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The Copyright Amendment Bill of 2017 currently undergoing the consultative process in South Africa, proposes overturning the longstanding prohibition against parallel importation provided for in the present South African legislation, an action that could undo more than a century of colonially-based market manipulation.
Clause 11 of the 2017 Bill proposes the insertion of the following Section 12B into South Africa's Copyright Act:
(1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this Act, the
Trademark Act, 1993 (Act No. 194 of 1993), and the Counterfeit Goods
Act, 1997 (Act No. 37 of 1997), the first sale of or other transfer of
ownership of a transferred original or copy of a work in the Republic or
outside the Republic, shall exhaust the rights of distribution and
importation locally and internationally in respect of such transferred original or copy.''
This proposed revision in the Bill draws attention to a longstanding issue that is not only a matter of copyright law, but also overdue for attention in the context of the fierce student protests that have been raging in South African universities in the #Rhodes Must Fall movement with its demands to #Decolonise the University, as well as raising questions relating to #FeesMustFall student activism that challenged the high cost of education, including the cost of textbooks. In student debates the questions that have arisen are why textbooks are very much cheaper in some countries than in South Africa, and why our students are not able to buy these books in South Africa for these cheaper prices? Also, what implications does the prohibition of parallel importation have for the fragmentation of trade in African publications across the different countries on the continent? Finally, how would this affect the South African publishing industry?
Reviewing parallel importation as an issue in international publishing reveals its very colonial origins and the extent to which this colonial manipulation of the market still lingers.
What does this mean in relation to the publishing industry – especially in Africa – and the international trade in books? What is meant by the 'first sale' and the 'exhaustion of rights'? What are the implications of 'exhausting the rights of distribution locally and internationally'? And what are 'territorial rights'? In particular, what would all this mean in terms of the pricing of books, and greater accessibility to affordable publications for students and general readers?
These issues can be unpacked by reviewing what was at stake in a US court case concerning the sale of books imported into the US at considerably cheaper prices than the US prices for the same books. It was this case, in fact, that led to stronger demands for the right of parallel importation – the free trade in books across borders.
Kirtsaeng vs Wiley (2013) – a Case that Changed the Playing Field
The decision to effectively move for the abolition of parallel importation prohibitions in South Africa has thus almost certainly been influenced by the judgement in the US Supreme Court case of Kirtsaeng vs Wiley, delivered in March 2013, which at long last overturned a much neglected but controversial aspect of global trade in copyright goods, long entrenched in US (and UK) copyright practice – the question of first sale rights and exhaustion of rights in international territorial deals negotiated between large US publishers and developing world markets.
The long persistence of this prohibition in the copyright legislation of ex-British colonies and the US is essentially a colonial hangover involving mostly large UK and US publishers using the imposition of nationally-based differential pricing as a way of maximising profits across the world.
The Kirtsaeng case involved a Thai student, Supap Kirtsaeng, who, when he arrived in the US, found that his college textbooks were absurdly expensive compares to the same books in his home country. So he contributed to funding the cost of his studies in the US by selling textbooks that he had purchased legally in his home country. (These were not pirated books). The fact that the books were cheaper was the result of territorial rights deals struck between US and Asian publishers. These deals would have involved transactions governed by contracts – rather than copyright law – between the originating publisher in the US and the local publisher.
Such a deal would have authorised the right to reprint a set number of titles of a particular book in order to create a local edition of a this title. Or it could have been a matter of printed books from Wiley provided in bulk. The foreign publisher buying these rights would be able to set a price for a local edition that was considerably lower than the US publisher's price and yet was profitable for the company concerned. The books would be sold under the imprint of the local publisher. However, such a deal would have been constrained by Wiley's control over the territory in which these books could be sold.
This is what is meant when publishers talk about 'territorial rights' – the segmentation of the market in different territories – a matter of contractual agreements rather than copyright law. Part of the deal would have been the prohibition of sales beyond the agreed licensed territory, both through the rights contract signed between the two parties and quite probably also enshrined in national legislation prohibiting 'parallel importation'.
A territorial deal such as this one is manipulating international copyright law and treaties in more than one respect.
- First of all, copyright is granted automatically when someone creates a work, such as writing a book, and this copyright is recognized and enforceable in any country in the word, according to the Berne Convention. Copyright is global, not segmented locally.
- Secondly, the copyright owner has monopoly rights over the work, but this is subject to a limitation – control is only granted on the first sale of a book. Once a customer has bought a book, or another copyright product, whether this be a single book, or a number of books granted in a licence to a publisher in another country, under copyright law the subsequent sales are not part of the copyright monopoly, and the courts would reject attempts by publishers to exert such control.
The term used is that of 'exhaustion', a 'technical term used to denote the concept that, once a copyright holder has sold or distributed goods then the rights conferred by copyright, patent or trademark do not give the copyright, patent or trademark holder the right to control sales of the goods which she herself has authorised' (Rens 2010; 54). These are also referred to as 'first sale rights' – once a copyrighted work has been sold, the copyright owner can no longer claim rights over subsequent sales. It is the right of the purchaser to sell second hand copies.
Kirtsaeng was sued by US-based global publisher Wiley, at first successfully, until the Supreme Court reversed the preceding judgements in 2013, with some harsh words for the US publishers' expectation that it was their right to control global pricing to enforce different prices in different regions of the world and to try to block trade in these lower-priced products across other countries. One comment by the judges was that second hand car sales across different countries would become impossible if such conditions were applied given the quantity of copyrighted computer code contained within modern cars.
This practice is also in extreme contrast to the plea by Francis Gurry, the Director-General of WIPO, for a world that could not only provide a seamless global environment for copyright and the trade in creative goods, ensuring that creators can be rewarded for their work, but could also leverage the potential for digital media to democratise culture. The point is that the fragmentation if markets that is caused by this practice, runs counter to the fluidity and flexibility of modern markets and their technologies.
An Imperial Hangover
This territorial dispensation in the publishing industry in the English-speaking world has its roots in an imperialist/ colonial hangover entrenched in the early 20th century. Early copyright law in the colonial context incorporated 'Imperial Copyright', which assumed British control over publication and dissemination in the colonial empire. In this environment, copyright legislation functioned to protect the consumption of British copyright products in colonial subject territories. This thinking was carried over into national legislations when ex-colonies, such as South Africa, drew up their own copyright laws in the form of 'His Majesty's Imperial Copyright Act', as the 1911 Act was named. The purpose was to protect and perpetuate the dominance of British goods across all its dominions.
The ongoing history of this story of colonial dominance is quite extraordinary in terms of the casual assumptions that underpin it. In 1947, an updated version of this 'ownership' of colonial markets was entrenched in the British Traditional Market Agreement (BTMA). The agreement, which addressed the growing rivalry between the long-established British publishing industry and the threat of the burgeoning US industry, embodied an understanding brokered between British publishers that they would not license American publishers' books for the British market unless rights were granted to all the colonies or former colonies of Britain, regarded as Britain's 'traditional market'. In other words, Britain behaved as if it 'owned' its colonies and ex-colonies and their markets. An American publisher granting a publication licence to a British publisher would have to extend this licence to these territories, or there would be no deal.
In the same way, a British publisher licensing the UK edition of an African publishers' title would often insist in 'rest of the world' rights, or no deal, something that lingers on to this day.
It is also interesting to note that the date of the BTMA, shortly after World War II places these events in the same time scale as the early foundations of British dominance of the the commercial scholarly journal system were laid by Robert Maxwell and the British Information Services. Control of scholarship and communications was clearly an important strategic imperative in a changing high-technology post-war world, where knowledge was becoming ever more valuable. What needs to be acknowledged now is that any provision for copyright and international trade has to take into account that the world has changed even further and that the book industry is operating in very different circumstances as print and digital publications moves towards greater integration of different media, facing very rapidly changing business models. This makes it even more important to have an open system of international trade in the creative industries.
In the longer run, as the US publishing industry grew in size and strength this became an agreement in which the British claimed a traditional right to markets in its ex-colonies and the US could operate in the large US market, its dependencies and the Philippines. The 'rest of the world' was an open market.
