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"'Make America Great Again!' It is a slogan that has been repeatedly used by Donald Trump in his campaign for the presidency," Pastor Thomas Robb wrote in the Crusader. "You can see it on the shirts, buttons, posters and ball caps such as the one being worn here by Trump speaking at a recent rally. … But can it happen? Can America really be great again? This is what we will soon find out!"
"While Trump wants to make America great again, we have to ask ourselves, 'What made America great in the first place?'" the article continues. "The short answer to that is simple. America was great not because of what our forefathers did — but because of who our forefathers were.
"America was founded as a White Christian Republic. And as a White Christian Republic it became great."
The Trump campaign sharply and swiftly criticized the article. "Mr. Trump and the campaign denounces hate in any form," the campaign said in a statement Tuesday evening. "This publication is repulsive and their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign."
Reached by phone, Robb told The Washington Post that while the Crusader wasn't officially endorsing Trump, his article signaled the publication's enthusiastic support for the Republican billionaire's candidacy.
"Overall, we do like his nationalist views and his words about shutting down the border to illegal aliens," Robb said. "It's not an endorsement because, like anybody, there's things you disagree with. But he kind of reflects what's happening throughout the world. There seems to be a surge of nationalism worldwide as nationals reclaim their borders."
The 12-page quarterly newspaper calls itself "The Political Voice of White Christian America!" and has a well-known white supremacist symbol on its front page. The latest edition includes articles about Jewish links to terrorism, black-on-white crime and a man who claims to be Bill Clinton's illegitimate child. An article near the end of the paper says that Trump's candidacy is "moving the dialogue forward."
The publication's website says that its "number one goal" is to "stop white genocide."
"The Crusader" is the official newspaper of the KKK. #MAGA #DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/mBTvLOFU9u— Billy Gee (@billygee12) November 1, 2016
Since the earliest days of his presidential bid, Trump has attracted the support of prominent white nationalists across the country, setting off fears that a dormant fringe faction of the GOP base — one steeped in xenophobic and white supremacist rhetoric — would be folded back into mainstream politics.
In the early months, white nationalists said they were reluctant to publicly throw their support behind the controversial billionaire for fear of harming his strengthening campaign. But white nationalists said as Trump became more emboldened, they did too.
In January, Jared Taylor — editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance — lent his voice to a robo-call recording urging registered voters in Iowa to back Trump. Those potential voters, Taylor told The Post, are part of a silent majority who are tired of being asked to celebrate diversity but are afraid of being labeled bigots.
A month later, Trump was embraced by former KKK grand wizard David Duke, which led to a controversial exchange between CNN's Jake Tapper and the Republican candidate. Asked by Tapper to "unequivocally condemn" Duke, Trump pleaded ignorance.
"Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, okay?" Trump said.
Tapper pressed him several more times to disavow Duke and the KKK, but Trump again declined.
"I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists," Trump said. "So I don't know. I don't know — did he endorse me, or what's going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists."
That same month, Rachel Pendergraft — the national organizer for the Knights Party, a standard-bearer for the Ku Klux Klan — told The Post that Trump's campaign offered the organization a new outreach tool for recruiting new members and expanding their formerly dwindling ranks.
The Republican presidential candidate, Pendergraft said at the time, provided separatists with an easy way to start a conversation about issues that are important to the dying white supremacist movement.
"One of the things that our organization really stresses with our membership is we want them to educate themselves on issues, but we also want them to be able to learn how to open up a conversation with other people," Pendergraft said.
Using Trump as a conversation piece has been discussed on a private, members-only website and in "e-news, stuff that goes out to members."
In addition to opening "a door to conversation," she said, Trump's surging candidacy has electrified some members of the movement.
"They like the overall momentum of his rallies and his campaign," Pendergraft said. "They like that he's not willing to back down. He says what he believes and he stands on that."
In August, the American Nazi Party's chairman, Rocky Suhayda, agreed, declaring on his radio show that Trump offers "real opportunity" to build the white nationalist movement.
More recently, Trump's rallies have been marred by a series of racially charged incidents.
Last week, a black Trump supporter was booted from a North Carolina rally after he was mistaken for being a protester. Trump's security detail escorted a man out of the rally as the audience cheered.
"You can get him out," Trump said, making a sideways motion with his thumb. "Get him out."
The person in question turned out to be C.J. Cary, a North Carolina resident, who claims to be a longtime Trump supporter.
Cary, in a phone interview, said Saturday that he had gone to the rally because he wanted to hand-deliver a note to the Republican presidential nominee. He made his way to about 20 to 30 feet from the stage and shouted "Donald!" while waving his note around to try to catch his attention.
"Everyone else is waving Trump signs and I'm waving this white letter," Cary, 63, said. He said that, coupled with the fact that he was wearing sunglasses during an evening rally to deal with his sensitivity to light, may have been what set people off.
Cary said a security official noticed he appeared to be a supporter but said he should not have disrupted the rally.
"He asked me, 'What happened? You have on a GOP badge,' " Cary said. "I said, 'I'm yelling at Donald, and he thinks I'm a protester.' "
Days later, Donald Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, forcefully disavowed a supporter as "deplorable" for chanting "Jew-S-A!" at a weekend rally, the latest incident of anti-Semitic rhetoric used by some of the GOP nominee's backers, according to Post reporters Jose A. DelReal and Sean Sullivan.
"[The man's] conduct is completely unacceptable and does not reflect our campaign or our candidate. Wow," Conway said during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union." "That man's conduct was deplorable. And had I been there, I would have asked security to remove him immediately."
The Saturday afternoon incident in Phoenix was captured on video that showed a man confronting reporters at the rally with shouts and a three-fingered hand gesture that resembled hate symbols flagged by the Anti-Defamation League.
"You're going down! You're the enemy!" the man yelled. As the rest of the crowd broke into a chant of "USA! USA!," the man repeatedly chanted, "Jew-S-A! Jew-S-A!"
Conway agreed when CNN's Jake Tapper asked whether the man's behavior was "deplorable" — a reference to controversial comments made last month by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who was criticized for casting "half of Trump's supporters" as a "basket of deplorables." Clinton later expressed regret for suggesting that half of his supporters were racist or xenophobic.
As DelReal and Sullivan reported, the "Jew-S-A" incident revived long-standing anxieties about xenophobic and white supremacist rhetoric used by a fringe faction within the GOP nominee's base.
Anti-Semitic slogans and language, they wrote, have become common among self-identified members of the "alt-right," a fringe conservative movement that fashions itself as a populist and anti-establishment alternative to the mainstream Republican Party. Many within the alt-right have enthusiastically embraced Trump's campaign message, which has included calls for mass deportations of undocumented Latino immigrants and for barring foreign Muslims from entering the United States.
Many of Trump's critics have accused him and his campaign of stoking racial grievances as a political tool. Those accusations have intensified since Stephen K. Bannon stepped away from running Breitbart News — which he has called a "platform for the alt-right" — to become the Trump campaign's chief executive.
"I wouldn't want to tar and feather every Trump supporter with the anti-Semitic comments of one person, but it is the case that the Trump campaign has been embraced by the radical right in an unprecedented way this season," said Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Trump came under fire over the summer for retweeting an image of rival Hillary Clinton alongside $100 bills and a Jewish star bearing the words "most corrupt candidate ever!" Trump later claimed that it was a sheriff's star.
Trump's son, Donald Jr., also drew attention for doing an interview with a white-nationalist radio host this year; he later told Bloomberg News that he did not realize the interviewer was going to be looped into the conversation. He was also blasted for posting an image on social media he said he got from a friend that included Pepe the Frog, a figure that has been appropriated by white supremacists. He told ABC News that he did not know about the association.
This post has been updated.
What's the alt-right? A primer


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See me safe up: for in my coming down,
I can shift for myself.
Thomas More
(the frozen demise of the mint / Julie Cook / 2017)
Despite our having just journeyed through the season known for all things of anticipation…
that sacred time of observing Advent, which then culminates with the wondrous arrival
of the illuminating Nativity…
we actually, in this silent and slumberous time of deep winter,
continue finding ourselves waiting and watching.
Found in the Latin word adventus, which is the translation of the Greek word parousia,
we find a word and meaning that has traditionally been used to refer to the Second Coming of Christ.
Not so much denoting a single and initial birth, but rather embracing the anticipation of
a second birth…a sort of re-coming…
Yet, as William Stringfellow observes,
"we live now, in the Untied States, in a culture so profoundly pagan that Advent
(or any other Christian "season")*
is no longer really noticed, much less observed.
The commercial acceleration of seasons,
whereby the promotion of Christmas begins even before there is an opportunity to enjoy
Halloween, is superficially, a reason for the vanishment of Advent.
But a more significant cause is that the churches have become so utterly secularized
that they no longer remember the topic of Advent.
*(parentheses mine)
And so it seems that our secular and worldly selves have given way from our
continuation of waiting and watching to rather the glossing over of a key
observational time within our faith.
We have allowed, as it appears we have preferred, to move away from that which should
still be our focus, yielding rather, to the superficial luster of the fleeting.
For it seems that the notion of Advent, or any other of the "seasons" of the church,
has fallen way to the more glamorous secular association of what should actually be the truly
innate spiritual rhythms of our beings.
Yet as unrelenting and ever-faithful,
we now find ourselves transitioning from the anticipation found in Advent and the Nativity
to Epiphany, leading way to Ash Wednesday and the heaviness of the somber Lenten season…
as it too shall give way to the unending promise of Hope…
We enter, once again into a time of waiting and watching…
waiting not so much for the first birth with its earth shattering life that was cut
tragically short by a brutal yet necessary death…
but rather we, the dwindling yet tenacious faithful, both wait and watch
not for an ending associated with death but rather for the continuation of what is to come…
Life anew and everlasting…
As we find ourselves listening to once again, as well as claiming, those prophetic words of that
lone figure who cried out to the masses so long ago…
as his words continue to resonate in our hearts…
Matthew 3:3


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If your system is checking Scan Disk after every restart then it means some of your system files have been corrupted. Main reasons for this error are
•Improper Shut Down
•Not letting Scan Disk to be completed at first time
•Any of your External Hard Disk and Portable Drive connected to your system may cause this error after every boot.
Want to create fake windows errors ?


