text:
Spring 2.0 introduced
@Required, Spring 2.5 added
@Autowired and Spring 3.0 added even more annotation driven configuration capabilities by introducing
@Configuration and added support for JSR 330 annotations. So given a legacy bean of type A whose properties are annotated with
@Required we might want to derive a more modern-style spring bean using
@Named and
@Inject. The problem now is that we can't simply extend class
A like that:
@Named("fail") public class B extends A { ... }
By default, springs
RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor would raise an exception when processing the bean named
"fail". So we should either think about using delegation instead of inheritance – thus using two separately defined beans like outlined below:
@Named("delegate") public class B { @Inject private A a; ... }
If we can't resort to delegation for some reason, the following configuration class can solve our problem:
@Configuration public class TestConfiguration { @Inject private ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory; @Bean(autowire = Autowire.BY_TYPE) public BeanWithAutowiredProperties beanWithAutowiredProperties() { AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor autowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor = new AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor(); autowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.setAutowiredAnnotationType(Required.class); autowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.setBeanFactory(beanFactory); BeanWithAutowiredProperties beanWithAutowiredProperties = new BeanWithAutowiredProperties(); autowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.processInjection(beanWithAutowiredProperties); return beanWithAutowiredProperties; } @Bean public BeanWithAutowiredProperties fail(){ return new BeanWithAutowiredProperties(); } @Named public static class A { } @Named public static class B { } public static class LegacyBean { private A a; public A getA() { return a; } @Required public void setA(A a) { this.a = a; } } public static class BeanWithAutowiredProperties extends LegacyBean { private B b; public B getB() { return b; } public void setB(B b) { this.b = b; } @PostConstruct void initialize(){ if(null == getA()) { throw new IllegalStateException("required property must not be null"); } if(null == b) { throw new IllegalStateException("autowired must not be null"); } } } }
Note that we're using a local bean post processor so that the spring lifecycle for other beans is not affected.
Each voice enriches us. – G'Kar, Babylon 5
On today's Diversity Day (German) I want to share a story with you.
One of our software engineers is hearing-impaired and needs to read people's lips in order to fully understand what they are saying. The Daily Scrum in front of the taskboard can sometimes be challenging. People point at tasks and at the same time talk about what has changed, then they wave about in the general direction of "done" and mention something that got done, and then ask whether that thing with the build pipeline has occurred again, while pointing towards the seven tasks in "to do" from five feet's distance away. It can be quite hard at times to match the conversation to an actual card on the board.
So our colleague asked whether we could introduce a pointer device to the Daily Scrum and hand it about. Now, each speaker in the Daily Scrum takes the laser pointer, highlights the task they are talking about, and then passes the laser pointer on to the next guy.
Then the person who initially felt the need for a laser pointer due to impaired hearing went on vacation — and the team kept using the pointer. They admitted that highlighting the tasks helped them all to structure the discussion and to not get lost.
There are a few more very similar examples. Behavior modifications were triggered on behalf of only one person with a disability and then turned out to improve communication for everybody.
The point to drive home is this: What seems like an extra effort and cost factor, serving only people with uncommon needs, can actually be beneficial to everybody. The position of a minority can be the crucial difference that makes a difference.
(PS: The title of this article is a quote from the Declaration of Principles.)
In the course of 8th grade, one is supposed to do an internship. I am very interested in programming and also coded on my own before, so I wanted to find out how this works out in large companies and if it fits my interests and the image I had.
Eventually, I was taken in by Coremedia's Product Center.
As good as this sounds, I originally searched for a spot at one of Hamburg's numerous companies producing games. However, none of them were eager to take inexperienced trainees, so I decided to publish a blog post addressing anyone working in the IT business in search for an internship. Martti was the one who answered and took me in along with another applicant.
Over the course of two weeks, we were introduced into the teams and not only did we learn about their work, we also got our own task, closely related to their work which gave us a very detailed insight into programming with HTML and JavaScript.
The employees received us in a very friendly and open manner and were eager to help if needed. We were treated as coworkers and Martti used a lot of time to help and coach us in the process of coding our application.
It was great to be at Coremedia AG, as a trainee I learned a lot about the used IT languages and the overall work ethic. At the same time as being very informative and funny, it was still exhausting at times, especially when we were stuck with a task. To conclude, as this was supposed to help us in determining whether working in this industry fits our interests, we definitely think that it helped to be here at Coremedia AG. I can imagine myself working on IT in the future.
There is a widespread confusion about the meaning and the relevance of "commitment" for teams that develop software according to Scrum. "Commitment" is one of the five Scrum values, as introduced in the book "Agile Software Development with Scrum". However, since 2011 the word does not appear in the Scrum Guide any more, which has not helped to clear up any ambiguity. Plus, there is no really good translation of the word in German, complicating things even more for me in discussions with co-workers in Hamburg.
So, what is commitment and how can it, or an improved version, be a useful concept? And finally, how can this abstract value be brought to life by actual Scrum teams? I believe it is best to replace "commitment" with a more precise term that addresses more issues, and put that to work.
The Origins
In ye olden times, before the 2011 Scrum Guide, development teams used to commit to a sprint goal or even to a list of user stories. The future is unpredictable, estimates are way off, impediments show up, developers are easily distracted, miscellaneous foreign managers often distract the team, nevertheless the dev team promise really hard to deliver the sprint results the product owner ordered. The scrum master is in place to remove at least some of the issues.
