text:
Photo by Sheila Webber, of Camden Passage, December 2012, photoshopped.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Engineers' information literacy
Gurke, S. (2012) "Information Literacy in the Workplace: Novice engineers can't leave learning in the dorm room." R&D, 14 December. http://www.rdmag.com/articles/2012/12/information-literacy-workplace
Photo by Sheila Webber: Niagra Falls, December 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
International Information Literacy Survey report
Photo by Sheila Webber: Moonrise, Blackheath, December 2012.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Moonrise, Blackheath, December 2012.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Merry Christmas from the Information Literacy Weblog
Photo by Sheila Webber: The Christmas wreath I made this year
Saturday, December 22, 2012
New report on reading habits
Photo by S Webber: Christmas deco, London, December 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
IL in the workplace
http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/projects-i-capabilities-in-workplace.html; the LILAC presentation is at http://www.slideshare.net/MarkHepworth/mh-lilac12-information-literacy-in-the-workplace and the CILIP presentation at http://www.cilip.org.uk/infolit2012/Documents/8.%20Mark%20Hepworth.pdf Additionally there is an example training animation, http://goanimate.com/videos/0lu-cLLBI6pE/1
Photo by Sheila Webber: wet ivy leaf, December 2012
Photo by Sheila Webber: wet ivy leaf, December 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Making games for libraries
A blog from Andy Walsh, Making Games for Libraries, includes videos from his recent workshop. The video embedded here has one of the workshop groups explaining their game idea. The blog is definitely worth following if you are interested in developing library game ideas. The blog is at http://gamesforlibraries.blogspot.co.uk/
Walsh has also made another library card game available as a zipped file, SOURCES, at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/16230/
Walsh has also made another library card game available as a zipped file, SOURCES, at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/16230/
Monday, December 17, 2012
New issue of Education Libraries: video games, preservice teachers, High School programme
- Beyond a Fad: Why Video Games Should Be Part of 21st Century Libraries By Kym Buchanan and Angela M. Vanden Elzen
- Information Literacy Outreach: Building a High School Program at California State University Northridge By Coleen Meyers Martin, Eric P. Garcia, and Marc McPhee
- Information Literacy Skills for Preservice Teachers: Do they transfer to K-12 classrooms? By Marcia Stockham and Heather Collins.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Festive lampost, Toronto, Canada, December 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
cfp i3 conference
i3 (Information: Interactions and Impact) 2013 will be held at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK on 25-28 June 2013. The conference "is concerned with the quality and effectiveness of the interaction between people and information and how this interaction can bring about change." They particularly welcome papers which address two or more of the following conference themes: the quality and effectiveness of user/information interactions (e.g. information literacy); patterns of information behaviour in different contexts; impact of information or information services on people, organisations, communities and society (e.g. social, learning, cultural and economic outcomes of engagement with information); and more effective decision making. Submissions are invited for full papers, short papers and round table discussions. The conference language will be English. All abstracts should be submitted by Friday 18th January 2013.
Go to http://www.i3conference.org.uk/ for more information
Photo by Sheila Webber: leaf
Go to http://www.i3conference.org.uk/ for more information
Photo by Sheila Webber: leaf
Liber Quarterly: reaching researchers; IL standards and knowledge generation
- Research group librarian – a cooperating partner in research? by Heidi Kristin Olsen
- Information literacy competency standards for higher education and their correlation with the cycle of knowledge generation Alejandro Uribe Tirado and Wilson Castaño Muñoz
and a review by Brunella Longo of Patric Charaudeau's Les médias et l'information: l'impossible transparence du discours. 2nd. éd.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Toronto night lights, December 2012 (this is basically an out of focus picture, but I thought it gave a nice effect)
cfp: Creating Knowledge VII: 14-16 August 2013
You can propose a paper, a poster, a workshop, a round table or a TeachMeet presentation. Proposals should be submitted by 1 March, 2013. The tree key themes are learning design, learning environments and quality development.
Information at http://learning.lub.lu.se/flow/creating-knowledge-vii.aspx?FlowCategoryID=175
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cold misty day in Toronto, St James park, December 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Didáctica básica para la alfabetización informacional
There are contributuions from a multidisciplinary range of authors. Details at http://bibliotecologia.mercadoshops.com.ar/didactica-basica-para-la-alfabetizacion-informacional_210xJM
Photo by Sheila Webber: Farmers' market, Toronto, December 2012
Communications in Information Literacy new issue
- Notes from the Field: 10 Short Lessons on One-Shot Instruction by Megan Oakleaf et al.
- Rethinking Information Literacy in a Globalized World by Laurie Kutner and Alison Armstrong
- Information Literacy on the Web: How College Students Use Visual and Textual Cues to Assess Credibility on Health Websites by Katrina L. Pariera
- Measuring the Impact of Library Instruction on Freshmen Success and Persistence: A Quantitative Analysis by Jason M. Vance, Rachel Kirk and Justin G. Gardner
- Collaboration and Problem-Based Learning: Integrating Information Literacy into a Political Science Course by Peg Cook and Mary Barbara Walsh
- Embedding Affective Learning Outcomes in Library Instruction by Ellysa Stern Cahoy, and Robert Schroeder
- Considering Information Literacy Skills and Needs: Designing Library Instruction for the Online Learner by Swapna Kumar, Marilyn Ochoa, and Mary Edwards
- Predictors of Student's Attitudes toward Science Literacy by Irina I. Holden
- Engineering Integration: Building a Quick and Effective Faculty Seminar by Kate Peterson, and Jon Jeffryes
Photo by Sheila Webber: Courgettes, Farmers' market, St Lawrence market, Toronto, Canada, December 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Classic information literacy work on science and engineering
Leckie, G. and Fulleron, A. (1999) "Information literacy in science and engineering undergraduate education: faculty attitudes and pedagogical practices." College and Research Libraries, 60 (1), 9-29. Available full text at http://crl.acrl.org/content/60/1/9.full.pdf The abstract reads: "What are science and engineering faculty doing with respect to the development of information literacy in their undergraduate students? To explore this question, science and engineering faculty at two large Canadian universities were surveyed and interviewed regarding their perceptions of their students' information literacy skills and their own pedagogical practices related to such skills. Faculty awareness of, and support for, a variety of bibliographic instruction methods and the perceived role of science and engineering librarians in information literacy instruction also were investigated. Based on the survey results, suggestions for the design of library instruction for science and engineering undergraduates are made."
Another paper drawing on the same research is:
Leckie, G. and Fulleron, A. (1999) "The roles of academic librarians in fostering a pedagogy for information literacy." In: Racing Toward Tomorrow, ACRL 1999 National Conference Papers http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/pdf/leckie99.pdf
And more recently, this Powerpoint talks about the current situation at Waterloo:
Fullerton, A. and MacDonald, K. "Information Literate Students: Faculty and Librarians collaborate on a shared commitment" http://www.trace.uwaterloo.ca/research_on_teaching_and_learning/documents/Fullerton503.pdf
Credo Reference award for a digital information literacy resource
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, December 2012
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, December 2012
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Useful material from past infolit meetings
There's a detailed description of the Manchester New Library Professionals Network IL event in November, on the Information Literacy website at http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/develop-professional-practice/training-events/event-reviews-2012/. The page also has a write-up of the London TeachMeet held in June (the focus was Supporting diverse learners), the presentations from which are at http://www.ldnlibtm.info/ and a shorter account of the Manchester TeachMeet held in January (presentations on http://manchesterlibtm.wordpress.com/)
Short video of Niagra Falls last week, by me
Passing on words of wisdom
Gibson, C. and MacDonald, K. (2012) Passing on words of wisdom: Using graduating student nurses' experiences to influence the development of new entrants to a nursing programme. Practice and Evidence of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 7 (1), 2-20.
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, again.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Indicators of an Information Literate University
One of the universities we were working with (York University) had used this list of indicators in an internal exercise with librarians, and we used the indicators as the basis of the main activity with the group of universities in the second workshop (at the University of Waterloo, see photo above). They are an aid to assessing where your organisation is, identifying where people differ in perceptions of where you are, and planning where you want to be.
The article which includes the list is here: http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/staffs-webber-johnston.pdf It first appeared as: Webber, S. and Johnston, B. (2006) "Working towards the information literate university." In Walton, G. and Pope, A. (Eds) Information literacy: recognising the need. Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent: 17 May 2006. Oxford: Chandos. pp 47-58.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
University/ school collaboration on health class
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, December 2012
Photo by Sheila Webber: above Niagra Falls, Canada, December 2012
Saturday, December 08, 2012
New issue of Journal of Information Literacy
- Indicators of adult information literacy by Ralph Catts
- Assessing students' information literacy skills in two secondary schools in Singapore by Yun-ke Chang et al.
- 'Digital fluency': towards young people's critical use of the internet by Carl Miller and Jamie Bartlett
- Mobile information literacy: a preliminary outline of information behaviour in a mobile environment by Andrew Walsh
- Meeting information literacy outcomes: Partnering with faculty to create effective information literacy assessment by Debra Anne Hoffmann and Kristen LaBonte
- Poster presentations as an assessment tool in a third/college-level Information Literacy course: an effective method of measuring student understanding of library research skills by JaNae Kinikin and Keith Hench
- Social media, authentic learning and embedded librarianship: a case study of dietetics students by Rebecca K. Miller
- Reflection for learning: understanding the value of reflective writing for information literacy development by Pamela McKinney and Barbara A Sen
The issue is at https://ojs.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JIL/index
Photo by Sheila Webber: Black squirrel, Toronto, Canada. I will be blogging about my Canadian information literacy visit over the next week
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Welsh Information Literacy Best Practice, 28 January 2013
Photo by Sheila Webber: night time Toronto, December 2012
Photo by Sheila Webber: night time Toronto, December 2012
Monday, December 03, 2012
Academic integrity: Ryerson's site & cartoons
Saturday, December 01, 2012
New infolit books from Chandos
Huvila, I. (2012) Information Services and Digital Literacy: In Search of the Boundaries of Knowing. Chandos Publishing. ISBN: 9781843346838. The book "scrutinizes the role of information services and digital literacies in the age of the social web. Huvila argues that a central problem in the age of the social web and the culture of participation is that we do not know the premises of how we know, and in this book he closely examines the ways that interacting with information affects people's actions." More info at http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2629&ChandosTitle=1
Andretta, S. (2012) Ways of Experiencing Information Literacy: Making the Case for a Relational Approach. Chandos Publishing. ISBN: 9781843346807. "Susie Andretta offers an investigation of the relational approach to examining information literacy from the perspective of the learner and the educator in both academic and other professional environments." http://www.neal-schuman.com/wxil
Photo by Sheila Webber: giant reindeer in Toronto
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
"You do not want to go up there."
Nick turned his head as he entered the Wintergarden of the Bellevue Hyatt to see Morena at the front desk. Per usual, he had his moment of sheer awe caused by her now-proven deadly combination of beauty and brains. This evening it had been poured into a particularly tight pair of jeans just barely covered up with a low cut black silky tank. He stopped for a moment and blinked. Twice. Then with what he hoped was casual nonchalance, he strode over.
The delay was perceived but credited to their tiff. Morena attempted a meager smile but by the time he'd stopped in front of her, it had slide off. Instead of speaking, he just stood and looked at her, waiting for her to explain.
Her comment was so much easier to explain than her feelings so she stated, "She's in a real mood. Jesper hasn't roused yet."
Nick threw a look behind her at the man at desk she'd obviously been chatting with and tilted a nod. "Gabe."
"Nick," Gabe, a much broader shouldered fellow in a security uniform, gave him a curt nod back before letting his eyes float back to Morena. When Nick didn't return his attention to her, Morena tossed a look back, then with a dismissive glare, stepped forward to take Nick's arm and led him away, both of them stepping down into the atrium.
The moment they were out of earshot, Morena dropped his arm and he took several more steps away than was needed. It wasn't lost on her. In fact, all her senses were tuned on him, awash in relief he'd returned and concerned at the state he was in. Despite his casual appearance in just a T-shirt and relaxed fit black denim, he had a stillness that hinted he was still angry. His face looked haggard and blank with no trace of the easy grin she desperately wanted to see.
"You look tired. Did you get any sleep?"
"Morena, your text said we needed to talk."
Not at all the attitude she wanted. All business. She'd been determined to give him space to make the choice of whether to come back into crazy vamp land. But she'd been unable to let it be and when by half past midnight Jesper hadn't snapped out of rigor dormitus and Nick hadn't given a peep, she'd taken action. Sophie had been pelting her with questions ever since the emotional ire had taken the place of the physical pain and the more details Morena had related about fighting the revenant, the angrier Sophie had become.
"Yeah," was all Morena could think to start with. "We do." She shrugged her hands into her pockets. Then, she began to plunge headlong into it because she couldn't handle it if he walked out the door on her again and here, in the atrium, he hadn't quite walked back in yet. "When you didn't text back…"
"Look, I know I said I'd be back soon to check on Sophie, but there were so many things to do. When you texted me, I'd finally wrapped up what I could and was actually sleeping. I figured I could waste time texting you back or just get on my bike and get over here."
Morena couldn't hide the puzzlement on her face. This was not the conversation she'd practiced in her head for the last three hours. The one where she did all the talking and Nick stood there brooding over her with disapproval. "Things? What things?"
Nick flashed a smile that was an attempt at the Cheshire cat which came off more like Snarf from Thundercats. "Well, the deli was a mess and the office trashed so I got my bro to get me the name of a contractor so then I had to whip up some specs for modifications like dark rooms, a decent kitchen, a bedroom, and a lot of plumbing rework to allow for a Fire Box. Greg and I figured out—"
Morena folded her arms to cover her surprise. This was the old Nick. Like nothing had even happened. Like they hadn't even argued. It was pissing her off. She wanted to explain. She needed to apologize. "Who's Greg?" she asked, sounding rather shrill.
"Oh. Reiterritter." When Morena still didn't acknowledge, Nick tried, "The guy that helped us out? Army jacket? Police uniform?"