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In October 1999, a massive cyclone slammed into the eastern coast of India, killing at least 10,000 people. A few weeks ago, a very similar cyclone, Phailin, struck the same region. The news coverage ahead of Phailin painted a frightening picture of a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina poised to wreak havoc on India and potentially repeat the grim toll of the 1999 storm. Yet when all was said and done, Phailin resulted in around 50 fatalities–just a fraction of what was feared. This reduction in fatality levels from the tens of thousands down to the tens is no accident–it is a powerful example of how good disaster risk reduction efforts can save lives on a massive scale.
Media reports since this storm have noted the intense effort by the Indian government to mitigate the threat Phailin posed–from giving storm warnings days in advance to evacuating close to 1 million citizens out of harm's way. But the untold story behind those headlines is how a U.S. Government partnership helped India to develop that capacity.
Over the past 15 years, USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, which I lead, has been working with the Indian government to help strengthen its ability to prepare for and respond to disasters. USAID has helped train thousands of Indian emergency personnel, civil servants, and officials. The Agency invited Indian colleagues to tour its Operations Center in Washington, D.C., and learn about the Incident Command System (ICS), the U.S. Government's own framework for disaster response management. With USAID's assistance, the Government of India adapted the ICS for its own emergency response system. USAID has also supported collaboration between Indian and American meteorologists, which has strengthened the forecasting and early warning that proved so critical earlier this month.
USAID also supports a project to increase first responder capacity in India called the Program for the Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER). PEER offers trainings in areas such as medical first response, urban search and rescue, and hospital preparedness; it was so well-received that India's National Disaster Response Force has adopted the training curriculum for its own battalions. Many of those same battalions helped lead the response to Phailin.
While much now remains to be done to help bring relief and recovery to those affected by the storm, Cyclone Phailin has shown India's ability to address a major disaster using its own disaster management institutions. The Indian government deserves enormous credit for its investment in these systems, and the U.S. can take pride in knowing that our investment in this partnership with India has now paid off in a big way.
Learn more about USAID's disaster assistance to India in the recent release of Pounds of Prevention: Focus on India.


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Eric Harrington – Our Greatest "Moral Crisis" is Moral Crises..
I recently saw an article on Global Warming entitled "Caring for Creation: The greatest Moral Crisis of Our Age". Now I am firmly convinced that CO2 emissions are a major factor is the rapid environmental changes we are witnessing today. Not that anyone has proven a direct relationship between the two for they have not, but instead because the climate of the Earth is a chaotic system and inherently unstable. The only thing that gives us the illusion of it being stable is the massive size of the planet. But in chaotic systems, very small changes can be amplified dramatically, and that defines what we see today.
But this essay is not about global warming. It is about our greatest moral crisis… that of Moral Crises. I cannot help but be struck by the fact that everything today is being distilled down to some form of moral crisis or another. A bared nipple on prime-time TV? A moral crisis! Prayer not formalized in school? A moral crisis! Some disillusioned person burning a flag. A moral crisis! It is a veritable crisis of crises of epidemic proportions.
The roots of this phenomenon I believe can be found in basic human nature. Many years ago I read a sales training book that suggested that if you wanted to get the sale, you had to get the "customer" (insert sucker whenever appropriate) to evaluate the product on emotional terms, and not on analytical or practical ones. The pragmatic mind will generally find stasis and further evaluation the appropriate next step to any major decision, while the emotions can spur someone to act, to buy now — often times without real careful consideration. Fear, sexual attraction, anger, all emotional responses connect to the animal in us and elicit powerful and immediate responses and these emotions can be easily manipulated to elicit the response the "emotee" desires.
Morals are the great Svengali of manipulators. Confucius suggested that laws only reduce a decision to a weighing process of "I get this if I am successful, or I get this if I am caught" and is not as powerful socializing tool as morals and tradition. But morals, while arguably important in the socialization of people, conversely can reduce what should be objective, logical decisions to emotional ones. They artfully reframe the debate on any issue from the actual issues involved, to an argument about the cultural environment in which they are being considered, for morals are not typically specific, rather they are vague and subjective, and can be manipulated. Now don't tell that to your local minister, because he will proceed to inform you that they are not vague, but instead clearly defined in the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, or any one of the many repositories of the dogmas and philosophies of the period they were written. Filtered through his noble interpretation of course… But the truth is, they are, like an artful sales presentation, only a caricature of the real issues at play.
Take for example sex, or sex outside of marriage, or sex outside of procreation, or whatever moral framework you choose. If you remove from the discussion the dogmatic ideology of religion, and discuss this with staunchly secular people, you will see that they will still frequently have strong moral feelings about sex. They may not use the bible to justify them, but the feelings are strong none the less. So where do these feelings come from?
Sex is an extremely vulnerable experience. Only a rare few people are really beautiful in the process from a purely physical sense, and even beautiful ones can exhibit some pretty funny expressions at just the right moment. But that is one of the most beautiful parts of sex. It is the unmasking, the removal of the social camouflage, the uniting of two people in a communication free of device or artifice. And it can quickly lead to that most powerful form of human bonding, love. And in that way it is frightening, for to be rejected at that level can be devastating. Hence sex is fraught with fear and insecurity. Even the most sexually confident and promiscuous people are often that way specifically to protect themselves from the alternative. Vulnerability.
So sexual morals are mostly a system by which each individual tries to protect themselves from risk, from vulnerability. To say it is immoral to have sexual relationships with multiple partners is really to say that if I limit you to just me, I will be safer. Safer from disease, safer from comparison, safer from loss of love. But instead of simply saying, I am not comfortable for all these reasons, reasons that can be debated logically and possibly invalidated, we instead say it's morally "Wrong." For sexually transmitted disease can be avoided through various protections. As can the flu be avoided by washing ones hands after coming home from the store. Yet we do not call this immoral. Comparison and fear of loss are more complicated and rooted in self-esteem issues, and thus instead of just admitting we are weak or insecure, we reduce the judgment to the intangible. It is Immoral. It's just wrong.
But while effective in manipulating human actions, Morals are the definition of a slippery slope. For they remove the reality from the evaluation, and place it in a surreal historical fiction, where the past has become absolute. It has been said that if "we do not learn from the past, we are destined to repeat it" and truer words have never been said. But moral summations can easily remove the context, all the wisdom from the lesson, and change it from spiritual education, to spiritual suffocation, for they all too often carry a charged emotional content without any real "history" attached. And the veiled or not so veiled threat they carry is social rejection, for as they spread, they provide a fertile soil for gang mentality and "with us or against us" attitudes.
And because they are unquestioned and unreasoned absolutes, these little emotional letter bombs are potent tools for manipulation by the unscrupulous, the power hungry, the jealous, the angry. They have protected the power of the church through millennia of abuse and horror. They insulate our government today from scrutiny by questioning ones patriotism, another veiled moral. The contaminate literature, art, love, virtually all expressions of basic human freedom and joy with guilt and outrage. And they are on the rise.
Now I can just hear the outrage at the suggestion that there is simply no valid grounds for morals, and that people should be absolutely free. "Why that would be Anarchy! That's what happened to ROME!"
But that is not what I am saying. There is a place for morals. In situations where there is a clear victim. In situations where there is a choice between a win/win and a win/loose.
In situations where one party has the upper hand and the opportunity to take unfair advantage.
One of the basic morals that really stands up ironically can be found in the bible, although actually first written centuries before by Confucius. It is called the Golden Rule. It' states "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." But of course this axiom always solicits the following exception, "But what about a masochist?" And for that reason I add the following, "or if it is not obvious what the other person might prefer, ASK!" i.e. interact. Be open, be frank, be honest about your intents and you will find out what the people around you want in your interactions. And be fair. Strive for a win/win at all times. "But that is the antithesis of business!" I can hear the Capitalists gasp. But that is simply not true. It depends on if one has the interest of the good of one, or the good of the whole. And business can be operated under true capitalistic principles, while preserving a sense of the greater good, when one is wise enough to realize that we are all connected, and when one is abused for the gain of another, there will be a price to pay by all. When the environment is sacrificed there will be a price to pay by all. When the Middle East or South America is manipulated by the global corporatocracy, there is a price to pay…by all.
My goal here however is not to try and evaluate which morals that are valid or necessary, or not. For then I would be manipulating you. My goal is to suggest that as the most intelligent and powerful creatures on this planet, we have an obligation to not to be morally and socially lazy and simply accept the morals foisted upon us by our peers, our parents, or our fears, and instead step outside the emotions and create our own moral system based on the basic principles of win/win, and greater good. In that way we learn and grow in wisdom through the process of formulating our own moral code that will be grounded in reality, experience, and history.
And through this process our ability to understand and cut to the core of a problem continuously improves and we become better, wiser, more objective people, not for what we believe, but for what we have learned and understood. We begin to learn to step outside the emotions of the situation and see it for what it really is. This is not to say we should become unemotional automatons. Emotions are also the source of our joy, our passion — even pain is a powerful educator. But they should not be used to formulate your blueprint for human interaction, only to enjoy it, motivate it, inspire it.
For in the end, there are no moral crises. Only a crisis of ignorance. Of belief. Of blindly accepting the word of someone else as right. Whether out of fear, childhood programming, or just plain laziness, it is the first step on the slippery slope of fascism, and is self perpetuating, for with each surrender, the next becomes easier. It is possibly the greatest crisis of our times. The crisis of Moral Crises.


