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BELLEVILLE — Two months after her 1-year-old son Joey died, Cathie Abernathy refused to answer questions under oath during a coroner's inquest in March 1973, according to court records.
"I refuse to answer on the grounds it may incriminate me," said Abernathy, now Cathie Melville of Cabot, Ark., during the inquest held at an East St. Louis funeral home.
When asked why she refused to testify, Melville said Thursday, "I can't discuss details of the case. All that will come out at trial."
The next witness was Gary A. Warwick, then Abernathy's 21-year-old boyfriend who initially told police that he found the little boy in the child's bedroom unconscious and slumped over the bars of a toy plastic motorcycle. A police report stated that Warwick, who was indicted for murder in Joey's death, attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for 10 minutes but could not revive the boy, who was known as "Baby Joey."
When asked at the same inquest to testify, Warwick answered, "I have been advised not to say anything," according to a transcript. "On the grounds that it might incriminate you?" the coroner asked. "Yes," Warwick replied.
Court records show that after giving an initial statement to St. Clair County sheriff's investigators and a brief statement in February, Warwick chose not to answer further questions or take a polygraph test on the advice of his attorney.
Warwick was charged with murder, but the case was later dropped, without explanation. Last week, he was arrested on a new warrant issued in connection with Joey's death.
Sheriff Rick Watson, who recently reviewed the case file and pushed to reinstate the case against Warwick, said, "I'm hoping that these stories will create more leads and more evidence."
Jim Gomric Jr., a Belleville attorney representing Warwick, declined to comment.
Records in the 40-year-old cold case state that Joey had just been released from a hospital after five days of treatment. He was released on Christmas Day, five days before his death on Dec. 30, 1972, suffering some type of syndrome that caused his hair to fall out, his skin to easily bruise and his toe nails to drop off.
Despite this apparent malady, a pathologist ruled that Joey died from punches to his abdomen that lacerated his liver, which had occurred very near the time of death.
Warwick was arrested near his home in Portage, Ind., last week and is currently being held in the St. Clair County Jail in lieu of $5 million bail. The 62-year-old Warwick, an accomplished softball coach, has the support of neighbors and friends from his community who do not believe he could have killed the child.
Details from the night of Dec. 29-30, 1972, when the little boy died are contained on microfilmed records in the St. Clair County Circuit Clerk's office. They include police reports and records of legal proceedings. However, the question of how the murder case became derailed for four decades is not fully answered in the records.
This much is known:
* Warwick was arrested shortly after the issuance of a warrant on April 30, 1973, was then indicted on a murder charge and was held in lieu of $10,000 bond before being released on July 16, 1973, after his bail had been reduced to $2,000.
* On Oct. 19, a bench warrant was issued for Warwick after he failed to show up for a court hearing, according to an order signed by then Judge Robert L. Gagen.
* A motion to declare the $2,000 bond null and void was approved on Nov. 27, but two days later, another judge, whose name was not legible on the record, ordered that the bond be restored and the warrant quashed.
The only hint as to why this occurred was stated in this judge's Nov. 29 motion that said, in part, "Bond forfeiture and bench warrant improperly issued ... original bond reinstated."
Copies of subpoenas to various potential witnesses show that the case was headed to trial. However, then State's Attorney Robert H. Rice filed a motion on Sept. 23, 1974, through an assistant prosecutor to dismiss the case. It was signed by a judge that day but no reason was given for the dismissal. It's the last court record in the case.
Warwick said that on the night Joey died, he had been up at about 2 a.m. and had been watching a late night movie, when he thought to look in on the boy, and found him unconscious. After failing to resuscitate him, Warwick called out to the child's mother to call for an ambulance, but she panicked and went into the bathroom and screamed, according to court records.
Warwick said he called the little boy's grandmother, Barbara J. Altman, who showed up after about 10 minutes. According to a police report, Altman had also received a call from an unnamed relative stating, "that Cathie's son Joey was very sick, and that Gary (Warwick) was crying and for you and me to get over to Cathie's house right away."
In a statement to sheriff's investigator Sgt. Charles Airhart, Altman said that upon arriving at the couple's mobile home at 1222 Freeman St., on the edge of East St. Louis, "Gary met me at the door and told me that it was too late, Joey was already gone."
Altman, in the report, stated that she noticed, "...a blue mark under the baby's eye and what looked like a blue mark or line under his mouth. " She told Airhart that until a month earlier, Joey had been "in good health." She said that since that time the toddler had been under a doctor's care after developing some sort of illness.
"The baby could just touch something and he would bruise," according to Altman's statement. "His toenails came off. His ear had turned blue. The least (touch) and the baby would be bruised," she told Airhart.
During the inquest in March 1973, a female friend of the family said she had dropped off Christmas presents for Joey on Dec. 26, the day after he got out of the hospital, and found his appearance, "horrible." She testified that all of his fingers were bruised and his hair was falling out.
On Feb. 26, 1973, Airhart wrote in an investigative report that he received separate phone calls that day from Cathie Abernathy and from Altman. According to his report, Abernathy called to complain that her mother (Altman) had, "implanted in her brain" that Warwick had killed Joey. She also claimed that a statement she made four days earlier to Airhart was "not true."
In that statement, Abernathy stated that Warwick didn't kill her boy and that "Gary Warwick loved her son and that she would wake up in the early morning hours to find Gary playing with the baby."
But Altman, the boy's grandmother and Abernathy's mother, told Airhart that she and her husband, Charles Altman, believed, "...that their daughter Cathie Abernathy had something to do with the death of Cathie's son, or was protecting Gary Warwick."
Barbara Altman, according to the report, also said that Warwick had been trying to persuade her to have her daughter Cathie committed to a mental hospital, "Because he would tell Cathie something and she would forget or would forget things she had done." Altman stated in the same report that she did not believe her daughter needed to be sent to a mental hospital.
Charles Altman related a curious episode to Airhart that he claimed had occurred a week or so earlier. Altman said Warwick came to the Altman family home in East St. Louis at night to complain that, "He had been run off the road by some guys in an old Pontiac with plastic over one taillight and that Joseph Abernathy Jr., (Joey's father) and two other guys were in the Pontiac," according to Airhart's police report.
Altman said, according to the report, that Warwick asked for a gun and he gave him one. Then Warwick took the handgun, "Walked into the woods, took off his light colored jacket, hung it up," and then "fired some shots." It was unclear from court records who he allegedly shot at.
Airhart's report stated that Warwick told Altman, "That he had wounded one of the subjects." Altman then called police, but there is no further reference to the alleged shooting in the court records.
Altman stated that afterward he drove to Joe Abernathy's house and found the Pontiac with the taillight out, but determined through a method not explained that the Pontiac had not been driven that night.
When confronted with the information about the Pontiac, Charles Altman said in the statement to police that, "Gary could not give an answer."
Contact reporter George Pawlaczyk at firstname.lastname@example.com and 239-2625.


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Red Hat Enterprise LinuxServer Desktop & Workstation Developer Subscriptions Satellite OpenStack Platform For IBM POWER For SAP Business Applications Management For Scientific Computing
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Add-OnsExtended Update Support High Availability High Performance Network Load Balancer Resilient Storage Scalable File System Smart Management Extended Lifecycle Support
Open hybrid cloudWhy Red Hat Why open hybrid cloud? The new IT Public cloud Cloud resource library Private cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Cloud applications and workloads
Courses and training pathsPopular and new courses Red Hat JBoss Administration curriculum Core System Administration curriculum Red Hat JBoss Middleware development curriculum Advanced System Administration curriculum Linux Development curriculum Cloud Computing, Virtualization, and Storage curriculum
Technology solutionsSOA and integration Business process management Custom Software Development Enterprise Data and Storage Systems management Migrations
Red Hat, OpenStack, and Open Clouds
April 12, 2012
by: Brian Stevens, CTO and VP, Worldwide Engineering
Nearly two years ago, Rackspace and NASA bravely took on a new mission: unifying their separate efforts of cloud storage and cloud compute under the umbrella project of OpenStack. Publishing the source code under an open source license, and investing significant time and resources to catalyze a world-wide community of users and developers to shape the future of the OpenStack project.
Late last year, Rackspace declared its intent to move the stewardship of the project to a neutral governing body. Today, it announces the corporate members who have expressed their intention to become founding members of the foundation, and we are proud to say that Red Hat will participate as one of the foundation's Platinum Members. In the coming weeks we will participate in the drafting committee to finalize the foundation structure and we look forward to its eventual ratification.
While Red Hat has contributed extensively as part of the OpenStack development community, we are enthusiastic to now become an official member. OpenStack will now join an open source architecture that has been redefining our customers' IT for the past ten years:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux: The unifying operating system of bare metal, virtualization, public and private cloud.
- Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: Secure, high-performance datacenter virtualization.
- Red Hat CloudForms: Hybrid cloud management.
- OpenStack: IaaS for private and public cloud.
- Red Hat OpenShift: The enterprise PaaS for the cloud.
- Red Hat Storage: Hybrid cloud storage.
- Red Hat Enterprise MRG: Messaging, Realtime and Grid for high-performance computing.
Red Hat JBoss Middleware Solutions: Comprehensive portfolio of middleware software.
In the coming months we will share more details on what this means for our partners and our customers.
We have long believed that open source was the future for enterprise infrastructure and the open cloud, and today, thanks to the pioneering work of Rackspace and NASA, the future just got a whole lot closer.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
She files regularly for NPRâââ
Originally published on Tue January 8, 2013 1:23 pm
On Tuesday, the minimum wage in 10 states will increase by anywhere from a dime to 35 cents.
For all of the states but one, the pay hikes are part of automatic adjustments designed to keep up with the cost of living.
In Rhode Island, it took a state law to raise the minimum wage for the first time in five years.
Rising Wages Vs. Rising Prices
Cafe Zog in Providence is a cozy, quirky place where you can grab a coffee and bagel to go, or nab a booth then head to the counter to order a hot breakfast.
St. Louis Public Radio is a service of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.