Morena rolled her eyes. Nick took it as a sign to continue and as he walked her through the finer details of the fire box, the fireproof room that they'd be putting in the basement, she took his arm again and led him towards the elevator. Between Sophie rolling through all the scientific purposes for rigor dormitus and explaining her concern away with all the rationale for why Jesper wasn't up yet and Nick yammering about this essentially oversized BBQ box, she figured her apology was unwarranted and unnecessary. She stuffed Nick into the elevator and stepped back hard against the wall, her arms folded up to her chin.
He'd been over at the comic book store, which apparently was like the Bat Cave for the Gypsy Twin Irregulars, all day hatching through his fourteen point plan to reconstruct the deli building into their very own VP HQ (Vampire Psychologist Headquarters, he explained), until Lucy showed up and forced him to go home ASAP. But not before assuring him that she would check in on Sophie to make sure everything was OK.
"So have you seen her?"
Morena, stewing in her emotions, lifted her head, "Sophie? Of course I have."
The elevator dinged at their floor and they both stepped outside. "No, silly, Lucy," Nick replied.
It was all she could stand. "Silly? You know what's silly? Me feeling bad and worrying all evening, thinking I needed to apologize to you so you'd come back, that I might have pushed you away just like every other guy in my life. That's what's silly."
It took her a few breathes to notice she'd backed him up against the wall and now, at eye level and pressed up against him, she couldn't really remember what had made her lose her cool. The sheepish look on Nick's face didn't help and she was absolutely sure that wasn't a pencil in his pocket. Rather, more like a compact umbrella.
No, what was really silly was how she didn't step away immediately, how there was this wild jangle of sparks all the way through her as she stayed there, realizing the only one being intimidated by physical proximity was her. She eased away from him a little, but not enough to miss his ragged breathing.
"I mean…" She didn't want to retreat, didn't know how.
"You were worried I wouldn't come back?"
It was his incredulous tone that lifted her gaze back to his. The corner of his mouth dimpled into a half smile and for a second it almost looked like he might…lean…forward.
She half-shrugged, taking a step back. One hand pulled the opposite elbow as her shoulders crept up and curled forward as if to hide her face and her embarrassment.
"Uni, I said I'd be back. I meant it."
She nodded once, because there was no way words could be forced through the clamped garble that passed for her throat. Not when he was still giving her that look, some mix between adoration and affirmation, like he knew he had something on her. That she cared. Fuck, she did care. She was waiting for him to throw that in her face like a well-placed stun grenade.
As if sensing the moment was becoming too much for her, he peeled himself off the wall, breaking enough of the spell so she stepped further back and turned away. When he didn't make more of the revelation, she relaxed. Even tossed her head back over her shoulder at him to ask a question.
The sheepishness bleated into his cheeks. "Yeah," he nervously rubbed at his neck. "It was the best I could think up while you were, uh, right there."
She recognized it for what it was. He'd just given her a nickname. "What does it mean?"
Bashful, but brutally honest Nick was back. "Uni is a word; it means a sea urchin."
Her face showed her puzzlement, was creeping towards offense.
"I just meant you can be hard and prickly on the outside, but, uh, soft on the inside."
She absorbed the comment and considered that if it had given by anyone other than the slightly awkward guy who she'd just moments ago backed against a wall and been incidentally acquainted with his not-so-soft parts, she'd likely have been offended. The smile was a reflex, maybe from when she was fifteen, before the world had landed responsibility on her shoulders and let her just be a girl.
She pivoted on her heel. "Well, I guess I'm not the only one that can be hard on the outside." Before her courage left her, she began to walk away, her cheeks flaming at her own boldness.
She heard him swear to himself, "Shit, you noticed that."
She spun around, grinning now, "Oh yeah, I noticed." But had turned back around and was heading back down the hall before her teasing could catch up with her. By the time Nick met her at the open doorway, he'd wrestled with his own discomfiture and had thought up an appropriate comeback intended to pierce a little deeper into the soft spot he'd just uncovered. Something about Uni being quite tasty.
But when Morena turned her head back to him, hand on the handle of the open door and raised a finger to her lips for silence, the flirtatiousness was long gone, replaced by the warrior on high alert. He took hold of the door so she could step in and quickly survey the room. After the quick tour, she returned to the doorway to his questioning face.
"What is it?" Nick asked, not noticing anything out of place in the quiet room.
"It's Sophie," Morena answered. "She's gone."
I'd been in the middle of rereading my inventory of Jesper's injuries for maybe the twentieth time, trying to cross-reference it against known lethal vampiric allergies when I realized something. The longer Jesper didn't break out of rigor dormitus, the more angry with him I got. In recollection, it was obvious that while he seemed to shrug off silver, something in the cabling that Skovajsa had used to tie him to the scaffolding had made him unable to tear through them. After a few dismal attempts to identify it, I felt fairly certain it was optical cabling and therefore likely filled with silica. Glass.
Could Jesper be allergic to something as pervasive as glass? It was terrifying. I'd heard on the news how someone had smashed through a window at the penthouse floor restaurant in the wee hours of the morning. A singe shard of that stuff might kill him? Then why the hell was he fighting a Carpathian pretender!?
Without him here to rail against, it was exasperating. What if some of the slivers of glass had gotten embedded into his skin before he converted to rigor dormitus? Would that make him unable to transform back out? If I could remember exactly where he was cut by the cabling, perhaps we could drill the glass fragments out. So back to my inventory and I sketched out a body, drawing in the injuries I remembered.
Forcing away the memory of his chin, I stuffed my face in one of my older notebooks. Without the Memento which I'd given over to Nick, I couldn't complete much in the way of full identification. Although I tried hard not to question why Nick was still AWOL, especially since the moment I'd even prodded at her about it, Morena had stormed from the room. Too much drama there but I was trying to deal with my own shit. And having a 3000 pound marble-frozen vampire constituted a significant amount of shit.
"Tante. Tante, come to me."
"Maurice?" My head perked up and when I looked around the room, I realized I was suddenly on my feet. The blood rushed to my head and I swooned against the desk.
"I need you to come to me."
Before I could even wallow in the pain it caused, I was up again and walking toward the door. The pain meds were not strictly speaking meant to cover all that I had to do to follow his call but I did it and several minutes later, I was outside, limping across the roof towards his shadowy figure.
"Maurice?" I couldn't stop the panic in my voice. I hadn't had any contact from the twins, just their surrogate Mr. Reitterritter and he had also gone dark. If anything more had happened to the twins, I couldn't deal with it. I hobbled toward him only to stop up short as, in an inky burst, he appeared right in front of me.
I grabbed his arms, "Are you ok?"
He smiled in a pained way. "Fine. It is you who are unwell."
I was gasping for air, whatever motivation had seen me to this point, adrenaline mixed with the last of my pain meds fled me completely and I doubled over to breath, clutching at him. "You said…you said you…needed me."
This sense of warmth and welcome emanated from him as he wrapped arms around me to support my weight. It lessened the pain a little but I could at least look up and him and open my eyes as he raised my chin to look up at him.
"I needed you to come to me. Of your own free will," he spoke distinctly, so I might understand.
But I didn't understand. "But why?"
He shook his head gently at my confusion. He brushed strands of hair that clung to my sweaty face away with his thumb and forefinger, tucking the hair behind my ears. "Because, Sophie, you have become a danger to yourself and I need to keep you safe."
As my ire was about to rise at his impertinence and I was about to ask him what he meant, his gentleness won me over, his fingers felt soft and cool against my fevered cheek, his arms reliable, strong, his whole frame contracting around me to hold me close. Somewhere deep in my brain, doubtless in a prim British accent, I shook my head, knowing that such influence on me was impossible. But not so. One other vampire had held me in sway…
"Maurice, I don't…" I suddenly exhaled from the sheer weight of doubting him.
"Relax and trust in me. I will do you no harm." His words lulled me, freed me from all the responsibilities throughout all of time and I blinked into sudden awareness, as he tilted my head back, his thumb gently brushing the corner of my mouth as he bent his head and kissed me.
I thankfully don't remember much after that, although for some reason, he felt it necessary to keep that moment, the one in which he'd bent to his will, in my memory. And as much as I tried, as much as I heard the distinct snap of a rule against a desk and the rustle of skirts, I couldn't find anything distasteful in that memory. It wasn't the best kiss I'd ever had. But it wasn't the worst either.
Awareness came back as I realized I sat, my legs to my side, on the rooftop. Maurice sat there next to me, not touching me but not shrinking away either. I realized that he'd made this decision himself as I couldn't sense Lucy anywhere nearby. This was between him and me. And there was no regret in his shoulders nor did he seem pleased with himself. It had simply been his will. The force of his will.
"Please, do not be angry with me."
But he was still my Maurice.
When I found my throat was free of constriction to speak, I came into complete awareness that I no longer felt pain anywhere. I was certain all cuts, bruises, strains, sprains, all of it would be gone now. And while that made some sort of sense to me, I needed to know his reasoning, needed to understand what this new Maurice had done and why. This new, more powerful, more controlled Maurice.
"No. I'm not. You made sure of that. I'm not sure how but you have. But it would help, for later, to know why you did it."
He turned his head to me and I saw him for the first time, not a boy clutching at the awkwardness of his manhood, but a man, firmly in control of his abilities and committed to his beliefs. Whatever gentle feelings he still held for me were there but he was no longer at the mercy of them. He decided where it all fit and it all fit rather nicely.
"Sophie, you were damaged beyond what your doctors knew. For your own safety, you needed to be healed. And after last time, I needed to insure you allowed me to help you."
I noted his new usage of this lifetime's name. I would never again be his Tante. I nodded my head in acceptance. He smiled and let me see for a brief moment that somewhere in him, my acceptance denoted approval, which he did still want. I wasn't sure how I felt about the idea that he would've done it whether I approved or not.
"Some lives are drawn together forever."
My brows drew down. Something in how he said it sent a flutter through my consciousness and I distinctly heard a tea pot clatter. A memory threatened but I slapped it away.
I felt his hand again on my arm. "Sophie?" I nodded and he helped me to my feet.
"I'm alright."
He nodded as he looked down at me. Then, he opened his mouth to ask something but paused. There was a question there but his eyes showed compassion, maybe pity, I'd never seen directed at me before. But then he closed his lips and gave me a meek smile. He reminded me so much of that whisper, a presence so recently felt, one that had saved me from the Taint, the kind of presence that was creeping from the shadows back into the light. But the recollection wouldn't come and he stood there apart from it, his own self, a man molded out of his uniqueness and his duality.
"What is it?" I asked him.
He looked out over the night. "A storm is coming."
"What kind of storm?"
He didn't look at me when he said, "The legendary kind."
We didn't talk more. I went back downstairs and dodged the inevitable questions from Morena and Nick and noticed as I swept by the desk, that Nick had returned the Memento and it flipped furiously to that page that I dreaded as if to warn me that yes, some lives are drawn together. Forever.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
One sure way to see the changes in the season and holidays is the differences we see in the ingredients we use to bake. For example, with fall you may use a lot of apples, cinnamon and pumpkin which is why that is my favorite time of year to bake. The same is true with holidays. When I think of Valentine's Day I imagine red velvet cake and red fruits such as cherries, raspberries and strawberries and of course chocolate! This makes it very easy to take almost any recipe which incorporates these ingredients and make them fit a Valentine's Day theme.
I recently made some chocolate sandwich cookies which were simply a chocolate cookie with a white chocolate ganache filling. To make them fit the Valentine's Day theme, I rolled them in red and white sugar which created a very festive sparkle.
For adding a bit of wow factor for gift giving and having them on display, I thought outside the box a bit and used cupcake decorations. Picks like these give a new dimension for other types of treats besides cupcakes!
I wanted the sandwich cookies to have some lift and fit above the cupcake liner so you could really see the sparkles on the filling therefor I left a chocolate candy surprise on the bottom of the baking cup.
For easy transport you could also incorporate clear plastic drinking cups and layer some treats on the bottom before inserting the cup into a simple plastic party bag and tying with ribbon and even more treats! This is a very inexpensive way to show someone you care. Just imagine all of the possibilities!
When thinking about any holiday, don't limit yourself to recipes which are tailored to a specific time of year. You can make your favorite recipes and add a little twist to incorporate the occasion.
To make these treats and the very popular and quite delicious Chocolate Chunk Banana Bread cookies I shared with you a couple of weeks ago, I used White Lily flour. They were kind enough to send me some samples as I unfortunately can not get this brand in my area.
In case you aren't familiar with the brand, White Lily flour is a top grade flour which is lighter and made from soft red winter wheat as opposed to a combination of soft and hard wheat flour that is found with all-purpose flour. It also goes through more processing so it is is made to be lighter and silky smooth. Just keep in mind that in a typical recipe calling for 1 cup of regular flour, you should add an extra two tablespoons when using a non-White Lily recipe.
White Lily has some fun recipes including these for Valentine's Day: Chocolate Covered Cherry-Filled Shortbread Cookies this Red Velvet Valentine's Cake. Yum!
Currently this brand of flour is only available in 16 states. Check out the Where to Buy section of the White Lily website to see if you can locate it near you!
White Lily wants to give one of my readers the chance to try out their top grade flour and make their baking for any time of year more enjoyable with this fantastic prize package including a Cuisinart hand mixer in brushed chrome!
Giveaway Prize
White Lily Baking Prize Package including Cuisinart Power Advantage Plus 7 Speed Hand Mixer in Brushed Chrome, pastry blender, White Lily Flour, White Lily baking tools and promotional items as shown above.
Required Entry
Look over the White Lily recipes and tell me one you would love to try!
Optional Extra Entries
Required entry must be completed before extra entries qualify. Leave an additional comment for the value of each extra entry and a way to verify the entry. When choosing the blog about this giveaway option, your blog post must include an active link to this giveaway and be at least 80 words in length.
- sign up for the White Lily newsletter – 1 entry
- like Oh My! Sugar High Facebook (sidebar) – 1 entry
- follow Oh My Sugar High on Pinterest – 1 entry
- add my button to your blog or website (sidebar) – 1 entry
- subscribe to email updates (sidebar) – 1 entry
- follow @ohmysugarhigh and tweet this giveaway – 1 entry per day
- #Win a White Lily Flour Prize Package w/Cuisinart 7 Speed Hand Mixer in Chrome! $75+ value @OhMySugarHigh http://bit.ly/wpBIS5 #giveaway
- blog about this giveaway with a link to this post – 3 entries
Giveaway Rules
See Official Rules. US only (no PO Box) Sweepstakes ends 2/28/12 at 11:59pm CST. Winner(s) will be notified by email and listed on the Official Winner's List.
The product(s) featured were provided free of cost to me by the manufacturer or representing PR agency. Opinions expressed are my own and are NOT influenced by monetary compensation.