The End of the BTMA – A Shift to Contract
The BTMA became the subject of an anti-trust investigation by the United States Department of Justice in 1974. It was formally 'terminated' in 1976 by British publishers, who subsequently and vehemently insisted that there was no longer a 'gentleman's agreement' to divide up the world markets in this way. However, both sides largely continued these practices through individual licence agreements and contracts, and through the mutually agreed practices of the British and US branches of multinational companies, so that the pattern persisted until at least the end of the 20th century. The prohibition of parallel importation became an important tool in these practices.
Essentially, two dominant publishing powers had agreed to carve up the world market between them, formally or informally. These practices also represented a shift from copyright to contract and licence to control international markets. The anti-competitive aspect of these practices has been vigorously debated in the context of the patenting practices and the 'evergreening' of patents in the pharmaceutical industry, and territorial limitations – or 'geoblocking' – on the release of digital products, but much less in publishing.
The history of the BTMA is illuminating, therefore, because it was simply the most overt form of a scheme that persists into the present: the leverage of scarcity market models for market dominance and the maintenance of high prices wherever possible through a system of 'territorial rights'. yet very few people have paid much attention to this.
Rather than pricing products at the median price across markets and trying to attain affordability together with economies of scale, the publishers preferred to preserve price levels that were as high as possible in their richer Northern markets and then, if desirable or necessary, negotiate special deals for larger markets which could not pay the premium price. In these markets, predominantly in South and East Asian markets, profitability was achieved through very high volume sales at low prices.
The problem of Emerging Economies
In the copyright laws of ex-colonial countries, South Africa included, these territorial practices are protected by the prohibition of parallel importation, carried over from the concept of British imperial copyright. This provision, not required by the WTO's TRIPS Agreement, prohibits the importation of goods licensed by the originating publisher in one country, into another country.
This essentially violates the principle of exhaustion of rights after the first sale, substituting it with ongoing contractual control of price and distribution by the originating publisher. Hence the problem with a South African bookseller wanting to buy the much cheaper Indian editions of US and UK university textbooks into the South African market. The Indian publisher would also face a clause written into the contract for the Indian edition, limiting sales to an agreed territory – in other words, the first sale exhaustion of rights was being over-ridden by contracts and PIR provisions in national legislation.
The Background – What is Parallel Importation?
For those unfamiliar with the terrain, the question of parallel importation arises (when it comes to copyright goods rather than patented products) at the boundaries of copyright law and commercial practice across international markets. It has to do with the granting of 'territorial rights' by one publisher to its own subsidiary, or to another publisher in a different country in order to allow for differential pricing related to affordability in that particular market, as in the Kirtsaeng case.
These rights are not in fact part of copyright law, as the copyright that, according to the Berne Convention, is automatically granted to the author when a work such as a book is created, is recognised and enforceable in every country that has ratified the convention. That applies to most countries in the world. These deals are very dependent on market size and do not necessarily take account of market needs. Given the size of the Indian market, the cost per copy is likely to be low and the selling price much lower than the British publisher price, but still allowing for profits for both parties, given India's population of around 1,4 billion people. An African market may face the same level of need, given poverty levels, but cannot offer the same market size in a single market.
The way in which the differential pricing in these deals is protected is generally provided by legal provisions written into national copyright legislation that prohibit 'parallel importation'. This means that items – in the case that we are studying, primarily books – made in one county under licence from a copyright holder, cannot be sold by booksellers, publishers or other individuals in a second country if that country has parallel import restrictions (PIR) in its legislation (as is the case with most ex-British colonies). This is not a matter of copyright law, which, as we have seen, is global in its scope. Nor are these provisions required by the Berne Convention or TRIPS.
For those unfamiliar with the terrain, what this meant was that as a result of restrictions on parallel importation, a country like South Africa could not buy the much cheaper Indian edition of a UK or US textbook licensed with a a much cheaper sales price in India, for example, with its huge market. Instead, in a country facing protests from students about the cost of education, we had to buy the massively more expensive UK editions of international textbooks. In recent tears the most vociferous objections have come from US college students, enraged at the high prices they have to pay compared to their fellow-students in Asian countries. This has begun to have a serious impact on the college textbook market in the US and internationally, given rising levels of resistance to purchasing books and the growth of digital open textbooks.
The Potential Impact on Publishing Across Africa
These practices also give pause to reflect on the state of cross-country publishing in Africa, on a contact with a colonial legacy of illogical national boundaries. In Africa the market for books has been fragmented by decades of territorial licensing between African publishers and British and US publishers in order to get international market reach for the African publisher. If an African publisher has a title with potential in the wider market, it will most often be licensed to a UK or US publisher, who would claim 'rest of the world' rights, while other African countries would have to buy this UK 'world' edition rather than the original African edition. And so, in the 1990s, for example, the African Literature department at a local university often found itself having to license photocopies of prescribed novels by African authors, as they were simply not readily available in South Africa, or only on special order at unaffordable prices, because British publishers were often reluctant to bother with distribution in as small a market as South Africa, and also because the international edition was simply too expensive.
The questions of first sale and the exhaustion of rights mentioned addressed in s12B of the Bill will effectively undo the prohibition of parallel importation that currently protects these practices and will allow booksellers to order books from the countries and editions that offer the best value.
This market mechanism results in commercial illogicalities. While one could make the assumption that territorial licences are exercised in order to rationalise prices in line with circumstances in different countries, this is by no means always the case. While low prices have often been negotiated for territorial deals in the very large Indian (and other Asian) markets, these deals have not been extended to Africa, where lower prices are much needed, but markets are smaller and more fragmented. Nor do publishers authorisze the sale of cheaper Indian editions into the African market.
Instead, International Student Editions, discretionary lower-cost editions – but more expensive than the Indian versions – are offered by UK and US publishers for some of the larger-volume titles in these markets, and for the rest, students have to pay the full US or UK price for their textbooks – something applying particularly to upper-level specialist textbooks, which tend to be excluded from international rights or discretionary price reductions in these smaller markets.
Another discretionary practice was a British 'charitable' scheme for the provision of heavily discounted books into African markets, the Educational Low-Priced Book Scheme (ELBS). As a charitable initiative, these books were bought at wholesale prices from British publishers and sold in some African countries (excluding South Africa) at very heavily discounted prices. This effectively undermined regional publishing, as publishers in more affluent African countries such as South Africa could not compete with the low pricing levels. And so, for example, as an unintended consequence, an Africa-relevant obstetrics textbook could not sell across African borders in the mid-1990s, as the British edition, with little African relevance, was much cheaper.
While the international publishing industry has long regarded these practices as a natural right, it is interesting to note the tone of the Kirtsaeng vs Wiley judgement, which draws attention to the wide-ranging implications of the overriding of first sale rights in a world in which manufacturing of print and electronic goods takes place across the globe and in which IP rights pertain to a wide array of products. '[T]he Constitution's language nowhere suggests that [the] limited exclusive right should include a right to divide markets or a concomitant right to charge different purchasers different prices for the same book, say to increase or to maximize gain', the judgment argued.
From an IP perspective, this industry manipulation of territoriality raises the further questions of first sale rights and the exhaustion of rights at a national level in the context of the rise of new media and changing market circumstances. The 'first sale right' that was at the heart of the Kirtsaeng case is the right of the purchaser of a copyrighted product to own it fully once it has been legally purchased. This means being able to sell it to someone else, lend it, rent it, or give it away. means Thus, you can sell on not only a book, but also a a CD, or a car stuffed full of computer programmes that you have legally purchased; a library can lend books without worrying about where they were manufactured; and video rental companies can hire out movies. These are free of PIRs. Why are books different? the judges in the Kirtsaeng case asked.
An International View on the Abolition of PIRs – the Case of Australia
Now, with South Africa proposing the abolition of PIR from our copyright legislation, and the Productivity Commission in Australia producing yet another report that argues for the lifting of parallel import prohibitions on books, a closer look is needed at the impact that this has had in other countries: will it lead to higher prices, or set up a more competitive local industry at a time of very rapid digital change? And what impact has the Kirtsaeng case had on changing practices in international trade?