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Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains, serving more than 12,000 girls in New Hampshire and Vermont, urge everyone to be safe and prepared for wintry weather. First, follow the weather forecast.
For your home:
Clear all exits of snow in case of fire
Clear outdoor exhaust vents of snow
If you lose power, never run a generator or grill inside
Have a fire extinguisher and know how to use it
Make sure smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are working
Bring pets and animals inside in extreme weather
For your car, be sure to carry:
Snowbrush and ice scraper
Flashlight, boots, extra gloves
Blanket or sleeping bag
Energy bars and drinking water
First-aid kit
Sand or kitty litter, and keep windshield washer fluid filled
Girl Scouts of
the Green and White Mountains wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season! To
join or volunteer, see girlscoutsgwm.org or call 888-474-9686.


text:
Second District Congresswoman-Elect Annie Kuster issued a statement Friday afternoon in response to the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. that left at least 27 people dead.
"No words can make sense of today's shocking tragedy or bring comfort to those whose lives have been shaken," Kuster said. "My thoughts and prayers, and those of the entire nation, are with the victims, their families, and the people of Newtown."
Second District Congressman Charles Bass issued this statement:
"My heart breaks for the victims of the senseless and despicable tragedy that occurred in Connecticut earlier today. Lisa and I join the people of New Hampshire in keeping the victims, their families and friends, and the people of Newtown, CT in our thoughts and prayers during this horrible tragedy, and we hope that they may begin to find some comfort and peace in the days and weeks ahead."
Gov. John Lynch also issued a statement, saying "Today's shooting in Connecticut, taking so many innocent lives, is a horrible tragedy. On behalf of the people of New Hampshire, our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been wounded or killed, and to their loved ones."
Gov.-Elect Maggie Hassan called the shooting "an unbelievable and senseless tragedy," adding that "Tom's and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, families, students, teachers and entire community in Newtown, Connecticut."
Sen. Kelly Ayotte issued the following statement Friday evening:
"Words cannot adequately express the depth of our grief in the wake of today's senseless shootings in Connecticut.
As the mother of two young children, it's difficult for me to imagine a more horrific tragedy. My family joins citizens across New Hampshire and the nation in mourning the lives that were lost.
In the difficult days ahead, please keep the victims, their families, and the Newtown community in your thoughts and prayers."


text:
Disc Jockey: Michael Mann's 'Thief' looks backwards and forwards
Among new home video releases this week is the Criterion Collection's edition of "Thief," Michael Mann's 1981 feature film debut starring James Cann.
'The Butler' works its way to second box office win
Lee Daniels' "The Butler" took home its second U.S. and Canadian box office title.
Oprah Winfrey returns to the screen for 'Lee Daniels' The Butler'
Oprah Winfrey, who co-stars in "Lee Daniels' The Butler," discusses the civil rights movement and the women who stayed at home in the '50s and the '60s.


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Journal of Economic Perspectives: Vol. 17 No. 2 (Spring 2003)
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Some Economics of Ticket Resale
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Courty, Pascal. 2003. "Some Economics of Ticket Resale ." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(2): 85-97.
A large number of brokers and scalpers resell a significant fraction of event tickets at substantial markups and they manage to do so despite the fact that promoters and ticketing agencies do not support resell for profits and often attempt to block secondary market. Why can't promoters capture the profits from secondary markets or at least deter brokers from doing so? I present a simple explanation that borrows from the literature on airline ticket pricing and draw parallels with that literature. I review some evidence consistent with this explanation.
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Check your romaine lettuce if you bought the Tanimura & Antle Field Fresh Wrapped Single Head Romaine. The company has issued a voluntary recall.
A single lot of romaine lettuce is being recalled because it may be contaminated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacteria (E. Coli O157:H7). This product is packed in a plastic bag with the UPC number 0-27918-20314-9 and may have a Best Buy date of "08 19 12". The product was available at retail locations Aug. 2–Aug. 19. Georgia was one of 19 states (and Puerto Rico) where the affected product was shipped in the United States.
There are no reported illnesses associated with consumption of this product, according to the recall notice on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's website. E.coli O157:H7 can cause a diarrheal illness, often with bloody stools. Although most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, some people can develop a form of kidney failure called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). HUS is most likely to occur in young children and the elderly. The condition can lead to serious kidney damage and even death.
The recall is being conducted in consultation with the FDA, and is based on the testing of a single random sample by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Consumers with questions or who would like replacement coupons may call 877-827-7388, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m., Monday-Friday.


text: Buzz Brainteaser by POPSUGAR Entertainment 3/19/09 0 Reactions 0 Shares Print 0 0 0 0 0 Welcome to Buzz Brainteaser, the trivia feature on BuzzSugar! Every weekday I'll test your knowledge about TV shows, music, and movies. If you enter in the correct answer, you win points! In the movie Chocolat, what country does Roux (Johnny Depp) come from? Read More Buzz BrainteaserChocolat Get a Personalized Celebrity & Entertainment Newsletter! Help us customize your newsletter by selecting your interests (optional): A Listers Movies Young Hollywood TV Link Love See exclusive This Is Where I Leave You posters — Moviefone Is The Maze Runner your new YA obsession? — HuffPost Entertainment 5 behind-the-scenes features that show why movies went wrong — Cracked Andi's fairy-tale journey with her pick from The Bachelorette — BuddyTV The best music from this week's PLL episode — Pretty Little Liars 23 signs you're still obsessed with Gossip Girl — BuzzFeed This week's most underrated new release — Rotten Tomatoes Jay Leno is returning to NBC, in a new role — The Hollywood Reporter Shocking sex scandals on The Bachelor and Bachelorette — POPSUGAR Love & Sex


