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Are you building a community or a club? | Opensource.com
Are you building a community or a club?
I've never been much for clubs. When I was young, I made a lousy cub scout. I wasn't a real "joiner" in high school or college either (just enough to get by) and I still don't get actively involved in many professional associations today.
But I'm a sucker for a noble mission. I find myself getting drawn into all sorts of things these days. Good causes, interesting projects, even big ideas like the reinvention of management all share my extra attention, brainpower, and resources.
I love to contribute to things I believe in.
So why don't I care much for clubs or associations? They are typically groups of people who have come together to support a common purpose. Right?
I believe many of these groups have fallen into the trap of losing touch with the core purpose that brought the initial group of people together in the first place.
They have lost their raison d'etre.
In the beginning, most clubs start off as communities. In fact, the definition of a club is "an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal." Which is pretty similar to this definition of a community: a "self-organized network of people with common agenda, cause, or interest, who collaborate by sharing ideas, information, and other resources."
So what goes wrong? How and why do clubs and associations lose their sense of purpose?
First, let's take a quick look at how a community might grow in an ideal setting. Watch the short animation below before you read on:
A community starts with a core purpose, which draws people together. Some people hold that purpose very closely, while others participate at a distance.
The key is that every member of the community is in orbit around the purpose, whether at the distance of Mercury or the distance of Pluto. They are not in orbit around other community members or community leadership.
People can move in and out of close orbit over time, but there are no walls saying you are either part of the community or not part of it. You can participate to the level of your interest and never worry about getting kicked out. Every contribution helps.
Great communities have people in active, close orbits around the purpose, but also have people in the outer orbits. Great communities are inclusive, recognizing that these folks in the outer orbits are often connectors, well positioned to build relationships with other communities they might also orbit.
Now watch this next animation. It starts the same way, but you'll quickly see where community starts turning into a club.
About a third of the way through, you'll notice that someone get the bright idea to put a wall of membership around the community. Meaning, you are either formally in the community or you are not.
Membership can come in different forms. It could mean mandatory payments or dues. It could mean an application process. Or an initiation. Or hazing. Whatever.
But once the wall of membership is built, the casual participants are shut out. It is no longer easy to lurk on the fringe of the community. Commit or commit not, there is no middle ground.
In my experience, it is when this wall of membership gets constructed that another interesting effect starts to occur:
The event of joining an organization often becomes more important than the purpose of the organization itself.
In some of these club-communities the actual purpose is to get into the club. Once you are in, there is no further purpose beyond simply reveling in your membership with other members. Ah, membership does indeed have its privileges.
In other club-communities, the purpose still exists, but as the animation shows, it becomes less and less important over time as things like control, power, and politics begin to take over.
Eventually, the purpose of the organization becomes simply to perpetuate its own existence. Often, members find themselves orbiting other members—the ones in leadership positions—rather than orbiting a core purpose at all.
These sort of stagnant organizations hold little interest for me.
Now maybe you like clubs more than I do. Maybe you are an extrovert who likes the great parties, luncheons, conferences, etc. and doesn't need to be contributing to a higher cause. If this is you, let me assure you that I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with clubs. They can be a lot of fun. Or so I hear.
But if the real goal is to achieve a core purpose, to make change happen, will a club environment get you there?
A better structure might be to design the community to be as open and inclusive as possible, giving people the opportunity to contribute and benefit at whatever level they see fit. A strong center of gravity around a deeply-held, clearly-expressed core purpose will hold people's attention, keep them in orbit.
Remember the old open source adage: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
Your active, passionate participants will attract more participants, and with enough people contributing, perhaps your community will grow big enough to eventually either achieve its core purpose or at least make significant progress in the right direction.
7 Comments
Following your logic (which I like!!), smart club leaders should think of club as a cause, which makes me think of things I'm passionate about and my involvement with them. If I'm passionate about a cause, I volunteer. So--at their best--clubs should act like causes and treat their members like volunteers. Right now, formal clubs find their "volunteers" at the board member/leadership level. Everyone else is just participating or showing up.
Being involved in a computer club, I find this observation very interesting.
As Laura H. mentions, our "volunteers" are mostly at the board or special interest group level and most everybody else is just participants.
So that begs the question, if Clubs are Communities that put a wall around them (membership), how does one remove the wall while maintaining the order and funding? Or is it one-way?
Once read a guy who defined the limit notion as a space to live, as a space to be habitated, not as a wall, but as a piece of land where people can live, not as a member, neither as a foreigner. This definition of the frontier or limit as "limes" could bring some light. In a practical case, I have no idea, the FOSS community I belongs has no membership, is not a club, and any one can come and participate, may we could make the distinction between volunteers and participants, but without a hierarchy structure has no sense, we just have the benevolent dictator and every one else.
BTW: sweet reflections.
...is because informal groups (i.e., communities) often have a hard time getting members to do the hard work that making a difference in any area provides. Not because they're not interested, exactly, but because people are busy and often figure someone else will do it. By having people "buy in" or in some way feel obligations toward the club, they essentially secure more involvement and loyalty.
IOW, when the Rotary Club does a neighborhood litter clean-up, there's usually quite a crowd. When we send out an email on our community email list to organize one, we get a lot of "Thanks for doing this!" and "What a great idea!"... and about three people who show up on Saturday morning ready to bag up beer cans. :)
This reminds me of one of my biggest lessons as a producer of content. My first film was in competition at Sundance at the close of the 90's...the first film I worked on in 92 brought me their for the first time. Redford started to shine a spotlight on what became a new economy for the entertainment industry "indie film"... but the organization he created that helped birth this new economy...soon became a closed market with the Sundance Institute becoming like a gatekeeper that was not incredibly different than any clique ...and instead of supporting an entire community of indie film...they became the "thumbs up and thumbs down" gatekeepers... soon an industry that could have been wide in it's breadth was asphyxiated by the exclusivity of a community run by self-reinforcing gate keepers. Go look at the numbers of how many films in the last 15 years were in competition at the festival whose filmmakers didn't go through the Sundance lab, have a celebrity, was friends with the fabulous Institute employees themselves.
An initiative whose goal was to raise INDEPENDENT filmmakers became self coiled and instead raised only independent filmmakers who were dependent on the Sundance film festival to give them a thumbs up or down.
There is a better way to develop a market that is wide and shallowly supportive of many... inclusive and creates a wider market dependent on competition and not the selectivity of initially well intentioned organizations whose scale has grown to reinforce their need to be important for its own sake rather than the purpose it was created for.
As we go further into convergence on the web ...we see this same mistaken community structure taking the same path. An organization or community that said something cool in the beginning becomes self important and scaled... weighted down by it's own size and influence and in so doing blocks a larger economy from growing ...and as we saw with indie film... sustaining itself into stagnation.
It was the reason I left NBC and all that behind... the best thing for our economy right now is that the channels, tools and content that stir retail and industry that the web should become ...can not become restricted pipes...via anti-net neutrality, corporate behemoths or self-important industry gatekeepers.
sorry for the rant...very important to me.


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Kit 3 Getting Our Hands Ready Kit
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- Contains 10 hands-on activities designed by a licensed occupational therapist
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- Establishes good habits for learning writing easily
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Designer Rachel Rudman is an occupational therapist with an advanced specialty in pediatrics. She has a bachelors degree in Psychology and a Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy. In her private practice, where she works with children ages 2-14, she helps parents and teachers with topics such as early hand development and sensory integration. The activities in the Grasshopper Preschool Prep Kits are based upon years of successful experience with positive results.
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subset: commoncrawl


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The United States declares its independence, an "Iron Horse" retires, the Beach Boys hit No. 1 for the first time, and we lose three presidents, all on this day.
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Top Definition
A girl who is not your girlfriend but offers the same benefits. Much like 7Up, you like it... it likes you! A title for those guys who are afraid of commitment. A little like a fuck buddy, but one step up, maybe a bit of like/love. Did I say love?
Me and my un girlfriend are into non committal sexual realtionship, then we usually eat.
Por d0c 23 de julio de 2006
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The kind of girl that you have an open relationship or little relationship with. Like dating casualy, but not going steady.
Yeah, I guess since we never decided to go steady she's my ungirlfriend.
Por Puchiko 27 de agosto de 2005


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Source: Tech Crunch
quote: I'm not an iPhone user, but I know many. A common reason for sticking with the iPhone is all the equipment they have accumulated that works with it (read: that fancy connector on the bottom.)So if this new port is not backwards compatible, all their equipment has been rendered ... Worthless!Throw that on top of the number of them that complain about iTunes, and suddenly that upgrade decision becomes... well, complicated...
quote: ...and drift ever further from reality into a wish fulfilment dream world. I too like to day dream but I try to remember that they are day dreams and not reality.
quote: If Apple do indeed change the connector port design then I suspect they will address the issue of backwards compatibility with older peripherals.
quote: BOSTON, Jun 06, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Samsung is the most preferred consumer technology brand, ahead of Sony, HP and Apple , according to ConsumerMetrix Technology Brand Preference Index just released by Strategy Analytics. In a survey of more than six thousand consumers in the US and Europe, "Technology Brand Preferences," Samsung received the highest overall preference rating of +41 percent, followed by Sony at +29 percent, HP at +20 percent and Apple at +19 percent. The lowest brand preference ratings were given to Lenovo (-37 percent), RIM (Blackberry) (-28 percent) and Sanyo (-26 percent). Respondents were asked to consider how likely they would be to choose each of more than twenty global brands when buying technology products such as computers, mobile phones and TVs.
quote: The lowest brand preference ratings were given to Lenovo