Although publishers (and Australia is no exception in this regard) have tended to raise vehement objections to the lifting of restrictive copyright practices, the questions that have to be asked require a realistic evaluation of the likely impact in the light of current market circumstances. First of all, book markets are currently made up of a mixture of print and digital products, so that a consumer already has the choice to buy a book from a local bookseller, or order a digital version from an overseas provider. The supply chain includes services for printing on demand across national borders, with a digital file in one country being printed – via Lightning Source, for example – in another. Altogether, market possibilities are expanding, but PIRs could threaten this, as is witnessed by the conflict about interrnational pricing of Kindle books.
The biggest fear of publishers appears to be that the removal of PIRs would be that the market would be flooded with very cheap goods, to the detriment of the local publishing industry. The Productivity Commission, after an extensive financial analysis of the market conducted by Deloitte in 2012, concluded that, in a comparison between New Zealand, which removed PIRs in 1998 and Australia, this appeared not to be so. Overall, the finding was that Australian booksellers could have sourced and supplied international trade titles from overseas for less than what they were charged for by Australian publishers. This at a time when Australian book prices were between 20 and 33 per cent higher than the UK for the same titles. Another finding was that 'PIRs 'impose an implicit tax on Australian consumers that largely benefits foreign copyright holders.'Most of all, however, it would be very instructive to evaluate whether there would be greater potential for the expansion of publishing across southern Africa, with the removal of PIRs and the potential for greater cross-country collaboration for market growth using mixed-media strategies.
Overall, it looks as though abolition of PIRs would be of benefit, rather than harming the book trade and its customers. In Africa, I would argue. it would almost certainly increase trade and broaden the reach of African books and other copyright goods across the continent. A detailed study of this tangled web is well overdue.
Donoghue, Peter 2015. Parallel Importation and Australian Publishing: Here we Go Again. The Conversation (blog article) https://theconversation.com/parallel-importation-and-australian-book-publishing-here-we-go-again-51249 .
Karjiker, Sadulla 2015. The first sale doctrine: Parallel importation and beyond. Stellenbosch University. http://blogs.sun.ac.za/iplaw/files/2016/04/The-first-sale-doctrine-Parallel-importation-and-beyond.pdf
Owen, Lynette Clarke's Publishing Agreements: A Book of Precedents. 9th Edition, 2013. London, Bloomsbury.
Productivity Commission Australia, 201i6. Intellectual Property Arrangements. Productivity Commission Enquiry Report No 78, 23 September 2016. Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia
Rens, Andrew. The Legal Context for Publishing in South Africa and Uganda. In Gray, Eve; Rens, Andrew and Bruns, Karen (2010) Publishing and Alternative Licensing Models in Africa: Comparative analysis of the South African and Ugandan PALM Studies. Ottawa, IDRC, 2010
Shaver, Lea, Copyright and Inequality (February 18, 2014). Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Research Paper No. 2014-3. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2398373


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BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) A British national working at the inaugural European Games was killed in a road crash in Baku.
The Briton, who has not been named, was a passenger in a vehicle driven by an Azerbaijani, who was also killed in the incident on Tuesday, police spokesman Ehsan Zahid said.
Two more British nationals were hospitalized, and receiving consular assistance, British Embassy spokesperson Gunel Ahmedova told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
California-based company FiveCurrents, which is working on the opening and closing ceremonies for the games, said the Briton who was killed had been working for one of its subcontractors, and expressed ''great sadness'' at the death.
''Three other team members also required immediate hospital treatment after the incident, and will be repatriated so they can receive further medical attention,'' FiveCurrents said in a statement released via games organizers.
The incident occurred on an avenue near accommodation for athletes, international media, and foreign games workers, as well as the Olympic Stadium.
European Games chief operating officer Simon Clegg said they were aware of it.
It is the second serious road incident at the games, which end on Sunday. On June 11, three Austrian swimmers were struck by a bus in the athletes' village, leaving one, 15-year-old Vanessa Sahinovic, with severe spinal injuries.

subset: commoncrawl


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James Leigh Joynes
It was largely through his brother-in-law J. L. Joynes, Jr. (1853 -1893) that Henry Salt began to meet the more active social reformers of the day. Like Salt, Joynes was a vegetarian and a Shelleyan
Writing in his autobiography My Days and Dreams, Edward Carpenter wrote of J. L. Joynes:
"Joynes and his sister [Catherine Leigh Joynes] were singularly unlike externally, yet singularly alike in the depths of their hearts and in their devotion to each other. Both were tall and long-limbed: she dark, raven-haired, with large eyes and sensitive, somewhat sad, Dante-like profile; he red-haired with high complexion, small bluish eyes, heavy features.
She was intensely emotional, too emotional, but — as such people often are — highly musical; and her literary gift was certainly one of the most remarkable I have known — though unfortunately, except in her letters, rarely utilized.
He was intensely logical, concentrated, determined — though underneath ran a strong current of poetic feeling — as witness his little book of excellent verses On Lonely Shores (1892).
Both of them did good work in connection with the Socialist and Labour movement, he more especially by lecturing and writing for the Social Democratic Federation and other such organizations; and she rather more by personal sympathy and helpful friendship towards the rank and file of the workers; both of them were devoted lovers of Nature, and of a natural plain way of life; and their devotion to each other only ended with his too early death in 1893."
Henry Salt's tribute can be read here.


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Medical malpractice kills 500 times more Americans than accident
Those running the show would have us believe guns are a problem, but what about those we see for medical care,,,,,, it appears our medical providers are an even bigger problem.
As always the full story at the link.
Medical malpractice kills 500 times more Americans than accidental gun deaths… we need DOCTOR control
Wednesday, September 26, 2018 by: Isabelle Z.
Tags: bad doctors, bad medicine, badhealth, badmedicine, causes of death, Dangerous Medicine, gun control, gun deaths, malpractice, malpractice deaths, media shutout, medical error, medical mistakes, medical violence
(Natural News) We've all heard the statistics about accidental gun deaths in the U.S. Many of them are overblown, of course, but even one death is too many. However, when these statistics are put in perspective by comparing them to other types of accidental death, it's even more tragic; medical malpractice kills 500 times more Americans than accidental gun deaths do! Doesn't that mean there should be 500 times more calls for doctor control than gun control?
The shocking data on malpractice deaths is quite solid. It was taken from an eight-year study from the reputable Johns Hopkins University, who found that there are at least 250,000 deaths due to malpractice in America each year. That's bad enough on its own, but CNBC reported that number is actually on the low end as other studies have found such deaths surpass 400,000 per year. Because physicians, coroners, and funeral directors rarely note human errors on death certificates and these are what the CDC relies on to post death statistics, such cases are dramatically underreported. Either way, it's safe to say that a minimum of 250,000 people die from medical malpractice each year.
How many people die accidentally at the hands of a gun each year? 500. Again, 500 lives lost is still devastating, but it's clear that a disproportionate amount of public outrage is directed toward guns compared to doctors who make mistakes. Even when you look at overall gun deaths rather than just accidental ones – throwing homicides and suicides into the mix as well – you'll get figures like 2015's 36,000. Two thirds of those, by the way, were suicides. So even when you consider intentional gun deaths, the number of malpractice deaths each year is still seven times higher.
Top U.S. scientists forced to resign over allegations of corrupt
This story relates to the science involved in the medical industry, but the corruption are rampant across the field including climate change. You have to remember that many of these scientists are paid by government grants and in an effort to remain employed they give the results desired by their bosses.
The balance of the article is at the link below.
Top U.S. scientists forced to resign over allegations of corruption and false studies
Wednesday, September 26, 2018 by: Tracey Watson
Tags: badmedicine, badscience, Brian Wansink, citizen science, Collapse, conflicts of interest, Gilbert Welch, Jose Baselga, junk science, real investigations, science, science clowns, scientific integrity, truth
(Natural News) Integrity and incorruptibility are qualities that we have every right to expect from the pillars of the scientific community. Shockingly, however, these pillars seem to be crumbling right before our eyes.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) recently reported that two of the most prominent scientists in the United States have been pressured to resign in the past few days, after it was reported that their methods revealed both their lack of integrity and susceptibility to corruption. (Related: The scientific fraud pandemic; few honest scientists remain.)
How the mighty have fallen
One of the most respected scientists in his field, José Baselga, chief medical officer at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is the published author of hundreds of articles featuring the most cutting-edge cancer research. The New York Times called him "one of the world's top breast cancer doctors" and "a towering figure in the cancer world."