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It's time to bring Acererak's legacy to today's gamers.
This month sees the release of 4th Edition's Tomb of Horrors—and so we spoke with the adventure's designers, Ari Marmell and Scott Fitzgerald Gray, about their contributions to Acererak's legacy.
Wizards of the Coast: Can we ask about your own experiences playing through the Tomb of Horrors—have you ever dared enter the tomb in any of its earlier incarnations, either as a player or DM? How did those expeditions fare?
Ari Marmell: Unfortunately, the first and only time I ever actually attempted to play through Tomb of Horrors was when I was far too young to appreciate it for what it is, or to really pay attention to the clues regarding how to make one's way through. Under those circumstances, as I'm sure you can imagine, the delve didn't last very long. (It was a long time ago, and I don't remember many details, but I'm not sure we even reached the infamous green devil face...)
I desperately wanted to play through Return to the Tomb of Horrors, in 2nd Edition, but alas, I never had the opportunity to do so. I've read the whole thing through several times in the years since, and I'm still amazed at what Bruce Cordell was able to do with it.
Scott Fitzgerald Gray: Oh, yeah. It was a Saturday night in 12th grade. We had, like, nine PCs and half as many henchmen all maxed to the gills with experience, magic, and a remarkable sense of invincibility that didn't last long. The body count was staggering that first excursion, but after the surviving characters bankrupted themselves paying for group-rate resurrections, the Tomb became a campaign touchstone and the site of a couple of extremely memorable follow-up visits. With the help of an extraordinary run of luck, the last of those featured the destruction of the demilich, but I won't bore you with the details.
Return to the Tomb of Horrors I never had a chance to run or play, unfortunately, but I've read it voraciously more than once. I've described it in the past as the best second-person novel ever written, and I think that assessment still stands. For me, Return to was the best thing to come out of 2nd Edition, and it was an incredible experience being able to cherry-pick some of Bruce's remarkable ideas to update for Moil and the Shadow Tomb.
Wizards of the Coast: Considering the history and reputation of the original Tomb of Horrors, what do you think set it apart from other dungeons? While the forthcoming release certainly includes tricks, traps, and plenty of villainous foes—what did you look to bring to the adventure to make it distinctively "Tomb of Horrors"?
AM: Well, what everyone remembers about Tomb of Horrors is how deadly it was. It's that lethality on which the bulk of the module's reputation is built. But I really feel that the true "signature" of the adventure isn't just in the deadliness of its challenges, but in their style. It was one of the first dungeons, if not the first, to make hidden clues and problem-solving an integral part of the delve; the first dungeon that couldn't be solved primarily via sword and spell; and, in a sense, one of the first to challenge the players, not just the characters, to really think their way through the hazards.
In order for 4E Tomb of Horrors to make any rightful claim to following in the footsteps of the original Tomb and Return to, it had to capture some of that same feel. It had to be dangerous, sure, but in a very specific way, and with the necessary clues to circumvent at least some of those dangers. The original Tomb of Horrors had a few traps that were fairly arbitrary, but most of them made some sort of internally consistent sense, and so, too, do many of the dangers of any adventure that would aspire to the name. Anyone can throw out some completely random hazards: "The door has three buttons on it. Pushing the purple one causes the door to open. Pushing the white one inflicts 3d12 cold damage. Pushing the mauve one transforms the character into a Corinthian leather ottoman." That's not adventure design, and that's not challenging the players, it's taunting them.
That doesn't mean that every encounter is a puzzle; as with Return to the Tomb of Horrors, there are plenty of combats, and there are plenty of skill challenges as well. But a great many of the encounters are, indeed, puzzles that the heroes can more effectively overcome if they're paying attention, and if they use their heads—just as in the original.
SFG: Full agreement with Ari. The reputation of the original Tomb was built on its legendary lethality, but that in and of itself isn't what kept successive generations of players coming back for more. If the adventure had simply been the death trap that many people write it off as, no one would have cared. But in every important way, the Tomb is about challenging the players as much or more so than challenging their characters. Sure, magic and hit points can help, but back in the days before skill checks, the puzzles and traps of the Tomb were about assessing your problem-solving ability, not your character's modifiers.
I'm very happy with how the 4E Tomb manages to marry the much more advanced skill systems of 4th Edition with that old-style Gygaxian love of sheer ingenuity on the players' part. There are plenty of challenges of both kinds throughout the adventure, and I think we found a good point of balance between straight-up character-based encounters and the deeper, more subtle player challenges that made the original Tomb memorable.
Wizards of the Coast: Do you think it's even possible to have a true "Tomb of Horrors" these days—insofar as design has moved away from the instant death-trap mentality of the original? How did you balance the deadliest of the original with playability? And what advice might you have for DMs looking to run the 4th Edition Tomb of Horrors with a possibly greater 1st Edition deadliness?
AM: It was definitely a fine line to walk. The design philosophy behind 4th Edition simply doesn't allow for the "instant death" effects that occasionally reared their heads in 1st Edition (and for which Tomb of Horrors was well known). But on the other hand, it is possible to make the consequences of failure more deadly in 4E than their often are, and we did that with some—not all, certainly, but some—of the challenges in 4E Tomb of Horrors. I won't pretend for a moment that everyone will be happy with the balance we found, but I think it'll work for most people.
And, of course, there's what I said above: The feel of the traps, and their problems-solving nature, is at least as important to the Tomb of Horrors mood as the lethality. And that, certainly, is something that can be done across any edition of the game.
In terms of advice for DMs who want a more lethal experience, there are several possibilities, and we actually discuss them a bit in the book itself. The simplest is, of course, to run the adventures for a party that's slightly lower level than recommended. If you really want something as lethal as the original, you can easily increase the consequences of failed efforts: make damage higher, drain healing surges, even add some instant-death—but be aware that, at that point, you're veering away from what the game is built to support. Nothing wrong with that at all, but you're on your own when it comes to dealing with the results.
I do recommend, though, that you think carefully before doing so. This adventure was written to be challenging; you may find that the consequences as written are sufficient, even if you initially don't feel that they look to be.
SFG: Certainly, a lot of sweeping changes have worked their way into each subsequent edition of D&D since the days of the original Tomb. However, I personally think there are still enough common elements to recreate the experience of the Tomb even though the mechanic of "save-or-die" (or, in some cases, just "die") is long gone.
Chief among those is my own sense that it's less the dying than the expectation of dying that made the original Tomb memorable. It's called the Tomb of *Horrors* for a reason, and that sense of dread and foreboding is something that any good adventure can and should make use of. Even though the players of the adventure will have the meta-understanding that instant death isn't a part of the game anymore, there are plenty of things to be afraid of in the new Tomb—including the idea that death isn't actually the worst thing that can happen to your PC...
Wizards of the Coast: Looking at the 4E Tomb of Horrors, were there elements from the original, the Return to, or other sources that you knew you wanted to include? (Such as, is the trap in the G4: Perilous Pool encounter appears a clever homage to the Endless Quest's Dungeon of Dread?)
AM: Heh. Actually, while I played through many of the EQ books, Dungeon of Dread wasn't one of them. It was actually based on an encounter from the original Tomb of Horrors (and makes a reference to that original encounter in the text.)
But yes, there were quite a few things we wanted to include. A lot of it was purely stylistic, as I mentioned above, but some of it was more specific. We tied in a great deal of Acererak's personality and backstory, from the Tomb of Horrors and Return to. Several locations in the 4E Tomb of Horrors are modeled on areas of the original Tomb, and several other locations are actually revisits, taking PCs to areas from the original or from Return to. And indeed, several characters appearing or mentioned in Return to (and in several related Dragon articles from back in the day) are part of the ongoing plot here as well. Players and DMs running 4E Tomb of Horrors need not have any experience with the original or with Return to, but those who do should realize swiftly enough that this adventure could, if they wanted it to, serve as a direct sequel—the third part in the Tomb of Horrors trilogy, as it were.
We also knew that we wanted to work in some of the myth/history/cosmology of 4th Edition. Return to played a lot with other planes (particularly the Negative Material Plane), and involved the machinations of Orcus as well as Acererak himself. It "grounded" the adventure, if you will, in the reality of the game setting. We wanted to do the same. We also wanted Acererak's current scheme to make sense based on his prior efforts; his ultimate objectives haven't changed, after all.
SFG: Absolutely, and on both a mechanical and conceptual level. The fingerprints of Messrs. Gygax and Cordell are all over the 4th Edition Tomb, and without giving too much away, there are a number of sections of this adventure that will see the heroes retreading old ground—but in ways that are likely to surprise players who know the originals (and not necessarily in a good way). In terms of the bigger picture, as Ari says, it was important for the scope of this adventure to be defined in relationship to everything that had come before. In the process, we created a loose timeline into which the original Tomb and Return to can fit as proper backstory prequels to this adventure.
Wizards of the Coast: This Tomb of Horrors offers a rather far-reaching plot across multiple worlds; that said, there's still a visit to the original Tomb. What draws a party there story-wise, and what changes might they encounter (compared to the original) once inside? What informed your decision not to simply recreate the original tomb in its entirety as a mechanical update?
AM: Oh, it's definitely part of the ongoing story. By the time that chapter rolls around, the heroes should be well aware that they're dealing with Acererak. There are a few different ways the heroes might wind up in Skull City and the original Tomb. They may have tracked the place down in hopes of learning more about what Acererak is up to, and how to stop him, or they may have found themselves there involuntarily after the events of the prior chapter.
I'd rather not say specifically what's changed, or to what extent, because I'd rather players discover it in the process of play. But I will say that, yes, there are changes.
As to why we didn't recreate the original in its entirety? There are a few steps to that.
One is that, well, it's been done. Tomb of Horrors appeared in all three prior editions; there wasn't a burning need to redo it yet again, when we could instead do something new with the underlying ideas.
Part of it is an issue of space. The 4th Edition (and late 3E) format for adventures makes individual encounters a breeze to run—but the trade-off is that individual encounters take up more room. A conversion to 4th Edition of an older adventure requires a more page count than they original, and that's page count that we couldn't then use for something new.
Mainly, though... remember what I said earlier, about Tomb of Horrors-inspired material for 4th Edition being a fine line to walk? It's even more so for direct translation. While I believe, as I said before, that the primary draw of the original Tomb of Horrors was the style and feel of the encounters, not the lethality, that lethality is a major part of the adventure's reputation. But it's also a tough fit for the design philosophies behind 4th Edition (and, to a lesser extent, 3E).
When it comes to something very broad-based, like a campaign setting, it's okay to tweak details to fit the design of a new edition. Same is true when designing materials inspired by an original adventure. But to convert the adventure itself? Not so much. In an adventure, particularly a short and heavily thematic one, the individual details are the whole point. Change them too much, and you might as well not be using the original adventure at all.
If we'd tried to directly translate the original, we might have found ourselves having to sacrifice either the feel of 4th Edition or of the original adventure. And even if we didn't, even if we'd managed to walk that narrowest of lines, it would have overshadowed everything else. Discussion and debate as to whether we'd gotten the original exactly right would have distracted everyone from the rest of the book—and all the new material and new story/adventure opportunities that were the whole point of the book. By instead building new material based off and inspired by the original—as Bruce Cordell did with Return to—we've got the best of both worlds, and can provide new material that should satisfy most fans of both.
SFG: I'd also add that Return to made it necessary to push beyond what the original Tomb once represented. The world that Bruce created around the Tomb is simply too rich to ignore, and the story of Return to raised the bar far above what even the best dungeon crawl can do.
As to what draws a party to the 4E Tomb, one of the things that I loved about Ari's conceptual setup for the adventure was its separation into different sections across different parts of the adventuring tiers. Unlike many longer adventures (which can tend to get a little railroady despite the best efforts of all involved), the 4E Tomb leaves it entirely to the individual DM how to stitch the various sections together—and in doing so, make sure that the PCs are involved for reasons of their own making, not reasons that the adventure simply enforces upon them.
Wizards of the Coast: That said, what elements of the original Tomb might players come across (either within the abandoned tomb, or beyond)—does that four-armed gargoyle make a return in one fashion or another, for example?
AM: I would, again, prefer not to go into too much detail on this one. I want people to discover returning elements in the course of play. But I will say that, yes, there are definitely aspects—story elements, characters, monsters, themes, and even a couple of specific locations—that reappear, in some form or another, throughout the various chapters of the 4E Tomb.
SFG: Nope. Nothing at all. That mist-filled archway? I wouldn't worry about it...
Wizards of the Coast: In the afterward, Bruce Cordell writes that as soon as he read "god golem" he knew he was going to love the newest take on Tomb of Horrors. What can you tell us about facing Acererak this time around; while a demilich is never an easy fight, what has Acererak been up to lately? Any new tricks up his… that is, in his skull?
AM: Oh, he's got quite a few new tricks to try out. He's been working hard since his near destruction at the hands of the last group of adventurers—those players familiar with Return to will recognize bits of his tale—and his plans are already in motion by the time the heroes stumble onto them. He has quite a few new minions, puppets, and tools to throw at anyone foolish enough to stand in his way—and even if the PCs survive long enough to face him directly, they'll find that there's more to him than meets the eye. (Yes, even as compared to a "normal" demilich.)
Of course, he's still up to his old tricks as well. Watch for more of his infamous—and not necessarily talented—poetry. And pay close attention to it, since the heroes' lives may depend on it.
Like Return to, there are different levels of victory. It's entirely possible that the heroes may thwart Acererak's plans, but fail to finally destroy him, in which case they can probably expect to hear from him again. And if they should fail to stop those plans, well, they get to enjoy the world-altering repercussions.
SFG: As is the case with all the best villains, each setback only expands the scope and madness of Acererak's ambition. Again, one of the most fun things with this adventure was consciously building on and connecting to what had come before. In the original Tomb, Acererak destroyed hapless adventurers simply so that he could "survive more centuries". Return to upped the ante by revealing that Acererak had been saving those souls, and that his master plan was to undergo an apotheosis that would have granted him "godlike power". This time out, "godlike" doesn't quite cut it anymore...
Wizards of the Coast: Considering adventure design, especially for an adventure like Tomb of Horrors, how do you go about creating an encounter that shows players its deadliness without railroading them into automatically setting things off? Conversely, how would you create a trap that's interactive (that players can try and solve), but are not so easily bypassed with a simple skill check?
AM: There are a few options there. The first is, of course, to have an encounter where things start going badly immediately, and slowly (or not so slowly) get worse if the players fail to circumvent whatever trap or challenge lies at the center of it. But of course, that's only sometimes appropriate.
Sometimes, you play with expectations. If the party comes across a room that clearly doesn't belong where it is, such as an ornate dining room in the middle of a rundown dungeon (not saying that this precise example is in the adventure, mind you), there's obviously something very wrong—but they don't necessarily know what's about to happen.
And sometimes, you set up a challenge where only players who have really been paying attention are going to keep from blundering into it. You don't want to railroad, as you point out, and you have to accept that a few parties will manage to avoid it entirely, never learning just how deadly it was—but that's the trade-off for playing fair with the majority of parties who are going to blunder right into it.
As for your other question... Well, that's partly up to how the DM and the players want to play. There are quite a few instances in 4E Tomb of Horrors where the players have to figure out how to move forward; they have to figure out how to interpret the hints and clues they've seen in order to continue on. (For instance, the challenge in one room can only be circumvented via a clue that was found in an earlier chamber.)
One gaming group might require that the players come up with the answers, and if they fail, they've lost; other gaming groups might try to figure things out on their own, but resort to attribute/skill checks to gain hints from the DM if they're truly stuck; and others might just resort entirely to said checks. I don't personally recommend the last option, just because it's not really appropriate to the feel of the Tomb of Horrors. (And I find it less fun than trying to puzzle through things myself.) But all three options are there, just as they are in any D&D adventure. That said, the book's introduction does strongly recommend that groups at least try puzzling things out on their own, since—again—that's more in keeping with the spirit of the original.
SFG: For me, one of the hallmarks of the original Tomb (though I know this point is debated by those who don't care for the adventure) is that there are always options. With 4th Edition's much more focused encounter design, "options" was a constant touchstone, because options are what bring encounters to life. There are plenty of places in the 4E Tomb where the PCs can and will find themselves in serious danger, but that danger should never be a simple pass/fail scenario. Although there are plenty of straight-up combat and skill challenges in the Tomb, the adventure as a whole—like the original—is a deadly and elaborate puzzle. A skill check might bestow a necessary piece of information, but how that piece fits into the larger puzzle—which is to say, what options that piece introduces—is something that the players will have to work out.
Wizards of the Coast: Finally, with an absolute wealth of material to play through in the new Tomb of Horrors, do you have a favorite encounter? Or one you suspect players will soon be on the message boards about, mentioning their resulting character death?
AM: That's a tough one. I think the deadliest encounters fall in the last couple of chapters (and I'd rather not offer details of those). As far as a personal favorite? Well, at least one of them would have to be the sundial puzzle.
But I'm really very happy with all of them.
SFG: As Ari says, it's tough to pick a favorite without giving too much away. However, I can say that the encounters I enjoyed working on the most are those that have some connection or hearken back to the original Tomb and Return to—because players who know the Tomb might actually find themselves at a disadvantage compared to those for whom the 4th Edition Tomb of Horrors will be their first real experience of Acererak's madness. The Tomb is a part of gaming history, and while history often repeats itself, it rarely does so the same way...
Ari Marmell currently works as both an RPG designer, on products such as Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons, The Plane Below, and the Dark Sun Creature Catalog; and as a novelist, on titles such as Agents of Artifice (a Magic: the Gathering novel) and The Conqueror's Shadow. Ari currently lives in an apartment that's almost as cluttered as his subconscious, which he shares (the apartment, not the subconscious) with his wife, George, and two cats.
Scott Fitzgerald Gray started gaming in high school and has worked as a writer and editor much of the time since then. After belatedly realizing he could combine both vocations in 2004, he's been making up for lost time as a freelance RPG editor and designer, primarily for Wizards of the Coast. Scott's memories of the original Tomb of Horrors are so traumatic he rarely talks about them, but reworking this classic adventure has been excellent therapy. He lives in the Canadian hinterland with a schoolteacher, two daughters, and a large number of animal companions.