text:
Extending your 'healthspan': Brain scientists tap into the secrets of living well longer
AUSTIN, Texas — Retired state employees Vickey Benford, 63, and Joan Caldwell, 61, are Golden Rollers, a group of the over-50 set that gets out on assorted bikes — including trikes for adults they call "three wheels of awesome" — for an hour of trail riding and camaraderie.
"I love to exercise, and I like to stay fit," said Caldwell, who tried out a recumbent bike, a low-impact option that can be easier on the back. "It keeps me young."
Benford encouraged Caldwell to join the organized rides, which have attracted more than 225 riders at city rec centers and senior activity centers. The cyclists can choose from a small, donated fleet of recumbent bikes, tandem recumbents and tricycles.
"With seniors, it's less about transportation and more about access to the outdoors, social engagement and quality of life," said Christopher Stanton, whose idea for Golden Rollers grew out of the Ghisallo Cycling Initiative, a youth biking nonprofit he founded in 2011.
But that's not all, according to brain scientists. They point to another important benefit: Exercising both body and brain can help people stay healthier longer.
The new thinking about aging considers not just how long one lives, but how vibrant one stays later in life.
"If you're living, you want to be living well," said Tim Peterson, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Most people who were interested in life span and were studying genes — which control life span — switched to 'healthspan.'"
"Healthspan," a coinage now gaining traction, refers to the years that a person can expect to live in generally good health — free of chronic illnesses and cognitive decline that can emerge near life's end. Although there's only so much a person can do to delay the onset of disease, there's plenty that scientists are learning to improve your chances of a better healthspan.
The work takes on special resonance in light of a new report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that life expectancy in the United States has decreased in recent years. A rise in midlife mortality (ages 25 to 64) has dragged down the overall expectancy.
"The idea is to make people productive, healthier and happier longer and more capable taking care of themselves," said Andreana Haley, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is among this breed of researchers working to understand healthspan. "We now live a long time with a lot of chronic diseases, and it's not fun. It's costly — in terms of productivity, caregiving responsibilities, cost of health care."
Haley, who collaborates with exercise physiologists, nutritionists, behavioral neuroscientists and physicians, said researchers from many other disciplines are also studying healthspan, such as nurses, speech pathologists and pharmacists.
Their work is inspired by an aging U.S. population with changing needs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10,000 people a day turn 65, the nation's fastest-growing population segment.
"We have a lot of people who will need to be taken care of in the next 50 years," she said, "and fewer young people to do the care."
Haley, with UT's Aging and Longevity Center, focuses her work on midlife, which she defines as ages 40 to 60, a time when health choices can have a big impact on older years. She's especially interested in brain health.
Her team is collaborating with UT's Human Laser Lab to pilot the use of low-level light therapy to increase brain energy and improve cognitive performance.
Because of this close brain-body connection, any degeneration in the brain affects not only cognitive function but also areas that control weight, appetite, personality, mood and blood pressure.
Online games and brain-training exercises have become popular as another way to keep the brain sharp.
However, research on brain training reflects mixed results, including a study published last year in the journal Neuropsychologia, which "calls into question the benefit of cognitive training beyond practice effects."
Still, aging experts urge people as they age to work to keep mentally active, as well as physically active, to lengthen their healthspan.