On 8 September, two mainstream media publications – The New York Times and Pro Publica – revealed that Baselga had failed to disclose the fact that he had received millions of dollars from Big Pharma and medical corporations.
Scientists and researchers are expected to reveal this type of conflict of interest, since links between pharmaceutical or medical companies and scientists can bias a researcher's methods and results. Unfortunately, scientific journals do not investigate to establish these types of ties, relying on the scientists themselves to be honorable and reveal them. (Related: Scientific fraud published in reputable medical journals has soared more than 1,700 percent since 2004, says report.)
Having failed to disclose his links to Big Pharma and being outed by the media, Baselga tendered his resignation on September 13.
Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at the Ivy League Cornell University, sent the next shock-wave through the scientific community. Wansink became famous for his work examining the health effects of pizza and what affects the appetites of children. His Cornell bio calls him "a leading expert in changing eating behavior – both on an individual level and on a mass scale — using principles of behavioral science." It adds that he is the author of two books which have been translated into 25 different languages, as well as over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles.
Then, last year, investigators raised the alarm about what AFP refers to as the "surprisingly positive results in dozens of his articles." Messages he sent to a researcher encouraging her to edit her findings to remove results that might cause an upset and "go viral," were also leaked to the media.
After a year of intensive investigation, the university announced last week that Wansink's methodology and results were problematic and that he was guilty of "academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data, problematic statistical techniques, failure to properly document and preserve research results, and inappropriate authorship."
Wansink has announced that he will resign at the end of the academic year, and the university has revoked his teaching privileges with immediate effect. In addition, although he has denied all accusations against him, 13 of Wansink's published articles have been retracted by scientific journals.
The tip of the iceberg
Not arguing the information
Not arguing the information re Soros and his WW2 collaboration life phase/survive and prosper strategy.
But when you use a Q source, you're accessing an "educate-the-masses" cum "jolly-along-the-maga-supporters-while-little-material-change-is-really-happening" propaganda project.
So, the specific info nugget referred to may be accurate, but the source used is far from neutral and is designed to protect the new administration from sentiment change resulting from its non delivery of change.
Thus over reliance on Q sourced info will slowly shift your perceptions from a solid objective base towards a Trump sympathetic one.
In my humble opinion this creates (if one is to retain balance of perception) a need to then read a little more NYT or HuffPo to redress tilted sources present in the inventory of incoming information, and while their book reviews or cooking columns might be good, objectivity retention becomes more slippery with increased volume of all public arena information taken in.
Q in other words is a boomer pacification project, and an attempt to pass on 1950s-80s actual news to people born after the boomer period to boost the Republican-military demographic and at the same time (informationally speaking) to erode or reduce growth of the Democrat-anti-military-millennial educational system working on youth, by hooking web "autists" etc puzzle solving and gaming enthusiasm to figure these vague announcements out and teach them right wing doubts of socialism, communism, things Democrat etc, get them to read about JFK's death, and so on.
In my humble opinion its not neutral, though your point is absolutely valid.
It is impossible to know when
It is impossible to know when the End Times have started, yet that does not prevent people from trying.
Is it wrong to be a false prophet?
Is it wrong to listen, knowing in advance that this is not a prophet, nor an access to truth any more than to roll a die is.
Yet we can't stop it, being human and wanting to know such important things, moreover to tell others, and at the same time push our own agenda. In short to use people by the words of The Bible .
But you won't stop, and can't stop. Will you admit it though?
@ Happy Now!
Great post!
You ask: "Is it wrong to be a false prophet?" It has never been "right' or good and one who is, is in big spiritual trouble. There have been false ones from the beginning and even multitudes of them today. It is difficult to stop the madness, as they say "the Lord spoke to me or Jesus appeared to me". It is their testimony. They are on dangerous ground.
For many, the safest position is to "have eyes to see and ears to hear", watching the events of the world and the Kingdom of God, backed by having "Christ within", knowing His Voice and following Him only. In this position, one could give an opinion, on a spiritual subject, not backing it up as "prophet Jones", but letting the hearer or reader know that this is "jmo".
The real prophets are not welcome in the assemblies of men and demons. The O.T. prophets, the ones sent by the Lord, were usually killed by the clergy of the day and the real ones today are "outside the camp". The days are coming when true prophets will come forth, giving a clear message of repentance, calling the assemblies to true separation from the world and the man made divisions of religion. Tribulations will come quickly and this will wake up a sleeping Body for "who so ever will". Yes, jmo. Jim
I heard every word he said
I heard every word he said
I wish I didn't.
Always with the negative waves ... those negative waves ... think positive Nana! The globalists are living in their own worst nightmare now. It's all coming apart for them.
its all coming apart
Hi AM good to see a post or two from you :-)
Is it coming apart because what they are trying to accomplish is not natural, even though they think it is natural?
Perhaps its not nice to fool with mother nature and there is a self correcting force?
Maybe the pendulum is about to swing the other way?
AMAZING science lesson from Adams: Environmentalists declare war
The entire story can be read at the provided link.
AMAZING science lesson from Adams: Environmentalists declare war on photosynthesis in stupefying effort to exterminate all recognizable life on planet Earth
Friday, December 07, 2018 by: Mike Adams
(Natural News) We were all taught how photosynthesis works in high school… or at least you should have been taught how it works. Photosynthesis is arguably the single most important metabolic process on the planet, and it is from this process that nearly all complex life is sustainted.
Photosynthesis is a process by which plants produce metabolic energy. Using this energy combined with elemental materials pulled from air and soil, they build tree trunks, food crops, leaves, pollen, seeds, stems and everything you've come to associate with living plants. Even alga use photosynthesis to grow and divide, which is why microalgae such as spirulina require sunlight to flourish.
Photosynthesis is the foundation of most food webs on the planet. Any rational scientist would agree that if photosynthesis were halted, nearly all recognizable life on planet Earth would be exterminated. This is inarguable.
Photosynthesis has three inputs:
1) Sunlight – a source of light energy
2) Carbon dioxide – an essential source of carbon, used by plants to build almost everything that plants need
3) Water – used by plants to maintain structure, circulate metabolic nutrients, etc.
Why do these three inputs matter so much? Because environmentalists have declared WAR on two out of those three: Sunlight and carbon dioxide.
Environmentalists are at war with photosynthesis and all plant life on planet Earth


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Bicentennial Park is part of the Sydney Olympic Park Grounds. In the year 2000, Sydney hosted the Olympic Games and to prepare for this, a large indoor and outdoor sporting establishment was constructed, including various public areas, athlete accommodation and multifunction centres. Bicentennial Park is included in this large feature, which is now used for other sporting, cultural and arts events which require a large space and easy public access.
Today, visitors are welcomed to enjoy the green oasis in this primarily residential and industrial western suburb. Bicentennial Park offers tours of the area, environmental education programs, and a range of recreation activities for all ages. The park has ample space for picnicking, ball games, wetland walks and bird-watching. It also contains a very popular track for cycling, water features, and special monuments. Address: Australia Avenue, Sydney Olympic Park NSW, 2127.


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Should indicted ex-Delray commissioner keep seat on county health care board?
The Post's Joe Capozzi reported Thursday that criminal charges against former Delray Beach City Commissioner Angeleta Gray could jeopardize her position on the Palm Beach County Health Care District Board.
It seems Gray, who was appointed to the seven-member board by the County Commission in March 2013, is telling county commissioners that she wants to retain the post and plans to fight the two misdemeanor charges.
"I spoke to Ms. Gray and she indicated to me that she was going to contest the charges. So, my inclination is let her have her day in court because she said she is fully fighting the charges," Commissioner Steven Abrams told Capozzi on Wednesday.
The Palm Beach County state attorney on April 23 charged Gray with one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the state's gift law, both misdemeanors, in connection to a vote she cast on a city contract in December while serving on the city commission.
The day after prosecutors filed charges, Nicholas Romanello, the health care district's general counsel, asked county officials whether the county might rescind Gray's appointment.
Romanello said he reached out after he had "been in touch with a number of health care district commissioners who expressed varying degrees of concern" about Gray's position.
Romanello would not identify the district commissioners who expressed concern to him.
Under state law, three of the district's board members are appointed by the County Commission and three are appointed by the governor. The director of the county's health department is also required to serve.