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Cellar/Tasting Notes "The 1990 La Chapelle is the sexy and opulent. I had the 1990 at the Jaboulet tasting, and again out of a double magnum three months ago. On both occasions it was spectacular, clearly meriting a three-digit score. The modern day equivalent of the 1961, it deserves all the attention it has..
Cellar/Tasting Notes Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2008 Hill of Grace has a slightly closed nose before giving subtle notes of ripe black cherries, blackberries and violets with hints of cedar, pepper, green tea and cumin. There's a slight raisin character on the full-bodied palate with crisp acid, dense fruit and..


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Officers and Staff
David R. Forrest, Sc.D., PE – Senior Fellow—Standards
Dr. Forrest is a materials engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, MD, President of the non-profit Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, and Senior Fellow, Standards, at the Foresight Institute. At the Navy, he is the PI for an Accelerated Insertion of Materials system sponsored by ONR, has developed a 3D transient tandem-arc weld model that was used to improve toughness in steel weldments, and has simulated fully 3D temperature and stress transients for Joint Strike Fighter landings on ship deck structures. He is an evangelist for emerging technologies such as covetic materials, lightweight friction stir welding systems, and productive nanosystems.
Before joining the Navy in 2001, he spent 15 years in plant operations and research in the specialty metals industry and two years in materials technology consulting. In the early 1980's he developed processing/structure/property relationships at Bethlehem Steel to improve the toughness of large steel forgings. In the late 80's, working with Julian Szekely for his doctorate degree at MIT, he modeled and designed systems for electromagnetically-driven fluid flow. In the 1990's, he worked at Allegheny Ludlum on a wide range of problems including the application of computational thermodynamics to reduce core loss in grain-oriented silicon steel, and deformation modeling of Ti-6Al-4V pack rolling in collaboration with Paul Dawson at Cornell. In 1999, he won Allegheny Ludlum's Technical Achievement Award for developing an ultrasonic system to measure microcleanliness for quality control during steel production.
David has performed technology analysis and market analysis for both Digital Equipment Corp. and Baverstam Associates on systems ranging from molecular computers to battery sealants and optoelectronic crystals. His policy work includes an analysis of the metal industry's impact on global warming, collaborating on the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, and presenting more than 20 briefings on molecular manufacturing systems, including at the National Academies and the U.S. Senate.
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text:
Breaking News
Miss the 2014 Senior Graduation Ceremony? Watch it HERE
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For district information or
to apply for transfer:
NHJ Admin Office 317.878.2100
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Online Cafeteria and Textbook payments/deposits are temporarily disabled as we transition to a new meal program and online payment processor. If you need to pay past due Textbook Rental you can come by the Admin office or call us at 317.878.2100. If you would like to make a cafeteria deposit into your students account, you may mail a check to NHJ Food Service, 802 S Indian Creek Drive, Trafalgar, IN 46181
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Sabres Edge reached another milestone today by securing its 12 millionth page view, becoming the first Buffalo News blog to garner that many looks.
Sabres Edge began in March 2007. It topped 1 million page views in April 2008, hit 3 million in September 2009 and quickly began reaching more milestones. It reached 5 million page views in February 2010, hit the 6 million mark two months later and topped 7 million in June 2010.
With more than 5 million views in the past two years, Sabres Edge averages more than 6,800 looks per day. There have been 4,387 posts by the writers and more than 35,600 comments by readers.