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Note: While this is a review of the book "Arctic Dreams and Nightmares," a collection of art and accompanying short stories by the late Inuk artist, Alootook Ipellie, we are also taking a look at Ipellie's larger body of work, and the significance of his contribution to Inuit art and political comics in general.
The title "Arctic Dreams and Nightmares" is a woeful summation of this haunting journey through the imagination of a man who seems to have been, as the title suggests, a dreamer. But within modern memory, it is an easy thing to understand how any Inuk's dreams might turn to nightmares.
Writing as a qallunaat from the privileged perspective of the south, it is outside my role to interpret these dreams for the world. But as a sometime-student of Canadian colonialism and its violence against the indigenous people of the Arctic, I can help to shed some midnight sun on the darkness of this genocidal history.
Rachel Attituq Qitsualik wrote in Nunatsiaq that "The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now." This Inuk hunter on the cross, pierced by the arrows and harpoons of his people, is a curious expression of the impact of Christianity on indigenous spirituality. For several hundred years, missionaries were among the only European people in the north. The legacy of the Christian churches in the Arctic is inextricable from the legacy of the residential schools system, which saw many Inuit taken from their communities. The choice of wolves, harpoons and arrows to pierce the Inuk Jesus is difficult to interpret; is it intended to convey that the Inuit have done harm to themselves by adopting Christianity?
The Inuit have not so much adopted Christianity as adapted it, as they have done with so many things from the south. In the 1950s, when the government imposed a program to settle the Inuit into stationary townships, social workers would complain of bathtubs being used to butcher seals or dining room tables turned into workbenches. But as their success in the extreme conditions of the Arctic shows, Inuit culture is nothing if not adaptive. So there is perhaps an echo of this in the image of a 3-piece Inuit blues group like the one above. It is likely not a coincidence that blues, a music with its roots in articulating experiences of oppression and resistance, is the music played by the band.
There is something viscerally disturbing about a woman being drawn along like a sled by a team of babies, still tethered to her womb by umbilical cords. Casual familiarity with the Inuit is enough to understand the historic importance of dog sleds to their lives, and some may know that snowmobiles have overwhelmingly replaced dog sleds as the main mode of tundra transit. But what goes woefully unacknowledged is the vicious extermination of hundreds of sled dogs by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who traveled the Arctic in the 1950s and 1960s, murdering whole teams of sled dogs. This systematic slaughter left a collective trauma shared by many Inuit, a violent break with traditional lifeways enforced by agents of colonial administration. It is difficult to discern the meaning of the children in place of the dogs – is it meant to convey that the Inuit continue regardless?
The broader ethics of animal rights aside, there is a particularly sinister clash between traditional indigenous practices and glamorous celebrities who care more for seals than human life. The famed French film starlet Brigitte Bardot has had a long career as an animal rights activist, and at one point took the Inuit to task for their continuation of the seal hunt. Here she is re-imagined as an Inuk's wife, stalked by the very creature she once sought to protect. Unchecked by the seal hunt, the creatures now turn on their former predators, seeking to club them in turn. If starvation would not be the literal outcome of ending the seal hunt, the scene is suggestive of the damage to Inuit culture if this long practice would be discontinued.
What is more, the damage may not only be cultural. In addition to it being a major component of Inuit culture, what is called 'country food' is in fact healthy to the Inuit diet, which has adapted to this nutritional intake from centuries of continuous habitation in the region. Adverse health trends in the north have been linked to the adoption of southern diets, encouraged by well-intentioned southern doctors.
Regardless of the historical context in which these works are placed, there is a critical meta-narrative at play. Primitivism, an artistic movement that appropriates indigenous aesthetics for European audiences, has become an acceptable form of art – a kind of cultural erasure. Traditional indigenous art is permissible in the iconography of official Canadian cultures, because it is "historic". Indigenous peoples are permitted in the canon because they are presumed to have assimilated, (AKA disappeared). Inukshuks, totem poles, soapstone carvings and bead-work are all relatively traditional indigenous crafts, co-opted by the Canadian state to suggest a continuity between historic indigenous peoples and modern Canadian settlers–use of indigenous culture by the colonial apparatus suggests a cooperation, or at least a submission by the former to the latter. Symbols of pre-contact Inuit spirituality are acceptable as well – traditional tales and legendary creatures that preserve the image of the Inuk as an unchanging "primitive" without the complex legacy of Christianity. This is effectively a denial of the violent rupture that occurred.
Ipellie's style seems to stand outside of this. His art is by turns haunting, erotic and grotesque, but always political. By deviating from southern expectations that Inuit art produces a pre-contact fantasy of seal hunting, igloos and polar bears, his art challenges white expectations of indigenous art. By smearing sex, violence and modernity across southern stereotypes of Inuit culture, Ipellie defaces the museum-exhibit sterility of the "noble savage" trope with the viscera of human vulgarity.
The Inuit are not simply figures in the past, a culture to borrow as part of some settler narrative. They are figures in our present, affected by us, and, as is best represented by Ipellie and his work, affecting us in turn.


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In 2008, Korg, the music industry's leading supplier of analog synthesizers, made waves—figuratively and literally—with its surprisingly robust DS-10, a synthesizer emulator for the original Nintendo DS. Since the cartridge landed well before tablets and smartphones had risen as suitable, portable pieces of musical hardware, its use of the DS touchscreen proved welcome for anybody who wanted to quickly twist knobs, create sequences, and create glorious, synthesized sounds in a cheap, portable way.
However, since its host hardware only had 4MB of RAM, the designers at Japanese studio Detune had to make compromises in reproducing the decades-old MS-10 synthesizer, particularly in cutting the number of simultaneous sounds. After launching various follow-ups on iOS, the DSi, and even a limited keyboard synthesizer on the 3DS, Korg has returned with its most robust synth emulation offering yet: the DS-12, set to launch this September.
For starters, Korg enthusiasts can now look forward to 12 discrete synthesizers running simultaneously, as opposed to the original DS-10's weird hack of two synths and four "drum tracks" (which actually worked by pre-recording drum tracks to be played back, so as to reduce overall hardware load). As with last year's M01-D piano synthesizer, the new DS-12 will also include longer 64-step patterns, which can either lengthen sequences or provide greater sonic density in the same amount of time.
All of this is matched with the original software's ability to jump from sequencing to knob-twisting to cable-plug interaction in real time. In this sense, the 3DS's dual-screen setup is one of its few boons compared to the growing touch-screen fray, allowing main system information to remain frozen on the top screen while performers jump around on the fly for the sake of live performance antics. (Sadly, the 3DS's lack of multi-touch will continue to hamper faster-fingered sonic manipulators.)
Detune has somehow made use of the 3DS' no-glasses gimmick, as well, by rendering the synthesizer's oscilloscope in 3D. The above video, which merely hints at the synthesizer's "right in your face" 3D effects, serves both as proof of the software's robust sound possibilities and as a reason to host laser-filled raves in your living room. We'll keep our eyes out for the game's announced September launch, though that remains in doubt thanks to the M01-D's months of delays before launching last year.


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Source WWD
Stella & Dot Expands Into Family of Brands
July 24, 2014
By Kristen Tauer
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY: Social-selling fashion accessories brand Stella & Dot is evolving into a family of brands that will include a line of charm bracelets and skin care. Launched by chief executive officer Jessica Herrin in 2007, the company targets a female demographic and currently includes 34,000 active "stylists" in six different countries, who earn commissions by hosting product parties in their homes and selling to their social networks. "Our real reason for being is as a people company. Our stores are every living room and kitchen," said Herrin from Los Angeles.
Set to launch in fall 2014, KEEP Collective focuses on leather wrap bracelets that are customizable through a selection of over 300 charms. "KEEP was inspired by combining our love of jewelry with our love of living happy. [The charms] are designed to be a daily talisman of what makes you unique," Herrin remarked on the brand, which will sell at a lower price than the accessories currently sold under Stella & Dot. The Sequoia Capital-backed company is also expanding out of the accessories realm and into beauty with the launch of EVER, a line of skin care. Pre-launch, Stella & Dot has already begun soliciting interested sales representatives and customers for both new brands through keep-collective.com and myeverskincare.com.