Assistant County Administrator Jon Van Arnam said he has been meeting with individual commissioners this week to make them aware of the district's inquiry.
County commissioners can rescind any board appointment at any time. Gray's district post is not on the agenda for the commission's next meeting, which is Tuesday, but there's a chance an individual commissioner could raise the issue that day.
"She serves at the will of the board and, as with all appointments to any board, (commissioners) can remove people any time they choose. We don't have any indication at this point that they intend to do that," Van Arnam said.
County Mayor Priscilla Taylor, who said she also spoke to Gray, said she thinks the commission should wait until Gray's legal proceedings end before they consider whether she should be removed.
An arraignment hearing is scheduled for May 22.
"She told me she didn't feel she was guilty of anything, so I guess it's innocent until proven guilty," Taylor said.


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Angela over at The Teacher's Desk 6 is hosting a great giveaway to celebrate her resent milestones! I hope you stop over and enter to win a great prize pack. I have donated my March Bundle for her giveaway.
Tried it Tuesday {Stretching my copy limit}
Angela over at The Teacher's Desk 6 is hosting a great giveaway to celebrate her resent milestones! I hope you stop over and enter to win a great prize pack. I have donated my March Bundle for her giveaway.
10 comments
I remember all too well those dreaded copy restrictions. Luckily for me, I have a copy located directly across the hall. I literally walk 6 feet outside my door and there is the love of my school life--the copier. The paper is supplied for me right there, and we have no copy code of shame. I'll take a moment of silence just for you and your copy woes. :)ReplyDelete
Thanks for the shoutout, Jessica! I love your ideas for saving paper. I bought your bundle during the recent TpT sale(LOVE IT) and am planning on using a passage this week. I'm going to try printing it as you did. I like the idea of having it all on one page. Thanks!ReplyDelete
I love doing half sheets! I usually send off my copies for the next year in April - just the tests and anything I know I will be using. This time around I want to send all my half sheets too. I've never heard of fan and pick. Great idea!ReplyDelete
Oh man those copy restrictions!! We don't technically have one just yet but I am sure we will in the near future as we have been starting to get warned more frequently...right now it is watched and you might get an evil eye if you do too much paper copying!! :) Love the idea of reducing the size of the image to be on a half sheet of paper...never would have thought of that! Thanks for sharing! :)ReplyDelete
Learning to the Core
We don't have a limit, but we get a big finger wag when we start using "too many." Except we don't really know what that number is.......... it's kind of a pain.ReplyDelete
It could be worse... We aren't even allowed to make our own copies at my school! Apparently everyone went a little copy crazy. Now we have to turn in our copy requests at least 48 hours in advance for an assistant to do for us. They keep track of our numbers in our personal copy folders. For last-minute and forgotten resources, I have to use my printer. I do half sheets and use the "draft" setting to conserve my ink. What a pain!!ReplyDelete
I've never made half sheets, but I have cut up worksheets to make as task cards or to use for Scoot. I like the half sheet idea! Our school has a limit, but we've never been told we can't make copies, so it must be pretty large. We have so many required district assessments that are multiple pages, so I guess they put it in the budget. :)ReplyDelete
Head Over Heels For Teaching
You are so creative in stretching that copy limit! Even if there wasn't a limit, it is always nice to know other ways we can be more Earth friendly. :) Thanks so much for linking up!ReplyDelete
Fourth Grade Flipper
I do the same thing. We get a box of paper a semester...ReplyDelete
Simply 2nd Resources
We get our copies counted too... a few years back we got quarterly updates... sometimes the number was a little shocking! Lately, administrators are too busy to keep track or inform us but they do often remind us to conserve! The "image combination" feature as our copier calls it is the absolute best! We make "half sheets" all the time... our kids actually use that lingo when describing papers!ReplyDelete
:) Here's to a lower copy count!
My Shoe String Life.


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Several years ago we traveled to England's countryside and met a gentleman who showed us his rose garden. He was proud of its beauty, and it gave him immense pleasure to share this treasure with friends and surprise visits from people like us. The roses were some of the largest and richest in color we had seen. The attention he gave to each one reminded us of a kindly grandfather taking care of a grand child. He took time with each rose and talked to it as if it were a living person. In doing so, his life was rich and joyful.
Attention is what gives life meaning and a range of emotions that color your experiences. How you pay attention can determine the quality of your very life. When you learn to increase the power of attention, it can create deeper relationships, develop less reactivity, more humor and satisfaction with each day.
But, attention is fragile and must be nurtured like a rose garden. We can ask if there are things we need to let go of in 2015 to be able to nurture ourselves better? Rather than being in pursuit of something, can we take time to pay attention to our inner spirit and nourish it? What would it be like for you to slow down to the best version of yourself?
To be more aware of your inner life, some time in mindfulness meditation or prayer slows the internal chatter so you can hear your higher self. Then you can experience more elevated emotions such as love, joy, gratitude for the simple things in life. This practice expands consciousness to the level of wisdom and understanding that all minds are connected and omnipresent. You have great capacities to be personally aware, to receive information about people you focus on, to fulfill your higher destiny.
Upcoming Events
Bill and Carol will be offering a once per month group experience in Consciousness Exploration with hypnosis, remote viewing, and mindfulness meditation. When you discover your innate capabilities, you will be astounded. Ceu's will be available for clinicians. Watch for details.
We wish you a wonderful February!
Carol and Bill


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(Reuters) - Briton Jamie Murray believes his doubles victory at Queen's with Brazilian Bruno Soares has given the pair a much-needed boost ahead of next week's Wimbledon as the duo target their third grand slam title.
Murray and Soares, who also won in Stuttgart earlier this month, beat France's Julien Benneteau and Edouard Roger-Vasselin 6-2 6-3 to claim their sixth tour title together on Sunday.
The pair, who won the Australian Open and the U.S. Open last year, are now looking ahead to Wimbledon, where they reached the quarter-finals in 2016.
"It's big for us to win at Queen's, one of the strongest fields in the year... and it gives us great confidence ahead of Wimbledon," Jamie, the elder brother of world number one singles player Andy Murray, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"But on Monday (at Wimbledon) everyone starts from the same position... but we are one of the favorites for the tournament and we will do as well as we can."
The 31-year-old Murray said his relationship with Soares has grown over the past 18 months and the duo are looking to finish the season strongly.
"We practice together, play our matches and even recovery together — it's a 24-hour partnership," said Murray. "Of course it helps that we have a good relationship as we spend all our days together.
"We have been playing together for 18 months now and hope we keep playing together and finish the year as strong as we can."
Last year, Andy and Jamie became the first brothers to top the world rankings in singles and doubles at the same time.
The pair have played together on tour and represented Britain at the Davis Cup but have never appeared together at a grand slam.
With Judy Murray recently tipping her sons to "have a crack at Wimbledon" before the end of their careers, Jamie also refused to rule out the possibility of teaming up with his younger brother.
"One day we might play together at Wimbledon but that depends on Andy's singles career," Murray said. "I don't know when that might happen but at the moment I'm happy playing with Bruno."
Jamie Murray was talking to Reuters as a part of IBM's technology event ahead of next week's Wimbledon.
Writing by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Davis


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Obama has yet to visit half the states won by John McCain in 2008
President Obama's visit to Kokomo, Ind., this week brought him back to a small Midwestern town that he visited once before in April 2008 and to a state that Obama has visited at least four times since his stunning win there two years ago.
But while Indiana has gotten plenty of love from the president, there are still a number of states that Obama has not visited during his term, the majority of them firmly in Republican territory.
According to The Washington Post's POTUS Tracker, which keeps tabs on the president's daily schedule, there are a dozen states that Obama has yet to visit as president. Eleven of those were won by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) by wide margins in 2008 -- including eight that McCain won by double-digits -- meaning the president has not visited half of the 22 states that McCain carried two years ago.
The list includes Oklahoma, McCain's second-best state and the only one in the country where Obama lost every county. But it also includes Vermont, Obama's second-best state and one of several where he won every county. (With the exception of Vermont, Obama has visited all of the 27 other states he carried in 2008.)
In addition, of the five states that trended more Republican in 2008 than in 2004 -- Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia -- Obama has visited only Louisiana and West Virginia.
