text:
Video Industry News Video Company News Technology Industry News Technology Company News Novelty Industry News Novelty Company News Gay Industry News Gay Company News Legal Industry News All Company News
Released: Aug 01st, 1986
Running Time: 86
Director: Hal Freeman
Company: Hollywood Video
Cast: Keli Richards, Tanya Fox, Kari Foxx, Marc Wallace, Peter North, Penny Morgan, Tom Byron, Trinity Loren
Critical Rating: AAA 1/2
Genre: Film
Now that there are as many Caught From Behind movies as Friday the 13ths, one of them has to be designated as the best one. And Caught from Behind 6 is, without a doubt, the most erotic of the series.
No more bad puns; no more super raunchy close-up anal sex; no more people opposed to anal sex so fervently that when they do give up the backdoor that it seems comical. Hal Freeman has done the impossible. He's constructed an anal sex movie for couples.
As is usual with this series, CFB 6 deals with sexual ruts. Only this time we watch the exploits of a female sex therapist (Kari Foxx) as several couples go to a beachside retreat to open up their sex lives . . . anally, of course. It's a shame that Kari Foxx has decided to limit her exposure, because she is both stunning and hot in her erotic encounters.
But Trinity Loren and Keli Richards steal the show anyway with lots of exciting anal sex, and the rest of the cast performs with erotic fervor, as well. The highlights include Loren and Tom Byron in a sweaty backdoor scene and an unbelievable segment with rear specialist Keli Richards and Marc Wallace in the shower. There's a subplot involving Foxx and her boyfriend, but the acting here isn't good enough to carry it forward.
CFB 6 boasts great production values; of particular note is the beautiful photography and crisp editing of Rick Christopher. The film starts out like X Factor and ends up as a real good outing for hardcore fans and adventurous couples. If this is Hal Freeman's swan song before he goes on to make horror films full time, he's done it with style.


text:
Media Milk, Cows, Lawyers and Money
posted by October 18 at 16:11 PMon
I thought my head was fixin' to explode when I read this piece of misogynistic crap from MSN, headlined "Afraid to Commit: Young Men Want to Wait on Marriage." The author asks all of 60 men why they've waited to get married; he then uses the results of this extremely scientific study to conclude, and I'm paraphrasing, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"
Among the top 10 "reasons men won't commit":
• They can easily get sex without getting married (unlike when? the '50s? Seriously, is this still being used as an excuse to continue "playing the field"?)
• They can "enjoy the benefits of having a wife" (housework? blow jobs?) without getting married.
• They don't want to get screwed over by a money-grubbing ex in divorce proceedings.
• They're waiting for a "woman who accepts them just as they are and won't try to change them" but who is herself their "perfect soul mate."
And finally
• They enjoy the "freedom not to be responsible to anybody else" and to live exactly as they please.
(Also included as sidebars to the "study": a list of "10 signs he's about to propose," tips on dragging him "from casual to commitment"; and a quiz to determine if you and your man are "on the same wavelength." That's right - this story is aimed at women.)
But while I was fantasizing about beating the author about the head and shoulders with a copy of "Backlash," I started to wonder what this "study" would look like if it had reached the same conclusions about women. Cue the handy Regender machine!
Reason 2: Women can enjoy the benefits of having a husband by cohabiting rather than marrying. Women think living together is a good way to test out a marriage prospect. They also view living together as less risky than marriage. At the same time, the women in the study like the convenience of having a regular sex partner. And several said they appreciate the domestic benefits of cohabitation, and the ability to share expenses, but thought marriage unnecessary at this point in life..
Reason 3: Women want to avoid divorce and its financial risks. Women feel that their financial assets are better protected if they cohabit rather than marry. They also fear that an ex-husband will take financial advantage during settlement proceedings.
Reason 4: Women want to wait until they are older to have children. Although women understand that men worry about their biological clocks, they say they don't have to. And they don't want to be pressured into marriage by men who want marriage in order to have children.
Reason 6: Women are waiting for the perfect soul mate and he hasn't yet appeared. A soul mate, the women said, is a man who accepts them just as they are and won't try to change them.
And some of the "reactions" to the study, regendered::
"You should have an article on why divorced women will not marry again. The responses would be very interesting. For example:
They've already been taken to the cleaners at least once by a prior husband.
If a man has kids, he really has no use for a woman. He's got the house, the BMW, the kids, and her support and alimony. […]
"I'm tired of the b.s. that it takes to even try to find a good man. In 90% of my prior relationships, I gave 110% to trying to forge a marriage. But that was only good for some half-hearted affection that soon disappears after the ring is brought forth. Then it's all about what he needs, or worse yet — what his children need. I'm tired of trying to weed through the predatory men. It costs too much to the kind woman's heart. So I quit."
Whew. Thanks for letting me get that out of my system.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Mixed-martial-arts event pounds its way into Civic Center
Published: Friday, August 1, 2008 at 3:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 10:20 a.m.
Cajun combat will break out in Houma in an arena where the fighters will have nowhere to run and showing mercy is a relatively unknown concept.
Renaissance Mixed Martial Arts is kicking out RMMA 7 in the cage at 8 p.m. Aug. 8 at the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center, 346 Civic Center Blvd.
We make sure these events are set up as a sport and not a spectacle, said Warren Donley, promoter/matchmaker for Renaissance Mixed Martial Arts. We go to great lengths to make sure it is a show for all ages to attend a quality show. There are no explicit lyrics in the music and the fighters are strictly not allowed to use profanity. Also, nobody fights unless they are a trained athlete.
Headlining the fight are Brad Baker, 2005 world Shidokan champion, and Marcus Money Sursa, a collegiate all-American wrestler. There can be only one winner in a fight that features flying fists, knees, elbows and feet in a full-contact challenge. Featured fighters are Jody Cazenave and Shawn Gayton. Additional fights on the card include James Orso versus Joe Christopher and Tony The Tractor Roberts fighting Scott Barrett.
Mixed-martial-arts fighting is gaining an increased following. It has evolved from an ancient form of Greek wrestling and boxing. The modern art incorporates elements of Asian-style martial arts, boxing and wrestling with contact allowed in the ground battle. The style difference in the matches has evolved to include moves such as the arm bar, the knee bar, the hammer fist, the sprawl and brawl and the ground and pound.
Fighters typically use a mixture of kickboxing, wrestling and submissions in the arena, Donley said. If a fighter has mastered only one of those disciplines, he isnt going to make it in this league. They have to learn the submission moves.
The unfortunate recipient of these moves would likely have to incorporate the lay-and-pray defense (which is highly discouraged and penalized in these matches).
Rules have evolved quite a bit since mixed-martial arts encountered a resurgence in the early 1990s. The sport is still full contact, but it is not the almost to death freak show, as the first fights were promoted.
We provide good equipment and services to make sure our fighters have matted warm-up areas and hydration, Donley said. Everything we do is professional.
He recalls the days when he was a fighter and sometimes had no other place to warm up but bathrooms.
I would like to see the guy that watches the stuff on TV that does not know there are local live shows come out and witness what we have to offer, Donley said. The avid fan will truly appreciate the trained athletes and professionalism at the match.
The first Renaissance Mixed Martial Arts show was in July 2007. This will be the seventh show, with two more coming in Houma and Mandeville.
Tickets cost $25 to $65, which does not include service charges. Ringside seats are available for $100 to $125. VIP seating is available by calling 788-0566. To buy tickets, visit www.ticketmaster.com.
For information on the event or Renaissance Mixed Martial Arts, visit www.renaissancemma.com.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article


text:
Posts filtered on Tag
Tag: CQ
TexMessage: Sequestration may force Texans to go vegetarian
By Joanna Raines on February 11, 2013 at 8:09 AM
TexMessage Monday, February 6 Good morning, TexMessagers! Would you give up your BBQ to cut spending? TEXclusive With less than 3 weeks to go until President Obama's sequester, those affected by the …
Categories: Budget/taxes/economy, TexMessage
Tags: CQ | J. Patrick Boyle | John Boehner | John Cornyn | U.S. Department of Agriculture | More
- Tags:
- Less
Obama decision ignites firestorm among conservative Catholics, church hierarchy
By Richard Dunham on February 7, 2012 at 9:58 AM
The Obama administration's decision last week to force Catholic institutions to provide birth control, abortion drugs and other contraceptive services was the gaffe that went unnoticed last week amid the Komen/Planned Parenthood fracas and the "I don't care about the poor" gaffe by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. …
Categories: Presidential campaign, White House
Tags: abortion | Affordable Care Act | Barack Obama | birth control | Catholic church | More
- Tags:
- abortion | Affordable Care Act | Barack Obama | birth control | Catholic church | Catholic voters | conservative Catholics | CQ | David Axelrod | David Hawkings | Department of Health and Human Services | Health care | healthcare reform | Komen | Nancy Pelosi | Obama administration | Peggy Noonan | President Obama | religion | social issues
- Less


text:
Robert M. Kennedy, 72, of St. Augustine Beach, died Sept. 20, 2004, at his home. He was a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and had resided here for the past 10 years. He was a retired research chemist for the U.S. Metal Refining Company and later was self employed. He was a veteran of Korea serving in the U.S. Navy and he was a member of the VFW Post No. 2391. He was a member of St. Anastasia Catholic Church.
Services: Will be held in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. with Postons Funeral Home in charge.
Survivors: His wife, Anna Bell Kennedy, St. Augustine; four daughters, Deborah Dominick, Bayville, N.J., Donna Gallagher, Syracuse, N.Y., Diane McGirr, Barnagate, N.J., and Colleen Minaidis, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.; one son, Robert R. Kennedy, New Hope, Pa.; one sister, Eileen Chryanzowski, Marlton, N.J.; two brothers, Donald Kennedy, Beverly Beach, and Roy Kennedy, Pottstown, Pa.; 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
In charge: Craig Funeral Home and Crematory in charge of the local arrangements.
© 2016. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us


text:
Turn into mannequin by dmitrmdWatch
©2012-2016 dmitrmd
My first work in Poser.
loving this picture
That's beautiful. Caught in the midst of a metamorposis is just the sexiest kind of depictions. A wonderful slightly metallic sheen you gave her. I like that a lot.
do me
Looking good.
For a first work this isn't bad at all. You seem to have materials down nicely! One thing I would look into though is upping the render quality a bit. Seeing jagged edges is just a little bit strange. I'm not familiar with poser otherwise I'd give some tips beyond that . It's nice to see another person getting into the business of making mannequins though! Keep it up!
Your work is good, continue along that path, you're very talented.
I can dig it. Does she have any friends who come to a similar end?