text: Theatre Review: 4000 Miles Tuesday, April 1, 2014 | Sacramento, CA Listen / Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin. An unusual relationship between a 91-year-old woman and her 21-year-old grandson -- who's in the midst of a cross-country bicycle trip -- is the focus of this Pulitzer-nominated drama. It glitters with uncommon insights about life and death. When the doorbell rings in the middle of the night, elderly Vera finds her bedraggled grandson Leo at the door with his touring bike. He's pedaled from Seattle to New York, he's smelly, and clearly the kid is troubled. Given the hour, the feisty old grandma asks an obvious question. Vera: Are you high? Leo: What? No. Vera: Well, it's three o'clock in the morning, so I'm just asking. Have you had anything to eat in a while? Leo has dropped out of college, he isn't speaking with his parents, and it becomes clear that the 4,000-mile bicycle trip was marred by some shattering event, which he isn't quite ready to discuss. In the meantime, grandma tries to help him out of his funk by discussing the old days, when she and her late husband were proud New York City leftists. The grandson, a rebel himself, swims into this topic like a frisky duckling entering a pond. Leo: Marx is cool! He's alright. Vera: Well, I think so, too. Leo: When I did that semester at Evergreen, I took a class on Marx. Best class I took. Vera: What does your mother say about that? Leo: About me studying Marx? I think was like, 'How is that going to be useful for you in the future?' Leo's having a tough time figuring out what path he should take in life. His girlfriend's gone back to college, and put their romance on ice. And he's hung up on the memory of a ghastly accident during the bike trip – much as his 91-year-old grandmother feels lonely after the death of her husband, and almost all of her longtime friends. The reverberation between the loss that these two are experiencing gives this play considerable dramatic depth along with its comedic moments Playwright Amy Herzog skillfully maneuvers her characters into surprising situations that trigger memorable conversations and disclosures. And the staging of this intergenerational story cleverly weaves the charmingly rebellious characters together in scenes that are both funny and tragic, but always feels sincere. The cast includes veteran actress Dee Maaske, a longtime stalwart at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – her performance as the grandma elevates a strong production into one of the best shows mounted locally this year. "4,000 Miles" continues at Sacramento's Capital Stage through April 13, 2014. Follow us for more stories like this CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today. Donate Today


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jAlbum 12 released
Posted Apr 3, 2014
by David Ekholm
We're excited to tell you about the improvements that have been added to the long-awaited v12 release of our desktop software. It's been a year since the last major release, where we added support for 164 video formats. This version focuses on improving the user experience:
Opening an album over a network drive
Resuming an interrupted build
jAlbum 12 is significantly faster in dealing with images loaded over network drives. A typical project that took 15 seconds to open over a network drive now opens in 3 seconds (SAMBA mounted network drive on Windows). The painting of thumbnail images has also been improved so you can browse through not-yet-loaded images with less lag.
It's however when making albums you will notice the most significant improvement. Previously, if an album build was resumed after an interrupted build (user aborting the build or an error), then jAlbum sometimes had to re-process each image and video again. This is now a thing of the past. Each image and video keep track of their build settings so unnecessary rebuilds are avoided.
New user interface
jAlbum's user interface has undergone the biggest change since jAlbum 7. It now has an embedded web browser that lets you quickly preview changes as you play along with settings. This is the main reason for the somewhat larger window. Let's go through the changes to the main window from top to bottom:
- New notification center: Helpful information coming from us or the skin developer can now be accessed from this icon even if a notification has been dismissed.
- Clearly indicated view mode tabs
- View mode specific toolbars. Each view mode has a unique toolbar with the tools relevant for it
- Clearly indicated label types: Easily see and control whether you're editing file names, titles, captions or keywords
- New skin information window giving you an overview of the currently selected skin and offers easy management for it
- Large settings button next to make album button
- Preview local album button next to make album button
- New view final album button next to upload button.
Edit view mode
- Image tools moved to custom toolbar
- Image properties now occupy the whole right-hand-side offering more simultaneous information
Preview view mode
- Toolbar offering the classical browser functions + work-flow related functionality like uploading and sharing
- See and control whether you're viewing the local or published version of an album
- Web browser for previewing a local album and viewing the final published album. Updates the local album in the background and reloads the display as you play with skin- and style changes. (Skin changes and general changes need a click on the "Apply" button to trigger an update)
Note: The browser we're using is Chromium. It is a modern open source component but it currently has two flaws:
- Currently No support for mp4 video format (aka H.264) that jAlbum is using. Use an external browser to view video powered albums instead. Hint: Alt-click the preview buttons to open the album in an external album or inactivate the embedded browser under jAlbum preferences.
- Missing Flash support for Mac. Flash support in general can be added by downloading Flash directly from Adobe
Share view mode
- Buttons to easily share your album using different social networks. All sharing options, including sharing with jalbum.net is now opt-in meaning no sharing will be done unless you explicitly choose to share
New Effects panel
New "Effects" settings tab allowing easy and detailed control of album-wide image effects like watermarks/texts, logos, grayscale, auto-correct and artistic filters via an easy to use interface. (Effects applies to all images unlike their "Image tools" counterparts). (Advanced users: The chosen effects are synched with the user variables panel)
New license
jAlbum 12 requires a new software license. For those who have purchased a v11 license, we currently offer a 50% upgrade discount. This means you only pay €14.50 ($19.50) for a Standard License upgrade and €34.50 ($44.50) for a Pro License upgrade. Make sure you sign in first though. Those who have purchased a license after February 17th already have a version 12 license. If you instead have a Premium or Power account, you also got a license valid for v12, so you don't have to buy a new license. To know what license you have today, just select "About jAlbum" from within the software.
New model
- Rewritten change detection. No more spurious "Do you wish to save changes" warnings
- Safely deletes unused slide and original image files from album folder
- Warns and guides users who haven't set up their ftp settings right
- Thumbnail specific information is now only displayed when hovering the mouse over the small "info-i" status icon
- Speed-up to deleting directories over SAMBA mounted network drives
- Implemented performance of files linked to SAMBA mounted network drives too
- Added multiple logging levels to ease debugging
- New icons and images
- Bundled with updated skins (HTML5 instead of Flash)
- Splash screen now displays license type
- Fix for broken "Repair all links"
- Various bug fixes


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Sounds like an excellent idea!
charles french words reading and writing
There is nothing official about this, but at this blog, I am declaring that this whole year from September 6, 2016 to September 6, 2017 is International Reading Year! Care to join me and spread the word?
If you like this idea, please tell as many people as you can.
And thank you to various people in the blogging world for suggesting continuing National Read A Book day!


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On the face of it, the religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment seem pretty clear: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That isn't so hard to understand, is it?
Granted, the meaning of "an establishment of religion" requires explaining, and the extent and limits of religious free exercise need to be specified. But surely these matters aren't so terribly obscure that they require an endless stream of legal tests.
Yet, as the Supreme Court's new term gets underway, its docket includes still another big church-state case. This one concerns the practice of opening sessions of public bodies with prayer, as happens with sessions of Congress and the Supreme Court itself.
Some people may find it strange that we still need to argue about this so late in the day. A bit of historical background may help.
For the nation's first century and a half, there was relatively little constitutional litigation centering on the religion clauses. People apparently agreed on what the language meant and were willing to leave it at that.
Shortly after World War II, however, significant church-state disputes began in earnest. Significantly perhaps, this development coincided with the postwar growth in size and influence of the Catholic Church in the United States, which some people'—including, as we now know, even some Supreme Court justices—found troubling.
It's hard not to see this concern to keep the Catholics in their place as one underlying explanation for the sudden rash of court tests. Part of the reason, too, was the emergence of a new, ideologically driven thrust toward the secularization of American institutions.
Since the 1940s, many, though by no means all, of the controversies have been school-related–religion in public schools, state assistance to parochial schools. In a decision in 1971, the Supreme Court delivered the famous Lemon test for identifying impermissible interaction between government and religion. The result was a fresh stream of cases requiring the increasingly frustrated justices to attempt to unravel the new complexities and contradictions created by Lemon.
Thus the church-state sector remains a murky battlefront in constitutional law. And now the Supreme Court is trying again. The new case (Greece v. Galloway) comes from Greece, N.Y., a town of 100,000 near Rochester, where since 1999 the town council has opened its meetings with prayer offered by a visiting clergyman.
Two local women objected to this practice and went to court. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with them—even though the Supreme Court had said back in 1983 that there is no intrinsic constitutional violation involved in public prayer of this sort. The court will hear oral arguments November 6, with a decision expected next spring.
A large number of individuals and groups with church-state interests have submitted briefs in the case. Surprising to some, the Obama administration's Justice Department has entered the fight on the side of the town.
So have nine prominent Catholic constitutional specialists, including Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame, Helen Alvare of George Mason, Robert George of Princeton, Hadley Arkes of Amherst, and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard. Their chief concern, it seems, is that the lower court decision sought to revive the moribund Lemon test instead of allowing it rest in peace.
Many people who aren't constitutional authorities would agree that's a bad idea. "We are a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being," the Supreme Court declared years ago. Let's leave it at that.
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ASHBURNHAM — Littleton High punched in two goals within the first four minutes of the contest and never looked back, defeating Lunenburg, 5-0, in the Central Mass. Division 2 field hockey semifinals at Oakmont Regional.
Littleton is seeded seventh in the field and Lunenburg was 11th.
The Tigers (17-2-2) advance to the sectional finals for the first time in school history and will face Oakmont Regional Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at Grafton High School.
"You can't play defense and win, you've got to go on the attack from the first whistle and not give up," Littleton head coach Diane Crory said. "Even if we're ahead, we always say it's 0-0. We get on that field as if we have to start all over again and that's what they do every game."
Tigers sophomore Sarah Lizotte netted two goals and an assist in the contest, while sister Kim Lizotte posted one marker and one helper.
"(The Lizottes) work together a lot," Crory said. "Their skills show their heart and determination, and that's what it's all about for each and every one of these kids. Those two just complement one another."
Lunenburg goalkeeper Rachele Spadafore finished with 15 saves, including several highlight-reel stops.
Only 2:57 into the game, Sarah Lizotte drilled a shot off Spadafore's pad, and the opportunistic Stephanie Gentile was there for the rebound that got the Tigers off to a quick 1-0 lead.
As if there weren't enough pressure for Lunenburg, 33 seconds later Sarah Lizotte picked up her first goal of the game to firmly establish the tone.
"We had to shut them down early and that's what we did," Sarah Lizotte said. "It's a team effort … and I think we worked really well together."
Kim Lizotte scored with 13:17 remaining when she absolutely drilled a drive from 10 yards out that put the Tigers up by three goals.
With 10:57 remaining, Kim Lizotte flew into the left side of the shooting circle, centering a perfect pass to sister Sarah. Spadafore slid on her back to stop Sarah Lizotte's initial point-blank shot, but the ball slid out from underneath the Lunenburg goalie, allowing the Littleton forward to put in her own rebound to make it 4-0.
Littleton kept on the accelerator until the final whistle. With only 20 seconds remaining, the Tigers found themselves with a penalty corner, and after some nifty passing the ball ended up at the left post on the stick of Meaghann Ackermann, who chipped it home to put the game on ice at 5-0.
"We knew we had to play offense tonight to bring any type of a contest to this game," Lunenburg head coach Emily Marsden said. "We tried really hard to get our offense rolling. Littleton has a really strong offensive attack, and we really wanted to challenge their defense more than we were able to do tonight."