The states Obama has not visited are concentrated in two main regions of the country: the Great Plains, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma; and the South, including Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Two Rocky Mountain States -- Idaho and Utah -- have not hosted the president. Vermont is the only northeastern state that makes the list.
Some states, by contrast, have seen a flurry of presidential visits over the past 22 months. Since becoming president, Obama has made at least 12 separate visits to Ohio, nine to Pennsylvania and Florida, eight to Illinois and seven to California.
It's worth noting that Obama's travel schedule, especially over the past several months, has been dictated in large part by this year's midterm elections. Obama himself vowed to stump for candidates in states where he thought he could be most helpful, and the White House deployed him judiciously over the course of the campaign. Most of the states where Obama has made multiple visits had Democrats were locked in high-stakes, competitive Senate or gubernatorial races.
Asked about the states Obama has yet to visit, White House spokesman Josh Earnest noted that many of them simply didn't have races this year that rose to the level of presidential involvement. Earnest also noted that, in covering 38 states so far, the president has visited more than 1.5 states per month during his 22 months in office.
"That's a decent pace, but I do think that the president will spend even more time outside of Washington in the next two years," the official said.
Felicia Sonmez
| November 24, 2010; 3:11 PM ET
Categories: Governors, House, Senate, White House
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2016. It's dangerous to call it 'significant', 'world-changing', blah, too soon, but 2016 is shaping up as the year when not only have a key number of western cultural icons have joined the Great Majority, but Brexit and Trump seem to have reconfigured our political landscapes. We are, for example, often told we're in a post-truth, post-welfare culture.
Like everyone I'm trying to process recent events, and I'm mostly failing. In my bewilderment I've reached for a wee bit of history. Truth is, despite a life-long fascination with history, I'm no pro-level historian. Please bear that in mind, as you read on. (Though, in our post-truth world, maybe I should just claim to be 'the World's Greatest Historian'!! ;-))
Memory tells me that one classic way of dividing European/Western-centric political history is to claim that the '19th Century' 'begins' in 1815 (with Waterloo) and the 20th century in 1914 (with the outbreak of the Great War). Clearly, these dates are euro-centric and arbitrary. What, after all, is 'a Century'? However, they suggestively indicate the way 'reading history' creates undertows and overlaps as well as drawing on key, focal events.
Thus, 1914. Clearly, there were any number of artistic and cultural moments which anticipate and were already constructing 'the 20th Century' before 1914. Modris Ecksteins' famously takes the 'riot' at the first performance of Stravinsky's The Rites of Spring in 1913 as a performance of 20th century subjectivities; equally, one can 'read' Literary Modernisms in texts long before Eliot and Pound's post-war 'triumph'. The violences of 1914 were already anticipated in the imperial adventures of the European powers.
However, there are some grounds for claiming that 1914 signals a key blow to the Meliorist fantasy of cultural-political progress and continuity. Yes, pre-1914 was hardly the settled aspic of Edwardian lawns and white frocks it is sometimes presented as, but '14-18 was arguably a catastrophe for the European Imperial mind. Some have suggested that, for example, the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 was the last moment of the Victorian era. Yes, this does rather 'read' history one way – overstating war and violence, buying into certain kinds of politics – but it is suggestive.
So, 2016. Is it a kind of watershed? Does it signal that the 21st century has taken place? I guess the answer is – as ever – possibly. It signals something. It may be that it signals the last flicker of the horrible racist-patriarchal dream of 'The Old White 'Strong' Man' who offers a fearful bargain – 'protection' in exchange for 'submission'. Perhaps that cultural imaginary is at its most dangerous when it is most wounded. And it is (arguably) wounded. But equally it may signal the end of one kind of neo-liberal (Whiggish?) fantasy of consensus and progress – that 'history' flows in one direction, a progressive one. (As many have suggested, if we're serious about rights, respect, justice etc. now may indeed be the time to organize, etc.). Some of the assumptions of the 20th century seem to have been exposed.
Equally, the death of a whole bunch of western cultural/pop culture icons in the past year or so indicates the death of one version of the 20th Century's ideas about cultural production. The likes of Bowie and Cohen – productions of the 20th Century - are going.
As 20th Century artistic productions disappear, so equally a number of 20th century referents become seemingly less available. In no order of significance, these include:
Earning a living as artist/musician/writer.
Having an 'ordinary' job that might generate a decent pension or enough to buy a house or even to be able to rent a house and save a bit.
A belief that society should care for the weakest and most vulnerable, including those displaced across borders.
A commitment to the claim that 'compassion' (after the serial violences of 20th century wars) is foundational for society, and so on.
These were just a few of the beliefs I feel the 20th century communities I was raised in held (for good or ill) as valuable and significant. And, yes, I know that as a European and and a Brit I speak from privilege and am taking a culturally-privileging position, but…
2016. The year the 21st Century took place?


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Fermeture du portail BDSP le 1er juillet 2019. En savoir plus...
Social inequalities in the experience of illness in Sweden : a "double suffering".
SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL MEDICINE, vol. 24, n° 2, 1996, pages 81-89, 30 réf., ISSN 0300-8037, SWE
Karolinska Institute. Department of International Health and Social Medicine. Unit of Social Medicine. Sundbyberg. SWE
This paper analyses the factors involved in differences in the experience of long-term illness (severe and non-severe illness), as measured in terms of self-reported frequency and intensity of symptoms.
The study has a cross-sectional design.
It uses a database from the Survey of Living Conditions of Statistics Sweden, and treats a representative sample of the employed Swedish population (n=13,501), aged between 16 and 65, interviewed over the period 1986-89.
The results show that male manual workers report more non-severe and severe illness than non-manual workers, and that manual and lower-level non-manual female workers report more severe illness, but not non-severe illness, than intermediate/higher-level non-manual working females.
The observed class differences in experience of severity of illness are partly explained by the factors investigated (job demands, personal economic difficulties, smoking daily, weak social network) in the case of men, and virtually entirely in the case of women.
Other ill-health dimensions, such as self-rated general health and impaired working capacity, prove to be related to severity of illness, the latter being more strongly associated with experience of severe illness than the former irrespective of social class.
The results lend support to the hypothesis that manual classes are subjected to what might be called « double suffering » ; they have more long-term illnesses and also experience these illnesses with greater inte...
Mots-clés BDSP : Inégalité sociale, Facteur socioéconomique, Classe sociale, Autoévaluation, Morbidité, Epidémiologie, Suède, Europe, Homme, Etat santé
Mots-clés Pascal : Inégalité, Santé, Catégorie socioprofessionnelle, Statut socioéconomique, Classe sociale, Autoévaluation, Morbidité, Indice gravité, Epidémiologie, Suède, Europe, Homme
Mots-clés Pascal anglais : Inequality, Health, Socioeconomic category, Socioeconomic status, Social class, Self evaluation, Morbidity, Severity score, Epidemiology, Sweden, Europe, Human
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Code Inist : 002B30A01A2. Création : 199608.


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Pet Heroes: Fireman
Pet Heroes: Fireman - забаваная игра для детей, в которой они будут выполнять обязаности пожарника.
Yoo-hoo! It is the pet city that can totally fascinate you with its stunning beauty. Blue sky, green grasses, murmuring stream…whatever emerges in the fairyland does exist in this city. On top of that, several brave firemen are living here, they are the super heroes who keep this beautiful place safe.
You know our heroes never let their guard down in case people may need them at any time. Look~ the building here and the forest there both are on fire. And what's going on with the workers on the road? Oops, a big tree is in the way and they can't move it. What a tough nut to crack! Hey, a helpless kid is crying under the tree because his kite got stuck there. Whoa~ looks like our firemen are gonna be as busy as bees. Could you please give them a hand? To fight with them and to be a member of them!
Beep~ Beep~ the truck is standing by. Pretty cool, huh? Along the road, you can enjoy the fun of driving as well as the beauty of the city. Shh~ that's the sound of the alarm! Honey, let's move!