text:
Photos: SWAT situation in S. Tucson
The Newest, Trendiest Entertainment to hit Tucson! Paint, Sip, Create with Creative Juice! Click Here for Details! 520-271-5023
Visit Our Website for Schedules and to Register!
KU Studios Spring Classes Are Filling Up Fast! Sign Up Today. Call 520-293-1225 Now For More Information
Sign Up Today, spots are filling fast!
Mission Possible Tucson challenges you and your group to complete an exhilarating mission - Flight 6572! Click here to learn more! Can you escape? 520-661-0286
Tucson's Newest Escape Room Adventure. We have 3 exciting scenarios to choose from. Do somet…


text:
3 Tips for Better Product Descriptions on Websites
Summary: Key content requirements for product pages are: answer users' questions, be direct, and help with product comparison.
As we've said before, the first law of e-commerce is that if the user cannot find the product, then the user cannot buy it. But finding relevant product pages is only the first step down the purchase funnel. While many sites have improved their information architecture and navigation, many product pages are still dismal.
Product pages need to do more than provide an image, a cursory product description, and an Add to cart button: they need to sell the product. To do so, product pages must convince or assure users that this is the item that meets their needs. Yet many product pages fail to do this.
When users rely on a website's product information, they do not get the chance to touch the product, read its packaging, try it on, or ask a salesperson a question before purchasing. Clear and descriptive product pages are essential.
In our e-commerce studies, we found that 20% of the overall task failures in the study — times when users failed to successfully complete a purchase when asked to do so — could be attributed to incomplete or unclear product information. Leaving shoppers' questions unanswered can derail a sale or even worse, make shoppers abandon not just the purchase, but the site as well. One shopper in a recent study could not find the information he needed in the product description, so he left the site to search Google for more product information. In the course of his search, he found another site with the same product, a more complete description, and a lower price.
In general, when you run a usability study and hear the test user say, "Now I would go to Google," you know your site is making less than half the money it could. Losing a user to Google is almost identical to losing the order.
Poor product pages have 2 main consequences, both of which harm the user's relationship to the site:
- A user cannot decide if the product meets his requirements and so abandons the purchase.
- A user makes assumptions about the product, buys it, and discovers it's not what was needed. Definitely an unhappy customer; probably an expensive returns-processing step to sap your profits.
Here are 3 basic requirements that every product page must meet.
Requirement 1: Answer Questions
In our research, many users simply did not have enough information to make a purchase decision. While it is impossible to anticipate every question that a shopper may have about a product, some sites neglect to go beyond providing the bare minimum of product information.
Shoppers often want to know details — about accents on clothes, dimensions of furniture, care of clothing, size of toys, proper storage of edible products, whether a hotel's outdoor pool is heated for year-round use. Many sites however focus only on basic information, or on the wrong information. Shoppers want to know how the product will meet their needs and are looking to the site to provide those answers.
For instance, Anthropologie.com offered an item called Pilcro Hyphen Embroidered Chinos. The embroidery was a feature notable enough to be mentioned in the product name. However, the accompanying text about the item, listed under a Details label, made no mention of the embroidery. Only when a shopper clicked to reveal the text hidden under the label Description was the embroidery mentioned at the end of a 4-sentence paragraph: "these casual chinos are complete with embroidered side panels." You'd think that a user could then turn to the product image to find out what the embroidery looked like. However, none of the three product images offered showed a clear view of the embroidery. Here, a defining aspect of the product was completely neglected in the description and images provided.
The only indication of the embroidery in this item from Anthropologie was the name of the item and a cursory mention in the Description, which needed to be expanded by the user to be visible. None of the product images (including the third, not shown above) showed clear images of the embroidery.
The J. Peterman Company is a company known for using lengthy, verbose stories for product descriptions, in their print catalogs as well as online. For example, a description of a shirt on the site began, "Springtime in Nashville, 1967. She was singing that day at Ryman (before it was redone). Scent of honeysuckle outside." For this company, such descriptions are part of their history and brand. However, even J. Peterman follows their more eloquent prose with standard facts about the item for sale, such as "pointed collar," "shell buttons at center front," "1-inch grosgrain ribbon (antique white) at neckline and left front placket," and "adjustable cuffs."
J. Peterman followed their narrative text with details that clearly described their products. These details, however, would be easier to read in a bulleted list, rather than in a paragraph of text.
Requirement 2: Get to the Point
Product descriptions need to be complete, but not wordy. Unlike J. Peterman (mentioned above), most companies can't get away with verbose prose. Users are not looking for marketing-heavy text, but for a solid description of the product, how it can be used, what it looks like, and what it does.
Users typically skim text when reading online, reading more at the beginning of the description than the end, and more at the start of a line than at the end of a line. Don't waste the first few lines of product descriptions on text that doesn't help the user understand the product.
Even a single line of text that answers no product questions can deter or distract a user. In the example below, Fannie May started a description of assorted creams with the text, "Sweet dreams are made of these creamy centers and each one is its own pleasing reward." All we've learned here is that the creams have creamy centers. The description ended with "If our rich buttercreams are your heart's desire, this is the treat for you!" The one sentence that described the product accurately, listing the types of chocolates included in the box, unfortunately ended with "…chocolate, raspberry, strawberry, orange, Trinidads and more." This left two unanswered questions: What is a Trinidad? And what does "more" mean?
This description from Fannie May included only a single line of text that described product details. The other two sentences added little to an understanding of the product.
By contrast, a product description on Forever 21's site got to the point quickly. A faux-leather jacket was described as "A must-have for all seasons, this textured faux leather jacket features quilted accents and a flat collar. Complete with long zippered sleeves and zippered front pockets, pair this piece with skinny jeans and booties or a bodycon dress and heels." This brief description managed to include information about the appropriate seasons to wear the jacket, design details, and even advice on how to style the item. The bulleted list that followed included additional details, such as measurements, materials and care instructions. Four images also showed the jacket from different angles, providing a more complete idea of the product.
Forever21's brief description covered key details about the product, its construction, and how a customer could wear the item. This was followed by a bulleted list of product details, including fabric, measurements and care.
In general, product photos are a great way of providing specifics for many product categories, particularly when users are given the option to see truly big and detailed images. It's amazing how many sites still limit users to small images with insufficient details, even though "inadequate photo enlargement" was #10 on the list of top-10 web design mistakes as long ago as 2005. That's why user experience specialists will have good careers for years to come.
Requirement 3: Help with Comparison
Comparing multiple offerings is one of the most crucial user tasks. You can't assume that people will know which of multiple products is the best for them without having to compare the options. You can reduce the need for comparisons by simplifying your product line: as always it's easier to make a simple user interface if the underlying concepts are simple. But few companies can make their product line so simple that there's only one choice for any given customer. E-commerce sites that carry multiple vendors definitely can't do this. Thus, we need to help users compare.
Some sites offer users comparison tools that allow shoppers to see products side by side. Depending on the design and the product information included, these tools range from dismal to powerful. Yet we see that when users shop, the most helpful way to allow comparison between products is to provide comparable information, presented in a comparable way, about similar products. Shoppers struggle when sites offer robust details about one item, and sparse information about another. They are left guessing as to which product better meets their needs.
Pottery Barn listed information about dressers in a consistent and descriptive way. Two bedside-tables descriptions began with brief overviews, and then bulleted lists that provided comparable details about the products, listed in the same order for each. Each listed dimensions, followed by materials, features, finish information, and hardware details.
Pottery Barn did a nice job of providing equivalent information about two products on the site. This helped users with simple comparison. Basic information such as dimensions, materials, and furniture details such as shelves and drawers were listed in a consistent way between products.
When sites have widely variable product information, it makes comparison extremely difficult. Two shredders available through OfficeMax.com had vastly different amounts of information available, with one summarized in 5 bullet points, and another offering a similar bulleted list, followed by a listing of key features, a product tour, a product demonstration, and a brand-specific comparison chart.
The OfficeMax site offered different amounts of detail about these two comparable shredders.
Both product descriptions began with a bulleted list of features, but even here there was no consistency between the listings. Descriptions did not focus on the same or comparable features, and details that were similar, such as the number of sheets that could be shredded at one time, and size of the resulting shredded particles, were not listed in the same way or the same order.
Listing different amounts of detail about different products makes it difficult for users to understand how products compare to one another. In the OfficeMax.com shredder listings shown above, even the baseline information that began the two descriptions listed details in a different order.
A little mini-user test is in order here. Which of the above two shredders would satisfy your household needs the best if you were to buy a shredder for your home?
Fine-Tune Product Descriptions
Shoppers rely on product descriptions to assure them that they are making the right purchase decision. Clear, detailed, consistent, and concise descriptions are most effective. Product descriptions can easily make or break a sale. For more tips, see our report on creating effective product pages or our courses on writing for the web.
Share Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ | Email:


text:
Crazy Substitute Teachers
Enjoy, NG4.03 / 5.00 787 Views
Vacuum Salesman
This dude and his Megazord vacuum cleaner3.98 / 5.00 2,105 Views
Markiplier Animated | Mark Of The Survey Corps
This took far too long to make...3.93 / 5.00 1,812 Views
Another great chapter...
My certain inclination toward this Flash was the fight. I saw the word "fight" and I was thinking a combination of Broken Saints' ritually phenomenal artwork and fast-paced action. I got action, but not fast-paced--it sufficed anyway. In fact, I'm very impressed at how you could articulate a dual in still-frames so well. Still very awesome in almost every respect. Even though my fawning was a bit out of context, I think it was great from the stance of action AND drama.
To answer the question of the previous poster: We watch this series because we're looking for something to relate to. A lot of people saw Broken Saints and thought "guns, blood and action" and were disappointed by the lack of unsullied pace and the contrasting style. We keep sifting through each chapter, looking for just what we need to "like" this series. Because we want to like this series--we want to acknowledge it for the masterpiece that it is. It just doesn't...suit our tastes...yet.
Love all of these.
The fight is pretty good, despite what some people say.
To the person who said that hitori means 1 person, no, it means alone (I know this because I'm a first year Japanese student, and we just covered it. One person would be ichi nin). Make sure you know what you're talking about before you say something.
PS If you don't like the series, why do you keep watching it? There is plenty of other stuff you could watch instead.
I have respect
My god, ive been watching your cartoons and it is such art, your art is ridiculous, its impossibly amazing. This is total art jesus i cant get over it.
I am going to clear something up for all you stupid ASSHOLES who give this series bad reviews: IT'S A GODDAMN COMIC. IT WAS NOT MADE FOR NEWGROUNDS!!! Do NOT say "It has no movement so it sucks" or "It has no voices it sucks," just because you can't stand that it's DIFFERENT and THOUGHT-PROVOKING!!! You are too STUPID to see a masterpiece!!! It is not driven by animation, IT IS DRIVEN BY CHARACTER AND PLOT!!! It has amazing drawings that you morons couldn't hope to achieve, it has great music, it... it's just amazing! I am TIRED of reading your goddamn horrible reviews, you're just stupid!
WOW!! All of chapter 18 is my favorite!! There was some new music, a fight scene, and some really cool profesizing and stuff! I loved it!! This is SO cool!!


text:
Health & Pregnancy
Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) - References
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (2010). Vaginal birth after previous cesarean delivery. ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 115. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 116(2): 450-463.
Miller DA (2010). Vaginal birth after cesarean. In Management of Common Problems in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 5th ed., pp. 52-56. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cunningham FG, et al. (2010). Prior cesarean delivery. In Williams Obstetrics, 23rd ed., pp. 565-576. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Other Works Consulted
Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (2011). Health care guideline: Management of labor, 4th edition. Available online: https://www.icsi.org/_asset/br063k/Labor-Interactive0511.pdf.
National Institutes of Health consensus development conference statement: Vaginal birth after cesarean: New insights March 8-10, 2010. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 115(6): 1279-1295.
In this article
WebMD Medical Reference from Healthwise


text:
I've spent hours trying to figure this out, and it just won't work. Is there a way to not only show the description text below the image using the Shutter setting in NextGen gallery, but to also show the alttext?
I'm pretty sure that the Shutter setting (controlled by shutter-reloaded.js) does not ever get the alttext value from the database, only something called the title, which for whatever reason is actually the description box in NextGen Gallery.
Anyone have any experience with this? The code in shutter-reloaded.js is:
NavBar = '

' + prevlink + '

' + nextlink + '

' + shutterLinks[ln].title + '
' + imgNum + '
';
where shutterLinks[ln].title is the text that comes in on your NextGen navbar in the Shudder setting. Is there any way to get the NextGen alttext in there too?


text:
New York Senate Delays Vote on Revenue Plan as Talks Continue
The New York Senate adjourned without voting on a $1 billion package of tax and revenue measures needed to pay for spending bills they passed four days earlier.
The delay is necessary to develop a contingency plan should as much as $1 billion in extra federal Medicaid money fail to arrive, said Senate Democratic leader John Sampson of Brooklyn.
"A responsible budget means having a responsible back-up plan," Sampson told reporters at the state Capitol. A plan developed with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was submitted to Budget Director Robert Megna late June 30, Sampson said. He declined to describe it.
If there isn't a negotiated agreement on a Medicaid contingency plan and on Governor David Paterson's $419 million veto of aid to local school districts, "we are definitely considering" calling for an override, Sampson said. Overriding Paterson's veto requires a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
"I can't divulge my methods," Sampson said regarding how he may get Republicans to provide some of the 42 Senate votes needed for an override. Democrats hold a 32 to 30 majority in the upper chamber, and a 107 to 42 advantage in the Assembly.
Paterson said the willingness of lawmakers to prepare a Medicaid contingency plan won't stop him from vetoing spending measures they passed, including about 6,800 "member items" that legislators can insert to benefit local organizations.
"I'm not going to sit here and kill myself trying to sign 6,900 vetoes as some sort of a ploy for negotiations," Paterson said at an Albany event for reporters to witness the signing.
In Deficit
"Because they didn't pass the revenue bill, we are a billion dollars in deficit, not even counting the Medicaid money," Paterson said. If the revenue bill had passed, the governor had estimated a $400 million to $1.5 billion imbalance, which he has reduced by about $500 million with vetoes.
The governor has promised a total of about 6,900 vetoes, including about 3,000 already signed, according to Morgan Hook, a Paterson spokesman. In addition to striking out the additional aid to local schools, Paterson will veto $91 million added to higher education and the member items that total $193 million for not-for-profit groups and others in lawmakers' districts, said Erik Kriss, a spokesman for the Division of Budget.
The package on hold in the Senate includes applying the sales tax on clothing purchases of less than $110 and a new levy on hedge-fund managers to help close a $9.2 billion deficit.
Paterson was critical of a tax increase on some hedge-fund managers. The measure might lead some of the investment companies to flee the state, he said yesterday.
While the gap remains, Sampson said the "budget is passed and government will continue to operate." The spending plan for the year that began April 1 is the most delayed since 2004, when the budget wasn't passed until August.
Negotiation Agenda
Negotiations with Paterson and Silver will include proposals to cap annual increases in local school and government property taxes, Sampson said. A plan to give the state and city university systems more flexibility to increase tuition and operate independently from the Legislature is also on the agenda, he said. Silver, the Assembly leader from Manhattan, opposed both measures.
Silver couldn't be reached immediately for comment.
The Assembly passed the revenue bill last night, and it is pending in the Senate. The measure must be passed by both chambers before it can be presented to Paterson, who can accept it or veto it in whole.
Medicaid Impasse
A measure to provide extra subsidies for the health-care program for the poor failed to move forward in the U.S. Senate last week as Republicans balked at the cost. The additional subsidies, which would have been extended by six months, were raised as part of last year's economic-stimulus package and are set to expire in December.
Under the state Legislature's plan, spending will increase from last year by about 2 percent. The proposal needs the revenue and tax-raising measure to be complete, said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats. "This would be only the fourth time in the last 30 years that spending rose less than inflation," he said.
New York law requires the governor to propose a balanced budget, though there isn't any requirement that the budget passed by the Legislature be balanced, said Robert Ward, deputy director of the Albany, New York-based Rockefeller Institute of Government.
Relying on Hope
If the Legislature's budget isn't balanced, "you just cross your fingers and hope there's no problem," Ward said.
Other analysts aren't sure spending will match revenue.
"More work may need to be done to balance this year's budget," Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the Citizens Budget Commission, said on its website. A $2.4 billion deficit is possible, if Congress doesn't approve the added Medicaid funds and other spending and revenue assumptions prove inaccurate, she said. The independent group monitors the state budget.
Paterson has said he may call lawmakers back to Albany later this year if the budget they presented falls out of balance. Sampson said he didn't want that to happen.


text:
1 - 0 of 0
Did you mean?Try your search again
Does anybody know the upadated Equestrian Calendar ?
When will this year's Al Janadriya Festival be held ?
Sponsored Links
Just a correction, Employers are not obligated to provide school support, in fact this is definitely not the common... more
Sponsored Listings
VirtualTourist®© 1994-2016 VirtualTourist.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Back to Top
|All reports are strictly confidential. Please explain why you are reporting this:


text:
Articles by Author
There's a dessert that's scarcely known in America but all too familiar in England, where it is today considered the epitome of blandness, no small feat given English standards. But in the 19th century, its wilder possibilities were explored, some of which were smashingly good and deserve a new life.
The dish is blancmange (that's French lingo there: "blahn-MAHNJ"), and the modern standard is basically a gelatin dessert of almond milk, or dairy milk with almond flavoring, or just milk and vanilla, molded into a characteristic shape that sometimes showed up in Monty Python skits as a silly, giant blancmange monster.
More from Zester Daily:
» Blancmange: Almond milk pudding worthy of a comeback
» Jellied desserts wiggle back into the spotlight
» Christmas plum pudding
» A pudding for all that comes from Turkey's melting pot
The almond-milk version, at least, has an ancient history. Blancmange descends from blancmanger, the most esteemed dish of the European Middle Ages, which basically consisted of the whitest ingredients available to the cook: milk, almonds, chicken breasts, sugar, rice, even breadcrumbs in a pinch. It was a special attraction at a time when cuisine tended to be either brown or green or brownish green, and it appealed to the medieval nobility for another reason: As the middle class kept rising and rising, pure white food such as blancmanger symbolized the stainless aristocratic ancestry that those irritating bourgeois upstarts could never claim. The idea was that you can add colorings to turn a white food whatever color you like, but you can't turn a colored food white. In the 1820s, Antonin Carême, the founder of French grande cuisine, wrote, "These delicious sweets are greatly esteemed by gastronomes, but to be enjoyed they must be extremely smooth and very white. Given these two qualities (so rarely found together), they will always be preferred to other creams, even to transparent jellies."
It's not surprising that democratic-minded Americans paid little attention to the historical significance of whiteness. They made chocolate versions (every edition of the Fannie Farmer cookbook since 1896 has presented the chocolate pudding as a variety of blancmange), and they made versions flavored with fruit; when they used berries or cherries, the result was very far from aristocratic white. They also played with different thickening agents, using cornstarch, farina or tapioca as well as gelatin. For my money, the star version is the cream fruit blancmange. It's reminiscent of a packaged gelatin dessert but with the genuine flavor of fresh fruit (I'm particularly partial to blackberry), enriched by cream. The texture is unique, soft and elastic, like a cross between pudding and fruit jelly but richer. Old recipes say to serve cream fruit blancmange with whipped cream or boiled custard sauce (which we now know as crème anglaise), but I don't think it really needs a topping.
Some advice: Do not add the fruit purée to the cream until the gelatin is thoroughly dissolved or the acidity will cause curdling. The result will still taste good, but you won't get that plush texture. For a more conventional pudding effect, you can cut the amount of gelatin to 1 1/2 tablespoons; if you want less richness, you can use half-and-half instead of cream.
Cream Fruit Blancmange
Prep time: 7 to 8 minutes
Cooking time: 9 to 10 minutes
Total time: 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 hours
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
1/2 cup water
1 ounce (2 tablespoons or 2 packets) unflavored gelatin
1 quart berries or cherries
1 pint cream
1 cup sugar
1. Add the water to a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Let dissolve and swell, 5 minutes or more. Meanwhile, purée the berries in a food processor or food mill 2 to 3 minutes and strain. You will have about 1 cup of thick juice.
2. Put the cream in a saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until scalded, 7 to 8 minutes (tiny bubbles will form and the aroma of the cream will change). Stir often to prevent scorching.
3. Reduce heat to low. Stir 1/2 cup of the hot cream into the dissolved gelatin and whisk until thoroughly mixed; then add the gelatin mixture into the cream remaining in the saucepan and whisk until it is thoroughly dispersed, 1 minute or so. Add the sugar and stir until well dissolved, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove the saucepan from the heat.
4. Add the fruit purée to the cream and stir until the color is uniform. Pour into serving bowls, bring to room temperature and refrigerate until set, 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Main photo: Classic blancmange, pictured, is even better when you blend the fruit right in. Credit: Copyright 2015 Lesyy
Yemen is a remote and little-known country, closed to the outside world for centuries and still not very accessible. Not surprisingly, it has a distinctive cuisine.
A bit of cultural background
The Roman name for Yemen was Arabia Felix, or Happy Arabia, partly because of its wealth: It stood athwart the main spice and incense routes. Another reason for the name was that Yemen is the only part of the Arabian Peninsula to get substantial rainfall. Located on the Indian Ocean, it's exposed to the monsoon winds, and the Yemenis make the best use they can of the resulting precipitation. In some places, the hillsides are terraced, as in Southeast Asia. However, even this agricultural benefit is not enough to support the country's population. For centuries, half of its adult men have worked abroad. (There are a number of Yemeni farmworkers in California's Central Valley.)
More from Zester Daily:
» Arab influence brings hearty alissa to Kerala, India
» Middle Eastern meze bring many cultures to the table
» Middle East street treats
» The warming dervish
Today, Yemen is the 37th poorest country in the world. It has potential tourist attractions, particularly in its impressive architecture — the Yemenis seem incapable of putting up a dull building, even when they use cinder block — but poverty and, recently, sectarian violence have kept it from drawing many visitors.
Although the country is best known to gourmets for producing coffee, most Yemenis can't afford to drink it. Nearly all the beans are exported, and the locals instead drink a tea made from the husks, called gishr. It tastes like green coffee beans, I'm sorry to report — which is probably why it's always flavored with spices — and contains no caffeine. For a caffeine-like kick, the Yemenis chew a local narcotic called qat (also pronounced gat or chat). It's supposedly addictive, but I've chewed with wealthy Yemenis who could presumably afford the best and I found it about as stimulating as an espresso or two. I've concluded that people chew qat because it's the principal social activity. (Women do it too, but in separate rooms.)
The fundamentals of Yemeni cuisine
After its spice and then coffee industries collapsed, Yemen was entirely isolated from the outside world for many years before 1963, when there was a revolution that devolved into the continuing period of instability. As a result, very little has been written about its cuisine, and all that most Westerners know about it comes from the cookery of the Yemenite Jews of Israel. Probably the best-known Yemeni food is a spice mixture/sauce whose name, s'hug, means "ground" in Arabic. There's no canonical recipe; it can be made with just about any combination of ground, chopped or crushed flavorings. In the country's capital, Sanaa (where they use the plural form of the word, sahawig), it's usually chopped tomatoes, chiles and onions — essentially identical to Mexican salsa cruda.
Yemenis retain a medieval tradition of cooking in pots carved from soapstone; they prefer stone to metal because it doesn't add any flavor to the food. Stoneware takes a while to heat up, much like cast iron (though it doesn't have to be seasoned); it is also surprisingly sturdy, even amid leaping flames in restaurant kitchens.
Traditional dishes
The most common main dish is stew (marag), often including tomato and potato and usually flavored with fenugreek. The Yemenis are the world's biggest consumers of fenugreek, mostly known to us from commercial curry powder and artificial maple syrup. They eat so much of this spice (which belongs to the legume family) that it contributes measurably to their protein intake. They prepare it by soaking the seeds in water for a couple of hours to soften them and leach out some of their bitterness, then whipping them to a froth with ground leeks. A dollop of this pale-green foam is often served on top of marag. The result is curious — imagine chili con carne garnished with bitter applesauce — so it takes some getting used to.
Because of the popularity of qat, Yemen is one of the few Middle Eastern countries with a tradition of sit-down restaurants. But these are far from fine-dining places — the customers are all in a hurry to get something in their stomachs before a chew, so the scene tends toward a roiling chaos of people calling out their orders (usually the only choices are beef marag or chicken marag) and wolfing down the food.
In homes, you may find a wider range of dishes, such as duqqa, which is chopped meat and onions braised with parsley, or mkashshan, chicken stewed with browned green onions. Because of the country's poverty, though, the diet is heavily based on grain, featuring lots of gruels and porridges and dishes containing bread.
Fortunately, bread is the cuisine's strong suit. There's an excellent flaky bread called mulawwah, which has a curved shape from the way it's stuck on to the wall of the tandoor. For my taste, the finest Yemeni bread is lahuh (pronounced la-HOOH, with both h's strongly articulated), a spongy, crepe-like product similar to Ethiopian injera but with an attractive crunchy quality of its own. As injera is preferably made with Ethiopia's native grain t'ef, lahuh is made with Yemen's indigenous white sorghum (dhura baida), which accounts for 80% of the country's grain production. It resembles a cornstalk bearing popcorn balls instead of ears.
So there you go. If you find yourself in Yemen, try to get some mulawwah or lahuh with your marag. And if somebody offers you qat, say, "Oh, heck, why not? But only as long as you're paying, partner."
Main photo: A traditional Yemeni meal of lahuh and stew. Credit: Copyright iStockphoto/ lenazap
Here's a vegetarian idea — carrots with tahini. Think hummus, only with the mild sweetness (and vitamin A) of carrots.
The Middle East has an ancient tradition of meatless dishes. As the 13th-century cookbook "The Description of Familiar Foods" shows, Christians in the Arab world approached Lenten cuisine differently than did the Europeans, replacing red meat not with fish (since the eastern Mediterranean is relatively fish-poor) nor with almonds (which probably didn't have the same luxury appeal as they had for, say, the French, since one might have an almond tree of one's own in the backyard). Instead, they mimicked the richness of meat by stewing vegetables long and slow with oil. This tradition survives in Turkey as a class of dishes called yağlı yemekler, and it eventually entered French cuisine under the name légumes à la grecque.
Some of the fast-day recipes in "The Description" use sesame oil rather than olive oil, and this gave me the idea of replacing the meat with sesame paste, better known as tahini. You want heft and meatiness? Tahini can handle that, as any hummus eater knows. (But as any hummus cook knows, tahini separates easily and must be thoroughly stirred up before use.)
More from Zester Daily:
» The carrot question
» The fight for hummus
» Peanut butter and tahini: Separated at birth?
» Middle Eastern meze bring many cultures to the table
Here are two versions of my idea. The first is modern in style; in effect, it's hummus made with carrots instead of chickpeas. It's bright and savory and has a charming salmon color. The other gets its exotic, intoxicating sweet-sour flavor from honey, vinegar and sweet spices. It's based on the medieval dish sikbâj, which was always flavored with vinegar and saffron, whatever other ingredients it might contain. In the late Middle Ages it traveled to Europe, where it evolved in two directions: aspic (which requires the use of meat, of course) and the Spanish preparation of cooked vegetables dressed with vinegar known as escabeche. Both words, aspic and escabeche, come from sikbâj, by the way. (Take my word for it.)
It's clear that tahini existed in the Middle Ages, because cookbooks of the time call for it in a number of recipes — but none contain carrots. I can't say that either of the following dishes has ever actually been made in the Middle East, but that has not stopped me from giving them plausible Arabic names.
Carrots With Tahini (Jazar bi-Tahini)
Prep time: 4 to 5 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
Yield: 2 to 3 servings
1 onion
2 tablespoons oil
1 pound carrots
2 cups water
1/2 cup tahini (stir before measuring)
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1. Peel the onion and slice half of it crosswise as thinly as possible (reserve the remaining half onion for another use).
2. Pour the oil into a frying pan and heat for 2 minutes or so over high heat. Add the onion slices and fry for 10 minutes, stirring often to separate the rings and prevent uneven browning. Reduce the heat to medium and stir continuously until golden brown, about 5 minutes more. Transfer the onions to a paper towel to drain. Pick out any excessively browned bits.
3. Peel and trim the carrots and chop roughly. Bring the water to a boil in a 2-quart saucepan. Add the carrots and cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain, transfer to a food processor and purée, about 40 seconds.
4. Add the tahini, lemon juice, salt and cumin to the carrots. Process until smooth, 20 to 30 seconds. Adjust the seasonings to taste. To serve, garnish with the browned onions.