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TAHOE CITY, Calif. - North Tahoe High School has a tradition of excellence in many facets of education. Students from NTHS are accepted to the best schools and are prominent figures in many careers. The start students can obtain here at NTHS is limited only by the individual. If the sky is the limit, then students may reach for the stars.One portion of North Tahoe's education that seems to shine, thanks to its students, is the band program. Students stretch their individual abilities as well as work for total band success. Students are encouraged to work hard to participate in ensembles that take only the best from regions, sections and the entire state of California. These ensembles are called honor bands. It is here the individual student can really assess how he or she compares to the best.The members may participate in several honor band levels, but the top three fall as The Capitol Honor Band from the Sacramento area, NorCal Honor Band from Highway 50 to Interstate 80 and north to the Oregon border and the king of them all ... All State.Capitol Honor band invites 80 schools from the greater Sacramento area to send recorded auditions of individuals playing their best instruments. These students spend months preparing and a panel of judges select the best. This year, 33 high schools participated and of those schools, 95 musicians were selected. Granite Bay High School proved to be the most successful school for participation, but the number two school was North Tahoe High School. Ten students were selected to perform Jan. 10-12 with 15 hours of rehearsal and a full-length concert under the direction of Dr. Joan du Albuquerque; director of bands at Luther College in Iowa. The band played amazingly and the students were uplifted by the rigor and challenge Dr. Albuquerque required. North Tahoe High School was represented by freshman Ryan Heisinger on trombone; freshman John Humphreys on bass trombone; sophomore James Palacio on contra clarinet; sophomore Bonnie Goslin on clarinet; sophomore Grace Lindemann on clarinet; sophomore Annie Thompson on mallet percussion; junior Jack Blackmon on percussion; senior Gus Gotschall on percussion; senior Shasta Tresan on tenor sax; and senior Zoe Thompson on clarinet. NorCal invites students north of Interstate 80 and Lake Tahoe from Highway 50 to participate in its honor band. Invitations go out to more than 250 schools from Northern California. This year, we will be going to Humboldt State University on Feb. 7-9 to perform in the 80-piece band under the direction of Dr. Robert Halseth of California State University, Sacramento. For the first time in North Tahoe's history, we will be sending eight students to this event. Annie Thompson, Bonnie Goslin, Grace Lindemann, James Palacio, John Humphreys, Ryan Heisinger, Shasta Tresan and Zoe Thompson will be our representatives. All State had 1,600 auditions for the 300 people set to participate. These are all the best in the schools looking to play with the best in the state. North Tahoe will send two students to this event Feb. 21-23. Shasta Tresan and for the first time at North Tahoe, a freshman has been accepted; John Humphreys. I am very proud of our program, but the individuals who strived to reach for the stars have indeed made it easy to be amazed by their work. Congratulations to all who have achieved so much. Thank you for working so hard to make North Tahoe music great.- Dean Nordby is the band director at North Tahoe High School.
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on November 12, 2012 - 5:53 PM
, updated November 12, 2012 at 11:43 PM
Jim Baron's Canisius College debut was a little more unsettling than planned, but the Golden Griffins showed off some of the finer points of Baron's guard-friendly offense.
If Canisius' 83-75 season-opening victory over Boston University proved anything, it's that the Golden Griffins will be difficult to defend. That's particularly true in the backcourt, where Harold Washington, Billy Baron and Alshwan Hymes scored 58 of the team's points.
"These are three of our leaders, three of our captains," Jim Baron said. "It's important that they have consistency in their approach the whole time."
But the Terriers (0-2) made it close by connecting on 12 of 25 three-pointers including 10 of 16 in the second half as Canisius was a step slow on its rotations.
Contributing to the late drama for the Golden Griffins (1-0) was their 14-of-26 shooting from the free-throw line on the night.
But considering the 5-25 disaster of a year ago, the 1,422 in attendance at the Koessler Center left more than pleased with the end result. It's definitely a different look with a new coach, three transfers in the starting lineup and another, Freddy Asprilla, due back after serving a three-game suspension.
"We want to score buckets, we want to push the ball down, we want to get down there and we want to be aggressive," said Baron, the former St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island coach who became Canisius' 25th coach last April.
"I thought we did a good job of doing that. We got to the foul line, we got them in foul trouble early. We missed a lot of free-throw opportunities and that's going to be important for us to step up and make those."
Canisius will likely go as far as its backcourt takes them.
Washington scored 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting while adding six rebounds and three steals. He was a blistering 6 of 7 from the field in the first half, including 3 of 3 from long range. His three-pointer and steal and layup was part of an 8-0 run in the first half that gave Canisius some breathing room at 33-21 with just over four minutes remaining.
Billy Baron was in total control of the team in his debut on Monday night. Baron, who followed his father from Rhode Island, had 21 points, eight assists, six boards and two steals.
Then there was Hymes, who started 30 games a year ago, who came off the bench with 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting from the field and 3 of 4 from three-point range.
"It's huge when you have someone coming off the bench, and the level doesn't drop, it picks up," Billy Baron said. "It's so huge. When he came in he gave us that extra boost hitting shots. He kept us going and the momentum didn't drop."
Said Jim Baron: "It's important that we get guys like that and Alshwan stepped up bringing that high energy. James Harden did that for Oklahoma City, and that's why they went to the championship game. Ray Allen is doing that for the Miami Heat right now. It's those intangibles.''
Canisius led by as many as 15 points in the second half following a jumper by Hymes with 11:27 left, but BU's three-point shooting led a thunderous comeback.
After Hymes missed a three, John Papale, who scored a career-high 17 points, nailed a trey and the Golden Griffins' lead was trimmed to 73-70. Washington made 1 of 2 free throws on the next possession then after Billy Baron missed a floater, Jordan Heath followed with a layup as he was fouled and the lead was back up to six points at 76-70. The Terriers couldn't close the margin any further.
The Golden Griffins' next game is against Big 4 rival St. Bonaventure on Saturday at the Koessler Center.
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Formerly known as Baden Youth Sports Camps, Advantage Basketball Camps was founded in 1986 by Michael Hummel based on the philosophy that children need attention and direction in their lives. This basketball coaching method does just that. Advantage Basketball Camps serves as a basis for learning important life lessons like self-confidence and the value of self-discipline, just as much as they provide instruction in ball handling and basketball shooting techniques. The mission is to teach children using the most effective methods to help them be their best on the basketball court and beyond. Your kids will grow and learn about more than basketball at an Advantage Basketball Camps' session. While they practice ball-handling, dribbling, and shooting, they will also learn about self-esteem, teamwork, and the value of hard work. The summer 2012 camps will consist of 1-5 day sessions for boys and girls of all skill levels, from 7 to 18 years of age. Locations include Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and more.
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Where are 'Boy Meets World' stars today?
POSTED: 9:49 AM PDT May 2, 2013 UPDATED: 11:00 PM PDT May 4, 2015
Tuesday marks not only 15 years since the series finale of "Boy Meets World," but also the 34th birthday of one of its stars, Danielle Fishel. To mark the occasion, take a look at where the stars of the show are today.
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Top Definition
the little bits of turd left around your arsehole after dropping the kids off at the pool and not wiping properly.
Part my cheeks so you can see the stink nuggets.
dodane przez StudNET listopad 12, 2003
Trending Now
Can you define these popular missing words?
chunks of shit that stick to your ass hairs. mainly if you have a hairy ass.
if you dont wipe good, shit will stick
dodane przez moises styczeń 11, 2004
little pieces of shit that comes back up the toilet when u drop a wide load
"Look in my ass and smell the STUNK NUGGETS!!" - Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
dodane przez Big Bear sierpień 06, 2003
Pieces of smelly shit that have come from the anus.
Your stink nuggets are in my mouth; they taste delightful.
dodane przez Alex styczeń 27, 2003
Those not so small dingle berries that be hangging from more than just the BUM!
Matt andersons hit me with the Stink nuggets!
dodane przez Anonymous kwiecień 11, 2003
1. noun. A mix of asscrack hair, shit, and toilet paper, that gums up your buttcheeks.
Jenny: Did you have fun with Matthew last night?
Sarah: No way, I was gonna blow him until he pulled down his underwear, and three stinknuggets were clinging to his balls.
Sarah: No way, I was gonna blow him until he pulled down his underwear, and three stinknuggets were clinging to his balls.
dodane przez Kotton Mouth King of Kannibus październik 28, 2003
dodane przez jay kwiecień 25, 2003


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Top Definition
unimpressed, unmoved, disappointed by lack of cerebral prowess or performance, failure to meet expectations, failure to provide evidence to support arguments
His performance did not wow me at all, I was totally underwhelmed.
af go big or go home 1. januar 2004
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Antonym of overwhelmed.
I was underwhelmed with the new vacation spot.
af geogoldman 1. juni 2009


text:
Top Definition
raj u dirty aids infested rat cunt.
بواسطة chris and liam يناير/كانون الثّاني 11, 2007
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Can you define these popular missing words?
The epitome of a low life scumbag, usually wears flat brim hats and spray paints walls and bashes people smaller than themselves, they are the opposite of anything respectable.
what the F**k look at that ratcunt what trash
بواسطة georgeclooneybradpitt فبراير/شباط 4, 2010