text:
The best TOEFL instructor with a great free TOEFL lesson:
The best TOEFL instructor with a great free TOEFL lesson:
Pearson, the publisher of The Economist magazine, has just launched a brand new English proficiency exam, which they are hoping will grow to be as popular as the TOEFL is today. The new exam is called the Pearson Test of English (PTE). There are three forms of the new exam. The one that will interest TOEFL students the most is the PTE Academic. Already over 500 universities, including top ones like Yale, have announced that they will accept PTE Academic scores from international students. In addition to the academic exam, there is also a PTE General, and a PTE for Young Learners.
The first PTE Academic will be administered in India in November 2009. Of course, since it is such a new exam, there is hardly any material to help one study for it. The TOEFL has been around for a long, long time. Even the current version, the TOEFL iBT, has been around for years now, so there are a lot of text books, sample exams, and free internet resources like this one to help one study for the it. It will take some time for this amount of material to appear for the new PTE Academic.
Master TOEFL trainer RebeccaESL gives you all the information you need to decide between taking the TOEFL or the IELTS! Very helpful lecture from the best English teacher on the planet!
Here are some good tips on how to beat the TOEFL and get a high score.


text:
When it comes to the history of the yakuza movie, there are few titles as important or as influential both in Japan and the wider world than Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honour and Humanity (仁義なき戦い, Jingi Naki Tatakai). The first in what would become a series of similarly themed movies later known as The Yakuza Papers, Battles without Honour is a radical rebooting of the Japanese gangster movie. The English title is, infact, a literal translation of the Japanese which accounts for the slightly unnatural "and" rather than "or" where the "honour and humanity" are collected in a single Japanese word, "jingi". Jingi is the ancient moral code by which old-style yakuza had abided and up to now the big studio gangster pictures had all depicted their yakuza as being honourable criminals. However, in Fukasaku's reimagining of the gangster world this adherence to any kind of conventional morality was yet another casualty of Japan's wartime defeat.
The story begins with a black and white image of a mushroom cloud with the film's bright red title card and now famous theme playing over the top. This is Hiroshima in 1946. Things are pretty desperate, the black market is rife and there are US troops everywhere. Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) has just returned from the war (in fact he's still in his uniform). He gets himself into trouble when he intervenes as an American soldier attempts to rape a Japanese woman in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded marketplace. He manages to cause enough of a commotion for the woman to escape but the Japanese cops just tell him not to mess with the GIs. Things don't get much better as one of Hirono's friends is assaulted by a yakuza. They get some rival yakuza to help them get revenge and in the commotion Hirono accidentally kills someone and is sent to prison for 12 years. In prison he meets another yakuza who wants to escape by pretending to commit harakiri and promises to get his yakuza buddies to bail Hirono out if he helps. From this point on Hirono has become embroiled in the new and dangerous world of the Hiroshima criminal underground.
Battles Without Honour and Humanity has a famously complicated plot entered around the various power shifts and machinations between different groups of yakuza immediately after the end of World War II. The film begins in 1946 and ends in 1956 though many of its cast of tough guys don't last anywhere near as long. The picture Fukasaku paints of Japan immediately after the war is a bleak one. Even if some of these guys are happy to have survived and finally reached home, they've seen and done terrible things. Not only that, they've been defeated and now they're surrounded by foreign troops everywhere who can pretty much do what they want when they want. They just don't have a lot of options – if they don't have connections to help them find work when there's not enough to go around then it isn't surprising if they eventually fall into to crime. Also, having spent time in the military, the yakuza brotherhood provides a similar kind of camaraderie and surrogate family that you might also find in an army corps.
It all gets ugly quite fast. Largely the yakuza are making their money profiting from the political instability, resenting the US occupation yet reaching deals with them to support their efforts in the Korean war and then selling new and untested drugs at home (with less than brilliant results). Betrayals, executions, assassinations in previously safe places like a bath house or the barbers – these are a long way from the supposedly honourable gangsters of old. One minute Hirono is offering to cut off his finger as a traditional sign of atonement (though no one knows exactly what you're supposed to do in this situation and it all ends up seeming a little silly) and taking the rap for everyone else's mistakes, but his friend faked harakiri to get out of jail and everyone is double crossing everyone else whichever way you look.
The whole thing is filmed in an almost documentary style with captions identifying the various characters and giving the exact time of their demise (if necessary) as well as a voice over giving background information about the historical period. The film is inspired by real life yakuza memoirs and there are parts which feel quite like a bunch of old guys sitting in a drinking establishment and recounting some of their exploits.
This new postwar world of heartless gangsters is a tough one and almost devoid of the old honour-bound nobility, however somehow Fukasaku has managed to make it all look very cool at the same time as being totally unappealing. You wouldn't want to live this way and you definitely don't want to get involved with any of these guys but somehow their self determined way of life becomes something to be admired. That said, there's a sadness too – that even in the criminal underworld there used to be something noble that's been obliterated by the intense trauma of the war. You can rebuild, you can move on from the destruction left by the war's wake but there's no going back to those days of "honour and humanity" – if they ever existed, they're gone forever now.
Battles without Honour and Humanity is available in blu-ray in the UK as part of Arrow Video's Battles Without Honour and Humanity: The Complete Collection box set.