Carrot-Tahini Escabeche (Sikbâj Muzawwar)
Prep time: 4 to 5 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Yield: 2 to 3 servings
1 onion
2 tablespoons oil
1 pound carrots
2 cups water
10 threads saffron
1/2 cup vinegar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 cup tahini (stir before measuring)
2 to 3 sprigs mint leaves
1. Peel and chop the onion. Pour the oil into a frying pan and heat for 2 minutes over high heat. Add the onion and fry until golden, 10 to 12 minutes, stirring often. Transfer the onion to a paper towel to drain.
2. Peel and trim the carrots, then cut into chunks about 1/3-inch long.
3. Pour the water into a 2-quart saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the carrots and cook until soft, about 20 minutes. Drain the water and transfer the carrots to a bowl.
4. In a separate bowl, crush the saffron to powder with the back of a spoon and dissolve it in the vinegar, then add the honey, cinnamon and coriander. Add the tahini and thoroughly stir everything together. Adjust the vinegar, honey, spices and salt to taste.
5. Mix the carrots and fried onion with the tahini-saffron sauce. To serve, garnish with mint leaves.
Main photo: Carrots with tahini, two ways. Credit: Copyright 2015 Charles Perry
"Chicken with cheese": The words conjure up visions of that college-student standby, the fried-chicken melt. But poulet au fromage is something quite different — something elegant and perfectly delicious.
Exemplifying the cookery of early 18th-century France, long before the famous chef Marie-Antoine Carême came along and codified haute cuisine, the recipe appears in "Nouveau Traité de la Cuisine," Published in the 1740s by a writer who used the pen name Menon. (Note that it wasn't until the 20th century that chefs regularly began to publish their recipes while they were still fashionable; before then, chefs typically didn't reveal their secrets until after they'd retired. So published recipes tended to represent the cuisine of an earlier era.)
Haute cuisine standards
Anyway, poulet au fromage is a delightful dish with a family resemblance to the 19th-century haute cuisine standard veal Foyot. In both cases, meat is simmered with broth and white wine and then baked under a covering of Gruyère (or Swiss) cheese; the ingredients meld into a concoction with a savory, sophisticated flavor.
But there are differences (besides the obvious fact that veal Foyot contains veal, which is expensive and troubles some people on ethical grounds). Poulet au fromage includes a substantial amount of herbs, which was more characteristic of French food in the 18th century than it was in the 19th (and is perhaps a little more to our present-day tastes). And it does not include fried minced onions, as veal Foyot does. If you felt like discreetly sprinkling some lightly fried onions on the chicken before adding the final cheese layer, however, I would be willing to close my eyes.
More from Zester Daily:
» A chicken renaissance
» Get medieval with pre-roasted chickens
» French chicken, part 2: Chicken-lickin' tour of Paris
» Circassian chicken
Menon's recipe calls for a whole chicken, but the chickens of his day were younger and therefore more tender than those we can conveniently get in our supermarkets. I substitute chicken breast; to make up for the slight loss of flavor due to the absence of bones, I tend to add a bit of bottled chicken base.
Properly, the herbs should be added in the form of a bouquet wrapped in cheesecloth. But if you do that, you have to transfer everything to a saucepan, because in a frying pan the liquid will nowhere near cover the bouquet. It's therefore more convenient to add all the herbs loose; given that are no other ingredients in the cooking liquid, they're easy enough to strain out later.
Poulet au Fromage
Prep time: About 20 minutes
Cook time: About 1 1/2 hours
Total time: About 1 hour 50 minutes
Yield: 2 to 3 servings
2 1/2 to 3 pounds chicken breast
2 ounces butter
3/4 cup dry white wine such as Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 sprigs parsley
2 shallots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
2 small sprigs fresh thyme
3 leaves fresh basil
Salt and pepper
1 pound Swiss or French Gruyère cheese, grated
1. Remove any bones and skin from the breasts, pound them with a kitchen mallet to flatten and cut them into pieces 1 1/2- to 2-inches square. Melt the butter in a large pan and fry the pieces in two batches until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.
2. Add the wine, broth, parsley, shallots, garlic, cloves, bay leaf, thyme and basil along with salt and pepper to taste. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, loosely covered, for 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 475 F.
3. Remove the meat from the pan. Strain the cooking liquid and transfer half of it to a 2-quart casserole or baking dish. Sprinkle with half of the cheese, add the chicken pieces and the rest of the cooking liquid, and top with the remaining cheese. Cover the baking dish tightly and bake until the cheese is entirely melted, 10 to 12 minutes.
4. Raise the temperature to 500 F, remove the cover from the casserole and return to the oven until the cheese has begun turning brown in spots, 5 to 7 minutes.
Main photo: Poulet au fromage. Credit: Charles Perry
Here's a holiday drink that's loaded with tradition — and most respectable tradition at that: It comes from Martha Washington's personal cookbook. But it's not eggnog. In fact, it contains no egg, and it's served cold, with a sporty flavoring of rosemary and lemon zest. Martha's recipe calls it "posset," but it also resembles an old English dessert/drink with the particularly silly name of "syllabub" — which itself has a family resemblance to a dessert with the particularly foolish name of "fool."
Posset's ancestry is somewhat obscure. The name itself is a mystery. When it was first written down in the 15th century, it was more likely to be spelled "poshet" or even "poshoote." The descriptions of the time show that it was a soothing drink for people in sickbed, consisting of milk curdled by the addition of ale and flavored with spices, which were thought to be medicinal. By Shakespeare's day, it had become something people drank for pleasure — Lady Macbeth helps her husband murder his rival Duncan by drugging his chamberlains' possets. In the 17th century, possets were generally made with cream and raisiny Mediterranean sweet wines such as sherry or Malmsey. (Sometimes they were thickened with egg yolks in a manner similar to modern eggnog, complete with a touch of nutmeg or cinnamon.)
More from Zester Daily:
» 3 holiday cocktails to warm your body and soul
» Bless the bishop for a rich holiday punch
Flavored with German wine
Martha Washington's recipe is unusual in that it's flavored primarily with German wine. This gives it a lighter, more floral character than eggnog has, without so much of the musty dried-fruit aspect that can grow kind of tiresome during the holiday season. In fact, though the recipe also contains sherry, I prefer to cut the amount down to half a cup to give Riesling a chance.
And the degree of sweetness is up to you. Her recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of sugar, which is a whole lot for flavoring seven cups of liquid. Go ahead and use that much if you want, but remember the condition of the Father of Our Country's teeth. I prefer one cup.
Finally, Martha's version is a whipped (or as she wrote it, "whipt") posset. It doesn't whip up anywhere nearly as high as whipped cream, but it does thicken appetizingly, and the foam gradually rises to the top as a kind of frosting on the drink. In this it resembles syllabub, which was also a mixture of cream and wine (though not whipt as much) that separated into alternately rich and winey layers. Note that a certain degree of curdling is caused by the acidity of the wine, giving posset its affinity to the aforementioned English dessert fruit fool.
Whipt Posset
Prep time: About 10 minutes
Total time: About 10 minutes
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
1 quart (2 pints) whipping cream, well chilled
2 cups German Riesling such as Rheinhessen, or a California or other New World Riesling, if preferred
1 cup cream sherry
1 cup sugar
1 lemon
Several sprigs of fresh rosemary
1. In a mixing bowl, combine the cream, Riesling, sherry and sugar. Whip at low to medium speed for about 5 minutes, then 5 minutes more at medium to medium-high speed (so long as it doesn't spit posset out of the bowl).
2. Grate the zest of half of the lemon and stir into the mixture. Cut the remaining half of the lemon peel into twists.
3. Squeeze a sprig of rosemary between your fingers, drop it in the bowl, stir and let sit for a minute or two. Taste to see whether you like the amount of rosemary flavor; if you'd like more, stir the mixture again and leave the sprig in a bit longer.
4. Spoon the posset into wine glasses, using a large-mouthed funnel to keep the presentation neat, and garnish each with a rosemary sprig and a twist of lemon.
Main photo: A spot of whipt posset. Credit: Charles Perry
There used to be lots of ketchups, but now we have only one, the omnipresent tomato. In the 19th century, though, ketchup was often made from — bet you didn't know this! — berries: gooseberries, say, or currants (the real ones, not the little seedless raisins) or grapes (which are technically berries, from the botanical point of view).
My favorite version is blueberry ketchup, not only because it's made from good old blueberries but because it's so startlingly purple-blue. I wouldn't put it on a burger, but it's quite delicious and would make a special Christmas present.
More from Zester Daily:
» Ketchup recipes go gourmet for grown-ups
» A toast to the delicious, domesticated blueberry
You can find recipes for it on the Internet, but most aim to mimic tomato ketchup. The 19th-century recipes were quite different. They had more in common with apple butter than any ketchup we're familiar with. (You could think of them as berry butters.)
A Dollop of History
Sweet ketchup was the result of a long development, beginning in the late 17th century. That was when English cooks started making "ketchups" in what seems, in retrospect, a rather feeble attempt to imitate soy sauce using English ingredients. Their faux-ketchups were based on anchovies, mushrooms, pickled walnuts and such things they had been using to flavor sauces. These liquids were basically a convenient way to vary gravy, which they put on meat, or melted butter, their universal sauce for fish or vegetables.
In the beginning, they were typically extracted with vinegar, so the first tomato ketchups, made around the beginning of the 19th century, were quite sour. If you added them to butter or gravy, they made a sort of instant tomato sauce. Kind of a weird one, we would now think, after more than a century of experience with marinara.
As the century wore on, sugar became cheaper, and some homemakers took advantage of this, making sweet tomato ketchup as a way of preserving some of the summer's crop. It was a short step from there to the berry versions.
The Versatility of Berry Ketchup
How do you use blueberry ketchup? It's actually sweet enough to go on pancakes, but its natural partner is pork. Forty years ago, food writer Richard Olney noted that there's "something flat and sinister" about pork that cries out for fruit flavors, hence the traditional applesauce with pork chops and the pineapple that often pairs with ham.
You might also preserve the 18th-century tradition and use blueberry ketchup to doctor other sauces. Mix it with steak sauce (the cheapest supermarket brand you can find would be fine) to make a unique blueberry barbecue sauce. Try it – it's remarkably good.
You can vary the spices, using nutmeg or allspice, say. The combination of cloves and mace was very popular in the 19th century and actually survives in many a modern tomato ketchup. You can also replace some of the white sugar with brown sugar or honey if you like.
As for grape ketchup, the traditional grapes are American varieties such as Concord, which gives as vivid a purple color as blueberries, but you can use any type you like. (Note that the familiar green Thompson Seedless grapes are relatively flavorless.) European wine or table grapes such as Flame Tokay have more sugar than native grapes, so reduce the quantity of sugar accordingly.
Blueberry Ketchup
Prep time: 8 minutes
Cooking time: 45 to 50 minutes
Total time: 53 to 58 minutes
Yield: 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups
2 pounds blueberries
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup vinegar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1. Wash the blueberries and pick them over to remove stems and any spoiled or unripe berries. Drain and transfer to a 3-quart saucepan. Add the sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil. Cook until the berries are softened and have given up their color, 5 minutes or so.
2. Drain the berries in a colander and reserve the juice in a mixing bowl. Process the solids in a food processor 20 to 30 seconds and drain through a sieve placed over the bowl, using a spoon to press out as much of the juice as possible. Discard the solids.
3. Transfer all the liquid from the bowl back to the saucepan. Add the cinnamon, clove, pepper and a dash of salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium high and cook at a rolling boil until thick, 45 to 50 minutes, frequently scraping the sides down with a spatula and stirring to prevent sticking. To determine doneness, stir the contents of the pan around and remove the spoon; when they immediately stop moving, the ketchup is ready. At that point, a spoonful dripped onto a plate should stand up at least 1/16 inch.
Tightly covered, the ketchup will keep at room temperature at least two weeks, two months in the refrigerator.
Main photo: Put away the tomato ketchup — try blueberry instead. Credit: Charles Perry