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"We Chose Tiffin" read the banner international students walked under in this year's Heritage Festival Parade, helping underscore Tiffin sees more and more international students attending Heidelberg and Tiffin universities.
So why does an international student choose a college in Tiffin?
Students are looking for a small, safe town where they can focus on their course work, said Rachel Crooks, director of international student services for Tiffin University.
Article Photos
Shilu Zhong (from left), Xin Ji and Sophie Kimmich are international students at Heidelberg University this year.
Most of the students who come into the United States are coming from large metropolitan areas where the streets are full with people, taxis and buses.
"I like a small class size. It offers the ability to stay closer to the professors,"
Victor Fernandes said.
Fernandes is from Brazil and is attending TU for his undergraduate degree in business management. He came to TU on a tennis scholarship and, once he graduates, he'd like to work in international business.
Like Fernandes, Ekene Ifeobu appreciates a small class size to receive better interaction with professors.
Ifeobu is from Nigeria and has a bachelor's degree in psychology and is attending TU for a master's in business administration.
Many students like the small, quiet community of Tiffin, as well.
Sakir Reza, from Bangladesh, describes Tiffin as calm, quiet and friendly.
Reza is attending TU for a master's of business administration degree in finance.
Coming to the U.S. is a big change for most of the international students. Most do not have a car and have to rely on friends to take them places. Other adjustments have been the culture, food, weather and learning people here are helpful and friendly.
"(Here at Tiffin) we are able to get involved in the community and to be able to get to know people," said Sophie Kimmich, of Germany.
Kimmich is attending Heidelberg and is majoring in English and biology.
This year, there are more than 100 international students attending TU and nearly 30 attending Heidelberg.
Students have a presence that is beneficial to domestic students, giving a positive reaction to their surroundings, said Julie Arnold, director of international affairs and studies for Heidelberg.
Both colleges offer an orientation process and tour of the area so that the international students can be more comfortable with their surroundings.
Students also are taken shopping for supplies they may need and assisting them in getting established in the community, such as helping them set up bank accounts.
There are many programs on campus for international students and domestic students to get to know different cultures and learn new experiences.
At Heidelberg, there is the World Student Union, cultural mentorship and the culture exchange. TU has the New to TU mentorship program and the World Student Association.
Although the colleges located in Tiffin see most of the international traffic, there are high school exchange students at Bridges Community Academy, Calvert High School, Columbian, Hopewell-Loudon, Mowak, Old Fort and Seneca East High Schools.
Students represent more than 27 different countries including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, china, Columbia, Estonia, Mexico, Nepal Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Uganda, Venezuela and more.


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5 Ways the Internet Is Like a Bad Spouse
Unlike many of the columnists here at Cracked, I've been married a long time. (I also have functional genitalia, but that's not relevant to this discussion.) And when you've been married, you learn the little difficulties of a shared daily existence. Certain traits start to emerge that make anyone a bad spouse or partner. And wouldn't you know it, all those traits are things the Internet is great at. Yep, the Internet is a lot like the last person in the world you'd ever want to marry. Here are five reasons the Internet would make a terrible spouse.
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Five reasons in addition to the Internet (like most Cracked columnists) not having functional genitalia.
#5. It Uses Your Honesty Against You
You're supposed to marry your best friend, your trusted confidant, the person you can tell anything. Of course, those traits don't apply to spouses that have super kickin' bods or lots of cash, but for the rest of us, that's the goal, and it's a really good idea. Even if you don't come easily to trust and aren't a particularly big sharer, odds are that most of us will start to divulge more and more about ourselves over time.
Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images
"Wait. You like it when chicks put what where?"
This is all good. It builds bonds and makes for a strong marriage. So basically the worst thing you could ever do as a husband or wife is use that shared information against your partner in a fight. Let's say your wife divulged her feelings of guilt about the time she lied to her dad at 18 and her father died before she ever cleared her conscience. Only a bastard would wait until he got into a fight with his wife and say something like "Oh, is this just another one of your lies, like the one you told your dad?!"
But the Internet LOVES to do that!
Anything you share with the Web will be used against you. So if Cracked's John Cheese writes intensely personal columns about his struggles overcoming addiction, then the Web's go-to insult for him is to call him a drunk (which is weird, because that non-functioning genitalia thing is such a gimme). I mention my Judaism in a handful of the hundreds of columns I've written for Cracked, and boom, it becomes a quick way to deliver anti-Semitic cheap shots. (In fairness to the haters, they're short on material because, as I mentioned, my junk is like totally functional.) DOB writes that he really likes his puppy, and whammo, suddenly millions of women go "awwww." OK, that last one was probably a bad example, but the point is, much like the last person you'd ever want to marry, everything you share with the Net will be weaponized and returned twofold.
#4. It Judges You by Your Last Bad Act
In many wedding vows, there is some form of that classic language about staying married "for better or worse." You can view those words as a mere talismanic phrase meaning "You're stuck, mofo, deal with it," but I tend not to. I think of it more as "taking the good with the bad." I like to think that, in a good marriage, you build up credit. You've done a bunch of good deeds because you wanted to and they flowed naturally from you, and your spouse appreciates them and loves you for it. Those deeds are part of who you are and why they love you. But in time, you will fuck up, you will make mistakes, you will do bad things. And when that happens, those mistakes will not wipe the ledger clean of your goodness. You will not be judged only by your most recent mistake. You will not suddenly become some whole other person in the eyes of your partner who has forgotten everything that has come before.
Unless you don't have that kind of marriage. Then look out. Then it really doesn't matter who you are or what you've done because you're just the person who has pissed off your partner right now, and nothing that came before counts for shit.
Ablestock.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
Uh, yeah, nice try.
And That's EXACTLY What the Internet Is
Let's use Cracked as an example, since I assume we're all familiar with it and because I get a bonus every time I'm self-referential in an article. Some of the angriest, hatiest bastards in the comments are also some of Cracked's most dedicated readers. Some of them. Some are just garbage. But let's talk about those dedicated people. They read this site every day. They're given three to five pieces of new content every single day including weekends and they generally like what they're getting because these folks keep coming back. So they see a piece they hate. Let's pretend they're right. Let's pretend it's awful and it's not their own subjective stupidity. Let's assume the piece just objectively sucks. Maybe Bucholz remembered he was Canadian and decided to stop trying so hard. Perhaps Soren made the mistake of thinking readers would appreciate a gentle form of satire. Or maybe I wrote it. Whatever. Point is, holy shit, how mad at Cracked can you be? You're here every day, you love us, you see something you don't like? Good. Don't like it. You can even say you don't like it, if you have a reason beyond this article is "retarted" or "full of gay," but have some perspective. Don't shit on the whole site and speak in extremes. Well, much like a bad husband or wife, the Internet hates perspective and loves the drama of the extreme.
#3. It's Bored of You
You marry someone because you like things about them. Maybe it's shallow, like you're totally into blondes with large breasts. Or maybe it's more psychological, like loving a man with paternalistic qualities and strong opinions about how you should live your life. Here's the interesting thing about people: They get tired of the things they like. That frat boy husband whose only goal in life was to marry a big, bouncy, all-American blonde is not likely to be caught cheating with another big, bouncy, all-American blonde. He's probably jumping on some svelte, dark-haired Ukrainian or something. And that woman who enjoyed a man with strong opinions about how she should live her life is almost definitely going to resent feeling controlled by a douchebag. It's very dangerous to marry someone who fills a desperate, almost fetishistic need because needs change and then you hate them. Yes, in this entry, the bad spouse is you. You're the one hating them for being exactly what you wanted on your wedding day.
Jupiterimages/Polka Dot/Getty Images
"I love you. Never change. Unless I decide someday I want you to, then please change fast."
And Being Fickle Is the Internet's Talent
I suppose I could demonstrate this by pointing to websites that do well until they don't. All those sites that have overstayed their welcome and used up their shelf life. Nothing changed. They offered the same content, but the people went away, probably saying something shitty before they left.
Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
"Uh, yeah, we get it, CNN.com -- you're 'newsy'!"
But just think about memes. We consume them, want them desperately, and get infatuated, and six months later, we want to murder anyone with the audacity to mention their existence. If someone rickrolled you right now, you'd probably never speak to them again.