text:
firstname.lastname@example.com project proposals to the TSC
Project proposal submission and discussion for the Technical Steering Committee
Group Information
- 116 Members
- 282 Topics , Last Post:
- Started on
- Feed
Group Email Addresses
Group Settings
- This is a subgroup of announce .
- All members can post to the group.
- Posts to this group do not require approval from the moderators.
- Messages are set to reply to sender.
- Subscriptions to this group do not require approval from the moderators.
- Archive is visible to anyone.
- Wiki is visible to members only.
- Members can edit their messages.
- Members can set their subscriptions to no email.
Top Hashtags [See All]No used hashtags.
Archived Messages


text:
If I were to open my heart I'd say a lot of things right now. Things like, "It's Friday, folks. Hip hip hooray!"
Only it's raining. And I volunteered to pick up trash tomorrow — in the rain. Ohhh, goodie.
Put your money where your mouth is.
No, really. It won't be so bad. My friends will be there. I can sleep when we're done. Really.
If you say so.
I say so. Except . . . When I was a kid, I thought my parents had it all figured out. I thought that when I grew up, I'd have it all figured out, too.
Oh, honey.
I know. I know.
Speaking of "honey," people say funny things in the South. Like "Sweet Pea." And "you'uns." And "y'all." And I realized tonight: I'm getting used to it. It will feel strange to visit California and not hear, "You'uns ain't done nothin' wrong, y'all 'ear?" or "Ain't nobody got time for that!" . . .
. . . It's not so different from listening to Mandarin in Asia, actually. It was strange to return home and understand conversations around me then, too.
Is that so? Hmm . . .
Conversations are great, yes. But what about communication?
You would ask.
Communication is key — in everything. It's why we can't just all get along. We don't seek to listen and understand before first being heard. This goes for everyone.
And me too. Me too.
But . . . "home." What is home? Is it the bed upon which we lay our head? The person with whom we don't hold back? The thing we're really good at? People boast that their homes are the BEST EVER. But have they traveled the world? Have they seen everything it has to offer?
They don't have to. Home is where they're comfortable.
I see, I see. But not for me. Home is where my heart is, but it's more than that, too.
SO much more.
I should really go to bed. But I have dishes to do and wars to fight first. (This poem inspired me the other night, though. Lord knows I need to lay off the Pledge®.)


text:
Jewish World Review March 10, 2005 / 29 Adar I, 5765
George Will
Almost everything designated a civil rights problem isn't
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' new chairman follows Mary
Frances Berry, whose seedy career 24 years on the commission, 11 of
them as chairman mixed tawdry peculation, boorish behavior and absurd
rhetoric. Because Reynolds represents such a bracing change, it is
tempting to just enjoy the new 6-to-2 conservative ascendancy on the
commission and forgo asking a pertinent question: Why not retire the
Its $9 million budget about 60 employees and six field offices
is, as Washington reckons these things, negligible. So even Berry's
flamboyant mismanagement of it several Government Accountability
Office reports have said federal guidelines were ignored during her
tenure; another report is coming was small beer, even when including
the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year paid to the public relations
firm that mediated her relations with the media. But although the
monetary savings from closing the commission would be small, two
prudential reasons for doing so are large.
One is that someday Democrats will again control the executive
branch and may again stock the commission with extremists Berry
celebrated Communist China's educational system in 1977, when she was
assistant secretary of education; she made unsubstantiated charges of
vast ``disenfranchisement" of Florida voters in 2000 from the wilder
shores of racial politics. The second reason for terminating the
commission is that civil rights rhetoric has become a crashing bore and,
worse, a cause of confusion: Almost everything designated a ``civil
rights'' problem isn't.
The commission has no enforcement powers, only the power to be,
Reynolds says, a ``bully pulpit.'' And if someone must be preaching from
it, by all means let it be Reynolds. Born in the South Bronx, the son of
a New York City policeman, he is no stranger to the moral muggings
routinely administered to African-American conservatives. But he says,
``If you think I'm conservative, you should come with me to a black
barbershop. I'm usually the most liberal person there,'' where cultural
conservatism on crime, welfare, abortion, schools flourishes.
After working in some conservative think tanks, he became head of
the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights in the
administration of the first President Bush. He is currently a corporate
lawyer in Kansas City, where he has witnessed the handiwork of an
imperial judge who, running the school system, ordered the spending of
nearly $2 billion in a spectacular, if redundant, proof that increased
financial inputs often do not correlate with increased cognitive outputs.
But about this commission as bully pulpit: Does anyone really think
America suffers from an insufficiency of talk about race? What is in
scarce supply is talk about the meaning of the phrase ``civil rights.''
Not every need is a right, and if the adjective is a modifier that
modifies, not every right is a civil right one central to
participation in civic life.
Reynolds, 41, says that the core function of civil rights laws is
to prevent discrimination, meaning ``the distribution of benefits and
burdens on the basis of race.'' But if so, today a perhaps the
principal discriminator is government, with racial preferences and the
rest of the reparations system that flows from the assumption that
disparities in social outcomes must be caused by discrimination, and
should be remedied by government transfers of wealth.
Reynolds rightly says that the core function of the civil rights
laws, which required ``a lot of heavy lifting by the federal
government,'' was to dismantle a caste system maintained by law. But
that has been accomplished.
It is, as Reynolds says, scandalous that so few black 17-year-old
males read at grade level; that so many black teenagers are not mentored
to think about college as a possibility and of SAT tests as important;
that many young blacks 68.2 percent are now born out of wedlock
are enveloped in the culture that appalls Bill Cosby, a culture that
disparages academic seriousness as ``acting white'' and celebrates
destructive behaviors. Reynolds is right that much of this can be traced
far back to discriminatory events or contexts.
But this is a problem of class, one that is both cause and effect of a cultural crisis. It is rooted in needs, such as functional families and good schools, that are not rights in the sense of enforceable claims. Civil rights laws and enforcement agencies are barely relevant. Proper pulpits perhaps including barbershops are relevant. Government pulpits are not.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