Open the game, slide the pets and choose one to get the ball rolling. See~ the truck is ready there, you can easily start it by pulling the "Handle" on the right. And never forget the tips: pull up to speed up, and pull down to slow down. And take it easy if you are driving in the reverse direction, click the "Blue Arrow" to make a "U-turn". There you go! Oh, no, watch out for the street lamp! Just slide left or right to control the direction! Phewww~ that was close! Well, have you noticed the "Steering Wheel" on the top? Take a shot at tapping it! It's gonna be fun! Hey, listen~ alarm! Check the radar on the top right and get to the scene ASAP. Come on! Full speed ahead! When you are driving, keep an eye out for the "Sign" which pops up from the left. It may tell you someone is in trouble at this very moment, just click it or stop the truck to figure things out. Aha! A talented kid like you deserves the "Loving Hearts", with which you can exchange for medals. Sweetheart, you are born to be a hero. It's time to go with your partner and save the city out of danger!
- 6 brave and lovely pets to stand by you;
- 11 mini-games fascinate you with its non-stop fun;
- Enjoy driving the cool truck;
- Collect more loving hearts to exchange for fabulous medals;
- Fun-filled animations perfectly meet kids' favor;
- 3D-vision brings you into a wonderland.
|Понравилась игра, приложение или новость? Поделитесь ссылкой с друзьями :)
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Cumene is a colorless, flammable, hydrocarbon liquid. It is part of the aromatic family and has a distinctive odor. Cumene is primarily used as a feedstock in the manufacture of phenol.
Production InformationMPC has cumene production capacity at its Catlettsburg refinery (Kentucky). Cumene is made by combining benzene and propylene feedstocks in the presence of a SPA (solid phosphoric acid) catalyst.
TransportationMPC transports cumene via barge and transport truck to Midwest and U.S. Gulf Coast customers.
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i just fell over a lexus v8 site lucifer, i think its called lextreme. the site is totally devoted to the toyota v8. you probably already know about it but just thought you might want to know.
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AtMasa Sushi
near the Johnson Space Center, I considered six slices of yellowtail that had been lightly seared and topped with a little bit of fresh jalapeño. The sashimi sat in a pool ofyuzu
Masa Sushi
977 NASA Parkway, 281-486-9888.
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; noon to 11 p.m. Sundays.
Texas jalape�o yellowtail: $11.95
Crazy sashimi: $9.95
Skydiver roll: $10.25
Bento box chicken dinner: $15.95
Surf clam sushi: $1.50
citrus juice and soy sauce on a strikingly modern white plate. It all looked very familiar.
I folded a slice in half with my chopsticks so as not to lose any of the chile peppers, then popped it in my mouth. First I tasted the salty soy and the sour yuzu (an Asian citrus fruit), and then the buttery hamachi, which began to dissolve with little encouragement from my molars. The jalapeño added crunch and pepper flavor, but surprisingly, I didn't detect any heat.
Masa's Texas jalapeño yellowtail is a spectacular "new style" sashimi presentation. I could eat about ten orders of the stuff. When we put the empty plate aside, Michael Zhou, the head sushi chef and owner, asked us how we liked it.
"Better than Nobu's," I told him. He blinked at me for a second in disbelief.
"You have been to Nobu?" he asked incredulously.
"Yeah, the one in Dallas," I said.
"There's one in Dallas? I have to go," he said. And then he whispered, "I learned this dish from Nobu." As it dawned on him that he seemed to be claiming to be Nobu's apprentice, he corrected himself. Actually, he'd copied the dish from one of Nobu's cookbooks, he told us.
This is no surprise. After all, Nobu Matsuhisa is one of the most influential and imitated sushi chefs in the world. He popularized the whole concept of new-style sashimi, in which slices of raw fish are flash-cooked and served with sauce and condiments. And jalapeño yellowtail is probably the most famous of the lot.
I love new-style sashimi, and I'm glad to see it on Houston sushi bar menus. And I wasn't kidding when I said I liked Chef Michael's version better. Nobu gets $18 for yellowtail with jalapeños. Mike charges only $11.95.
Sure, Chef Michael is borrowing other people's ideas -- what do you expect from a Clear Lake restaurant called Masa Sushi? I've never been to the famous Masa Sushi in New York, which is considered by many to be the best sushi restaurant in the country. But I know that master sushi chef Masa Takayama charges a straight fee of $300 per person for the chef's omakase lunch or dinner, and that a reservation for the 26-seat restaurant must be made weeks, if not months, in advance.
You can pop into Masa Sushi on NASA Parkway without a reservation seven days a week, although the restaurant was crowded on the Friday night of our first visit. There was a half-hour wait for a table, but there were places available at the sushi bar. So three of us sat at the three stools closest to the sushi chef.
"Those are the best seats in the house," a woman eating from a bento box a few stools away told us. "You can see everything he's doing."
One of my dining companions quizzed her about her bento box dinner. The ornate lacquered box, which is divided into compartments, often serves as both a plate and a carrying case for Japanese lunches. But at Masa Sushi, the shiny box is also used for combination dinners.
Lunch boxes come with a salad, steamed rice and your choice of entrée. The dinner combination comes with a salad, steamed rice and tempura shrimp on a skewer. With this you can get your choice of four entrées: chicken teriyaki, chicken katsu, pork katsu, or sushi and sashimi selections. (Katsu, or East-West sauce, may sound exotic, but don't be too impressed; it's made with ketchup, mustard and Worcestershire sauce.)
But there isn't much point in sitting at a sushi bar and ordering tempura, so we tried to stick with sushi. Chef Michael prepared an order of giant clam sashimi by slicing tiny fingers along the edge of a thin slice. To serve it, he threw the piece of clam violently against the serving plate. When he did, the little fingers curled up and waved at us.
"It's alive!" one of my companions gasped.
"No, it's just the nerves," Michael said, leaned over to reassure her. "But it is very fresh." The clam sashimi was sweet and chewy, with a wonderful flavor. My dining companions had become addicted to the citrus-soy sauce served with the jalapeño yellowtail. They dipped their clam in the leftover sauce at the bottom of the dish.
We were all fond of the skydiver roll, which featured a crispy-cooked soft-shell crab rolled up with avocado, onion and cucumber and topped with strips of marinated and broiled freshwater eel. The Cajun roll, with fried oysters and avocado topped with a crawfish cream sauce that resembled étouffée, wasn't very Japanese, but it did taste good.
Most of the other sushi-roll creations on the menu sounded pedestrian. There were quite a few with vegetables, baked fish and smoked fish. And for those who don't trust even smoked fish, the cream-cheesy Philadelphia roll here is made with baked smoked salmon.
But as for the seating, the woman with the bento box was right. From my perch overlooking the chef's left shoulder, I really could see everything he did. And it was quite a show. Chef Michael has several outlandish creations in his repertoire.
For some reason, his beef sashimi presentation reminded me of a Salvador Dalí painting. Maybe it was the weird martini glass with the offset stem that he used to hold the dipping sauce. Or maybe it was because the paper-thin slices of nearly raw beef hanging from the lip of the glass took the shape of Dalí's melting clocks. It looked wacky, but it made my mouth water.
The surreal beef sashimi and the jalapeño yellowtail are two of the seven new-style sashimi items on Masa's menu, which can be found under the heading of "Sashimi Specialties." We tried another dish from this list called new-style flounder sashimi.
The flounder was fresh, silky and absolutely delightful, and the yuzu-soy sauce was quite good as usual. But the topping of minced ginger and raw garlic left a harsh aftertaste in the back of my mouth. My dining companions and I disagreed about this dish. They loved it, pointing out that the seasonings weren't any more assertive than those found in several Thai dishes I've raved about in the past.
It's true. I love fiery food. And in fact, I raved about the Thai sushi chef at Blue Fish and his spicy sushi rolls. So why the double standard? Why would I suddenly take offense to a little raw garlic on my flounder?
When I left, I said a formal good-bye and thank-you to Chef Michael in my only words of Japanese. He didn't give me the usual formal Japanese reply. In fact, he looked at me like I was nuts.
Chef Michael is Chinese, a waiter told me on my second visit to Masa Sushi. One of my dining companions had arrived early and sat at the sushi bar talking with Chef Michael for a while. He reported that Michael used to own Mikado Sushi on Woodway. He sold out after the landlord announced a large rent increase and moved down here.