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If I were a betting man, I would bet that Flash is one of the most common asset creation tools for 2d sprite based games. In the past this meant that some poor schmuck would have to export all these nice vector based images out to PNGs. Compared to a SWF file the resulting PNGs take up a huge amount of space. This places restrictions on the quality and quantity of art in iOS games if you want to limbo under that magical bar.
I've been dreaming of loading SVGs or SWFs directly into cocos2d, but I never bit the bullet and built something to do it. Well yesterday dreams came true. I came across a post on the cocos2d forums pointing to a great post by Luke at zinc roe. Using the MonkSWF project by Micah Pearlman, Luke put together a nice cocos2d wrapper called SWFNode which let's you create an animated cocos2d node from a SWF. Each frame in the SWF becomes a frame in the animation. Go read his blog post, download and setup the Xcode 4 workspace he provides, and start playing!
It is important to note that MonkSWF and MonkVG do not support everything that Flash supports, so some files will not load properly.
Not Supported by MonkSWF:
- Bitmap fills and strokes
- Gradient fills and strokes
- Font rendering
- Morph targets
I also experienced a number of crashes when loading extremely large and complex SWFs. I have not tracked down the source yet.
SWF to CCSprite
Some projects may need to do a bit more than create a looping SWF node. I can think of a number of helpful cocos2d extensions that go beyond SWFNode that have yet to be built. So let's get started!
If you already have a project underway and you want to take advantage of the space savings that SWF provides, then you may need to use SWF frames as sprites. One way to do that is to write the SWF frames to a CCRenderTexture and then save them to CCSpriteFrameCache. Last night I wrote a category to extend CCSpriteFrameCache to do just that:
You simply pass the filename of the SWF resource to this method and it will add each frame to the sprite frame cache. If the filename is 'taco.swf' and it has 50 frames, then 50 CCSpriteFrames will be added to the cache named: "taco_1.png", "taco_2.png", …, "taco_50.png".
Here is the full method:
This is just a quick example of what can be done quite easily using cocos2d and MonkSWF. There are likely to a number of performance improvements, bug fixes, etc that can be made on this code. When I begin to integrate it into a real project I will post any improvements I make back here. Please feel free to contribute to, expand, or take the sample above for your own use.
One of the issues with the sample above is that the quality of the sprite generated by writing to CCRenderTexture is lower than if I write directly to the screen. It appears as if partial transparency is not being taken into account when writing to the texture. I will continue to look into it, but if anyone with more experience with CCRenderTexture has any thoughts please let me know.
The rendering issue was resolved by utilizing multisampling. In cocos2d multisampling is enabled by default, but it is not applied to CCRenderTexture. I will do a follow up post detailing the changes. For now here are some lovely puppies:


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Man on the Street: Main Street construction
Date: April 7, 2010
by: Maria Amodio | Observer Intern
The Sarasota Observer asked some of the businesses on Main Street how they're going to be affected by the upcoming waterline replacement, which will shut down the 1300 block of Main Street during the month of June.
Jim Keabeney
Proprietor, Stairway to Belgium, 1359 Main St.
How is the construction on Main Street going to affect business?
"We're not planning on closing during construction, but we're very upset about it. We just got our outside seating permit so this is really bad timing for us. I wish they would have done it in August when there's less people here. We're just going to suck it up and do the best we can."
Mark Woodruf
Owner, Two Senoritas, 1355 Main St.
How is the construction on Main Street going to affect your business?
"After it's done it's going to be fantastic. We're working with the city right now. They're having a stakeholders' meeting every other Monday for anyone who has ownership in a business on Main Street. I'm really excited though. I'm trying to be proactive."
Are you going to stay open during construction?
"We're definitely not going to close. That's not the way we've ever done things here. Business has been really good through January, February and March, so I want to keep that momentum going."
Do you have any concerns?
"I just hope the city will hold up their end of the bargain by getting a valet service going and keeping the sidewalks clean during construction. They've been keeping us pretty informed, so far so I can't complain."
Ricardo Musto
Barber, Alberti's Distinctive Haircuts, 1379 Main St.
How is the construction on Main Street going to affect business?
"It's going to be bad. We have a lot of older clients who have someone drive them right to the door, so we're trying to figure out how to get them accessibility to the shop. If they had built the parking garage first, we would've at least had somewhere they could park and we could have possibly brought them around the back, but they're taking away all the parking at once."
Beth Ealing
Owner, Max's Dog Bakery, 1375 Main St.
How is the construction on Main Street going to affect business?
"Honestly, I think I'll be really shocked if anyone comes down here during construction. I think once they finish it will be wonderful, but it'll be hard getting there."
Gunda Dehn
Assistant Manager, Art Uptown Gallery, 1367 Main St.
How is the construction on Main Street going to affect business?
"This is going to be very difficult. Like everybody else, we have to worry about survival. I know it's necessary for the street to be shut down, but it would have been better to do it during July or August when there's nobody here anyway."
Contact Maria Amodio at firstname.lastname@example.com.
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- Jul
14 Bastille Day Fundraiser
6:30 pm - 10:30 pm
- Jul
15 Humanity Working to End Genocide Planning Meeting
4:00 pm
- Jul
17 FlaSEIA Exhibit - Florida PHCC's 93rd Convention & Trade Show
6:00 am
- Jul
17 AJC Lunch & Learn Featuring Jason Isaacson
11:30 am - 1:30 pm
Show of support
Siesta Key Hardware owners Patricia and James Hillier are bringing the island community closer together.
Creative contest
Southeastern Guide Dogs has announced a T-shirt design contest for its 2015 walkathon held across the state.
Growing up green
More than 80 campers experienced the beauty of nature at the S.T.E.M. Summer Camp last week in Venice.


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Chris Cooper
Woodward News
Woodward, Okla. —
The Houston-based Clean Line Energy recently held an open house in Woodward for area landowners to learn more regarding the energy company's planned construction of transmission lines across Oklahoma.
As landowners entered the open house, which was held at the Woodward Conference Center Wednesday morning, they were greeted by a representative of Clean Line Energy who then walked them through a series of displays explaining the benefits of the company. In the process of doing so Clean Line officials also addressed any questions or concerns raised by landowners.
"We're here to educate people on the project, but we're also here for feedback from local landowners to help narrow routing of the clean energy line," explained Sarah Bray, Clean Line's director of communication.
The project Bray referred to is the Clean Line Plains & Eastern transmission line project in which the company proposes to erect a pair of 3,500-megawatt direct current transmission lines stretching around 750 miles to carry power from a wind farm near Guymon to electrical markets in the southeast.
Wednesday's open house also featured detailed maps showing the proposed energy line routes through Oklahoma. Potential line routes may enter Woodward county from the northern central or western central portion of the county and run to the east or southeast through the county.
"We did this to give everyone an opportunity to see exactly what we're considering, to give them a chance to ask questions, and to ask us questions," Bray said.
On the maps landowners were encouraged to inform the Clean Line Energy company of sites such as overlooked residences by placing a sticker out next to the area.
"We take that information from locals and plug it into our computer system," explained Bray, "By doing so we can update our line route to make it more convenient for landowners."
Despite Clean Line's efforts to alleviate local concern, some landowners were still skeptical of the proposed project.
"It might be alright as long as they listen to the landowners," said Dan Deweese, a local land owner with property north of Woodward. "I've had problems with other energy company's running lines on my land in the past, and I don't want a repeat of that."
Danny Feerer, a landowner with property between Fargo and Tangier, expressed a similar concern.
"Wether they listen to you or not is always a concern," said Feerer. "I chose to live in the country, not in a city, and I don't want giant power lines running across my front door. I'm fifth generation to live on this land, and I just don't want to see it go to heck on my watch."
Bray seemed considerate of these concerns however, stating "We're committed to working with landowners, not only in our words, but in our actions. What we actually do is what's important."


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Signals, Systems, and Transforms (4th Edition)Author:
Charles L. Phillips, John Parr, Eve Riskin
Edition: 4
Pub Date: 2007
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Summary: SIGNALS, SYSTEMS, AND TRANSFORMSFOURTH EDITIONCharles L. Phillips - John M. Parr - Eve A. RiskinA clear, comprehensive presentation of the theory and applications of signals, systems, and transforms. presents the mathematical backgroung of signals and systems, including the Fourier transform, the Fourier series, the Laplace transform, the discrte-time and discrete Fourier transforms, and the z-transforms. Organizatio...n permits great flexibility in course emphasis. MATLAB® examples are integrated throughout the book. The advanced features of the student version of MATLAB are integrated into the examples and problems.The interactive Web site atwww.ee.washington.edu/class/SST_textbook/textbook.html has numerous animated demonstrations and interactive examples.More than 350 homework problems and over 150 examples. Answers to selected problems enable students to gain instant feedback of their understanding of new concepts.Significant Changes in the Fourth Edition Concepts presented more clearly. More concise introduction to convolution in Chapter 3. Expanded presentation of the Discrete Fourier Transform in Chapter 12. Revised problem sets for most chapters. Problems arranged so sets of problems relating to a common concept are presented together. The answer to at least one problem from each set is provided in an appendix. Biographical information about selected pioneers in the area of signal and system analysis has been added in appropriate sections of the text. [read more]
Product Details
Pub Date: 2007
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Edition: 4th
Pub Date: 2007
Publisher: Prentice Hall
www.ValoreBooks.com is a student's number one resource for cheap Signals, Systems, and Transforms (4th Edition) rentals, or new and used condition books ready for you to buy.
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text:
Are you ready for football? So is Patch!
Are you partial to the , , , Wolves of Buford or ?
Or maybe somebody else?
Let your allegiance be known in our weekly Gwinnett Football Game of the Week poll. Vote for your favorite matchup and we may feature the game later in our weekly football predictions column.
Gwinnett Football Games
Weekend of Aug. 31
- A.C. Flora, S.C. at (Sat.)
- Apalachee at
- at Elbert County
- at
- at
- Duluth at
- at
- Lakeview Academy at
- Miami Central at
- at
- at
- at
- Savannah at
- at Holy Innocents'
If your game isn't listed in the poll, don't worry. Tell us in the comments box below why your team's game is best. Those count as votes, too.