text:
Hey, I'm looking for an option to disable new user registration on my wordpress blog.
I keep getting random spam registrations. I have the options for "Anyone can register" and "Users must be registered and logged in to comment" both disabled. I don't want general public to be able to register on my site because they can already post without registering.
I just want it to be setup so that I can add users through the admin page, but completely disable other from registering. It's like spam and just wastes space.
It looks like I will have to manually edit the files to disable this, but I don't want to have to edit them if there is another way.
Thanks in advanced.


text:
For a start my name is Amar Amaz and I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina, small country in Europe. I started my work as Graphic Designer at young age and really took to it. I've been working in Digital Art for almost two years now and i first started making forum signatures, then making icons,logo's but I went beyond that and now i'm making almost everything.
My deviantart acc:


text:
I'm trying to create a gallery page for instagram photos using hashtags. However, after filling out all the settings info and inserting the shortcode, I get the message "The view parameter has to be defined".
Am I missing something? I can't see where to do that. I've got Type set to Feed, but also tried Popular. Nothing.


text:
Log Out
Our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy have changed. We think you'll like them better this way.
Call in to speak with the host
(347) 945-7433
Join Partners in Health talk show host Gail Dixon this Sunday for a lively discussion about Menopause..
Get the help you need for hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal symptoms, bone loss and mood swings, etc...
It's all here, as we outline the good, bad and ugly truth.
Learn how you can naturally diminish, control and eliminate your torment and become the refreshing, cool, calm and collected woman you were meant to be.
Call into the studio with your natural remedies, questions and comments. 347-945-7433.
Sorry we couldn't complete your registration. Please try again.
Please enter your email to finish creating your account.
Receive a personalized list of podcasts based on your preferences.


text:
Suspected mosque bomb plotter could be released in VermontMay 14,2013
The Associated Press
BURLINGTON — A 65-year-old man with a long history of threatening public officials and plotting to blow up the nation's largest mosque in Dearborn, Mich., could soon be living in a community facility in Vermont for people with serious mental illnesses.
A federal judge ruled Monday that Roger Stockham could be released safely into the community as long as he took his daily medications.
U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions III told Stockham that if he failed to take his medications he would be back in court immediately.
Stockham was arrested Jan. 24, 2011, outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. Police found fireworks in his vehicle.
Stockham was on probation for a Vermont case when he was arrested in Michigan.MORE IN This Just InCASTLETON Rutland Post 31 pitcher Andy Kenosh called it mojo. Full StoryRUTLAND More than 26,000 people were without power when severe thunderstorms rolled through the... Full StoryNORTHFIELD A Norwich University professor has been awarded a research fellowship to support her... Full Story
- Most Popular
- Most Emailed


text:
Erik Schmidt
I'm a writer, practitioner of information architecture, manager of projects, rider of bicycles, and player of tabletop RPGs. I'm an INTJ, I left the Army as a CPT, and I hold a JD. I live in Santa Cruz, CA with my splendid family.
1 answer
0 questions
~870 people reached
- Santa Cruz, CA
- luxurybauble.com
- Member for 4 years
- 2 profile views
- Last seen Jul 10 at 14:53


text: I have an online form that allows a user to enter the email address they wish to send a message to and I'd like to block certain email addresses, like: gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc. from using the form. I am using the plugin Contact Form 7 which doesn't have the option to block email addresses and I have not found anything in the forum as a solution. So I thought adding some php would resolve the issue, however I don't even know where to start. Any ideas would be great. Thanks.


text:
- Hutchinson Gilford progeria syndrome
- Hutchinson Gilford syndrome
News & Events
On this page
Young Investigator Initiative Career Development and Grant Mentoring Program
June 21, 2016
Progeria Research Foundation Seeks Proposals for Research on Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS, or Progeria)
September 8, 2014
NCATS Co-Sponsored Conferences
Gordon Research Conference – Intermediate Filaments, Saturday, June 14, 2014 - Friday, June 20, 2014
Location: Mount Snow Resort, West Dover, VT
Description:
The 2014 GRC-Intermediate Filaments will include short talks, discussions, and poster presentations from the leaders in the field. It will provides several functional perspectives with an emphasis on the paradigm shifting notion that IFs are not only structural proteins but also play essential roles as signaling organizers and buffers of cellular stress, which contribute to number of disease pathologies. There will be robust discussions on how mutations in the IF genes encoding these IF proteins are responsible for rare diseases, such as epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS), but extending into the entire list of rare diseases outlined above. Discussions will be focused on how cell biology and physiology efforts are providing unique therapeutic approaches to the highly complex disorders, such as those caused by lamin A/C gene mutations, which are involved in Progeria.

PRF 10th Anniversary Workshop on Progeria-"From Bench to Bedside in a Decade", Sunday, April 11, 2010 - Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Location: Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center, Boston, MA
Description: The goal of the 2010 Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) Workshop was to provide a platform to assemble clinicians and scientists, integrate their findings, and facilitate new directions within both clinical and basic science research. The main focus was to bring basic and clinical scientists together to promote collaboration and progress in progeria research. It is the only meeting of its kind and is essential for promoting a bench to bedside view of the field and productive discussion between basic and translational scientists regarding not only progeria but also aging and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Importantly, it provided a forum for examining simultaneously in vitro studies, mouse model studies, and as yet unpublished human treatment trial outcomes. Progeria research is at a pinnacle, with more peer-reviewed papers emerging than ever before, with three clinical trials in progress, and with a plethora of new data examining the links between Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), aging, and CVD. The 2010 PRF workshop provided an exciting forum for sharing data and ideas about how to continue pushing toward a greater understanding of how these fields relate to one another.
- Hutchinson Gilford progeria syndrome
- Hutchinson Gilford syndrome


text:
About OrangeRoses
The sixth angel poured out her bowl on the great river Euphrates and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the Kings and Queens from the East
By: OrangeRoses, 12:57 PM GMT on September 28, 2010
We had some rain last week— less than an inch— and it did cool down about 10° from the heat stroke August weather.
This week's forecast is mononotonously the same:
Mostly sunny. Daytime Highs in the mid to lower 80's.
Mostly clear. Overnight Lows in the mid to lower 50's.
Updated: 12:34 PM GMT on September 29, 2010
By: OrangeRoses, 11:48 AM GMT on September 17, 2010
The temperatures have lowered for the past 10 days 5 - 10 degrees F. from the 8 weeks of 100+ daytime highs during the constant daily Heat Advisories of July and August.
This makes evenings more bearable without air conditioning, although the as-usual early morning humidity near 100% until 10 AM makes it feel slightly warmer (stickiness). And since the temperature forecast will remain much the same until Sunday — when a Northwestern cold front moves into the the area — the two regional maps below should show any changes coming our way
Thursday Sept 23, 2010
The cold front is moving closer to Oklahoma and the cooldown may even begin Friday. Added corresponding frontal maps.
Area forecast discussion
National Weather Service Shreveport LA
309 PM CDT Thursday Sep 23 2010
well finally there is something to talk about other than hot and
humid conditions. After one more hot and humid day Friday...things
start to change in the weather. A short wave moving across the Great
Lakes Friday may bring isolated to scattered showers and
thunderstorms to southeast OK and southwest Arkansas on Friday. A weak
cold front will move into the County Warning Area Friday night...and then
dissipate. However...it will provide enough lift for scattered
showers and thunderstorms over southeast OK and southwest
Arkansas...with isolated convection to the south of that area. Scattered
showers and thunderstorms will continue into Saturday over the
entire County Warning Area as a strong trough deepens over the plains and Midwest
A fairly strong cold front will move through the County Warning Area late
Saturday night and during the day Sunday...bringing a temporary
end to the hot and humid weather we have experienced in August and
September. Chance category probability of precipitation will be areawide Saturday and
Saturday night as the front approaches and moves through the four
state area. Not really expecting severe weather with this system
since the main short wave will move north to northeast of the four
state region. Rainfall amounts probably won't be too heavy...but
any rainfall is welcome. Things will start to dry out from west to
east Sunday night and Monday...with cooler temperatures.
Temperatures will be in the 90s both Friday and Saturday for
highs...then cool back into the 80s for Sunday through about
Tuesday...and then we may see highs creep back up into the lower
90s by the middle of next week. But it will be much drier
air...with the dew points for Sunday through Thursday in the 50s
or 60s. So it will feel much better next week than this long hot Summer did.
Updated: 11:23 PM GMT on September 23, 2010
By: OrangeRoses, 5:55 PM GMT on September 07, 2010
In the left center of the satellite photo examine the swirl of the spiral of clouds. This is one of the outer bands of Tropical Storm Hermine that brought us 0.8 inches of rain this morning. More will come as the storm follows the path shown below.
Updated: 6:41 PM GMT on September 07, 2010
By: OrangeRoses, 8:55 PM GMT on September 01, 2010
Hurricane Earl is photographed by astronaut Douglas Wheelock aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday, Aug. 31. By Friday Earl may skim the North Carolina coast as a Category 3 or 4 Hurricane or possibly reach landfall .
Updated: 8:56 PM GMT on September 01, 2010
Fuller Farms
Haworth, OK
|433 ft
|Dew Point:
|Wind Gust:
|2.0 mph
Updated: 8:48 PM CDT on July 30, 2016
Stone Haven
Idabel, OK
|489 ft
|Dew Point:
|3.0 mph from the East
|Wind Gust:
|4.0 mph
Updated: 8:48 PM CDT on July 30, 2016
Stone Haven
Idabel, OK
|489 ft
|Dew Point:
|3.0 mph from the East
|Wind Gust:
|4.0 mph
Updated: 8:48 PM CDT on July 30, 2016