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on January 29, 2013 - 12:00 AM
, updated January 29, 2013 at 8:54 AM
After all the hoopla and rhetoric surrounding his release of the 2013-14 budget last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo must now sell it to an often skeptical business community.
That's exactly why he dispatched Kenneth Adams, president of the Empire State Development Corp., to the Amherst Chamber of Commerce luncheon Monday at Salvatore's Italian Gardens in Lancaster. As Adams made a detailed pitch to the business leaders of upstate's fourth largest municipality on the merits of Cuomo's $142.6 billion spending plan, he failed to win over everyone.
But there is no question this group is at least willing to listen, and appreciative of any attention paid to them by Albany.
"When someone from the state level comes to tell us about good things for me and for Western New York, it makes people in Buffalo say 'We hear you,' " said Vincent Ricotta, director of business development for Concept Construction Corp. "That never happened before."
Indeed, the approximately 100 people attending Adams' presentation seemed heartened by a budget that is short on tax increases and long on economic development. Adams, the former head of the Business Council of New York State who now spearheads the state government's economic development programs, recited the litany of new programs and policy initiatives outlined during Cuomo's budget presentation last week.
But he also touted the budget in the context of Cuomo's now-three-year administration, pointing to this year's projected $1.3 billion deficit as minor compared to what might have been without spending cuts enacted since 2011.
"If those cuts had not been made, like the dramatic cuts in Medicaid spending, we'd be looking at a $17 billion deficit today," he said, explaining the governor's "live within your means" budget directive.
Like other officials of the Cuomo administration assigned to explain budget details around the state in recent days, Adams related a detailed defense of the new plan. As the state's chief economic development officer, he made a special effort to emphasize plans aiming at "jobs, jobs, jobs." He praised now-familiar proposals to more closely link the state's universities to its research and manufacturing firms, calling for improvement in the state's national rank of 22nd in industry-sponsored research – compared to national leader North Carolina.
He explained the "innovation hot spots" concept that creates 10 tax-free zones around New York to serve as high-tech incubators, and he dwelled on new plans to reform workers' compensation and unemployment insurance. He also detailed the governor's proposals to boost green technology and to market regional attractions, among others.
For the most part, business leaders attending the session liked what they heard. Amherst Chamber President Colleen C. DiPirro commended Cuomo for the effort to explain the budget on a local level. Controversial proposals like raising the minimum wage to $8.75 per hour don't always fly with business people, she said, but she recognizes a willingness to engage in discussion.
"There's not a more controversial issue than the minimum wage," she said. "But he's not ducking it. And in the end we'll come to a compromise position everyone can live with."
Thomas Shellberg, who heads business development for Picone Construction Co., said his industry remains wary of a state government requiring companies to jump through too many permit process hoops. It needs streamlining, he said.
Still, he was "optimistic" about what he heard Monday, and knows new construction opportunities lie ahead because of state programs at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and the Richardson complex.
"Anything government can do to jump-start the private sector we'll jump on too," he said.
Others like Gerald Kelly, of Coldwell Banker Commercial Meridian, liked Adams' new ways to guide binding arbitration, including a 2 percent cap on awards paid by governments under "fiscal distress."
"The binding arbitration proposal was very creative," he said. "That's been a problem from Day One."
Adams said he is encouraged by the business community's reaction to the Cuomo budget plan as he travels around the state. As he pointed out in his remarks, he thinks it is recognizing that the governor's promises have so far been backed by action.
"The positive response from the chambers and from small-business owners is fueled by the governor's message of fiscal discipline," he said.
email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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From AZ Central:
Coyotes enforcer Paul Bissonnette is appealing the 10-game suspension he was issued Monday by the NHL for leaving the bench in an illegal line change during an altercation in Sunday's preseason game at Jobing.com Arena against the Los Angeles Kings.
Bissonnette's agent, Mark Guy, confirmed the decision.
In the first period of Sunday's game, defenseman Rusty Klesla was leveled with an open-ice body check from Kings center Jordan Nolan and had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher. After that, Nolan became an easy target for the Coyotes and center Martin Hanzal elbowed Nolan along the boards later in the period.
A scrum ensued and that's when Bissonnette made an illegal line change, coming off the bench before a teammate returned to it, to join the action. He was given a game misconduct for leaving the bench, and that triggers an automatic 10-game suspension.
The appeal process was revamped under the new collective bargaining agreement. An appeal first will be heard by Commissioner Gary Bettman, but now players who've been suspended six or more games have the option to appeal that decision to a neutral arbitrator.
Just for fun, I checked his Twitter account and there has been no activity since 14/09.
This seems pretty cut/dried in it's facts. I'm guessing he's "rolling the dice", hoping to get a reduced suspension from the neutral arbitrator. Does it seem like the new "system" might be worse than the old system?
What I did find funny was:
Bissonnette is allowed to continue to participate in preseason games.
"We're gonna keep pushing like he's a normal player," coach Dave Tippett said.
This might be easier said than done.


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Alliance man charged with planting pipe bomb
February 22, 2013
ALLIANCE — An Alliance man has been arrested after allegedly leaving an unwanted Valentine's Day present for his estranged wife and another man last week. David A. "Turtle" McCoy, 32, of 968 W....
It was described as being two feet long and made of two-inch wide pipe, containing what appeared to be black powder, BBs and several solid propellant model rocket engines with igniters. The igniters were attached to the external wires.
OMG, lock that nut case up and throw away the key!!
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Whether it's a casual Saturday morning spin or tackling your first century, the OCR series promises Giant's ALUXX aluminum frame comfort and Compact Road ride. Triple cranks ensure enough gears on your daily commute and on your weekly club ride.
Featuring a butted ALUXX aluminum frame and formulaOne Composite fork, OCR geometry delivers equal parts performance and forgiving positioning for all-day comfort perfectly matched to nimble handling.


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The Giving Tree
Make A Monetary Gift to the Center
Baylor Autism Resource Clinic
Welcome to the Baylor Autism Resource Clinic for Central Texas. The clinic was opened in January 2008 thanks to a grant from the Waco Foundation and support from Baylor University. Dr. Julie Ivey-Hatz, Associate Professor at Baylor, is the director of the clinic. The clinic serves Waco and the surrounding community. The clinic currently offers Social Circle groups aimed at improving social skills of children and teenagers that have ASD, provides resources to the community, and much more.
Baylor Autism Resource Clinic Informational Video
The BARC released an informational video in 2013 to share more about us! We had a wonderful videographer who did such a great job at capturing the essence of the clinic and we greatly appreciate the time, effort, and quality put into this project. Please click on the link below! Courtesy of Brennan Lane.