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What is HICO?
The Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO™) is an imaging spectrometer based on the PHILLS airborne imaging spectrometers. HICO is the first spaceborne imaging spectrometer designed to sample the coastal ocean. HICO samples selected coastal regions at 90 m with full spectral coverage (380 to 960 nm sampled at 5.7 nm) and a very high signal-to-noise ratio to resolve the complexity of the coastal ocean. HICO demonstrates coastal products including water clarity, bottom types, bathymetry and on-shore vegetation maps. Each year HICO collects approximately 2000 scenes from around the world. The current focus is on providing HICO data for scientific research on coastal zones and other regions around the world. To that end we have developed this website and we will make data available to registered HICO Data Users who wish to work with us as a team to exploit these data.
For the first three years, HICO was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research as an Innovative Naval Prototype (INP); support is now provided by NASA's International Space Station (ISS) Program.
HICO Status -
Transition to NASA
Jan 1, 2013
HICO was developed by The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) as an Innovative Naval Prototype (INP). HICO exceeded all its objectives as an INP and continues to operate after 3 plus years. ONR also supported the first three years of operations including the development and operation of the HICO website at Oregon State University (OSU). This ONR support ended in December 2012.
With the expiration of ONR funding, NASA's International Space Station (ISS) Program has agreed to provide funding such that the operation of HICO, including the OSU HICO website and data distribution, can continue. In the near term, NRL will continue to operate HICO and OSU will still manage the HICO website using established procedures.
As the ISS brings in new users through NASA's ISS National Lab Office and new domestic and the International Partners of the ISS Program, HICO operations will evolve to be consistent with other ISS operations. Changes will most likely affect the proposal approval and data selection and distribution processes, especially as they involve non-US principal investigators. HICO users and the ocean color remote sensing community will be notified in advance of any changes, as it is the intent of NASA, NRL, and OSU to make the transition as seamless as possible while expanding access to HICO data to a broad user base.
The entire HICO data archive, in HDF5 format, is now publicly available from the NASA Ocean Color website. Note that to access HICO data from the NASA website, an EOSDIS account is required.
In addition, the Oregon State University HICO website will continue to provide access to data in ENVI format from a subset of regions collected by HICO.
image galleries
Become a HICO Data User
As a demonstration instrument, HICO is designed to collect one 50 x 200 km scene per orbit. A limited amount of this data will be available to academic and international scientists for their scientific studies. To become a HICO Data User and request data for your study requires a short proposal and signing a data use agreement. Team members will be asked to publish and share all data and results including presenting their results at an annual HICO Team Meeting. To access the forms and format for the proposal and apply visit the "Become a HICO Data User" webpage.


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Talk Shifts to Petraeus for President in 2016
Supporters say they are putting a 2012 draft campaign on hold.
The David Petraeus for president bandwagon has been put on hold by his acceptance of President Obama's request that he replace ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the Afghan war boss. Now, his fans will have to wait until 2016. [Read 10 Things You Didn't Know About David Petraeus.]
Supporters of one unofficial Petraeus for President in 2012 effort tell Whispers that they are putting everything on hold because it is unlikely that he would have enough time to prepare for a bid in two years even if he only serves until the planned July 2011 beginning of the troop draw down promised by Obama. [Read 10 Things You Didn't Know About Stanley McChrystal.]
Instead they are talking about a 2016 campaign now, even though the general has repeatedly dismissed talk of a political bid of any sort. Those who were working on a draft effort say that by 2016 Petraeus might be more open to a presidential campaign, especially if Obama wins a second term and the general doesn't have to run—presumably as a Republican—against his commander-in-chief. If that happens, and Vice President Joe Biden doesn't run, then both parties will have open primaries just like in 2008.
His fans say a lot depends on what happens in Afghanistan. "If he pulls Obama's fat out of the fire in Afghanistan, he will go down as the greatest general since Dwight David Eisenhower," says one.


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looking for a challenger on rock band 2 (drums)
pooperscooper300 Unsigned
edited November 2012 in Playstation 3
hello im looking for a challenge on rock band 2 i have recently got this game and i currently only have the drums instrument, sadly, i play expert but mostly hard but ill be willing to play anything no matter the challenge. hit me up for a game my PSN is pooperscooper300 reply with a post of your PSN or hit me up (ROCK BAND 2 ONLY) P.S. i also have GH3


text:
By Jim Pitts
Corsicana Daily Sun
Jayd Kirby rushed for 152 yards and passed for another 135 yards as the Blooming Grove Lions beat the Rice Bulldogs, 41-21, at Bulldog Stadium Friday night.
The Lions upped their season mark to 4-1, while evening their District 6-2A Division II mark at 1-1. Rice fell to 1-4, 0-2.
Blooming Grove took advantage of the wind in the second quarter to break open a close game by scoring three times to take a 28-14 lead at halftime, after playing to a 7-7 tie in the first quarter. Kirby completed four of six passes for 123 yards in the quarter, including a big 60-yard strike to Brandon Hayes for a touchdown. The play came one play after Rice tied the game at 14-14 on a 75-yard run by Ragan Henderson, who broke the 1,000-yard barrier for the season on the play.
In the second half, going into the wind, Blooming Grove put the game away with a devastating ground attack that controlled the ball for over eight minutes and kept the Rice offense off the field. Kirby guided the Lions on a nine-play, 75-yard drive, capped by Kirby's 1-yard plunge to push the Lion advantage to 35-14. Both Kirby and Travis Whiteside had four carries for 30 yards on the drive.
Rice, behind Henderson and Chris Atchley, tried to rally on the ensuing possession. Driving into Lions' territory, the Bulldogs were stopped by the defensive play of Anthony Black and Kirby, who had a big tackle for loss on third down and added a fumble recovery at the Lions' 30-yard line.
Blooming Grove took over and again, going into the wind, kept the ball on the ground for all 15 plays. Kirby again ended the 70-yard drive with a 1-yard plunge on fourth down early in the final quarter to take a 41-14 lead. Tyler Morris added four carries for 40 yards on the drive.
The Bulldogs had the final score of the night late in the fourth quarter. Dalton Pike found Henderson open on a swing pass, and the running back took it 28 yards for the score. Pike completed four out of five passes for 63 yards on the drive, including a big 16-yard pass to Atchley on fourth down to keep the drive alive.
Defensively, the Lions, who held Henderson to well below his season average, were led by Kirby with seven tackles, including the key tackle for a loss and a fumble recovery, and Black with six tackles. Dalton Wasinger added five stops for Blooming Grove.
Rice was led by Raven Huffman, playing in his first game since a Week 0 injury, with 10 tackles, and Atchley with nine.
Blooming Grove 41, Rice 21
Blooming Grove 7 21 7 6 —41
Rice 7 7 0 7 — 21
First Quarter
R — Ragan Henderson 17 run (Junior Pena kick), 8:50
B — Tyler Ellis 10 pass from Jayd Kirby (Ellis kick), 2:29
Second Quarter
B — Kirby 1 run (Ellis kick), 10:56
R — Henderson 75 run (Pena kick), 9:59
B — Brandon Hayes 60 pass from Kirby (Ellis kick), 9:46
B — Kirby 5 run (Ellis kick), 2:44
Third Quarter
B — Kirby 1 run (Ellis kick), 8:32
Fourth Quarter
B — Kirby 1 run (pass failed), 11:30
R — Henderson 28 pass from Dalton Pike (Pena kick), 1:25
First downs 28 14
Rush-yards 56-332 33-213
Passing yards 135 63
Fumbles-lost 0-0 2-1
Punts-avg. 0-0.0 4-19.0
Penalties-yards 3-25 3-35
Rushing: B: Jayd Kirby 30-152, Tyler Morris 11-75, Travis Whiteside 10-61, Daniel Camarillo 2-30, Brandon Hays 2-15, Tyler Ellis 1-(-1). R: Ragan Henderson 21-150, Chris Atchley 10-68, Dalton Pike 1-(-5),.
Passing: B: Jayd Kirby 6-9-0-135. R: Dalton Pike 4-11-0-53, Ragan Henderson 0-1-0-0.
Receiving: B: Brandon Hayes 2-63, Tyler Ellis 2-54, Tyler Morris 1-16, Travis Whiteside 1-2. R: Eric Hughes 2-19, Ragan Henderson 1-28, Chris Atchley 1-16.


text:
Rate adjustments passed in Weeping Water. The likely need for water and sewer infrastructure upgrades led to the approval of a 5% increase in water and sewer rates.
The Cassgram reports In September the Weeping Water City Council directed the ordinances be drawn up for consideration. All three council members present at this month's meeting voted in favor of the ordinances.
Council minutes said there are water and sewer system improvements that will likely be needed to maintain adequate service and to meet mandated compliance measures.
The last rate hike for water and sewer fees was in 2007.