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A Rude Intrusion
During our trip to New Orleans we had a day of storms that prevented us from working. We took advantage of the time, frustrating though it was, to visit the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas.
Walking around the incredible displays, watching the otters, seals, penguins, sharks and albino alligator, I imagined sharing this with my boys and how much they would enjoy it. My frustration for not being able to work (we were extremely motivated having come all this way from San Francisco), coupled with seeing all these eager parents showing their kids some nature, while mine were thousands of miles away, began to rise.
Since there was little point taking my frustration out on either the weather or these families, I needed to direct it on something else…I got my wish.
I was drawn to the section about the wetlands. On this trip, I have learned that the disappearing bayou had served as a natural defense to surge water, what essentially destroyed much of New Orleans. For a great documentary on this, check out Hurricane on the Bayou. Had we taken care of this beautiful natural ecosystem, it would have protected the people of NOLA from a Category 5 hurricane.
And in case you are wondering, we are still destroying the wetlands, as incredibly an area the size of a football field is vanishing every 38 minutes.
Back to the aquarium and I discover that the wetlands and ocean ecosystem presentation is sponsored by several huge multinational oil corporations, including my old nemeses – British Petroleum – who famously tried their best to silence Left Coast Voices and others who weren't impressed by their spewing oil into the Gulf Coast.
I browsed through their presentation that firmly told children how important the contribution of the oil companies are to the area, how they are courageously fighting pollution and ensuring the energy needs for the next generation.
There is a great Yiddish word – Chutzpah! It means audaciously outrageous – but chutzpah just says it better (for best results focus on the ch and bring up all the phlegm you can manage). This is the Jewish People's gift to the world!
I cannot believe that BP and its friends would dare to put such an exhibit in New Orleans, when it has ruined the lives of many of the people who come to the aquarium – actually they probably don't, since they most likely can't afford to pay the admission into the place.
The Audubon Aquarium of the Americas claims to be an educational institution for primarily young people. So why does it allow the rich, multinational corporations to rewrite history on its premises? Doesn't it understand the legitimacy it is giving the oil companies by allowing them to tell their story under their auspices?
The answer is, of course, money. I am sure that BP paid more than 40 pieces of silver, but the value of the transaction hasn't changed in 2,000 years. Planet Earth, however, has, and dangerously so.
Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener's Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).


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#5: Russell Brand – Aldous Snow, Get Him to the Greek
I was worried when I heard that 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall would be getting a spinoff featuring supporting rockstar Aldous Snow. Brand's performance was certainly a highlight of one of my favorite films of that year, but it was a very broad, drugged-out lothario of a character. Could the rockstar (and Brand) carry his own film?
Somehow, the answer was yes. Nicholas Stoller's comedy is a significant departure in both tone and content from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Brand's performance gives some surprising depth to the rockstar Aldous Snow. The film is a broad and scatological comedy with the dark undertone of Snow's various addictions. It's also a wild sex romp that relies heavily on Snow's on-again, off-again one-true-love. The film's appeal is in its sincerity, and Brand completely commits to this character, warts and all.
#4: Jeff Bridges – Rooster Cogburn, True Grit
I don't have a lot to say about True Grit, except that it's a brilliantly written genre exercise. It is a legitimate western as surely as the works of Ford or Leone, and Jeff Bridges' take on the one-eyed marshal Rooster Cogburn feels right at home. His dialogue is slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, and his appearance is utterly unglamorous. This character is a slobbering, drunken mess, and I mean that as a compliment. I can safely say I'll never forget this performance, and Bridges deserves every bit of the credit he's getting for it.
#3: Ryan Reynolds – Paul Conroy, Buried
From my review: "This may be the most electrifying performance yet from Ryan Reynolds. Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away before him, Reynolds has crafted a masterful one-man show, and he never lets up on the stakes. Paul is dying alone, and Reynolds deftly conveys his ratcheting hopelessness and frustration."
It's Ryan Reynolds kidnapped and buried in a coffin for 90 minutes. That's the entire film. But the above description may make Buried sound a good deal more serious than it actually plays for much of its runtime. This film is lurid and hopeless, to be sure, but it is also a pulp masterpiece. Its tone and editing style is reminiscent of Hitchcock, and Reynolds plays just the right blend of realistic terror and anger while preventing the character from becoming overly bleak. One scene, in which Paul solicits help (via cell phone) from one of his wife's loathsome friends, ends with such a pitch-perfect delivery of its final line that my entire theater erupted in laughter. This is a film whose tone lives and dies by the performance of its lead actor, and Reynolds completely pulls it off.
On a related note…
#2: James Franco – Aron Ralston, 127 Hours
Aron Ralston leads a charmed life. He's a brilliant stuntman – completely in control, but clearly a little unbalanced. Franco had to take this reckless and cocksure character on a physically and emotionally heart-wrenching journey, without any other actors to share the burden for most of the film's runtime. 127 Hours has a similar premise to Buried – a man gets trapped under a rock for 90 minutes – but it is a very different film in both tone and characterization. Unlike Reynolds' character above, Ralston doesn't have access to a cell phone, so he spends the majority of the film talking aloud to himself, or saying nothing at all. The film utilizes various storytelling devices (including one involving a handheld camera that I wouldn't dream of spoiling), and Franco's performance played into all of them nicely.
I'm not sure if it's even possible to spoil this film, since its title, premise, and the fact that it's based on a true story should be enough to tell you how it ends. But suffice to say, this film takes a brutal and unflinching look at one of the most difficult physical tests ever imposed on a human being, and somehow comes out of it with a heartwarming message about how much life is worth living. It does all of this while wrapped in an unconventional character study, and never once lets Ralston off the hook for getting himself into the situation in the first place. Insofar as this is an exercise in filming the unfilmable, Franco's performance seems equally improbable. It carries this film, and I know of no other actor who could have pulled this off.
#1: Jesse Eisenberg – Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network
I know Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know the man, but I recognize the character. Each viewer will likely take away a different interpretation of this performance, depending on their feelings on the real-life Zuckerberg, but this performance stands alone in a film that's virtually impossible to separate from its real-life context. As a reflection of my time and generation, I found Eisenberg's captivating and enigmatic portrayal to be utterly unmatched this year. For a character who seems almost defined by a lack of chemistry with the people in his life (reminiscent of Dr. House, perhaps), he also plays brilliantly alongside Andrew Garfield in the film's most crucial relationship.
This Zuckerberg is hard to read, but conveys a great deal through his glowering stare, or the slightest twitch of a smile. This Zuckerberg is insightful, determined, perhaps even ingenious. And on some level, he knows the effect his actions have had. This Zuckerberg may or may not bear any resemblance to the real one, but Eisenberg's performance and Sorkin's script make him the most fascinating and well-realized characters of this year.
Honorable Mentions:
- Ben Stiller as Roger Greenberg in Greenberg
- Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward in The Fighter
- Michael Cera as Nick Twisp/François Dillinger in Youth in Revolt (Honorable, honorable mention: as Scott Pilgrim in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World)
- Leonardo DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island
- Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomqvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo


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Korean-American vies to lead Southern Baptists
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Southern Baptists elected their first African-American president two years ago in a move widely seen as a watershed for efforts to broaden the appeal of the nation's largest Protestant denomination beyond its traditional white Southern base.
Two years later, as the Southern Baptist Convention meets in Baltimore to choose the Rev. Fred Luter Jr.'s successor, top candidates include the Korean-American pastor who leads the largest Southern Baptist church in Maryland, and the white pastor of an Arkansas megachurch.
If the Rev. Dennis Kim were elected at the group's annual meeting Tuesday, it could send a strong message about the Nashville, Tennessee-based denomination's commitment to ethnic and geographic diversity. But even though the group's other top posts remain almost exclusively held by whites, some members -- including some of Kim's supporters -- are uncomfortable with the idea of making a conscious effort to diversify the leadership.
The vote involving Kim, of Silver Spring, Maryland, the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, of northwest Arkansas, and at least one other white candidate comes at a time when the convention is struggling to turn around a trend of declining church membership, attendance and baptisms.
The SBC's efforts to increase ethnic diversity among its churches has been one of the few bright spots in that effort, said Ed Stetzer, executive director of Lifeway Research, the publishing arm of the 15.7-million-member denomination. Statistics from the convention's church surveys show the ratio of member churches that are not predominantly white moved from 1-in-20 in 1990 to 1-in-5 in 2010.
"One of the untold stories of evangelicals, Southern Baptists included, is their incredible ethnic diversity," Stetzer said. But that diversity is not well reflected in the SBC's leadership, he said.
The president of the SBC's Executive Committee is white, as are the heads of the seminaries, the mission boards and the other large entities that carry out the day-to-day work of the convention.
"If we stop appointing African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics to leadership positions after this, we've failed," Luter said immediately after his election, vowing "to do all that I can to make sure this is not just a one-and-done deal."
Luter did not return a call seeking comment on the candidates for president this year.
Luter's election was seen as a big step for a denomination that was formed out of a pre-Civil War split with northern Baptists over slavery and for much of the last century had a reputation for supporting segregation. He was virtually guaranteed a win in 2012, coming off a term as first vice president with no announced challengers.
Kim's bid is more of a long shot. Floyd has served numerous high-profile roles in the SBC over many years, and he will be nominated by the powerful head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, the Rev. Albert Mohler.
Supporters of both candidates downplay the significance of race and agree the next president should be someone who can help halt the denomination's decline in membership.
Mohler, who announced plans to nominate Floyd months before Kim became a candidate, said he is pleased to be part of a denomination that has many qualified leaders, but he thinks Floyd has the right qualifications to lead the SBC now.
"I don't think it sends any big signal about diversity in leadership," he said. "The SBC is becoming diverse in leadership at every conceivable level."
Texas pastor Dwight McKissic, who will nominate Kim at the annual meeting Tuesday, says Kim is simply the best man for the job. "Everything about him represents what the Southern Baptists need to impact the nations of the world with the gospel of the kingdom," he said.
One of Kim's major accomplishments has been developing a pictorial tool that allows church members to quickly explain the gospel to strangers, Kim said. He said that in the past year and a half, members of his Global Mission Church of Greater Washington have used the tool to reach more than 3,200 people.
Kim said he believes the SBC can be more effective in spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth by expanding the circle of leadership, both geographically and culturally. But he said he does not support any type of quota for ethnic minorities in leadership.
Floyd, of Arkansas' Cross Church, said that he feels that whoever is elected will continue the convention's work of expanding its ethnic diversity. He cited his own work in moving the convention toward a greater emphasis on missions, both in North America and around the world, which he said will help the denomination start growing again.
"We know that in order to reach the world for Jesus Christ, just like the scripture says, we've got to reach all the nations of the world," he said.


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Biologist Steven Whitfield of Florida International University in Miami and his colleagues collected long-term data from the La Selva Biological Station in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. Surveys of amphibian and reptile populations stretch back to 1970 and, by compiling this data, Whitfield and his colleagues detected a calamitous decline that no one had noticed: a 75 percent drop in the total amount of amphibians over that 35-year period. "The slow changes that we detected—about 4 percent less frogs and lizards each year—would be difficult to notice," Whitfield says.
That kind of steep decline has an outsized impact on an ecosystem, says Mendelson, who was not involved with the research. "There's a whole lot of things that aren't being eaten, mostly insects," he says. "And there are a whole lot of other creatures that don't have prey." And, although this is one of the few places with long-term records to prove it, it is unlikely to be the only place where such declines are occurring. "Think about all of Amazonia and the Congo basin," he adds. "They are just as low."
The decline is all the more ominous for not having a precise cause, the researchers reveal in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. No sign of fungal infection was found and no habitat loss has taken place. Whitfield and his colleagues can only surmise that perhaps climate change has reduced leaf litter, the cover the declining amphibians and reptiles rely on to survive. "It appears that climate here is getting warmer and more consistently wet," Whitfield says. "This may impact leaf litter by increasing rates of decomposition or decreasing rates of litter fall."
Whitfield is currently researching the cause and impact of the disappearance, which also raises questions about other ecosystems and species that may have been considered relatively safe until now. "Traditional conservation practices, putting a fence around a biological reserve and controlling things like logging, that's not sufficient. It's effectively disarmed us," Mendelson says. "There is not going to be a simple fix to this. Ultimately, what you need to do is reverse climate change."


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Minority Government to be Formed with Greens and Independent Support
As an ALP supporter I have to admit to being over the moon with the return of Labor Government, all be it with a minority government being supported by the Greens and Independents. I think the result has the potential to be good for Australia – which is what I thought when Kevin Rudd and Labor defeated the Liberal and National Coalition in the previous election. Hopefully this time round we won't be disappointed with a Labor government and some real governing and leadership will be realised. I for one would love to see some one willing to lead in this country, governing with the national interest at heart, tempered with compassion and decency for all.
My thoughts this morning was that Bob Katter would back the Coalition and that Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott would back the ALP – not that I was 100% confident in that viewpoint. Never-the-less, that is how the Independents have lined up, giving the ALP 76 seats and the Coalition 74 seats. It would appear that the ALP Broadband policy won over the two Independents, which was what I thought would win it for Labor should the Independents support the ALP. I was never convinced that Bob Katter would go for it, though I still believed that if he should support the ALP it would have been the Broadband policy that won him. In short, it is a looking to the future and a modern Australia that has won out.


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Annulus 2014. Thought, scribbled, inserted, networked, commented. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey!
Happy new year to fellow bloggers! Here's to more friends, zany ideas and word-magic in year 2015.
Here's an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,400 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.