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Provided by the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Museum of the Confederacy
Conrad Wise Chapmans famous painting of the H.L. Hunley depicts the submarine undergoing repairs in early December of 1863.
A military escort led the casket deep into Magnolia Cemetery, where a sizable crowd of onlookers waited quietly at the grave.
It was Sunday, Nov. 8, 1863, and the occasion was becoming all too common in Charleston.
The deceased was Horace Lawson Hunley, who had been fished out of his boat the day before. It had taken divers three weeks to find and raise the submarine from the harbor floor, where it sank on Oct. 15.
When the boat was finally opened with P.G.T. Beauregard watching, the general was so disturbed by the blackened face of its namesake that he ordered a military funeral, even though Hunley was decidedly civilian.
The Charleston Mercury, which had not reported the details of Hunley's death, nonetheless carried the story of his funeral prominently under the headline "Last Honors To A Devoted Patriot."
"Possessed of an ample fortune, in the prime of his manhood -- for he was only thirty-six at the time of his death -- with everything before him to make life attractive, he came to Charleston, and voluntarily joined in a patriotic enterprise which promised success, but which was attended with great peril," Robert Barnwell Rhett Jr., the paper's editor, wrote.
"Though feeling, as appears from the last letter which he wrote to his friends, a presentiment that he would perish in the adventure, he gave his whole heart, undeterred by the foreboding, to the undertaking, declaring that he would gladly sacrifice his life in the cause. That presentiment has been mournfully fulfilled."
Rhett could be forgiven his melancholy, for it accurately reflected the mood of Charleston in the fall of 1863.
Union troops on Morris Island and Cummings Point had become viciously efficient and relentless in their attack, shelling Sumter almost daily, which reduced the fort to further ruin. Before long, the Yankees expanded their range to Fort Moultrie, firing "with considerable severity" on Nov. 13 and 14.
The Mercury could do little but report the number of shells that fell each day and tally the Confederates killed in the bombardments. By Thanksgiving, Rhett had rallied enough to try to strike an upbeat tone in his holiday message to the city.
"While our great Cause has not prospered as we had hoped and desired, still it is strong and full of life." Although the city had again become a target of shelling, Rhett sarcastically noted that "It will please the Yankees to know that no one was hurt."
In fact, the city was dying. The lower peninsula was nearly deserted, save for Southern soldiers, and businesses in town were finally falling victim to nearly three years of war. At the end of the month, the Charleston Hotel announced it was closing. The Mercury tried to blame the death of the hotel's proprietor but was forced to report that the Mills House was considering similar action.
Every day more bad news arrived, accompanied by the sound of cannon fire. The remaining residents of Charleston had to wonder how long the city could hold out.
Bizarre incidents
On Sunday, Dec. 6, troops at Fort Sumter watched the New Ironsides lower its boats in a blowing gale. They made their way toward Morris Island, quickly disappearing in the haze. The Confederates feared the worst, but there was no firing from the island all day.
More than a week would pass before they understood the purpose of the maneuver.
It had all happened suddenly. That afternoon, the ironclad Weehawken sent up its distress flag. The ship, which had been shelled heavily two months before when it ran aground off Morris Island, was in trouble again. In the rough weather, the Weehawken was foundering.
The ship was taking on water, and its bilge pumps, filled with debris, could not work fast enough to stop the rushing seawater. The crew tried to beach the boat, but it was sluggish and unresponsive. Just minutes after the crew discovered the trouble, the Passaic-class monitor's bow dipped beneath the waves, and its stern lifted into the air. It was going down.
Some of the Weehawken's crew managed to get out in time and were rescued by the New Ironsides boats. But at least 30 men rode the gunboat to the bottom. When the Confederates finally learned what had happened, they took little satisfaction from it. They had tried to sink the Weehawken for more than a year, but it seemed the weather was more formidable than Sumter's guns.
Before Charleston learned of the ironclad's fate, Sumter would suffer an equally bizarre accident.
The morning of Dec. 11 began peacefully. Both the Yankees and the weather had given Sumter a respite, and many of the fort's soldiers were lined up at the commissary to get their rations -- a rare, and much-needed, break in the action.
The explosion came out of nowhere: a loud report followed by an instant, and intense, fire. The blaze was so massive it was seen by some people on The Battery.
A small arms magazine next to the commissary had blown up, instantly killing the commissary officer, his men and the first several soldiers in line. The concussion of the blast knocked several others to the ground.
No one would ever know what caused the explosion, but the magazine kept burning and there seemed little way to extinguish the blaze. Lookouts on the blockade ships spotted the smoke belching from the fort, and the Navy took advantage of the situation, shelling Sumter mercilessly through the confusion.
Eventually, several soldiers were able to block all passageways to the magazine, suffocating the fire. But the damage had been done: at least 10 men were dead, another 80 injured. The next morning, The Mercury listed Capt. Frost, Sgt. Swanson and three members of Capt. Gaillard's company among the dead.
"The strength of the fort is by no means impaired by the accident," the paper reported. "The resistive power is still as strong as usual, and the confidence of the garrison remains unshaken."
It was a sly bit of propaganda, aimed directly at the blockading fleet's officers, who often managed to get copies of the paper. In fact, much of the fort was out of commission as a result of the blast. If the Union had launched a major assault in the day after the explosion, the Confederates at Sumter knew they would be finished.
A historic first
At 1 a.m. on Christmas morning, the Union forces opened fire on Charleston -- a shelling, The Mercury reported, that was "more severe than on any other occasion."
Five guns -- three at Battery Gregg, one at Cummings Point and another at Mortar Battery -- fired so relentlessly that sometimes three shells struck the city simultaneously. In less than 12 hours, the Yankee guns hurled 134 shells at the city, leading to at least two casualties.
"Several houses were struck," the paper reported, "but most buried themselves harmlessly in the earth."
The bombardment continued intermittently until New Year's Eve when, just after sunset, the Union fired two shots at Sumter. When the fort returned fire, the Northern troops "dipped their flag in respect."
There were few niceties between the two sides, however. As the darkest days of the war set in, The Mercury for the first time began to broach the possibility of the South losing the war.
It was a future, Rhett noted, of "subjugation."
"Try to imagine the scenes which would take place all over this country on the first day of acknowledged subjugation -- that is, the day which should witness a treaty for reconstruction upon any terms whatsoever. From that moment, the right name of this war would be rebellion; and, what is more to the purpose, as rebels its ringleaders would be punished and its soldiers disarmed. Our Confederate flag, that has blazed in front of twenty pitched battles, would be formally lowered, officially torn, trampled, and abolished forever, while the accursed Stars and Stripes would be proudly hoisted in its place, upon every fort and in every camp, with cannon thunders and Yankee cheers."
It was a future of shame, the paper opined, one that Charleston was coming to terms with quickly.
Beauregard could have scarcely felt better about the Confederacy's prospects. His forts were battered, his men exhausted and outnumbered, and still the shelling continued. Perhaps that is why he eventually agreed to let Lt. George E. Dixon, recently arrived from Mobile, to give the fish-boat one more chance.
After the sub sank for a second time, the general had declared it more dangerous to his men than the enemy and refused to let it be used again. But when Jefferson Davis visited Charleston, Beauregard -- desperate to deliver any good news to the president -- let it slip that he had other methods of defending the harbor.
So he allowed Dixon, a veteran of Shiloh, to re-fit the sub alongside an engineer from Mobile named William Alexander. They raised a crew from the Indian Chief -- a Confederate receiving ship anchored in Charleston Harbor -- and fit the boat with a spar from a David. The men trained through the winter, stopping once to allow a visiting artist named Conrad Wise Chapman to sketch the Hunley.
Dixon's crew operated the sub carefully and well. Through January of 1864, they tested the boat in the waters behind Sullivan's Island. By the end of the month, they were ready to attack the blockade -- if only the weather would cooperate.
Dixon had been in Mobile, recovering from Shiloh, while the Hunley was under construction. He had faith in the machine, and in Alexander, but felt as if he were about to buckle under the pressure from the Confederate military.
"There is one thing very evident and that is to catch the Atlantic Ocean smooth during the winter months is considerable of an undertaking, and one that I never want to undertake again," Dixon wrote to a friend in late January. "Especially when all parties interested are sitting at home and wondering and criticizing all of my actions and saying why don't he do something."
It would be more than two weeks before the weather calmed enough to give Dixon his chance. By that time, Alexander had been called back to Mobile and Dixon had to find a last-minute replacement on the crew. Finally, around 6:30 p.m. on the evening of Feb. 17, 1864, the fish-boat left the dock at Sullivan's Island and headed out to sea.
The boat ran on manpower -- seven of the eight men inside the cramped quarters turned a crank that propelled the sub's screw. It was never a fast craft. Running with the tide, which it was that night, the submarine could not quite reach 5 mph.
After little more than two hours, the Hunley was several miles off the coast and had its prey in sight. Dixon steered the Hunley toward the USS Housatonic, a relatively recent addition to the fleet. The ship was on the north end of the blockade, set off by itself.
Dixon had promised Beauregard the Hunley would not attempt to submerge, even though his crew had trained for it. So the fish-boat slipped across the surface, barely visible in the pale moonlight. As it closed on the ship, a Housatonic sailor on bow watch spotted the Hunley (the U.S. Navy had heard rumors of the fish-boat and had warned all crews to look out for it).
Luckily for Dixon, the officer of the deck chose not to listen to the warnings of the man on bow watch, a free black soldier named Robert F. Flemming.
By the time other sailors on the Housatonic recognized the danger, the Hunley was too close to turn a cannon on it. The sailors instead fired rifles at the boat, aiming for the glowing light coming from the forward conning tower port. Most of the bullets seemed to bounce off the fish-boat's iron skin.
The sub's spar made contact with the Housatonic in its rear quarter with enough force that the barbed end of the explosive canister on the bow embedded in the hull. Within seconds, the crew had reversed their cranking and the Hunley slowly started to back away, still under fire.
When the sub was some distance from the Housatonic -- some witnesses would say 80 feet, others would claim only 50 -- the entire flank of the U.S. ship dissolved in a single fiery explosion, the work of 90 pounds of gunpowder.
It took only a few minutes for the Housatonic to sink, but it came to rest on the shallow bottom with most of its rigging exposed, a bit of luck that offered most of the crew a place to await rescue. Only five men aboard the ship had died in the explosion; the rest waited to be rescued.
While Flemming clung to one yardarm, he saw the little fish-boat once more. He would later testify that as he watched the USS Canandaigua coming to rescue the Housatonic crew 45 minutes after the attack, he saw the submarine floating on the surface. There was a blue light shining on the water that had caught his attention.
Shortly after that, the Hunley vanished, taking Charleston's last hope of breaking the blockade with it.
Next: The third major bombardment of Fort Sumter
- Keywords


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MontaVista Linux 6 meets embedded developers where they are in the development cycle with a complete embedded Linux distribution and developer tools for a faster time to development. With Market Specific Distributions, the MontaVista Integration Platform and unprecedented flexibility in a commercial solution, MontaVista Linux 6 enables developers to build from source to more easily customize their software stack and add product-differentiating features.
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Semiconductor vendors have developed Linux technology to enable their hardware feature set. Yet systems developers spend valuable development cycles enabling and customizing the final hardware, and integrating other software and tools. Designers find themselves constrained, locked into early software choices, unable to fully leverage the power of the open source community, and without the right tools to customize the software to their specific application requirements.
Finally, embedded Linux development is information intensive and finding assistance from documents, the Internet, or software experts who can help answer specific hardware and software questions is a challenge in itself.
MontaVista Linux 6 is a new approach to embedded Linux development that helps developers deliver commercial-ready devices faster:
The MSD saves time by providing all necessary software to get up-and-running immediately while the SDK's Integration Platform allows developers to easily extend and customize their software stack, fully leveraging the open source community while maintaining control over the build process.
MontaVista Linux 6 provides a complete embedded Linux distribution and tools so systems developers can be up and running sooner and focus on product-differentiating features. Using the de-facto standard open source build system, developers can leverage their existing work and move to MontaVista Linux 6 with the assurance of feature compatibility and a clear migration path. MontaVista Linux 6 makes it easy to relocate and maintain local build environments in order to get teams developing sooner, leveraging open source software, while insulating projects from community changes.
With MontaVista Linux 6 systems developers can fetch and integrate code from other team members, internal company teams and even outside vendors including ISVs and contractors. This unprecedented flexibility in a commercial solution enables developers to more easily customize their software stacks including the kernel, device drivers, libraries and applications. Systems developers can consistently build all target software from source – with just one command – and reproduce multiple build configurations. Finally, optional pre-set features help optimize projects by minimizing file-system footprints in resource-constrained devices.
With MontaVista Linux 6, systems developers get support from the leader in embedded Linux commercialization and top experts in their field. While working with MontaVista, developers are sure not to be alone, but backed by over 10 years of experience. Get help from these experts via email and Web support and enjoy quick access to all software, updates, maintenance, and training required to assist delivering projects on time.
Using either command line or the included Eclipse-based MontaVista DevRocket, developers get a completely integrated set of tools including C/C++ compilers, run-time libraries, and a source- and assembly-level debugger, all optimized for specific hardware. Commonly executed commands can be automated in order to speed up development and reduce error-prone tasks. MontaVista Linux 6 takes you beyond the typical edit-compile-debug cycle and provides a full set of performance monitoring tools for profiling, memory leak detection, memory usage analysis and system and application level tracing.