The restaurant, which is located at the rear of a shopping center, has a beautiful interior with pale wood furniture, muted green walls and subtle bamboo patterns in the Formica and the wallpaper. Four pillars made from natural tree trunks line the walkway to the restrooms.
On this visit, I tried some simple sushi items like tuna, unagi, yellowtail and sea clam, and I found all of them to be adequate but lacking that glistening freshness of superior sushi. One of my dining companions got the tiger's eye roll with smoked salmon, smelt roe, cream cheese and jalapeño, which was fairly boring, in my opinion.
The other ordered a grasshopper roll. According to the menu, the grasshopper roll is stuffed with several varieties of raw fish, along with crabmeat and vegetables. But when it arrived, we noticed that the "crabmeat" was surimi gaudily tinted with red food coloring. Many Houston sushi restaurants advertise "crab" and serve "krab," but it's still a fraud. We sent the grasshopper roll back.
I was determined to try some more of Chef Michael's new-style sashimi creations. Our first visit had convinced me this tiny section of Masa Sushi's extensive menu was the most interesting thing the restaurant had going on.
The wildest-sounding item on the new-style sashimi menu is something called "Oh! Ya! Crazy Sashimi." In this dish, slices of slightly seared white tuna were wrapped up around a filling of crunchy pickled onions and daikon slivers and topped with what looked like chopped cucumbers with minced ginger and garlic. The sashimi enchiladas were sitting in a pool of the same sauce of citrus, soy and oil.
This dish was spectacular. Maybe there wasn't as much raw garlic on this one, or maybe all that pickled onion and radish offset the spices, but for some reason the raw garlic here worked great. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd been just too critical of the flounder.
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Then we got the black pepper tuna sashimi. The tuna had been lightly seared and coated on the outside with black pepper. It was then sliced thin and draped over a martini glass filled with dipping sauce, just like the sashimi beef. The bright red tuna coated with pepper along the edge looked exactly like slices of peppered pastrami in a New York deli. The first bite tasted pretty good. And then the pepper took over. There was so much black pepper on each slice of tuna that I couldn't taste anything else.
That's when I decided that I wasn't crazy after all. Much of the new-style sashimi at Masa Sushi is sensational. But sometimes the innovations are taken a little too far. You can embellish raw fish only so much before the sauces and condiments overwhelm the flavor of the fish.
We finished our second visit with another order of Texas jalapeño yellowtail. I had to see if it was really as good as I remembered. And it was.
Most of the menu at Masa Sushi is designed to appeal to mainstream tastes. But Chef Michael deserves a lot of credit for bringing some cutting-edge innovations to serious sushi fans in the NASA neighborhood. Granted, not all of his experiments work. But when he gets the combination of raw fish and spicy condiments just right, his new-style sashimi takes off like a rocket.


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(Submitted by Helen Hamilton)
The Cotton Ball Treatment
What do you do if your puppy (or mischievous older dog) gets into your holiday decorations and eats some of the glass ornaments? This potentially lethal mishap can darken even the brightest holiday season.
The Procedure
Before, the holiday go to a pharmacy and buy a box of cotton balls. Be sure that you get COTTON balls...not the "cosmetic' puffs" that are made from man made fibers. Also, buy a quart of half and half coffee cream and put it in the freezer.
Should your dog eat glass ornaments, defrost the half and half and pour some in a bowl. Dip cotton balls into the half and half and feed them to your dog.
Dogs under 10 lbs. should eat two balls which you have first torn into smaller pieces. Dogs 10-50 lbs. should eat 3-5 balls and larger dogs should eat 5-7. You may feed larger dogs an entire cotton ball at once. Dogs seem to really like these strange treats and eat them readily.
As the cotton works its way through the digestive track, it will find all the glass pieces and wrap itself around them. Even the teeniest shards of glass will be caught and wrapped in the cotton fibers and the cotton will protect the intestines from damage by the glass. Your dog's stools will be really wierd for a few days and you will have to be careful to check for fresh blood or a tarry appearance to the stool. If either of the latter symptoms appear, you should rush your dog to the vet for a check-up but, in most caes, the dogs will be just fine.
An actual experience, I can personally vouch for the cotton ball treatment. While I was at the vet waiting for him to return from lunch a terrified woman ran in with a litter of puppies who had demolished a wooden crate along with large open staples. The young vet had taken x rays which did show each of the puppies had swallowed several open staples. He was preparing them for surgery when my wonderful vet came in and said no surgery. I watched him wet several cotton balls, squeeze out the water and pop them down their throats. Within 24 hours, every staple was accounted for. This was a lesson I learned in the mid 1960s and have had to use several times on my brats. I wet the cotton balls and smear on some liverwurst and they bolt it down and ask for more. The cotton always comes out with object safely embedded.
"This probably has value" says Pat Kearney, who forwarded this article. "I know feeding a Sheltie bread after it swallowed a sewing needle many years ago, permitted the needle, still threaded, to pass through his system, no damage to the dog".
Teckel Tales, Vol. 21, No. 2 Winter 99/00


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I recently got my hands on a Silhouette SD electronic cutter. It's a little computer-controlled craft robot with very sharp teeth! Use it to cut out designs for all sorts of things: paper crafts and scrapbooking, vinyl lettering, glass and metal etching, stencils, and anything else that involves precision cutting of small planar materials. There's some pretty neat stuff out there: sticky vinyl, flocked vinyl, magnet sheet, even temporary tattoo paper.
I really like this lamp Meg Allan Cole has hanging in her living room– it's the Midsummer Light by Dutch designer Tord Boontje. I found a flat-ish picture of the design online and traced over it in Adobe Illustrator, setting to cut out some delicate flowers. Hit the jump for the results, the rest of the review, and a discount coupon code for the machine.
I then cut the proto-design out of Tyvek (a FedEx mailer, actually), just like Mr. Boontje's delicate yet durable lamp.
I tried a few times to change the speed and cutting depth settings, but the Tyvek was proving difficult. It would snag at sharp corners and the "grain" of the material is course and uneven. I decided to switch to printer paper.
I used my trusty brayer to press the paper super firmly to the carrier sheet. I figured the paper snags were due to poor settings on my part, and I was able to lower their frequency by playing with the speed and cutting depth variables. The settings seem easy to change, but difficult to master: a process of material/settings experimentation that I know well from the last time I cut anything with a laser. The software has setting presets for a few materials they think you're likely to use, which make for good starting points.
Despite the snags, the paper cutout came out a lot cleaner than the Tyvek edition!
Take a look at all those paper pieces stuck to the carrier sheet. Say you trace and cut a design entirely by hand, and it takes you 40 minutes. You could probably draw and cut that design with the Silhouette machine in 20 minutes, but you'll spend the other 20 cleaning up tiny scraps off a sticky pad with tweezers. They use some pretty well-engineered adhesive that holds the whole sheet tight but gives up tiny pieces easily, but not so easily that you can just shake them loose. This is my biggest pet peeve about the Silhouette, but there's away around it: just make adhesive-backed stickers!
I tried using the Silhouette to make some sticky vinyl bike lettering. I used Scotchlite reflective vinyl and looked up the Fuji bike logo font online.
It was easy to adjust the size of the letters and connect to the machine in both Silhouette Studio and Adobe Illustrator with the (unsupported) CraftROBO Illustrator plugin available for PPC Mac (works on Intel with Rosetta) or Windows.
Here's what the interface looks like on the Illustrator plugin.
It took me two tries to get the cutting depth right for the vinyl. The blade cuts through the vinyl but not he backing, so you end up with ready-to-place stickers instead of bits of paper everywhere. This has been my favorite use of the Silhouette so far. I got fast results on some pro-looking bike detailing without too much to clean up.
The Silhouette online store, accessed from within the design software, is generally stocked with shapes and lettering appropriate for scrapbooking or greeting cards, and designs are usually 99 cents. I was able to find some interesting box shapes reminiscent of those found in one of my favorite design books, Structural Package Designs. While I'm not inclined to buy preformatted text graphics to make greeting cards, I'm happy to pay a buck for a rad folding box design that would take me at least 20 minutes to draw up in Illustrator.
Silhouette is running a special promotion through June 29 2011: use promo code CRAFTZINE to get a Silhouette SD machine and 2 packages of temporary tattoo paper for $199, plus 25% off anything else in the Silhouette shop.