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Distracting the Spider
|"Failing to plan is planning to fail."
| The run begins on Day of the Early Tortoise in the Month of the Phoenix in the Tenth Year of the Bear since the Third Treaty of Houses.
The run takes place in the Illuminated Precincts and the World Above.
A letter, delivered to Cai Wen, with a box of items
My dear -
I am so ashamed, and so sorry! My weak nature overcame me, and I was beset with jealousy. I thought I could arrange things so you would never notice, and that I could return the items, no harm done, before you discovered their absence, but things went so, so, wrong. My plan was ill-conceived, and I was beset by enemies at every turn, and so it was that your great treasure was lost. I thought that I could tap their power to subtly turn your eyes from other women, that you might see only me - for you have entirely bewitched me with your wiles - and I still think that it might have been done, had everything gone according to plan.
I thought that between the Talisman of the Magpie, my own patron and the patron of those who would have that which has been denied them, and the Talisman of the Serpent, Mistress of binding and holding tight, that it would be simplicity for the experts of the Precincts to design a ritual to bind you to me. But they are less competent than I had hoped, and claimed to be unable to produce such an effect without months of research first. None of them!
So it was we were forced to resort to other options, to making a bargain with a greater Spirit. I thought that there might be some traction gained from bargaining to *not* throw the Magpie Talisman in the Dragon's Hoard - not that I *would* have, but it seemed harmless enough to allow myself to promise that I would not, in exchange for services rendered. So we bargained with one spirit to reach the World Above, and sought to bargain with another - but I was pursued, and ambushed not once, not twice, but three times!
I cannot tell you the details of the fight, or who stole what, because I had already fallen to the treachery of one who I thought a friend and the sword of the young Prince, but when my companion (whose name I shall not give, so that the blame for these deeds is on me alone) woke me, I found that both the Serpent Talisman and the forged Sankara stone were gone, and but the Magpie Talisman remained. I return this now, along with those other items that I borrowed and still retain, as well as my most abject apologies.
I can only hope that you find it in your heart to forgive me someday, for what I did, I did only in devotion to you.
(12 successes on Duping)
A page from Jin's double-encrypted journal
Well, *that* was bracing.
Things seem to have gone more or less according to plan, for all that the plan went off the rails about halfway through. When going off the rails is in fact part of the plan, I suppose nearly anything can be taken as victory.
When Siri approached me about... hold on a minute, what is my motivation here? Why am I on the "bad" team? I understand that Siri is a thief, excuse me, a "merchant", but I work for Lord Takanata! Surely he would not forgive a betrayal of this sort? Am I counting on his never hearing of my involvement?
Well, I suppose Lord Takanata has forgiven me before, so I must trust that he shall do so again should my "actions" come to light. I can work with that.
When Siri approached me after having stolen several of the party's Talismans, and asked me to use my contacts in the Precincts in order to find her a ritualist who could whip up a Grand Ritual on short notice, I found this entirely plausible as something that they might be able to do. I asked around those less reputable alchemists, those who might be willing to do a ritual of the sort she described, and also those who would be willing to overlook the provenance of the two Talismans we would be using (without being inclined to steal them for their own purposes). So... disreputable while not yet entirely without honor. It was a difficult line to draw, but one in which the Cryptomancer was well acquainted, and so I was able to find quite a few people to ask about it.
Despite my familiarity with this environment, I was completely surprised to learn that none of the alchemists I enquired with would be able to create a Grand Ritual in fifteen minutes! After asking at each of them, and confirming that even the presence of two Talismans would not permit such a thing to be done, I concluded (at each alchemist) that we would have to attempt a different method, to bargain with a spirit in the World Above instead.
Luckily for us, these disreputable dealers in magic would of course keep our business completely confidential, and not allow any hint to leak to any spymasters who might coincidentally be in the neighborhood.
And so it was that Siri and I found ourselves on the banks of the Jasmine River, negotiating for passage to the World Above. Having previously researched the River's nature and name to a large extent, I was able to finish the process with what I have learned in the seasons since, sufficient to call upon her that we might bargain. We traded the Ivory Crown to her for passage to the World Above, near the Magpie's realm, that Siri might make her greater bargain with Magpie himself, or any other that we might encounter. Siri wore the Armor of the Bear, and a bandolier with both Talismans, that she might withstand nearly anything that we encountered above us.
Alas for us, when we reached the World Above, we found ourselves immediately ambushed by Mystic Mondo and two compatriots of his, a stalwart fighter and a young acrobat. Somehow, they had reached the World Above before us, and we were nearly defeated before we had begun.
We fled from them, but alas again, the realms Above that focus on betrayal and ambush are close to Spider's Web, so we fled from the frying pan into the fire, where Prince Ti Jun and his followers closed the jaws of the trap. They attempted to seize us, but Siri burst free and we began to flee through a previously hidden path. The Prince struck Siri, smiting the bandolier, as we made our way to what turned out to be yet a *third* ambush, as Siri collapsed, having left a scene carrying both Talismans at once.
In the ensuing four way fight - our "way" being only minimally effective, since it was the now-unconscious Siri and myself - it seemed clear that Mondo and his man were outclassed by the Prince's group, which was outclassed by the new group. I did my best to make the false Sankara Stone appear to be an equal prize to the two Talismans, and I suppose I must have succeeded, because my team quickly went from one functional member to zero, and when I was healed, the false Sankara stone was gone, as was the Serpent Talisman.
A report on How I Rescued The Magpie Talisman, by Sei Lin
So, Mondo said that Lord Takanata's art said that me and Siri were supposed to pretend to have stolen the Talismans and run them around as a distraction so that Spider would not be home for something or another. Except that maybe they would actually get stolen, and that was okay except we should try to avoid that if we could, but not avoid it very hard. But pretending to steal something so that it would be actually stolen later seemed a lot like stealing something for real, and I pinky swore to not steal any of the Talismans although I totally could because the security isn't all that good most of the time.
So I wasn't on Siri's team, I was on Mondo's team, and then Siri and I could use our Secret Thief Powers to communicate with each other without anyone knowing about it, which was good to set up the ambushes. Which we did. We had an ambush and then the Prince of the Butterfly Meadows had an ambush, which was part of the plan, and then some *other* guy had an ambush, and he wasn't in the plan, so there were a lot of bad guys running around, oh, and I forgot to mention that this was all in the World Above where we went so that the bad guys would have to have Spider help them go there. But I guess two different sets of bad guys had Spider help them.
Once all the bad guys were jumping on Siri, and the Prince broke her Talisman thingy, then she went down pretty fast, and Jin wasn't really any help and I'm not sure why he was there at all. Master Hong, who is kind of like a short version of Wei Han, was pretty useful, but the other guy was a pretty serious fighter or ninja or something, and he nearly killed Mondo while I was rescuing one of the Talismans back from Siri, and that was the Magpie Talisman, which is probably better than the Serpent Talisman anyway, but the Prince stopped the other guy from killing Mondo and then they both (the Prince and the other guy) each got one of the loots that Siri and Jin had. But not the Magpie Talisman.
A Confidential Codicil
When in the course of events those who Fate has entrusted with the guardianship of many Great Talismans decide that said guardianship must pass to another, they (and, it must be said, Fate, for who can argue that Fate does not pay particularly close attention to the doings of the Circus of the Silken Wings?) find that the one most suited (or perhaps most ironic or most amusing) to temporarily hold the reins of guardianship is myself.
Thus it was that the Tale of Mystic Mondo and the Three Talismans and the Nine Ninja of Doom can be expanded with a chapter of Two More Talismans and One More Ninja of Doom. Unlike the first installments of this tale, I was presented with an opportunity not simply to flee (expeditious as the last of the Basic Strategies is), but to design and enact both overt stratagem and deeper method. I knew at once that the basic ploy of "wander about with the Talismans and hope to be spiritually mugged" would be to no avail - the bearers of the Talismans wander about with them at all times, and such trouble as finds them rarely has mugging for Talismans as its source.
The resources that we had been given to work with were in truth, somewhat haphazard. As is written in the Book of Seventeen Truths, "hard won, hard relinquished" and, aside from those Talismans which were designated as bait, many of the resources were those items that they had previously been unable to find a use for. I shall take it as a great compliment that they thought I would be more successful in the short time allotted, but in truth, all things have three uses: that for which they are well suited, that for which they are poorly suited, and that to which they can be converted by virtue of trade.
First, we required a pretext by which the Talismans were removed from their rightful owners, such that they would be more legitimate targets for theft - for to steal from a thief is considered no theft at all. I chose Siri as the "culprit", with a rationale that would not fool any who knew her in truth, but it would be plausible enough for one who heard it. Then, Siri and Jin made sufficient enquiries amongst the alchemists of the City of Light that their "stolen" trinkets would easily come to the ears of the Prince, who was at that time visiting with the Circus. Their enquiries came to naught, as expected, and indeed, required, so they concluded that they would have to visit the World Above to make a spirit bargain instead - thus leading the trail into the realms of spirit, where Spider would have to be called upon to follow.
Using the same constraints and conditions on transport to the World Above that Siri and Jin would use, I and my companions bargained with the Spirit of the Jasmine, offering her the Bonsai of Truth, an artifact of great power, but requiring even greater patience and consideration to properly employ, to spiritwalk us to her realm. Thus we reached the same location where Siri and Jin would later arrive, and we prepared to "ambush" them. Master Hong also prepared the field such that there would be hidden escape routes, that either Siri and Jin could use, or ourselves. By preparing such an ambush and escape, we shaped the nature of the space to be more closely aligned with Spider, allowing those Spider-allied of our pursuers to find and follow, which, according to my design, they did.
The actors in place, their lines begin. Siri and Jin enter to commence the performance; we enter from the opposite wing to demand that they turn over their stolen treasures. They flee by the first of Master Hong's hidden ways, and we pursue. The Prince and his troupe, following the lines I have written, step onto the stage to block Siri's flight, and the Prince strikes. The pair flees again, Siri's Talismanic power unravelling, and the final actor's troupe, following no script of mine, steps in.
While the Prince concerns himself with capturing his prize from the fallen Siri, the other is more directly our enemy, and dispatches Jin first before turning his attention, and his blade, to my trio. Master Hong is able to withstand him for a time, but the Other's men engage him so he is too pressed to guard any but himself. Sei-Lin is skilled enough to evade the enemy, but is not a guard. And so the Other's blade seeks my own life - to be forestalled by the Prince, who interposes both his own blade and his body between us.
The combat has reached a point of impasse, forces balanced without one able to score victory when the Prince and the Other disagree, so both fall back to their original goal, and plunder the fallen Jin and Siri. They are not given time to carefully search, so both must grab and run - the false Sankara stone and the Serpent Talisman are both gone, although in truth, it seems likely we shall see one, if not both, again, though perhaps not at a time or circumstance of our choosing, or our desire.
Master Hong
Report on the Battle Above
We encountered two hostile forces in the World Above; I did my best to ascertain their training and competence.
Prince Ti Jun is highly competent for his age, and I estimate him as fourth level. He is not a straight fighter, but he has a combat specialty which interacts well with a tactical focus. His team is accustomed to working with him and they support each other well.
The unnamed foe is at least sixth level, and is principally a fighter; many of his other shticks leverage his high combat stats in non-combat ways. I was not able to perform a complete analysis, as he has some ability to cloak his details from observation. His team is not accustomed to working with him, and appeared to be unaware of his exact capabilities.
Neither team was accustomed to operating in the World Above; Prince Ti Jun's team was more able to take the unusual setting in stride.


text:
Property: My Son Sanctuary
Id. N°: 949
State Party: Viet Nam
Criteria: C (ii) (iii)
The Committee inscribed this property on the World Heritage List on the basis of criteria (ii) and (iii):
Criterion (ii): The My Son Sanctuary is an exceptional example of cultural interchange, with an indigenous society adapting to external cultural influences, notably the Hindu art and architecture of the Indian sub-continent.
Criterion (iii): The Champa Kingdom was an important phenomenon in the political and cultural history of South-East Asia, vividly illustrated by the ruins of My Son.
The Delegate of China, speaking on behalf of all Asian and Pacific delegates, members of the Committee, warmly supported this nomination. He expressed the satisfaction of the twentythird extraordinary session of the Bureau in respecting the wish of the State Party with regard to the name and size of the property.
The Delegate of Thailand, underlining that appropriate criteria, and not the numbers of criteria, was important in defining the World Heritage values of properties, requested the advisory bodies to strictly apply appropriate criteria for properties to be inscribed on the World Heritage List. The Committee took note of the Delegate's request that the International Expert Meeting on the Operational Guidelines (April 2000) take this into consideration when revising criteria within the Operational Guidelines.
The Observer of Vietnam thanked the Committee for its decision and informed the Committee about the growing awareness of World Heritage in his country.