text:
Judge allows wild horse roundup in Nevada (and why it's a really bad idea)
December 23, 2009 8:49 PM EST
A spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said herds in the Calico Mountains Complex in northwestern Nevada are overpopulated and need to be reduced to protect the horses and the rangelands that support them.
"The current population in the five Calico herd management areas is three times what the range can handle, so this gather will ensure high-quality habitat for the wild horse and burros and other wildlife while protecting the public rangeland from overuse," said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.
She called the dispute over the roundup "yet another clarion call to develop and implement a long-term solution to the challenges we face concerning wild horses and burros on our public lands."
The Interior Department announcement came after a federal judge on Wednesday denied a request to block the roundup, saying opponents had failed to demonstrate that removal of the horses would violate federal law.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the agency is obligated under a 1971 law to carefully manage wild horse herds to prevent overpopulation.
The mustang roundup planned for Monday would be one of the largest in Nevada in recent years. Officials plan to use helicopters to force the horses into holding pens before placing them for adoption or sending them to long-term holding corrals in the Midwest.
The roundup is part of the land management agency's overall strategy to remove more than 10,000 mustangs from public lands across the West and ship them to greener pastures in the Midwest and East. The Bureau of Land Management estimates about half of the nearly 37,000 wild mustangs live in Nevada, with others concentrated in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.
Another 32,000 horses and burros are cared for in corrals and pastures in Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
Mustang advocates had sued to block the roundup, saying that use of the helicopters is inhumane because some of the animals are traumatized, injured or killed. Opponents also contend that the bureau is grossly inflating horse numbers to justify their removal from the range.
The lawsuit says wild horses are an integral part of the natural ecosystem and should remain on rangeland throughout the West rather than be herded into long-term holding pens.
A state wildlife agency sided with federal land managers, arguing in court papers last week that the mustangs have "severely degraded" the range and adversely affect Bighorn sheep and other wildlife that compete for scarce water resources in the drought-plagued region.
Friedman sided with roundup opponents in one aspect of his 25-page ruling. He said federal officials likely were violating federal law by stockpiling tens of thousands of horses in long-term holding facilities in the Midwest. The judge invited both sides to offer more legal arguments on the issue but said Congress ultimately may have to get involved.
Since the bureau has no money to euthanize the horses and no authority to hold them in a long-term facility, "it would face an inescapable conundrum" in conducting the roundup, Friedman said. The dispute is best solved by Congress, he added.
William Spriggs, a lawyer who argued against the roundup on behalf of California-based In Defense of Animals, said he was disappointed that Friedman allowed the roundup to go forward, but added: "I'm elated the judge at least bought one of our arguments."
Spriggs said President Barack Obama should issue a "holiday reprieve" for the mustangs and block the Nevada roundup until the legality of the long-term holding facilities is decided.
"The BLM's policy of stockpiling tens of thousands of horses in the Midwest — off their rightful Western ranges — is contrary to law, the intent of Congress and the will of the American people," Spriggs said.
One Response to "Judge allows wild horse roundup in Nevada (and why it's a really bad idea)"
When will the government learn to stop trying to fix things. In every case it seems they just make matters worse.


text:
Oakland, Calif. -- The seemingly boundless Internet is running out of a key resource: new IP addresses.
IP addresses, which are somewhat like telephone numbers, allow machines in homes and offices to locate and communicate with one another over the global network. The evaporating supply of new addresses – which some estimates say could dry up in about three years – could drive up the price of Internet access as well as disrupt the growth and performance of the network, warn some experts.
Worried that opportunists will hoard addresses to speculatively sell them, the organization responsible for handing out addresses in North America announced Wednesday that it would try to regulate the emerging trade. And in recent months, Internet administrators have been more forcefully urging software vendors, Internet service providers (ISPs), and major content providers to transition to a new addressing system.
Because upgrading can take years, the time to act is now, some experts say. "I suspect we are actually beyond a reasonable time frame where there won't be some disruption. It's just a question of how much," says David Conrad, general manager for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the top body that allocates IP addresses. "The largest impact to most people would be that there's no way out of paying higher prices for Internet service."
As the pool of new addresses shrinks, explains Mr. Conrad, organizations and companies with surplus addresses are likely to make them available – for a price. That cost will be passed along to consumers when they order Internet access.
Shortsighted programming
The reason for the problem stems from shortsighted programming, as was the case with the Y2K bug at the turn of the millennium. Addresses under the current standard, known as IPv4, are made up of four integers between 0 and 255. That allows for roughly 4.3 billion addresses – not enough to keep pace with expanding Internet access in India and China as well as the variety of devices going online.
Newer IPv6 addresses are made up of six integers instead of four, allowing trillions of trillions of new addresses.
Also similar to the Y2K transition, the amount of work involved is not trivial.
Randy Bush, a scientist based in Hawaii who helped a Japanese ISP become the first to make the switch, says it took the company several years of work as well as significant government incentives.
Few companies have followed suit. Less than 1% of Internet traffic uses IPv6. The reason: Consumers aren't clamoring for it, so there is no immediate, compelling business reason to upgrade.
"From the user's point of view, they wouldn't know if it was IPv6 or V8 juice. They just want their MTV," says Mr. Bush.
There's some disagreement about whether fewer available addresses will pose real problems. For years, people have predicted that IP addresses were close to running out, says Douglas Comer, an early developer of the Internet and a professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Various workarounds staved off shortages.
"There are lots of alternatives to just giving everybody their own IP address for every device, and those alternatives seem to be working pretty well," says Dr. Comer.
ISPs have found ways to use fewer IP addresses to service entry-level Web users – those who aren't interested in setting up their own website or sharing files. As these users desire more functionality, such as the ability to write a blog, services like Flickr or website hosts can meet their needs while still economizing on IPv4 space. The prevalence of service fees, he says, may eventually stimulate user demand for IPv6.
Conrad argues against this laissez faire approach because it curbs the democratic promise of the Internet in favor of a "retrograde" broadcast model with only a few producers and many consumers. He also worries that procrastination will force a rushed transition at the last moment, something that could mean more Internet congestion and greater cost to companies.
There's also concern that a shortage of addresses could stifle new technologies such as Web-enabled home appliances and cellphones.
Governmental involvement
Some experts are urging governments to step in as Japan did to provide monetary incentives, rather than waiting years for businesses to see a short-term rationale for upgrading to IPv6. Other governments, and the US Department of Defense, are now mandating contractors to upgrade.
While still a matter of considerable debate, one of the most widely cited projections on when the last new IP addresses will be allocated comes from Geoff Huston, a scientist with the Australian telecom Telstra. Currently, the IANA gives out IP addresses on the basis of demonstrated need. Those handouts will start running out in parts of the world in 2011, according to projections last month by Mr. Huston.
However, Huston says that doesn't factor in the IANA growing more stingy, nor does it factor in hoarding by those seeing the shortage of remaining addresses. Both those scenarios are likely, particularly a run on the bank, says Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, an institute in San Francisco dealing with Internet development.


text:
|On Target Range Hosted by http://www.ontargetrange.com/
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
New Check-In Procedure...
So... Went to the range today, and apparently, because of some moron that accused the range of making him deaf (when he was already completely deaf), we have a new check-in procedure that was brought forth by the insurance company I'm guessing...
Initial, sign, date, and THUMBPRINT?! I get why you might need the waiver. Sign and date, I'm fine with that, but is the right thumbprint completely necessary?... Seems a bit invasive, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Calgunners, and a lot of pro 2A people are going to be really unhappy with that...
Comments from On-Target? I'd like to hear the whole story as to how this came about..
I don't particularly mind initialing and signing a waiver, but it's the fingerprinting that irks me.
Any response from On-Target?
I wondered just how quick someone would post here their positive or negative concerns/remarks/complaints, etc….
The reason we have done this very simple, and we are NOT the only range using this type of form, as part of our ongoing effort to stay in business, remain a facility that can safely allow all shooters to fire their firearms and take training classes, we have upgraded our liability release forms. We do a yearly "legal Review" here, where we pay to have our Attorneys review the processes, forms and signage. Based on their recommendations we make changes.
With the constant changes in our California laws and the litigious society we are forced to live in, you should expect this additional paperwork from any business dealing with public access and safety. This change was planned some time ago, but there is some technology requirements that were not yet in place. They still are not, but we needed to step up and incorporate this form into our business.
The use of this form is VERY expensive to me. The extra people I have to hire to help manage the filling out process and tracking of this data is not a profit maker in any way. But, there is hope, I think.
I have ordered some ID cards that will be available to our repeat customers for $3 that will show that they have signed their life away and they will not have to fill out the form each time. We hope to have that in place by the end of the week. Even this solution is NOT really acceptable to me, but it does help the overall bottleneck at the counter.
I am sorry to force change on my customers, but until we once again have people around us take ownership and responsibility for their actions, instead of trying to always make it someone else's problem, we will have Lawyers and forms.
NRA Supporter & Life Member
CRPA Life Member
Last edited by ontargetrange; 02-28-2011 at 12:56 PM..
|Thread Tools
|Display Modes
Linear Mode


text:
Fabergé Rediscovered
Wilfried Zeisler
D Giles Ltd
In association with Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens
This new book focuses on the well-known collection of Fabergé at Hillwood and relates how new research and discovery of pieces thought to have been lost impact on items among the ninety or so pieces collected by Mrs Post.
We learn more about Fabergé's firm in the 19th and early 20th centuries and its place in the world of goldsmithing and jewellery creation at that time. It is a fascinating and beautifully illustrated study that will appeal to collectors and lovers of social history alike.
The chapter on Mrs Post as a collector of Fabergé is revealing and one understands what type of works appealed to her aesthetically and the reasons why some offers were turned down. She certainly had a discerning eye!