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From the middle of the 13th century pilgrims journeyed to the Abbey of Pfäfers near Bad Ragaz, where the Tamina Valley opens into the Rhine Valley, to bathe in the thermal waters. In 1535 the doctor and philosopher, Paracelsus, became the first doctor in Bad Pfäfers and testified to the healing powers of the thermal springs. Thus began the age of spa tourism. In 1716 the earliest baroque bathhouse in Switzerland was built below the Benedictine Monastery in Pfäfers.
From 1840 the thermal water was piped down to the more easily accessible village of Ragaz, 4 kilometres away, so Ragaz quickly became a renowned health resort. Luxury hotels were built to accommodate wealthy travellers, including Russian nobility, and, like the richly traditional Grand Hotel in Bad Ragaz, they still attract guests from all over the world. Today Bad Ragaz with its Tamina Thermal Spa, offers a broad range of medicinal and wellness packages.
The two golf courses in Bad Ragaz ideally complement the spa. The Bad Ragaz home mountain, the Pizol, and the plain of the Rhine Valley provide wonderful biking and hiking country. There is a popular cycling and inline skating route on the nearby Rhine Dam and marked Nordic walking trails are also to be found on the Pizol. The 5-lake walk on mount Pizol, which takes about four hours to complete, passes five crystal clear mountain lakes and, with its magnificent views of the eastern Swiss alpine landscape, it is a classic among mountain hikes.
From Bad Ragaz there are rewarding excursions into Heidi country, to which Bad Ragaz belongs; to the nearby Principality of Liechtenstein; to Chur; the castle at Sargans; St. Gallen and Lake Constance.
The Pizol ski region stretches between 1600m and 2220m. Winter sports enthusiasts will find 12 railways and lifts, more than 40 km of piste, a free-ride paradise, a winter sports school, cross-country trails and interesting ski tour routes. Toboggan fans will rave about the 7 km toboggan run, and there are marked trails for snowshoe hikers. The attractive mountain footpath affords panoramic views.
- Tamina Gorge – a wild, mysterious, narrow gorge near Pfäfers with cliffs up to 70 metres high, where the most prolific and energising thermal water (pure, warm spring) in Europe gushes from a chamber deep in the mountain at 36.5°C
- Ancient Bad Pfäfers – beautiful walk from Bad Ragaz through the thermal ravine to Bad Pfäfers where kings and princesses once bathed, and where there are now two museums and a Paracelsus memorial.
- Tamina Thermal Springs – the thermal spa centre near the Grand Hotel has two indoor pools and one open-air bath with whirlpool, water chute, waterfall, spa bath, spa grotto with massage jets.
- Pizol – at 2220m, the home mountain of Bad Ragaz offers a wonderful view of the Rhine Valley right across to Lake Constance and plenty of trails for hikers, Nordic walkers, cyclists and skiers.
- Heidi experience – the home of this children's storybook heroine offers Heidi experience trails on the Schwarzbüel Alp, the Pizol and above Maienfeld. Other Heidi attractions are also available.
Top Events
- Bad RagARTz Sculpture exhibition – triennial sculpture exhibition in Bad Ragaz and Vaduz with classical music concerts in the street (every three years in summer, e.g. 2015).
- Autumn Culture – classical music, fascinating theatre and virtuoso jazz (every two years in September).