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Private Dining
David Burke Fishtail
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Reviews ›
135 E 62nd Street
New York, NY 10065
Upper East Side
Getting there ›
$50 and over
See Menu ›
More Details ›
David Burke Fishtail Details
Dining Style:
Casual Elegant
(212) 754-1300
Hours of Operation:
Sat 11:00am - 4:00pm;
Sun 10:30am - 4:00pm
Mon–Thurs 5:00pm–10:00pm;
Fri 5:00pm–11:00pm;
Sat 4:00pm - 11:00pm;
Sun 4:00-9:00pm
Happy Hour:
Mon-Sat 3:00pm - 6:00pm
Sun 12:00pm - 6:00pm
Payment Options:
AMEX, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
Seafood, American
Dress Code:
Business Casual
Accepts Walk-Ins:
Additional Details:
Banquet/Private Rooms, Bar Dining, Bar/Lounge, Beer, Full Bar, Gluten-free Menu, Happy Hour, Late Night, Non-Smoking Restaurant, Patio/Outdoor Dining, Personal wines welcome, Personal wines welcome (corkage fee applies), Private Room, Takeout, Weekend Brunch, Wine, Wine Bar
Special Events & Promotions:
Group and private dining can be accommodated from 12 – 150. Our culinary team can customize your menu to meet your every need. Email email@example.com to learn more.
Getting there
Cross Street:
Between Park and Lexington Avenues
Public Transit:
F train to 63rd Street/Lexington Avenue, N, R, 4, 5 & 6 trains to 59th Street/Lexington Avenue.
Parking Details:
There is a parking garage on 63rd and Lexington.
A word from David Burke Fishtail
Celebrated Chef David Burke unveils David Burke Fishtail, a new innovative seafood concept on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Located in a historic townhouse, the bi-level eatery combines casual late-night dining with a casual bar in the ground floor bar with traditional sit-down service in the main
second floor dining room. Fishtail offers the freshest fare – provided by Litchfield Farms as well as their own company-owned fishing boat out of Brielle, NJ. Known for its sustainable seafood, Litchfield Farms compliments Burke's & Hara's beliefs in providing diners with the highest quality ingredients that do not compromise on integrity. Together, they have created a menu of 85 percent sustainable seafood which is coded with levels of authenticity for guests' reference. The 120 seat restaurant is located at 135 East 62nd St. between Park & Lexington Aves.
Foodspotting photos
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Diner Reviews
Food was decent not as good as
expected. Service was poor, felt rushed and unwanted. Nice seating though and ambience"
Dined on 7/24/2014
We had a reservation for 8:30
p.m., but were able to sit at 9:20, and were not able to order the food until 9:55. There were no apologies (except the hostess downstairs) . I have been there before, and I still think that the food is good. However, I will not go there again until I hear that they are no longer overcrowding the place."
Dined on 7/23/2014
We showed up on time to our
reservation but it took almost an hour to seat us. The place was very busy and loud. It felt like being in a loud bar. I had to yell to talk to my friend. The service was decently quick and polite. The appetizers were possibly the best part of the meal. The meal itself was very lackluster. The Fish was either overcooked or slightly underseasoned. I would not recommend to anyone."
Dined on 7/23/2014
We went for Restaurant Week and
the menu was truly fantastic. So many selections!! Really a great deal. The food was delicious and the wait staff was very friendly. Our only disappointment was the sommelier. We ordered a bottle of wine that we actually knew and were excited to see on the menu. When the sommelier brought the wine, I noticed that it was a different wine from what was listed on the menu. Same winery, different wine. I pointed it out because clearly he hadn't even looked. He also couldn't recommend something similar to the one we wanted (they didn't have it) because he had never tasted it. (Isn't that his job?) We ended up trying the one he brought in the first place but it was far inferior to the one we wanted. Bummer."
Dined on 7/23/2014
One of the best Restaurant Week
offerings. Food is excellent. Bar Happy Hour is a must-have between 5-7 pm!"
Dined on 7/23/2014
Nice range of options on the
menu. Dessert presentation was a standout -- cheesecake lollipops were extraordinary. Very NY crowd from young to old. Each room has it's own vibe. Bar area also great for slightly more casual dining."
Dined on 7/22/2014
This was our first and only
experience at any David Burkes restaurants. Awesome wonderful time. Great drinks and appetizers. Friendly bar staff. Then dinner at a table in bar area. Food exceptional. Wonderful waitress and service. All staff was superb. Cannot wait to return."
Dined on 7/22/2014
Had a great friendly waitress, and
the food was really good. I liked that they had a big restaurant week menu with some really great options"
Dined on 7/22/2014
Had another great dining
experience at Fishtail, again for restaurant week. Decided to expand my palate and try something different, as I can get very picky and often will resort to the same comfortable options. What's nice about their menu is that there are options that suit everyone...something comfortable like a pasta dish or steak frites, or something different to try. My guest and I both had the crab cakes appetizer. She had the lobster rigatoni with a rich tomato sauce and a slight hint of spice. I had the grilled salmon with artichoke hummus and red quinoa, which was flavorful and fun to mix all mediums together or eat separately. Last but not least, we shared the DB classic...the cheesecake lollipops! So much fun!"
Dined on 7/22/2014
Food was delicious, service was
great. We had a relatively secluded table, so there was minimal noise."
Dined on 7/21/2014
Sunday is Lobster Louie night and
in the past the baked lobster was stuffed and large. I ordered it this past Sunday and the plate contained 3 small pieces of lobster. The waitress informed me that they serve a lighter dinner in the Summer. The price however was not lighter. Also, we wanted coffee but it was never offered as the check was put on the table. Another example of a very high priced NYC restaurant with less then satisfactory rewards to the consumer"
Dined on 7/20/2014
The food was good (I had the
Lobster Louie on a Sunday Brunch), and service was attentive. Price was slightly on the high side - though expected as it is mid-town Manhattan. A cool place to be at least for once."
Dined on 7/20/2014
This is the second time at David
Burke Fishtail. Love the place and would go back a third time. Service was better first visit, it was also a Saturday night. Second visit was a weekday, Wednesday, service was still good but not as good as the first visit. Food is fantastic, atmosphere fantastic, comfortable, elegant but not formal. A lovely find."
Dined on 7/16/2014
I been here a few times in the
past and the food was always top of the line. Today I felt different, the food looked like leftovers and not like a grilled lobster. It's sad to see how the quality of the food has dropped. Also, the staff freely curse at the bar with some of the kitchen staff."
Dined on 7/13/2014
I've been to Fishtail a few times
when my family came into town and we always have a good time. Don't know if it's the food or the family but I always have a great time here."
Dined on 7/13/2014
My wife and I both had the grilled
swordfish with Puttanesca sauce. It was a very generous portion of swordfish and delicious. The restaurant is pricey but the food quality and service was worth it."
Dined on 7/12/2014
We live on the upper east side and
if we stay in the neighborhood, this is our regular place. It never disappoints. I love the octopus. I always try a fish dish and I tried the tuna this time for my entree with soba noodles. It was so good. Of course, we will return."
Dined on 7/11/2014
Everything was terrific, and it
could have been an outstanding dining experience except for the noise level, even upstairs."
Dined on 7/9/2014
Great food with top-notch service.
Food delivery could be slowed just a bit."
Dined on 7/6/2014
Go on a Sunday the lobster menu is
very tasty. I had the dumplings, angry lobster and cheesecake tree. All of the courses were delicious."
Dined on 6/29/2014
Love the Townhouse which is
currently closed. Thought we would try Fishtail. Pretty place but not as elegant as the Townhouse. Nice price fixed menu but food is uninspired and not memorable. No reason to go back except for the wonderful waiter,Adonis( yes that is his name!)"
Dined on 6/29/2014
Food was good. Service was only
mediocre but the noise level was too much. We were a party of 4 and couldn't have a conversation. I had to ask the waitress to repeat herself more than once. The tables were too close together also."
Dined on 6/28/2014
disappointed with the drinks happy
hour wines were of cheap quality bartender could not make requested drinks order, did not have a common element that all bars carry, ginger beer mojito's were the worst we ever had and what made it worse, they were 14 each booked reservation with open table as special occassion, birthday not recognized by restaurant, very disappointing"
Dined on 6/26/2014
At the end of my meal the waitress
accidentally spilled an entire glass of water on my lap. She apologized and got me napkins and said well thankfully it wasn't the margarita I've been drinking all night and left it at that. There was no accommodation in regards to making up for her mistake like free drinks or desserts or even an approach from the manager saying we're sorry and please accept our apologies with a drinks coupon for your next time here. I felt it was very poor service to the customer."
Dined on 6/25/2014
Fishtail has a whimsical name, and
a unique menu from David Burke's imagination. The appetizers were delicious, including the crab cake balls. The lobster sliders were excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed the Nori crusted Tuna. For dessert, the cheesecake lollipops are not to be missed. We ate downstairs and our server was had a terrific personality and took very good care of us. She made a great meal even better."
Dined on 6/24/2014
The high loud noise level ruined
the dining experience."
Dined on 6/24/2014
The food was great and our server
was really very nice. Woman with glasses."
Dined on 6/24/2014
Found the restaurant on a list
provided by our hotel. After reading the menu, chose it because we were looking for fish/seafood. Branzino is a favorite fish and we weren't disappointed by it or any part of the meal. Impeccable service, well trained staff. Recommend it--would go back."
Dined on 6/23/2014
I think they were understaffed on
this day that we went although as always the food was good and the place very cozy. Service was less than stellar on this day although the lone wait staff was very gracious and apologetic so it made the wait times bearable."
Dined on 6/22/2014
We had made reservations and
always end up in the front room. Would have preferred back especially since they had a table of approximately 15-20 business men that came in and then you were not able to have any conversation at our table."
Dined on 6/17/2014
Absolutely a spot on restaurant.
Both the food and service were perfect I would recommend this to all. We ate in the bar area which at 5:15 was hopping but service was not impacted. We decided no to have a main course but instead ordered 4 appetizers because we were tempted by all. I will return to try the rest."
Dined on 6/17/2014
The food and service was
excellent. The only criticism was the 2 females next to us we're very obnoxious and loud. Dropping "F" word aloud which was very annoying not only to us but other patrons. The manager should have stepped in."
Dined on 6/14/2014
The appetizer special was a tomato
& watermelon gazpacho with crab meat. It was amazing. As was the sea bass main course. Perfect for a Summer night. Apple tart & coffee. And I forgot to mention the sauvignon blanc wine which was wonderful. The service was also outstanding. A very friendly waiter. Very helpful with the menu. He announced the prices of the daily specials which I appreciated very much. I will be back."
Dined on 6/14/2014
We ate in the bar area and watched
the World Cup. Service was the best - waitress and bartender. Food was fantastic. Would recommend."
Dined on 6/14/2014
service was not that good at all.
waited a long time for a table. fish was good. glassware did not match the whole table. waitress was rude."
Dined on 6/12/2014
I usually love Fishtail. Dining
at this beautiful town house on a tree lined street in the upper east side makes one feel as though they are invited to a special home. The lobster bisque was as good as I have ever had. This trip, we were celebrating the birthday of a friend in from out of town. Unfortunately, several options were not available to her as she is gluten intolerant. Also, we sat forever waiting for my husband's dessert which never came. The server brought the bill before checking. She was apologetic but this was not up to the standard we expect and have experienced at this restaurant. Don't put your fork down or someone will try to swoop in and remove your plate. I hate that."
Dined on 6/10/2014
We loved the lobster louis brunch.
There was good variety to choose from and the food looked and tasted delicious. There was a bridal shower in another room and that is the reason the noise level was little higher. We sat in a lovely alcove."
Dined on 6/8/2014
This was our first time at
Fishtail and we really loved the food."
Dined on 6/7/2014
Wonderful space, excellent service
and fresh delicious seafood. Perfect evening with friends. "
Dined on 6/5/2014
We ate Sunday "Lobster Louie"
brunch--the best in town. Excellent service. Excellent decor. Excellent food! Highly recommended!"
Dined on 6/1/2014
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David Burke Fishtail is an innovative seafood concept on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Located in a historic townhouse, the
bi-level eatery combines casual late-night dining in the ground floor bar with traditional sit-down service in the main second floor dining room.
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A very strong group of enterprise array vendors racked up some of the highest scores we've seen to date on the sixth edition of the Quality Awards for enterprise arrays.
Every competition has its winners and losers, and the latest Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Quality Awards for enterprise arrays is no exception. NetApp Inc. is the clear winner in a very competitive field, but it doesn't seem appropriate to call the other five vendors losers as scores across the board were impressively high -- only 0.34 points separated NetApp's high overall rating and the lowest score.
Overall ratings
This is the second consecutive time NetApp has finished first, after sharing top honors with EMC Corp. on the fourth edition of the Quality Awards. Such a solid showing from NetApp should convince any remaining skeptics that NetApp isn't just network-attached storage (NAS) anymore. NetApp cruised into the lead with an overall 6.71 by taking top honors in four of the five rating categories, including a couple of narrow victories for sales-force competence and initial product quality. Hitachi Data Systems finished a strong second with a score of 6.61, while EMC and IBM were deadlocked in third with a score of 6.53.
Users' ratings were overwhelmingly positive. For the first time, all vendors and their product lines racked up scores of 6.00-plus in every category. Average category scores were also the highest we've seen in six iterations of the enterprise array survey, and the overall average rating was the highest to date. Clearly, enterprise storage system vendors are doing a good job of meeting the needs of their users.
Enlarge OVERALL RANKINGS: ENTERPRISE ARRAYS diagram.
Sales-force competence
NetApp just barely nudged out Hitachi in the sales-force competence rating category. The six statements in the category all relate to how well a vendor's sales and sales support teams respond to the needs of their prospective customers. NetApp finished first for two statements: "My sales rep is knowledgeable about my industry" (6.66) and "My sales rep understands my business" (6.56). Hitachi ranked highest for "My sales rep is flexible" (6.61) and "My sales rep is easy to negotiate with" (6.45). EMC's 6.78 led a bevy of strong scores for the statement "The vendor's sales support team is knowledgeable."
Enlarge SALES-FORCE COMPETENCE diagram.
Praise was spread around fairly liberally in the sales-force competence category, with four vendors leading on at least one statement. Overall, the average for all six products is the highest sales satisfaction rating registered to date on the enterprise array Quality Awards.
This was first published in March 2011