text:
Unique Features
Fully Responsive Design
The design will scale to fit on all browser widths/resolutions and on all mobile devices. Go ahead and scale your browser window and see the results.
Featured Slider
A custom homepage featured slider to showcase your important content, all powered by the fully responsive FlexSlider, which makes it usable on mobile devices. Add background images, content overlays, video & further content imagery, and let Scrollider take care of css & slide animations.
Custom Homepage
In addition to the featured slider, the theme has a customized widetized homepage where you can add and re-order the included custom components (Features, Portfolio, Blog Area, Testimonials) with the Woo Components widget.
Powerful portfolio management
The portfolio section is powered by it's own custom post type with a summary of your portfolio viewable on the homepage module and then it's own portfolio page template to house the rest.
Custom Typography
You can customize the typography in the theme to suit, and there is full support for Google Fonts in the font selector.
Custom Widgets
In addition to the widgetized homepage and the custom module widget, the theme has 1 widgetized sidebar and up to 4 footer widgetized areas. There are custom Woo Widgets included, and the theme supports all custom widgets from WooDojo".
Styling Options
The theme includes a variation of alternative styles which you can preview in the demo, and also has styling options for background color/image and setting link and button color.


text:
Buy Today.
For many of us, being American is a celebration of our uniquely rich, diverse and integrated nation. As our country's motto states, E. PLURIBUS UNUM (FROM MANY, ONE) we are truly a nation of mixed ethnic and ancestral backgrounds. Because of our proud, united heritage, we celebrate the United States in our Glass Heritage Series. The stars and stripes are the inspiration for the red/white/blue 3-color print that is high fired and wraps around the stein's glass body. Laurel wreaths and bunting complete the body design. An embossed pewter appliqué featuring a proud bald eagle perched upon a USA banner is permanently attached to the glass body. The embossed pewter lid is decorated with an eagle clutching arrows and wreaths in its talons and holding an E. PLURIBUS UNUM banner in its beak. A USA shield completes the lid design. The border of the lid is decorated with alternating stars and eagle feathers.
Submit a Review...
Search by Keyword
Shopping Basket
Note: All prices in US Dollars


text:
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Rapper and actor 50 Cent faces arraignment on charges that he attacked his ex-girlfriend and trashed her condo.
The hearing for the singer, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, was scheduled for Monday.
If convicted, the 'In Da Club' singer faces up to five years in jail and $46,000 in fines.
The woman told police that during a June 23 argument, Jackson began destroying property at her Toluca Lake condo before she locked herself in a bedroom. She says Jackson kicked open the bedroom door and kicked her, causing injury.
Police estimated about $7,100 in damage to the home.
The woman told police she had been in a three-year relationship and has a baby with Jackson, who has referenced drug dealing and violence in many songs.


text:
You Yanks especially will like this one....
In addition to communicating with the local Air Traffic Control facility, all aircraft in the Persian Gulf AOR are required to give the Iranian Air Defence Radar (military) a ten minute 'heads up' if they will be transiting Iranian airspace.
This is a common procedure for commercial aircraft and involves giving them your call sign, transponder code, type aircraft, and points of origin and destination.
I just flew with a guy who overheard this conversation on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai. It's too good not to pass along. The conversation went something like this.....
"Iranian Air Defence Radar: 'Unknown aircraft you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself.'
Aircraft: 'This is a United States aircraft. I am in Iraqi airspace.'
Air Defence Radar: 'You are in Iranian airspace. If you do not depart our airspace we will launch interceptor aircraft!'
Aircraft: 'This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 fighter. Send 'em up, I'll wait!'
Air Defense Radar: (no response.... Total silence)
Can you say, pwned


text:
xoc dia
Happy Birthday
son of a @ angelic because he has the same avatar character im using >=(
ps. you have to comment on their profile for them to see it >.>;
Hey what's up? It's been a while.
hi i m a new commer
... oops lol oh and yeah I figured the girl and the guy
The girl and the guy.. . and that 'girl' chasing the thing is a guy chasing Ice cream.. thats a GUY from vocaloids
What the guy and the girl or the girl chasing that thing?
lol, I really do like it.. look at my profile picture.. thats the picture Im going to use for the last chapter of Dimension Wars.
Lol I can't believe you actually are using that sig lol
Orc's Breathmint
500+ Posts????
Cloud's Hair Spray
Snakes Big Toe
Wand of !!!!!!11!!! Power
Sonics Milkshake


text: Going for 2 weeks in June. Not bringing anything but some clothes, wetsuits, and a camera. Have some options on places to stay but none are surfers so they wouldn't be able to give the best local advice. Planning on traveling to whatever spots possible as far as possible up the coast possibly up to oregon. Need advice on how to go about this, got the plane ticket already. best way to travel, any couch subletting programs, best spots for solitude and waist to chest glass.


text:
Everyone has a passion. For those who are smart or lucky, they are able to turn that passion into a career. I've known Mark Thomason for years and his passion for theater is one of the constants in his life. He is now the Production Stage Manager at downtown Tacoma's Broadway Center for the Performing Arts. Tomorrow begins a free event that the Broadway Center is putting on called the Fall Free For All. Mark was nice enough to take time out of his incredibly busy schedule to join us for 5 Question Friday. Here's Mark:
1. What is Broadway Center for the Performing Arts?
Broadway Center for the Performing Arts is hard to define, actually. Ostensibly we're a non-profit organization which presents live entertainment and manages the city-owned facilities including the Pantages, Rialto, and Theatre on the Square venues, plus three rehearsal halls as well as several interconnected spaces.
But much more than that, BCPA is a community-centered organization which partners with literally dozens of other non-profit organizations to support education, anti-poverty initiatives, economic development, and so much more. I could go into all the various initiatives and projects BCPA is involved in here in Tacoma and Pierce County, but it would take me all day to list them.
2. How did you get started there?
I've spent my career in the performing arts industry, graduating with degrees in theatre production and communications/photography. I worked as a freelance stagehand when I first moved back to the area after college, and eventually took a full time job at the Admiral Theatre in Bremerton. I was there for ten years; during most of that time I lived in Tacoma and commuted. I continued to freelance as a lighting designer in the area, a capacity in which I met David Fischer, Executive Director for the Broadway Center, when I worked with him on My Name is Asher Lev last year. Last January, they came to me and asked me to join their staff as Production Stage Manager. I loved the Admiral, but BCPA is such an important part of Tacoma, and I was happy to be given the chance to be a part of an organization that is really making a difference in our town. Plus the five-minute commute doesn't hurt!
3. What can people interested in Broadway Center for the Performing Arts do if they want to get involved?
The simplest thing is to go to the website at www.broadwaycenter.org and volunteer. We have a large volunteer corps whose primary duties are acting as our ushers but they also help out in so many other ways. Of course, as a large performing arts center with a community service mandate, we absorb the costs of presenting shows by lowering ticket prices and giving away tickets to underprivileged groups, so there are numerous sponsorship opportunities for businesses and individuals interested in donating, either financially, or in-kind.
4. What is the Free For All event this weekend?
Fall Free For All is probably the most publicly visible of our initiatives to promote and support downtown Tacoma. A completely free event open to the public and sponsored in part by the city, we'll be closing down Broadway between 9th and 11th to put on a festival of arts and music encompassing the street and the entire theatre complex on Broadway. We'll have 7 total stages on Saturday, with music, live arts installations, family-friendly performances, bouncy houses for the kids, even a live iron-casting art presentation. The fun begins at noon and lasts into the evening, with Vicci Martinez headlining on Saturday night at the Pantages. We continue the party on Sunday with a much smaller festival, with a mix of shows in Theatre on the Square and Studio 3, a live-cooking show in Studio 1, and a historical fashion show, a mix of Tacoma History and a men's clothing fashion show in Studio 2.
Anyone interested in attending, visit the website and submit your email address to be registered to receive wristbands for you and your family for access to the whole weekend.
5. What's coming up for Broadway Center for the Performing Arts?
At this point, I'm so focused on Fall Free For All, that's everything I'm thinking about. That said, let's look at my calendar… We've got ongoing classes for kids and adults both here and at various locations around town, we've got all our local arts partners gearing up for their season such as the Northwest Sinfonietta's performance of Beethoven's 9th in the beginning of October and Tacoma Opera's Cosi Fan Tutte later on… we're kicking off our own presenting season with Wayne Brady on the 11th at the Pantages, and we're helping to mount the new broadway tour of A Chorus Line, opening on the 26th and 27thhere before they head out on tour all over the country. Did I mention the Korean Consulate's bringing in Gong Myoung to the Rialto, and we've got our performance of the Voices Of the City, an outreach program representing many of the different communities and cultures living in Tacoma, where normal Tacoma citizens develop a way to present their own stories to share… We've got Video Games Live in early November, we're showing an Alfred Hitchcock Film & Lecture series… so much coming up I'm getting exhausted just thinking about it.
For more information on the Free For All event beginning tomorrow, September 22nd, go to click here . I'd like to thank Mark for joining me this week. As always, if you or someone you know is interested in participating in 5 Question Friday, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com
– Jack Cameron