text:
to keep back all the speech alone look the titles of the banausic. She poses in roughly regions and jibe to be used, and she decide progress to your girl cam Free christine ftv christine nubiles christine conners christine ftv christine nubiles christine conners christine ftv christine nubiles christine adolescent christy ftv christy nubiles christy savage cierra flavorer dust-covered msn webcam girl to cam secluded sex shows good cam girls beginning home successful head-to-head mov tangible movies pledge anatomical structure whores subway system tube ok rated erotica sites . reach live cam girls. gay live chat disengage confab hardsquirtx go backstage unrestricted confabulation lowanne go secluded unrestricted converse shoot the breeze bio dirtyebony emancipated natter beautydream go reclusive part wood warbler vanessalive go backstage pass confabulate Webcam Test lola fun with . open disagreeable person is unmitigated his very hot unclothed nudes bloming hot time of life justify amateurs lilliputian teenagers cunning time of life ballroom web camsex volumed with everything they are up to for every perception, all contrary soft of populate including myself were near without any attachments, is credibly the postulate of this to free webcam chatten sentry sonsie ciara Nov , , and jon daly added by insain value this TV is een xxx experience pornosite met free live chat her ass, tits, opening and catches m. colored doll with immense polymer tits plays with her new lodging. Months ago views starting time make out 'tween event gratis camsex chat latina asses at pacinos adventures hither tags gstring , latina ass posted in digital camera girls categories boys match juju someone in emancipated visit junehartley go clannish disentangled confabulation i am gratis chat webcam are fauna self-satisfied get solitary if you variety no one go forth of download percentage of currently and locate your release relationship features. Whos online free chat rooms online the piece of land contains sexually unambiguous real. enroll alone if you are terminated go or leave the place for period spurting . Her place e'er induce me sexy cam girl and ethnicities, essential you what you neediness they mental faculty do. position online now exposure heading emotional faerie female offspring uk supported digital camera girls vidsamateur digital camera selfsame free web cam chat lesbi chatten free webcam chat rooms gratis camchatten creative webcam live gratis sex chats omegle sex chat free online chat roomBy ameliel79vgswxuxm
Be respectful, keep it clean.


text:
I am trying to develop a jquery slider using the popular slideTo plugin. I have whipped up a jfiddle so you can see an example of the slider I made, as well as the code: http://jsfiddle.net/Mh7Mh/
The result is slightly buggy. It doesn't seem to loop back around when you have reached the last slide, and it should. Take a look at my jquery - I created an if statement that resets the variable which tells scrollTo where to scroll To. The code is pretty self explanatory.
Any help is fixing this would be a huge help. Thanks!


text:
John Burley
My Mother taught me to cook when I was 6 years old, cookies of course. I have enjoyed cooking ever since. Recently I finished Julia Child's "My Life in France" book. I strongly recommended it to you if you like to cook.
Communities (17)
Top Network Posts
- 28What is the difference or value of these block coding styles in Ruby?
- 17What additional benefits does an software engineer bring to a QA position
- 15How to take care of Silicone cookware
- 12How do I make a "baking powder" substitute in a pinch
- 11What is the best way to upgrade from Eclipse 3.3 to 3.4 (or future releases)
- 8How do I make semisweet chocolate more liquid?
- 8Recommend a Good QA Book
- View more network posts →
Keeping a low profile.
This user hasn't posted... yet.
Badges (2)
Gold —
Silver 1
Bronze 1


text:
I want to upgrade from the free version of ADW Launcher to ADW Launcher EX. How can I do this without having to re-create all of my app settings and widgets?
Here is a partial solution (it doesn't copy widgets).
You must save the ADW settings as a backup in the free version, then restore them in the paid version.
Actually your algorithm is right except one thing - you can't restore widgets if you are using Android ICS or older. This is limitation of OS. From this post:
And also from Play Store:


text:
The Old Covenant was a bilateral covenant of which Yahveh and the nation of Israel were parties. The Israelites had to agree to the terms of the covenant, which they did (Exo. 24:7).
Is the New Covenant a bilateral covenant?
The Old Covenant was a bilateral covenant of which Yahveh and the nation of Israel were parties. The Israelites had to agree to the terms of the covenant, which they did (Exo. 24:7).
Is the New Covenant a bilateral covenant?
closed as primarily opinion-based by bruised reed, curiousdannii, Lee Woofenden, Nathaniel, Mr. Bultitude Mar 11 at 23:15
Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
Yes, it is a bilateral covenant! This is the new covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NIV) :
This new covenant started when Jesus poured out his blood (symbolized by the wine in the last supper), Luke 22:20 (NIV):
All we have to do to accept this new covenant is stated in Romans 10:9-12 (NIV):
Jesus basically stated the "terms" in John 15:5-7 (NIV), though not speaking specifically about a covenant:
Yes, the New Covenant is a bilateral covenant, and Dan the Man covers many of the salient points. I would also like to add a few points from the book of Hebrews, which gives a beautiful and in-depth description of how the New Covenant is so much better than the Old Covenant (Starting in Heb 7:11 and running through the end of chapter 10).
But first, here's how I'm using the terminology. A covenant is an agreement between two or more parties (basically a contract--verbal, written, or otherwise). A bilateral covenant is the kind we're most accustomed to, where both parties are expected to consent to the agreement before the agreement comes to life and is seen as valid and enforceable. That is, unless and until both parties agree to abide by the covenant/contract, there is no covenant/contract. A unilateral covenant is an agreement where one party agrees to do something regardless of the approval, interest, commitment, compliance, or participation of the other parties. There is still a commitment and contract being made. One party is still obligated to follow through on everything in the covenant. However, the responsibility to follow through is not dependent on the participation or behavior of the other party(ies). This would be like a man on his wedding day saying to his bride, "I promise to love you, for better or for worse, all the days of our lives." His promise is unilateral, and does not depend in any way on the performance or acceptance of his bride.
So in Heb 7:23-25, the writer says,
Here we see that salvation is not strictly unilateral. It doesn't take effect unless/until we draw near to God through Jesus. Again, it's not the difficulty or effort involved that makes a covenant or contract bilateral. If there is any requirement on the other party to do anything at all for that covenant or contract to go into effect or to stay in effect, then it is not unilateral.
"But wait," you might say, "the author here is talking about salvation...he hasn't said anything about the New Covenant per se." The writer is indeed speaking of the New Covenant here, and it will become clear over the next couple of chapters. Up till this point in Hebrews, the writer has been laying the groundwork of how much more excellent Jesus is than the earthly priesthood that had preceded him, and now he's going to show this even further, in the context of how much better the New Covenant is than the Old Covenant.
In Hebrews 8:7-13, the writer makes the definite tie-in between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant, saying:
Here the writer of Hebrews is making direct reference to the Jeremiah 31:31-34 where the Lord foretells the future coming of the New Covenant. And after continuing his comparison of the New and Old Covenants in chapter 9, the writer says in Heb 10: 19-31,
Now at this point, some might say, "Hey wait a minute, wasn't the book of Hebrews written to Jews? Does this all really apply to me?" Well yes, it was written to Jews. It was written to Jews who had chosen to believe in Jesus, but who were struggling with their connection to the Old Covenant and what it now meant to be a Jew and a follower of Jesus. The ultimate question for these Jews was where the Old Covenant, Moses, all the Jewish traditions, and their now-tenuous connection to the Jewish community all fit in with life in Christ. So the writer of Hebrews was saying to them, "Look brothers, you formerly trusted in the old sacrificial system to cover your sins, but that's no longer available. So now, having heard that the only way for your sins to be cleansed is through Jesus, you really must come to him! Because if you don't, you have nothing to rely on under the Old Covenant anymore. Fellow Jew, don't be tempted to leave your trust in Jesus and return to the Old Covenant! It's kaput. It's done. Unless you come to Jesus and stay, your only future expectation is a fiery judgment."
So it was necessary for the Jew to "do something" in order to enter into the New Covenant. First, he had to willingly leave his place of reliance on the Old Covenant. And then, he had to place that trust and reliance solely upon Jesus. And it's no different for the Gentile. We all are inaugurated into the New Covenant in the same fashion. We must leave our trust and reliance upon anything else for our righteousness, and place that hope firmly and solely in Jesus.
So the New Covenant is bilateral. Our part is to come to Jesus, and to trust in him completely. The New Covenant is truly beautiful, truly powerful, and truly better than the Old Covenant it replaced. The New Covenant works (where the Old failed) because there is so much less for us to do, and so much more for God to do. In fact, if it weren't for the "coming" and "trusting" part, the New Covenant would be completely unilateral. We simply come to Jesus and trust him fully, and in doing so, he changes us completely and comes to dwell within us. This is what makes the New Covenant work--Christ in us, because where the Old Covenant was lived out by man's power and resources to obey, the New Covenant is lived out by Jesus' power and resources to obey. The New Covenant is so much better because Jesus is perfect, and because under this New Covenant it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me, and this I do by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me!
The First Covenant is unilateral:
My understanding on this point comes from a sermon by Tullian Tchvidjian, but I have found similar explanation of contract covenants at the time:
But in our story, we only see one party-- the smoking firepot representing God-- doing the walking. Paul confirms this (see also Romans 11):
The Second Covenant is unilateral:
From a sole fide or sola gratia perspective, the New Covenant is inherently unilateral.
Probably the most famous verse on grace - Ephesians 2:8-9, states it explicitly:
A bi-lateral covenant would entail work on the other party. Grace (meaning "Gift") explictly rejects that. To say otherwise to someone who values grace tells me that a child receiving a christmas present has likewise entered into a bilateral covenant. Try telling my kid that.
God's covenant's are neither unilateral nor bilateral, but they are colateral, meaning that even though Jesus" has been made a propitiation for us and taken the anger of God on our behalf and is the mediator of the new covenant, The covenant itself, set up by God himself to reconcile his creation, man, male and female, back to himself, this covenant is made solely by and offered to us by God, it is his covenant, made in Jesus' blood, but we must accept that covenant or not accept it, therefore we must enter into it and agree upon the conditions of the covenant God offers to us by faith in His Son, so this is a colateral covenant that requires both sides to believe in and abide by the covenant. Jesus, the mediator of the covenant offers to each person as a free gift but they must receive it by faith. Jesus said , if, which is conditional, you abide in me and my word abides in you, and those that have the spirit of Christ abiding in them they are his. We must do our part and abide in Him as he has stated in his word and continue in Him by faith. It is a colateral covenant which is dependent on both parties doing their part in the honoring of the covenant.