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on May 26, 2013 - 11:16 PM
An Asian carp was pulled from the Scajaquada Creek where it flows into the Black Rock Channel. Now, take a moment and catch your breath. This occurred May 17, 2007.
It appears to be the only documented Asian carp plucked from Buffalo Niagara's waterways.
And it's likely that the fish had been previously sterilized by man and dropped into the waters to help control underwater plant growth, according to a SUNY Buffalo State scientist whose late colleague snagged the fish.
There's no indication the now-notorious invasive fish has gained any sort of a foothold either here or in the rest of Lake Erie, where three Asian carp also were captured by commercial fishermen as early as 1995.
Still, you've probably seen the video. Hundreds of the fish, spooked by a passing boat motor, catapult themselves en masse above the surface of the water. That variety is but one of four main species of Asian carp – the silver carp.
One of the others – the grass carp – was the type found in Scajaquada Creek. Those three other carp – discovered in 1995 and 2000 near Sandusky, Ohio, and just due north of there on the Canadian side of the lake, also in 2000 – are of the "Bighead" carp species. Those can weigh 80 to 100 pounds and live more than two decades.
It's a threat that's chilling to Jim Hanley, a well-known local fishing charter captain who docks in Buffalo.
"Lake Erie is the greatest fishing lake in the world," Hanley said. "To see anything happen to it would be devastating."
Of course, Asian carp are not the only invasive species threatening Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes. Scientists are tracking more than 180 different species of invaders – including the spiny water flea, round goby and those pesky zebra and quagga mussels – in Lake Erie. Some, like the zebra and quagga mussels, have exploded in numbers and have had greater impacts lakewide. But non-native species are, in one way or another, affecting Lake Erie's ecosystem whether through water quality, disruptions to the food web, lake commerce or other issues.
"It affects the whole system," said Alexander Y. Karatayev, director of the Great Lakes Center at Buffalo State.
While scientists from Toledo to Buffalo are studying and managing invaders already here, others are strategizing ways to thwart the arrival of additional species like the golden mussel, killer shrimp and the anxiety-provoking Asian carp.
"Too often we wait for things to happen and it costs way more to deal with it afterwards," Jonathan M. Bossenbroek, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Toledo's Lake Erie Center, said about the introduction and spread of invasive species. "It's hard to get undone when it happens."
Asian carp
Given the havoc that Asian carp have wreaked on the Mississippi River in recent years after getting into the water through flooded Arkansas ponds where they were stocked to control weeds, fears abound that a similar catastrophe could beset one or all of the Great Lakes if the fish is introduced or migrates.
All that stands in the carp's way is an electrical barrier that separates carp populations in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal from Lake Michigan. For now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-managed barrier, which is about 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, appears to be working.
Then again, there could be other means of transmission of Asian carp to the lakes – natural and man-made.
The Army Corps has identified 18 potential pathways connecting the Mississippi River basin with the Great Lakes' watershed in the event of flood. Most are low-to-medium risk, but at least one – the Eagle Marsh wetland preserve near Fort Wayne, Ind. – has a high risk. And that offers a possible entry for the carp into a tributary of Lake Erie.
"Every time there's a potential connection there, there's a possibility for the fish to get through," said Jack Drolet, program manager at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cincinnati office. The Army Corps, he said, is raising the berms there.
And if the fish don't get here that way, they may be introduced by man.
A black market for live Asian carp exists in Chinatown fish markets in Canada. The trade is lucrative enough for some truckers to chance illegally smuggling tens of thousands of the fish at a time across the border in semi-trucks disguised as water tankers.
"The fish are more valuable alive," Drolet said.
Every year, Drolet said, border agents nab three or four truckers with a cargo of upwards of 50,000 Asian carp that were raised on farms in the southern United States, Drolet said. By accident or some other means, there's a threat of massive release to the lakes.
However it happens, if enough of this invasive fish were able to get into Lake Erie and multiply, the balance of the lake's ecosystem – not to mention a billion-dollar annual sport-fishing industry – would be at risk.
"I'm reasonably comfortable in saying we'd see undesirable effects on yellow perch and walleye," Duane Chapman, a Missouri-based U.S. Geological Survey research fisheries biologist, said of two of the lake's most popular fish. "They could be really severely hurt – large reductions in population – probably not extinction though."
It's nothing North Tonawanda fisherman Rich Davenport hopes to experience.
"They eat massive, massive volumes of plankton, and what they do is collapse the food chain from the bottom up," Davenport said. "If you lose minnows, you lose game fish. If you lose game fish, you lose your whole industry."
"You don't know there's a problem with an invasive species until it explodes."
Charter captain Hanley agrees.
That's why he said more should have been done a long time ago to deal with the threat.
Moreover, the recent scientific discovery of the carp's DNA in the lake is enough to prove they're already here, he insists.
Hanley expects Asian carp will start showing up in Lake Erie within the next couple of years.
"The barn door has been closed after the horses are out," Hanley said about the safeguards now in place in Chicago. "I know they're already in the lake. We haven't seen them yet but they're here.
"You don't see the mice in your house until they start eating your food."
Threat debated
If Asian carp were able to invade Lake Erie and multiply, scientists as well as fishermen like Davenport fear that they'd consume such a large amount of the nutrition that existing fish and aquatic animals that rely upon the same food chain would be severely affected.
Chapman, who co-wrote a study published last year on the topic in the Journal of Great Lakes Research, is "confident" Asian carp could reproduce in Lake Erie, establish populations and possibly overtake the lake. But, then again, he said, neither is it a certainty.
There are just a lot of unknown variables, he said.
"It's one of those things you don't want to try and find out," he said. "Anytime you have a big change like this, you're going to have winners and losers. If you want to have walleye and yellow perch, this is probably nothing you want to see happen."
Meanwhile, Amy J. Benson, a fisheries biologist in Gainesville, Fla., is less bullish on the Asian carp's chance to take over the lake because of the its unusual spawning preferences as well as water temperature, flow and other variables.
"It doesn't mean it can't happen," said Benson, who reported in recent weeks on the Asian carp's distribution across the continent. "I don't want to paint a disaster, but I also don't want to be too cautious and say 'nothing's going to happen.' "
Don Zelazny, the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Great Lakes program coordinator, agrees with Benson.
"The jury is still out ... in terms of what degree Asian carp could expand into Lake Erie," said Zelazny, citing the silver and bighead carps' preference for spawning in "fast-moving water" – something that Lake Erie does not have.
Still, Zelazny cautioned, "there are some real horror stories involving Asian carp."
As of now, the Asian carp remains only a threat.
Mussel invasion
One invasion that has occurred and is noticeable is the mussel invasion, zebra and quagga.
And their presence may have had the biggest impact on Lake Erie in recent years. At first glance, you might say their effect has been beneficial. But looks can be deceiving.
"The water became clear," said Karatayev, the Buffalo State professor who specializes in the study of mussels. "But there's less food in the water column."
Less food means fewer fish.
First discovered in the lake in 1986, the zebra mussel may have been brought to North America while still in its larvae stage in ballast water aboard a vessel from the then-Soviet Union just a few years earlier. Scientists' theories are based on the fact that the Ukrainian port where the ship got its water was the only one in the world where both zebra and quagga mussels were then known to exist.
Quagga mussels were found in Lake Erie in 1989 and now account for about 98 percent of the mussels in our eastern basin, Karatayev said.
He describes the little critters as "the most aggressive invaders in the Northern Hemisphere."
Populations of both appear to be tailing off slightly now, possibly because there's less food for them. However, they are still ubiquitous.
"There are still a lot of them," said Karatayev, "but not as many as six, seven or eight years ago."
And don't let the mussel fool you. Clearer lake water doesn't necessarily mean cleaner lake water.
The mussels, besides stealing oodles of those nutrients coveted by other indigenous lake animals, filter pollutants from the water but then "spit them out," depositing them in the top-layer sediment at the lake's bottom, robbing the pollutants of an opportunity to easily pass through the water's current and out of the lake altogether.
"They don't like it," said Helen Domske of New York Sea Grant. "Mussels spit it out like babies spit out peas."
Added Zelazny: "What the mussels are essentially doing is transferring the contamination into the sediment."
Round gobies
Then there's the round goby fish.
The aggressive species fights with native fish populations for both food and territory. It was discovered in the lake around 1990.
Not only can they feed during the dark, unlike many native species, but they spawn more often and guard their eggs, according to Sea Grant, a nationwide network – administered through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – of 32 university-based programs that work with coastal communities.
The goby, which can feed on mussels, is also believed to have spread toxins from them "up the food chain," where they are eaten by larger fish. Some also suspect the goby played a role in the large avian botulism outbreak on the lake about 10 years ago.
"The bacteria itself is in the ecosystem," Domske said. "The quagga mussels pick it up. The round gobies eat them, some get incapacitated by the toxin and can't swim away."
That makes them easy pickings for a passing loon. The bird swoops down for a toxic goby fish dinner. Two is enough to kill one bird.
Spiny water flea
Yet another invasive species to explode in the Great Lakes in the last few decades is the spiny water flea.
Also believed to have arrived from the ballast water of ships originating around the Black Sea in the 1980s, this water flea, which feeds on zooplankton, is blamed for adding to the disruption of the lake's food chain, scientists say. Zooplankton are those floating microscopic organisms comprising the base for the lake's food chain.
Again, less floating food to eat means fewer small fish. Fewer small fish to eat means fewer medium-size fish. Fewer medium-size fish to eat means fewer big fish. And fewer big fish?
Well, who wants to go out fishing all day only to return home with an empty bucket?
You get the picture.
Stemming the tide
Unlike some of the other issues facing the lake, the one of invasive species seems to be the hardest to predict and most difficult to manage. One can regulate the frequency and amount of wastewater discharge. Reduce phosphorus run-off by changing agricultural practices. Stop beach littering by changing attitudes.
Stemming the tide of invasive species is a tougher nut to crack.
Their numbers in Lake Erie is a figure that seems to be ever-rising with canals, waterways and shipping vessels connecting the Great Lakes with the outside world. There is a steep price for all that interconnectivity.
"Every time we have a new invasive species," the DEC's Zelazny said, "it takes up to 15 years to understand what the impact the invasive species is having on the habitat of the lake."
Once these invaders establish colonies where they don't belong, they are harder to get rid of than cockroaches.
"I'm not aware of one invasive species that has gotten into Lake Erie that has been controlled or eliminated," Zelazny added. "Once they're there, they are very hard to control and almost impossible to eradicate."
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Inverse Load Sensing Method for Line Load Determination of Beam-Like Structures
Romppanen, Antti-Jussi
Publication type: Doctoral dissertation
Issue date: 2008-10-31
Language: en
Belongs to: Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto. Julkaisu - Tampere University of Technology. Publication;762
Supervisor: Keskinen, Erno
Opponent: Koivo, Heikki; Schwab, Arend
University: Tampere University of Technology
Faculty: Faculty of Automation, Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Department: Department of Mechanics and Design
In this thesis, an inverse load sensing method is developed and investigated. Accordingly, it is found that strain measurements of a beam-like structure can be utilized in order to solve the actuating line load distribution. The feasibility of the method, especially for rotating beams is evaluated. The main applications of the method are in paper manufacturing processes, in which the paper web is pressed between rotating rolls and a line load distribution is created in the cross direction of the contact zone. The line load is particularly important, since it controls the surface properties of the paper, and is typically very difficult to measure accurately. In the contact zone, not only the paper, but also the rolls, are significantly influenced by the line load and experience considerable bending and flattening deformations. Thus, based on measurement of the strain of one of the rolls, the proposed method could be used to determine the governing line load distribution. Furthermore, the method could also be applied to other types of beam-like structures, for which the loading has to be determined. The strain-force relationship of the given structure is described by an influence coefficient matrix, which is formed by means of an appropriate unit load procedure. Since the loading input of the structure is determined on the basis of the strain response it produces, the proposed method is inverse. As is often the case in inverse problems, the system equations are found to be ill-posed, therefore, small errors in the measured input cause large deviations in the solution. Thus, the quality of the solution is improved by introducing a suitable regularization technique. The feasibility of the inverse load sensing method is first verified in two experimental cases of static point forces acting on beam-like structures. Then, two different approaches and the applicability of the method are evaluated with a purely computational analysis of a case, in which the line load distribution acts on a static beam-like roll structure. Finally, the feasibility of the method is tested on a real dynamic application of a pilot roll press. Strain gages are installed onto the inner surfaces of one of the rolls to give the needed strain data during a run. With appropriate conditions and adaptations, the proposed load sensing method can be utilized. The results were promising, although the implementation of the method should be carefully evaluated according to the requirements of the application.
Copyright: This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.


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on February 28, 2013 - 10:24 PM
CHELYABINSK, Russia – The last time a disaster with global impact struck Chelyabinsk, officials covered it up for three decades. This time, they're marketing it to the world.
The blast over this former secret Soviet nuclear hub two weeks ago was recorded by scores of dashboard cameras and viewed by millions of people, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attract international tourists and their money to the economically depressed province on the Asian edge of the Ural Mountains.
"Space sent us a gift, and we need to make use of it," Natalia Gritsay, head of the region's tourism department, said in an interview en route to Lake Chebarkul, where some of the biggest meteorites have been found and where officials gathered Feb. 26 to map out a new strategy for economic development. "We need our own Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty," she said.
The meteor was about 17 meters across and weighed more than 10,000 tons when it hit the atmosphere and exploded with the force of about 33 Hiroshima atomic bombs, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The blast was the biggest of its kind in more than a century. It shattered windows across the regional capital, also called Chelyabinsk, wounding more than 1,400 people and damaging more than 4,000 buildings.
An explosion at the Mayak processing facility in the region in 1957 released dozens of tons of high-level radioactive waste that killed hundreds and ranks as the third-worst atomic accident after Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.
While the Soviets kept the Mayak leak a secret for more than 30 years, local officials are determined to capitalize on the latest apocalyptic event.
"The first thing we need here are road signs in Russian and English and cops who can say 'hello' and 'okay' to foreigners," said Chebarkul Mayor Andrei Orlov. "