text:
February can be the cruelest month. In the midst of the cold, gray winter bleakness, it's tempting to daydream of a simpler life without hard work, heavy lifting or personal sacrifice, where nobody ever has to pay more in taxes yet all necessities of modern transportation — from airport runways and port dredging to eight-lane highways and bus lines — are magically provided.
In other words, how easy it would be right now to be a Maryland state senator or delegate opposed to raising the state's gas tax from 1992 levels.
Indeed, if we were members of the General Assembly, the press releases and speeches would practically write themselves. We would castigate anyone for daring to suggest that the 23.5-cents-per-gallon rate set 21 years ago, when a gallon of unleaded gasoline sold for about $1.13 instead of the average $3.78 of today, was somehow inadequate because of inflation.
Consumers can't afford to pay more at the pump, we would declare. Why, even a nickel or a dime a gallon is far too much. Of course, we would have to ignore the fact that Maryland's Transportation Trust Fund is running on fumes and that the construction program is about to be reduced to little other than pot hole repair.
Doing nothing about the gas tax essentially puts in moth balls the Red Line, the east-west light rail project in Baltimore that offers the city one of its best chances ever for economic revitalization, new jobs and self-sufficiency. But one need not mention that. Nor the fact that the Baltimore-Washington area has some of the worst traffic congestion in the entire country and that getting stuck in traffic is costing drivers billions of dollars in lost time and travel costs — far more than constituents would be paying at the pump.
Here's what we'd say instead: Gov. Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly have stolen a billion dollars from the trust fund. How can we raise the gas tax when they'll just steal that money again?
Of course, we can say stuff like that because most of our audience probably doesn't know beans about the state's transportation finances, and it sure sounds good even though it's highly misleading. We would never mention that the money transferred from the actual capital budget (the pot of money that pays for state highway and transit construction) has been repaid, and only reductions to local highway user grants were not.
And what is a highway user grant? Aha, chances are the voters in my district don't know that it's just a form of local aid, and that many other Maryland governors (including the last Republican one) have done the same thing. Such transfers have made it possible to spare vital education, health and public safety programs from more disastrous cuts during the worst of the recession.
What would have happened if highway user revenue hadn't been touched? Counties likely would have been forced either to severely reduce spending on their single biggest line item — public schools — or raise property taxes. Would voters have preferred higher tax bills or teacher layoffs to postponing local road resurfacing (the most significant effect of highway revenue cuts)? Probably not. Would it have saved the trust fund from insolvency? Absolutely not. We'd still be in the exact same position.
Oh, and by the way, we certainly wouldn't say anything about all the General Fund money that's been "stolen" by the Transportation Trust Fund over the years, like a portion of the corporate and sales tax revenue stream. Wouldn't want our constituents to realize that this stealing business has been a two-way street.
Meanwhile, we'd be fat and happy knowing that while leaving the gas tax at 1992 levels will be disastrous for the state's economic well-being in the long run, the whole thing won't collapse in 2014 when we run for re-election. The next generation of suckers can worry about the future (beginning in, oh, about 2015, when the Red Line was supposed to be built).
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller was criticized this week for calling House Republicans Neanderthals for opposing the gas tax under any circumstance. Senator Miller, who has shown the most leadership on this issue of anyone in the State House, deserved the critique and should immediately apologize to early human-relatives everywhere. After all, Neanderthals may have been crude and primitive, but they probably had more sense than to grunt out such bunkum.


text:
There still hasn't been a trailer or any footage from J.J. Abrams' brand new Star Trek movie, Star Trek Into Darkness. But a month from today, some lucky fans will get to see the first nine minutes of the film in IMAX theaters.
Update: According to EW, the screenings will be in front of showings of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, similar to the way you saw the opening of The Dark Knight Rises before Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
Here's the full press release:
WORLD PREMIERE EXTENDED PREVIEW OF J. J. ABRAMS' "STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS" TO DEBUT IN IMAX 3D ON DECEMBER 14th
HOLLYWOOD, CA (November 14, 2012) – Paramount Pictures will release the first 9 minutes from J.J. Abrams' eagerly-awaited "STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS" exclusively in IMAX 3D months prior to the film's official release in May 2013. This first-look at the movie will play in approximately 500 digital IMAX 3D theatres beginning December 14th.
"STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS," the sequel to Abrams' 2009 hit film that redefined the Star Trek universe for a new generation, marks the first time exclusive footage has played in IMAX 3D and only the third time a first-look will be released in IMAX.
"Our longtime partners J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk and the Bad Robot team have really hit it out of the park – the footage is absolutely incredible," said Greg Foster, Chairman and President, IMAX Filmed Entertainment. "Their use of the IMAX® Camera and canvas is sure to impress current and future Star Trek fans alike, and we're thrilled to once again work with our friends at Paramount Pictures to offer this extended 'first look' at this highly anticipated summer blockbuster."
To further the IMAX experience, "STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS" used IMAX cameras to capture several sequences. Exclusively in IMAX theaters, sequences filmed with the extremely high-resolution cameras will expand to fill more of the screen with unprecedented crispness and clarity, putting moviegoers right into the explosive action and vast scope of the film.
"STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS" is written by Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci and directed by J.J. Abrams. Abrams is producing with Bryan Burk through Bad Robot Productions, along with Lindelof, Kurtzman and Orci.


text:
Thursday, May 11, 2006
And so it starts...
What happened to the nice spring temperatures?! It's only going to get hotter from here too!
Oh well... when it's over 100 degrees outside, what do I decide to do? Bake bread.... hmm probably not the best of plans! At least the AC is working!
Rosemary-Apple Bread is a golden moist loaf studded with chopped tart granny smith apples and pungent fresh rosemary. It is a bit heavy, but in a good way, as there is no added fat inside the dough. The dough kneaded well without sticking much - I did keep the apple chucks semi large and it was a little tough kneading them in. When I added them, the dough got pretty sticky, but I used a touch of cooking spray on my hands and got them all in without having half of the dough stuck to my fingers. After the loaf is baked, melted butter is brushed on top to give the finished bread a very rich golden color. Next time, I think I want to add some shredded cheddar for a cheesy variation.
There are two parts to tonight's dinner. Five-Spice Tilapia with Citrus Ponzu Sauce was a snap to prepare and was done in minutes. Mild tilapia is coated in a spicy mixture of 5-spice powder, salt and red pepper. If you don't already have the five-spice handy, you can make your own as we did - mix together equal parts ground szechwan pepper, star anise, cinnamon, cloves, and fennel. The fish is cooked for just a minute or two on each side, or until it reaches the degree of doneness that you prefer. The tender flaky fish is then finished with a refreshing, salty and slightly sweet citrus sauce.
I'm not sure if the next recipe should be served with fish, but when has that ever mattered to us? Grilled Bacon-and-Herb Grit Cakes is a combination of hot cooked grits, fresh thyme, salty bacon and sharp white cheddar. While still warm, the grits are still pretty creamy, but after it is placed in a baking dish and refrigerated for awhile, it firms up quite a bit. Now, you can either cut it into simple wedges, or be fancy and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter. These cakes are then grilled to warm them up - since we are getting ready to move, I just used The Griddler instead of getting the grill back out. We didn't get the dark grill marks, but it worked just as well. These were good, but a bit bland - I think I would up the spices some and maybe add some nutty parmesan to give it a boost of flavor. I would also like to try this with some crispy prosciutto instead of the bacon!
10 comments:
- Anonymous5/11/2006 11:28:00 PM
Yikes! That's so hot for so soon!ReplyDelete
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.ReplyDelete
ok, once again everything sounds delicious ... I think I'll first give a try to the Grilled Bacon-and-Herb Grit Cakes ..ReplyDelete
can't wait to taste it ...
We may not have the 100 degree temps here but we make up for it with the humidity.ReplyDelete
Your grit cakes look tasty.
It all sounds great! I'm a little wow'd by the apple rosemary loaf. I never would have thought of apple and rosemary together.ReplyDelete
And what's with the temperature? That's insane! I doubt I could handle it but I'd love to have a bit of it. We've been stuck with 10C (50F) temperatures forEVER. It's depressing and making everything grow slow.
I think you have a winning combination... in the south grits and fish are often served together, especially for breakfast! The bread looks yummy!ReplyDelete
- Anonymous5/12/2006 01:24:00 PM
Come to San diego for the weekend! May grey is in full effect!!ReplyDelete
Today, north of Baltimore, MD the temp was a wonderful 70 and sunny. The bad news is that it is supposed to rain for the next several days. I would wilt in that heat, but as biscuit girl pointed out the humidity is awful here!ReplyDelete
Jennifer - So true... and the new extended forcast calls for more 100's! Luckily we will be leaving soon again for a bit!ReplyDelete
Sab - Thanks! Let us know what you think...
Barbara - We are preparing for the humidity.... I remember that from MN!
Nerissa - We both really enjoyed how the two flavors mingled together! I know.. I wish the temp's would have stayed a bit cooler - but it will soon be 110 or 115!
Michele - Thanks!
Jenny - Hey.. that sounds like an invitation!
Linda - I'll take cool and rainy please!
but its a dry heat!!! How many times have you heard that?ReplyDelete
I sure don't miss that part of living in Phx.