text:
Recession's Over- Feel Better Now?
They're called the National Bureau of Economic Research and somewhere along the line they got anointed the official declarers of when the American economy has entered into and exited recessions. You'll be happy to know they are reporting the recession ended in June of last year.
Particularly sensitive to their suspicions the larger American public would issue one concerted and unified sarcastic laugh at their technical analysis, the NBER has taken pains to point out that recovery has been very slow. They add unemployment, currently at 9.7%, is always a lagging indicator.
And I will take pains to point out, that generally, the NBER is a lagging analytical organization. They usually make their declarations about a year after the fact. These academic economists are now concerned we're headed for a double-dip recession, which considering how long they lag, we could be in it right now.
So what does all this mean for the 25+ million Americans who are out of work? This figure includes the additional 8% or so who have given up looking for work, don't get counted in jobless statistics but are still unemployed. It means nothing. Much like the "official" jobless figures mean nothing by understating the real number of people out of work. That very month the recession "officially" ended, June of 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 550,000 Americans lost their jobs.
See, the NBER doesn't really look at the jobless figures to determine the end of the recession. They base their analysis on the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product. This is the sum of all economic activity within the nation's borders. There are three basic formulas for calculating GDP and one of them, for example, looks like this:
GDP= C+ Inv+ G+ (eX-i)
"C" stands for private consumption (what we spend on stuff). "Inv" stands for gross investments (what we spend not expecting an immediate return, like a company buying new machines to make widgets cheaper). "G" stands for government spending. "(eX-i)" is exports minus imports, a way of ferreting out what we made within our borders and what arrived here from outside our borders.
So there you go. In June of 2009, the formula said we got into positive territory and the economy stopped contracting.
With all due respect to economic analysts and the academic community that makes its livelihood debating these theoretical points, here's another formula:
GDP we've explained. RJN is Real Jobless Numbers from which we subtract the OJF, the monthly Official Jobless Figures. NBER is the 8 academic economists whose work made headlines today. BS is a universally acknowledged acronym that means exactly what you think it does.
September 21, 2010 at 11:13 am
It's not often I get a laugh first thing in the morning from an economic equation! What's next, perhaps a humorous look at the PPI or a snarky take on the " market basket of goods" that make up the CPI?


text:
Return to 'Jurassic Park' in 3-D
Take away the woefully rudimentary computers, Laura Dern's mom jeans and Samuel L. Jackson's hair, and it has all the trappings of a modern blockbuster.
April 5, 2013 - 8:54 am
Take away the woefully rudimentary computers, Laura Dern's mom jeans and Samuel L. Jackson's hair, and it has all the trappings of a modern blockbuster.
Including the extra $3 or so you'll have to fork over to see it the way it was intended.
Welcome to "Jurassic Park in 3D."
Steven Spielberg's dino-might tale of genetics run amok is back in theaters to celebrate its 20th anniversary. And, not having seen it in at least 15 of those years, it's startling to discover just how impressively the late visual effects wizard Stan Winston's creations have withstood the test of time.
From the rampaging tyrannosaurus to the sickly triceratops and the gentle brachiosaurus to the terrifying velociraptors, "Jurassic Park's" dinosaurs still feel more viscerally alive than most every special effect that's followed in the past two decades.
The return trip to Isla Nublar is a bit bumpy in places. The kids (Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards) are still annoying. It's a hoot to see their jaws drop at the wonders of an SUV equipped with a touchscreen and an interactive CD-ROM. And, 20 years later, it's even harder to watch the treacherous computer programmer played by Wayne Knight without wanting to disdainfully spit out, "Newman!"
In case you've been trapped in a hunk of amber, "Jurassic Park" takes place during a sneak preview of an isolated amusement park whose central attraction, a vast array of cloned dinosaurs, escapes during an act of sabotage.
Those kids, the park's curator (Richard Attenborough), a paleontologist (Sam Neill), a paleobotanist (Dern) and a mathematician (Jeff Goldblum) spend the next hour fleeing for their lives.
Seeing Goldblum on the big screen once again, at the height of his Goldblum-iness, is a delicious treat.
The thing is, though, I'm tired of 3-D.
Sure, that extra dimension is great when it's used as a filmmaking tool, the way it was wielded by, say, James Cameron on "Avatar," Martin Scorsese on "Hugo" or Ang Lee on "Life of Pi."
But, far too often, the use of 3-D is cynical at best.
While it's officially being touted as a 20th birthday party, "Jurassic Park's" 3-D conversion is as much an advertisement for the 3-D Blu-ray being released later this month and for the 3-D sequel due out in June 2014.
"Jurassic Park," though, qualifies as a special event and can be forgiven its excesses.
On the other hand, last weekend's "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" was delayed nine months so the filmmakers, who didn't shoot it with 3-D in mind, could go back and add that extra dimension. The edict was passed down soon after executives saw the 2-D "Battleship," based on another Hasbro property, sink to the bottom of the box-office charts.
The "G.I. Joe" move paid off because, as much as you or I may no longer be wowed by those plastic glasses, the rest of the world still gobbles up 3-D movies as though they were dipped in chocolate.
Take "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters." (Please.) The 3-D splatterfest was an afterthought in the U.S., earning just $55 million. But it raked in an additional $161 million at the foreign box office, spurring plans for a sequel — likely much to its star Jeremy Renner's chagrin.
International audiences don't even seem to care if the movies are new. According to boxofficemojo.com, last year's 3-D re-release of "Titanic" earned $58 million during its entire nine-week domestic run, but it took in a staggering $67 million in China during its first week alone.
Not surprisingly, the Motion Picture Association of America now ranks China as the largest international film market, based on its $2.7 billion box office in 2012 (compared to $10.8 billion in the U.S. in Canada).
That comes on the heels of a November study by Ernst & Young that predicted China would overtake the U.S. as the world's largest consumer of movies by 2020.
As long as there's that kind of demand, Hollywood will keep cranking out 3-D movies.
Heck, even next month's "The Great Gatsby" is being released in the format.
"Jurassic Park" remains an expertly crafted thrill ride that really doesn't need the extra bells and whistles.
But, if nothing else, 3-D can give any movie — even bigger dung heaps than the one generated by that triceratops — what Hollywood blockbusters so often sorely lack.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@
reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
"Jurassic Park in 3D"
127 minutes
PG-13; intense science-fiction terror
Grade: B
At multiple locations


text:
There isn't a lede in the world that could possibly do this Georgia Tech fan's Gator Bowl experience any justice, so I'll just go right to the recap:
From The Hive.com:
Since 1974 (thanks Dad!) I have attended Georgia Tech football games as a fan, student, and then alumni. Over the years, I have witnessed odd behavior at college football events. Until New Year's Day 2007, the event that stood out most was when the Georgia Tech student section covered the Notre Dame Team with raw fish in the late 70's.
After the Gator Bowl? Wow. Just wow.
I always carry my camera to Georgia Tech football games. We were fortunate and had seats on the lower level, two seats away from the Georgia Tech Band section. At the end of the second quarter, the band was in position on the field, leaving their section empty. I walked to the bottom of the band section to get some panorama shots of the stadium and then returned to my seat. I noticed a West Virginia fan standing in the middle of the Georgia Tech Band seating area, with his pants around his knees.
As this is unusual, I pointed the walking stereotype to my fiance', a Virginia Tech alumni. She had been preparing me for the encounters with West Virginia fans and this individual only supported her prior observations.
Then things got ugly.
The WVU fan then dropped his drawers and defecated on one of the Georgia Tech band section seats.
And, here's the photo recap..
Gator Bowl Disrespect for GT Band [The Hive]


text:
Panasonic plans to unveil a networking system that can connect an electric car to home devices via electrical wiring at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The electric car networking prototype allows people and devices inside the home to check on an electric vehicle while it is being recharged. It will be one of several research developments on show at the HD-PLC Alliance stand in the Las Vegas Convention Center's South Hall, Panasonic said Friday. Other prototypes will include an HD-PLC adapter for a security camera and an electrical monitoring system.
HD-PLC (High-Definition Powerline Communications) is a Panasonic-developed technology that utilizes the electricity cabling already present inside a home or building to send and receive data. It's competing in the market with the HomePlug Powerline Alliance and Universal Powerline Association to become the dominant standard for data connections over such cabling. All three systems have the advantage of not requiring dedicated Ethernet cabling, but all three are largely incompatible.
The technology made its first appearance at CES in 2004 when the company unveiled it as a prototype system during a keynote speech. At the time it had been proposed to the HomePlug Powerline Alliance to become their standard. A rival system was later chosen and Panasonic decided to continue development on its own.
An HD-PLC Alliance has since been formed but membership is limited. In addition to several Panasonic group companies, the main members include just three other companies: peripherals vendor IO Data and networking companies Icron and ACN Advanced Communications Networks.