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Two women urged Buckhannon City Council Thursday to get rid of synthetic drugs, saying they supported an ordinance that would ban the sale of such items within corporate limits.
Amy Satterfield and Christine Bennett agreed the synthetic drugs commonly known as bath salts, potpourri and incense should be taken off the streets of Buckhannon. They said they decided to speak in support of the proposal after hearing the response from some community members who fought the ban against selling the items.
"We will not be silent anymore," Bennett said.
Article Photos
"I beg the council to stand up," Summerfield said. "We don't want it in our town. It is not safe. It is killing kids."
Robert Thompson, a citizen who spoke at a previous meeting against the proposed ordinance to control the sale of synthetic drugs, presented his findings which he said showed the benefits of the synthetic substances. He argued that these substances contain compounds that are beneficial to the health of the user, preventing brain cancer and other ailments.
The medicinal use is not the issue, said Summerfield. Those who use these synthetic drugs, including children, are using them for the purpose of getting high. She said that in 10 minutes of Internet research, she produced a mind-boggling amount of material that reveals instances in which people who have used the substances died. She said a 13-year-old boy in Pittsburgh had to have a double lung transplant from smoking "legal" marijuana.
Bennett claimed that 50 percent of juveniles in the local community are on probation because of the abuse of these legal drugs. She said she has seen students filter off the school buses, only to have to sign in with a probation officer at the start of school.
"We're all keeping this secret under the rug," she said. "Buckhannon was the center of the largest bath salts raid in the nation - in the entire United States. We made national news."
Bennett said in the interest of not turning the children in, thus causing them to have a record, students are placed on a trial probation period under the premise that "we'll get them fixed." She said she would not be silent anymore. She said that cities around Buckhannon were waking up and deciding to take control.
"We are in the process," Buckhannon Mayor Kenny Davidson said.
City Attorney David McCauley read a sample ordinance adopted from Clarksburg. He said a similar ordinance was adopted Wednesday in Summersville, and that many other sister cities have already taken the lead in establishing control. Bridgeport is also considering the issue.
"I beg the council to not be behind our sister cities anymore," Summerfield said. "We have pulled our children out of the river. We have pulled our children out of crashed vehicles."
Bennett had much more to say on the issue of juveniles in the Buckhannon community using synthetic drugs.
"Our percentage of juveniles on probation in this town is mind-numbing. There are juveniles who are being taken out of the custody of their appropriate parents, who are doing nothing wrong, because of synthetic marijuana and bath salts," Bennett said. "We sit here as a community and allow a store to open up on Main Street (Mom and Pop's Hippy Shop) 150 feet away from our youth center. We as a community declare that that's OK. I am not here to say that an adult can't do whatever they want with a legal substance, but I'm here to say that my children and this community's children are worth me not pushing this under the rug anymore.
"It is not acceptable to pull our children out of the river," she continued. "They are failing school. They are skipping school. They are stealing from Walmart, and this is not OK anymore. It is not OK for a store to come in and make a dollar, and let this community say that it's OK that over 50 percent of our juveniles are on probation."


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Character Klean Kanteen® Water Bottles
- Overview
Make our eco-friendly Klean Kanteen even more fun with Batman™, Star Wars Darth Vader™, and Spider-Man™ designs.
- 2.75" diameter, 5" high
- Crafted of stainless steel in our exclusive prints and fun colors.
- Lightweight, reusable, BPA-free and designed to last a lifetime.
- For best results, pack upright with cap closed or leaking can occur.
- Select styles and colors are Catalog / Internet only.
- Click swatches below to view all characters.
- Dimensions & Care
- Overall: 2.75" diameter, 5" high
- Capacity: 12 fluid ounces
- Hand wash before first use.
- For best results, pack upright with cap closed or leaking can occur.
- Dishwasher safe.
- Not for use in microwave.
- Shipping & Return Info
This is a general shipping item.
View Our Shipping Information
Return Policy
At Pottery Barn Kids, we take great pride in the quality and craftsmanship of our products. Attention to design, materials, safety and construction is our priority. We carefully inspect your order prior to shipment; upon receipt, please inspect your purchase and notify us of any damage. We will arrange for a prompt replacement. If, within 7 days for Quick Ship upholstery and 30 days for all other products, you are dissatisfied for any reason, you may return your purchase for a refund of the merchandise value.
If your return for Merchandise Credit Cards is greater than $10,000, we will issue $10,000 in Merchandise Credit Cards to you that day, and then mail additional Merchandise Credit Card(s) for the amount in excess of $10,000 to you.
We cannot accept returns on monogrammed, personalized, special-order items, or on items damaged through normal wear and tear. We also cannot accept returns of final-sale items, which are identified by a price that ends in $0.99.
For returns of items purchased from your Pottery Barn Kids registry, we will gladly provide a refund or exchange for the merchandise within 90 days of your event or within 90 days of purchase, whichever date is later.
For assistance, please contact Customer Service at 800.993.4923, 7 days a week, 5:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. PST.
International Returns: Online returns are available only for items that were shipped to the United States. If you would like to return items that were shipped outside the US, please see International Returns and Exceptions.


text:
Source: Reuters
quote: Second, and more concerning, is the non-collegial tone. He makes it personal, saying "you two show EXACTLY why Sony is failing," instead of sticking to the substance and simply saying "I disagree because..." And let's please lose the gratuitous "audio/video purists/bigots" insult. There are certainly reasons why Sony is failing, but it's not because of what they are doing with the RX100; I would argue, by contrast, is that this is the sort of product that used to keep Sony on top.


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On Thursday, the newly minted Uncle Harry told reporters at the opening of "The Sentebale: Stories of Hope" exhibition (which features photographs by Chris Jackson of Getty Images) that he met his newborn nephew the previous day at Kensington Palace, where the baby was "crying his eyes out, like all babies."
But it wasn't all tears between the two – Harry said he also had his first "cuddle" with the infant, too.
"It's fantastic to have an addition to the family," he said. "I only hope my brother knows how expensive my babysitting charges are!"
What does it mean to Harry to be an uncle?
He explained that his role is "to make sure he has a good upbringing, to keep him out of harm's way and make sure he has fun. The rest of it I leave to the parents."
As for which parent the new Prince resembles, Harry can't put his finger on it just yet: "I think you can judge that one for yourself. I've no idea," he said.
The exhibition, at the Getty Images Gallery in Eastcastle Street, London W1, is open to the public from July 26 until Aug. 10.
Can't get enough about the royal baby? Be among the first to know the news! Sign up below for our daily newsletter to find out about the new addition and other special offers – so you'll be the first to know everything from the baby's name to how the new mom and dad are adjusting to parenting.
Your Turn: The royal baby is finally here! Do you have a little prince or princess? Crown your little one, take a pic and they could appear on PEOPLE.com!


text:
on March 27, 2013 - 7:10 PM
After three years of delays, Metro Rail officials now say a new production plan should accelerate by eight months their project to rebuild the Buffalo subway fleet – and at no additional cost.
An urgent meeting convened Wednesday between the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and officials of Italian rail equipment giant AnsaldoBreda addressed the latest delays with a plan to return all 27 Metro Rail cars to Buffalo by the end of 2015, according to NFTA spokesman C. Douglas Hartmayer.
Though critics of the problem-plagued rebuilding program have suggested the NFTA should call in a $24 million performance bond posted by AnsladoBreda to ensure a timely project, Hartmayer said the plan negotiated Wednesday will avoid further delays and put the production schedule back on track.
"We have a plan here," he said. "The bond is a measure of last resort and we are far from that."
The meeting took place at NFTA headquarters Wednesday after The Buffalo News inquired about continuing delays in the program that is now centered in Dansville – the third facility devoted to the project.
Hornell Mayor Shawn D. Hogan, who has lambasted AnsaldoBreda and the NFTA for the delays that resulted in layoffs at a subcontractor's plant in his city, had strongly suggested that the authority at least call in the performance bond and possibly replace the firm with a new prime contractor.
Hogan even predicted in March of 2011 that the NFTA would not receive delivery of another rebuilt car for two years – far beyond the original schedule – after AnsaldoBreda stripped Gray Manufacturing Industries of Hornell of much of its duties in connection with the project. Last week he noted his prediction came true while at least a dozen former workers at Gray Manufacturing remained on layoff.
But Hartmayer countered Wednesday that calling in the bond or finding another contractor would only delay the project more while increasing costs now pegged at more than $40 million. He added that it is not unusual for such sophisticated rebuild projects to encounter significant delays.
"If Mayor Hogan wants to derive satisfaction in being right about his prediction, so be it," Hartmayer said. "Our focus is on the future, not the past."
The authority spokesman said the Wednesday meeting revealed that delays resulted from one of AnsaldoBreda's main parts suppliers going out of business. He said the company also has encountered problems in retaining workers at its former Foster-Wheeler plant in Dansville because of the temporary nature of the contract. In some cases, he said, workers left AnsaldoBreda for more permanent opportunities.
"All that has compounded the problem," he said.
Hartmayer said the project now will be expedited by sending an extra car to Dansville in the near future to enter the rebuild assembly line. The end result, he said, will be the return of Car 126 this spring, with Cars 110, 111 and 113 slated to return to Buffalo by the end of the year. They then face 600 hours of testing in the subway and additional trials before they can be assigned to revenue service.
The new schedule means the entire project will be completed by the end of 2015, he added, instead of the most recent time table of August 2016.
Because the newly refurbished cars cannot operate with the NFTA's older models – built by Tokyu Car Co. in Japan in the early 1980s – the new schedule also will allow more operating flexibility for the authority when the cars are returned. .
Wednesday's meeting involved NFTA Executive Director Kimberley A. Minkel; Antonio Torcia, AnsaldoBreda project manager; and Mauro Melani, AnsaldoBreda general manager.
"Today's meeting was very positive," Minkel said Wednesday. "Collectively, we identified a strategy that will address the current lag in production and reduce the overall time frame of the total project."
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