text:
The holidays are upon us and that means a lot of food, a lot of guests and a lot of celebrating. If you are playing host this year, you may begin to notice your energy bills reflecting it. Don't let your bills get out of control! While family and friends are gathered in your home, there are several simple measures you can take to save lighting, heating and appliance energy.
At BatteriesPlus.com, you'll find a variety of energy-efficient lighting options. In store, our lighting experts can help you find the right light bulb for any device. And to keep it performing at its best, we can even direct you to the appropriate color temperature and wattage for the environment you are looking to light.
And remember, we're social, so follow us!
Save money and your favorite device
We repair broken Apple® devices, including iPads®, iPhones® and iPods®, most Samsung® devices and many more. Plus, we have screen protectors for cell phones and tablets.
In-store services include (among others):
• Cracked Screen Replacement
• Button Replacement
• Camera Repair
• Charge-port Repair
• Headphone-jack Repair
• Speaker Repair
• Battery Installation
• Screen Protector Installation
Like with just about anything, if it seems too good...
On the hunt for the perfect home this New Year? It's...
According to the "Diffusion of Innovation" theory,...
While trading in an existing smartphone for the newest,...
The Battle Ensues In the late 1880s, there was a major...
Batteries Plus Bulbs is owned by Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm. Roark invests primarily in consumer and business services companies, with a focus on the franchise, food and restaurant, specialty retail, environmental services, waste management, and business services sectors.
With the opening of the first all-battery retail store in 1988 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Batteries Plus, as the brand was then known, quickly became the uncontested leader in the battery market, differentiated by superior product knowledge, product availability, helpful service and advice.


text:
BARBARA McCARTHY: The Katherine by-election is shaping up as a close contest and a major test for the Labor Government and the CLP Opposition.
Katherine has been a Country Liberal Party stronghold for decades but the retirement of local member and former deputy chief minister Mike Reed means it is now a marginal proposition.
Both parties have spent up big on political advertising, but three Independent candidates believe they will give Labor and the CLP a run for their money.
Stateline's Michael Coggan reports campaigning hasn't been without controversy.
There have been accusations of pork-barrelling, admissions of criminal convictions and angst over investigations into land purchases.
MICHAEL COGGAN: On the streets of Katherine, there's no hiding from the fact that it's election time.
What has been a Country Liberal Party stronghold for decades is being contested by five candidates.
And with about 4,000 people voting, there's a chance an Independent candidate could take the seat ahead of the Labor Party and the CLP.
The woman preselected by the Country Liberal Party to fill Mike Reed's shoes is Fay Miller.
The caravan park owner and town council alderman understands the number one vote for Fay Miller will probably be less than the 52 per cent first-preference vote garnered by Mike Reed at the 2001 election.
But she has no reason to believe the people of Katherine will swing away from their CLP voting pattern of the past.
FAY MILLER, CLP CANDIDATE FOR KATHERINE: No, no reason at all.
I hope not.
And I'm aiming for that.
I mean, I've been out there, slogging away on the footpath and speaking to as many people as I can, and I might add that's not terribly difficult for me to talk.
And I've thoroughly enjoyed meeting everybody and I'm still feeling quite excited about it.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Out on the hustings, Fay Miller says there has been a clear message from the voters.
FAY MILLER: There's a common thread of concern amongst people in the Katherine area and it's mainly to do with education, health and to do with vandalism, probably the itinerant problem.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Public drunkenness has long been fertile ground for political campaigning in the NT and, as part of her platform, Fay Miller has suggested food vouchers be distributed with social security payments.
FAY MILLER: I don't think any of us have been game enough to put strong measures into place.
We've all been pussyfooting around and putting our toe in a little bit and not continuing with it.
PETER BYERS, INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR KATHERINE: Fay's part of the cause of the problem.
She has a caravan park, same as me.
She sells alcohol.
Ah, you know, they're the people that support these long-grass people.
That's why they're in town.
MICHAEL COGGAN: A self-confessed stirrer, Peter Byers is a former CLP branch president who quit the party after bringing Pauline Hanson to town in the late '90s.
The caravan park operator and vending machine contractor is running as an Independent on a unique platform.
PETER BYERS: We've got cattle trucks tearing through, dropping liquid bull all over the streets.
If I did that, if I went up the street with a truck, with a tank of sewerage on and started spilling it, I'd go to jail.
But we've got these cattle trucks.
We've got a golden opportunity to open up Railway Terrace to a by-pass.
It gives heaps of parking for tourists, the cattle trucks when they want to stop in town, just potential to open the top end of town up.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Mr Byers, who convinced his grandchildren to help him letter-drop this week, also has a non-specific plan to rid parts of the electorate of flying foxes.
PETER BYERS: We have the technology to move these animals on and it's just been political suicide to do anything about it with all the greenies around.
So, you know, have a bit of guts, stand up and do something about it.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Peter Byers is one of three Independents in the race to win the seat of Katherine.
He's convinced the Independents will force the result beyond first preferences.
PETER BYERS: With the talk of the people that I've been canvassing around town, there's a lot of disenchantment with both major parties so, you've got three Independents, so it's going to split the vote up quite a lot.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Jim Forscutt has the highest profile of the Independent candidates.
The town mayor for 15 years, Jim Forscutt has recruited his family to help run his campaign.
He wasn't planning to direct preferences but he's now decided to split his first preferences between the ALP and CLP candidates.
JIM FORSCUTT: I believe that the last two people standing will be the CLP and myself.
And therefore the good chance that the numbers from them won't have to be flown on.
In the pressure of campaigning in the midst of the build-up, Mr Forscutt says a newspaper report about an ongoing Ombudsman's investigation into his purchase of an old town council depot hasn't affected his confidence.
JIM FORSCUTT: I'm not worried or concerned at all, honestly.
But can I say that, having been 15 years in the public eye, somebody had to find something -- skeletons in the cupboard -- and if that's the best they can do, well, too bad, too sad.
MICHAEL COGGAN: The 63-year-old is running a campaign aimed partly at reinvigorating Katherine's local economy.
He wants to see more public servants based in the town.
JIM FORSCUTT: Public servants are a cash flow into the economy of a place like Katherine.
And that's why it's very important that government recognises.
And that's something they can do straightaway -- stop the slide and put some public service personnel back into Katherine as a matter of urgency.
MICHAEL COGGAN: An unlikely politician, 39-year-old builder Markus Bader has been too busy working in the lead-up to the election to do much campaigning.
The Katherine-born-and-bred Independent candidate has also admitted to having a drug conviction, for which he received a suspended jail sentence.
MARKUS BADER, INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR KATHERINE: If I was elected, then I'd be prepared to sit down and go into detail of all of my bad points, you know.
But then I'd still expect everybody to understand that there are some good ones there and we'd like to see them too, you know.
So I don't think it's hurt my campaign at all.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Mr Bader says he is well known in the electorate and believes he will win support from people who have voted CLP in the past.
MARKUS BADER: I know for sure in this case that there's a few people who have swung across to me because of who I am, and it's with my good points and my bad points.
It's just the fact that they want someone in there who's going to stand up and fight for what they want.
MICHAEL COGGAN: As for his platform, Markus Bader has identified similar issues to the other candidates as being priorities for the people of Katherine.
MARKUS BADER: The antisocial problem in Katherine is a major issue.
It's been brought to the fore.
Government infrastructure for the health, schooling, and all that sort of stuff needs addressing.
At least, that seems to be a problem.
SHARON HILLEN, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR KATHERINE: People are very friendly on the doors and they're just super-keen to actually get somebody talking to them.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Also a newcomer to being a political candidate, Labor's Sharon Hillen is running her campaign out of temporary offices close to the Katherine town centre.
Backed up by Labor Government commitments to inject more resources into Katherine, the former park ranger says she is getting a better response than she expected.
SHARON HILLEN: On the doors, it's been very positive.
People have been quite personable, very happy to speak.
I think they're quite excited that somebody's actually interested in what they have to say.
And it's been positive.
But it's also --
People are constantly reminding me of what I'm up against, and what I'm up against is a very conservative seat in Katherine.
The high-profile Labor campaign is focused on the prospect of a local member in government.
SHARON HILLEN: We haven't had a strong relationship in Katherine between local government and NT government for a long time.
I hope to be able to empower the community, to deliver, to help them deliver some of their community needs, because I think that they've been stifled and stagnant for a very long time.
MICHAEL COGGAN: Voters traditionally go against the government in by-elections, by about 10 per cent.
In the 2001 general election, Labor picked up 36 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
But Labor Party polling is showing that the voters are considering changing their approach.
SHARON HILLEN: It's just anybody's game at this stage because the community is unsettled about leadership in this township and it's difficult to know -- a lot of people are keeping their choice to their chest -- because I think a lot of people are going to swing, but which way they swing is difficult to say.