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Student Loan Rate of 6.8 Percent Wasn't Always So Scary
Some of the same groups that fought today's hike to 6.8 percent fought for that rate not long ago.
Interest rates on student loans have seen many changes over the last decade and a half.
As the calendar flips from June to July, the interest rate on millions of current and future students' loans is also changing over, from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. And despite a slew of proposals to avert the rate hike – not to mention loud complaints from students and advocacy groups nationwide – Congress failed to agree on a path forward.
But not long ago, lenders, borrowers – and Republicans and Democrats alike – embraced the 6.8 percent rate. In fact, some of the same groups that fought it this time around also helped to enact the new rate.
"This is the great irony of this whole debate is that everybody said, 'Hey! That looks like a good rate. Let's just put it into law,'" says Jason Delisle, director of the Federal Education Budget Project at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The interest rates on student loans have seen many changes over the last decade and a half. The 6.8 percent rate originated in 2002, when Congress decided to switch from an interest rate based off of the 91-day treasury bill and capped at 8.25 percent to a fixed rate of 6.8 percent, which they agreed would take effect in 2006. That proposal passed the Senate via unanimous consent and passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support.
[POLL: Should Congress Allow Student Loan Interest Rates to Double?]
The new rate looked like a reasonable deal to borrowers at the time, providing a fixed rate that appeared to also be moderate. When the interest rate had been tied to the treasury, borrowers paid the 91-day treasury rate plus 2.3 percentage points. That meant rates could dip well below 6.8 percent, but could also climb above 8 percent, as occurred in 2000.
Still, the new rate was short-lived. In 2007, a newly Democratic Congress passed a bill to eventually halve rates on subsidized Stafford Loans for undergraduates, but only for the 2011-12 school year, after which the rates would again rise. Last year, amid great sound and fury, Congress passed an extension on that rate.
But now it has finally expired, and the question is what the rate "should" be.
That 3.4 percent rate is one reason why 6.8 percent looks so high today. But the low-interest rate environment also plays a big part. If the old formula of short-term treasury rates plus 2.3 percentage points were used today, loans would have a 2.3 to 2.4 percent rate – well below the newly expired 3.4 percent rate, not to mention the rates in almost all of the other plans put forward.
U.S. PIRG, a federation of state public interest research groups, is a consumer watchdog group that championed the 6.8 percent rate. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported in 2001, state PIRGs and the U.S. Student Association championed a 6.8 percent interest rate in 2001.
After the rate was passed, U.S. PIRG called the bill "an important step in making college more affordable for millions of Americans." However, the group on Monday issued a statement saying that in allowing the interest rate to double to 6.8 percent now, "Congress is pushing student borrowers to their limit."
Chris Lindstrom, director of U.S. PIRG's Higher Education Program, was not with the group during the 2001-2002 fight, but defends the group's decisions at the time. While she acknowledges that 6.8 percent looked a lot lower in 2001 than it does now, she also says one key factor has changed since then.
"The biggest change is the banks," she says. Banks were heavily involved in making subsidized federal loans at the time, but that ended in 2010, when Congress passed a bill making the federal government the primary loan distributor. Lindstrom characterizes the 6.8 percent rate as a compromise – "essentially as good as we could get," she says.
"We were working very hard to thwart higher rates – an initiative for higher rates that the banks were undertaking at the time," she adds.
The U.S. Student Association also pushed for the 6.8 percent rate, which it also fought against this time around. While the 2001 leadership of the student-run organization is no longer in place, the group now says that avoiding higher rates is a matter of helping students plagued by debt amid a slow recovery.


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I Will Sit In My Darkness
I will sit in my darkness.
If black is the presence of all colors,
Then perhaps it is the entire presence
Of the entire mind,
A consciousness left to condone
With the ever-present subconscious of whiteness.
There is no disappointment
In staining dark with light,
Like a dirty t-shirt with clean bleach stains.
Joy has been stolen far too many times
For me to trust full brightness.
There is a mystery here,
Countless ones, for that matter,
Wonders and wonders of what is,
What is not,
And what can be,
As well as how they all do,
Or do not, exist.
I see only blank stares
And empty minds with white.
Now if I may, I should like to ask an honesty:
Be you friend or foe?
Your ignorance to true acceptance
Is an erupting volcano
In my ever-processing mind.
Your glowing bubbles burst
Crimson indignation in my face,
The carbonation a sick awakening.
I have to say,
I rather relish in the challenge.
You cannot,
And you will not
Understand me, my friend,
If you consider me a freak,
A satanic,
A demon who dwells in black and red
Because Hell is my rumored home.
I am no deity's martyr of any kind.
I AM darker than you, but
In this way,
I have reached
And let me just say this:
I believe in the balance of the two,
The yin and yang,
A representation of interdependence.
You cannot know joy without grief,
Nor love without hate,
Nor appreciation without envy.
It would be hard to wake without morning
And sleep without dusk,
Or to play in the sun at day
And dream in slumber without night.
And though I appreciate the beauty of gray,
One cannot know light without dark.
I will sit in my darkness,
But still, I will promise to look toward your light
From time to time.