The Agile Manifesto, in contrast, demands that teams be formed by motivated individuals who just give it a go. These individuals already have a basic inclination toward the project goal and sprint goal, and they do not need an additional appeal to their integrity in the fashion of "but you promised!" Also, they are an empowered team and therefore are capable of removing impediments of any kind for the higher purpose of customer value.
A commitment resembles a contract: The dev team promise to deliver a certain service (sprint goal) by a certain date (sprint review meeting). However, there are no provisions in place to reward a successful delivery, or to punish a failed delivery, other than the dev team feeling embarrassed in public when they have nothing to show at the sprint review. Also, only one party is asked to sign it, not both. In fact, Scrum's commitment is almost, but not entirely different from a contract.
Building Trust
Now that we have had a look at the use of commitment, how is that useful to anyone? Some people seem to believe that, as it is really hard to keep a commitment due to the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it is a wise move to only commit to learning, to adhering to the Scrum process, or to the team, but never to a specific outcome. Most times your commitment will be broken anyway (never mind whether on your account or by adverse circumstances), so pressure will increase, quality will degrade, control will increase, and your team will be in a place they really wanted to avoid.
I disagree and argue that it is rather important to make commitments to outcomes in the general direction of your customers, i.e., to your product owner. Trust is the cornerstone of customer relationship not only in the Agile Manifesto. It is also the foundation of the teamwork pyramid in Lencioni's book "The five dysfunctions of a team", and we need to see the dev team plus product owner as one team in order to avoid the biggest risk, namely, of building the wrong product. In order to improve teamwork, you need to build trust, writes C. Avery, and to do that, he advises to repeatedly make small promises and keep them, this way building a track record of reliability, thereby expanding your freedom. Foremost, Avery recommends to only make promises you can definitely meet, because one single failed commitment can ruin the positive effect of a hundred kept promises in an instant and destroy your client's trust in you.
To me, a forecast you can count on most of the time is good enough, and close enough to a commitment that one can replace the other. When the dev team trust their own ability to execute and the product owner trusts the developers, they should work together smoothly even when the going gets tough, and resolve issues instead of shifting the blame about. Replacing "commitment" with "reliable forecast" works for me.
The obvious opportunity to repeatedly make and keep promises and build trust are sprints and sprint deliverables. This brings us to the question of how a dev team can actually keep their promises regarding sprint outcomes to the client.
Ready, Willing and Able
Meeting a sprint commitment (or better, "reliable forecast") depends on three aspects that are easily confused:
- The organization must be ready.
- The dev team must be willing to do all they can for a sprint success.
- They must be able to perform all tasks that might turn out to be necessary to reach the sprint goal.
Many authors, including Schwaber in his 2002 book and this more recent article, focus on the organization as the biggest obstacle to sprint success. A team can only commit to a sprint goal when they are empowered to meet it and to blast through any impediments that might occur, even if they hurt feelings and disturb processes in other parts of the organization. The underlying assumption is that the biggest challenge for Scrum teams is a lack of organizational support when they ruthlessly turn towards customer value. If the organization is not ready to accommodate this change in mindset, the team is doomed from the sprint planning meeting on and is better off not entering any kind of commitment.
Now, on toward willingness of the dev team to work as hard as they can (see, e.g., this article). Asking the team for a commitment to the sprint goal may or may not be helpful. Hope is that, in order to meet their promise, the dev team are now a bit more motivated to focus, to remove obstacles, and build the important things first. This way, the chances of achieving the sprint result are supposed to be higher than without commitment. The Agile Manifesto starts out with the assumption that developers are motivated individuals, as discussed above, so there is no need for an additional act of commitment. However, there is the real danger that a lackluster interest in success is a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereas a "play to win"-attitude can help bring success about. The (fictional) Yoda has (fictional) success with his famous "do, not try" approach. But the best way of having the dev team's full attention on the sprint goal is to grab them by their intrinsic motivation. In Appelo' Management 3.0 (Chapter 5, "How to energize people"), there is a lot of good advice on how to help people give their best at work. Only one of them is grabbing people by their sense of honor and integrity, by having them make a promise that they are reluctant to break. Asking for commitment is just one of the many ways to increase the willingness of the dev team to deliver.
On to the third aspect of
keeping commitments forecasting reliably, the ability to do so because the dev team have the necessary time, know-how, tools, and supply from upstream stations in the value stream. This is the classic area of team-level impediments and their removal. It is not enough to have a supportive company and a motivated team, they also need to be able to remove all impediments that slow them down. They need to notice them, attack them, and remove them for good. Noticing impediments is a science on its own, but good books have already been written on retrospectives, so this is not the place to dive in further.
Commitment and Sprint Planning
Let me wrap up this inspection of the notion of commitment by suggesting how to use "commitment" or "reliable forecast" in a sprint planning meeting.
The point of a Scrum Master is to address impediments from within and without the team, and to detect looming obstacles on the team's likely path.
- When the organization is not ready to tackle the work in the sprint, the dev team plus Scrum Master must call out and provide the required infrastructure, helping hands, or authority.
- When the team is not willing to run for the sprint goal, it is necessary to notice that not everyone supports the sprint backlog, and bring possible side-agendas or doubts about the general direction on the table before they blow up in your face during the sprint.
- When the team is not able to deliver, it is important to raise any concerns right away, whether they concern limited availability of team members, know-how, technical unclarity, or any other risk threatening the sprint success.
The idea here is to educate people to act proactively (first habit of Covey) and to assume responsibility for the sprint goal and sprint backlog instead of evading a clear position (Avery).
So, in my role as Scrum Master, I usually ask two questions at the end of the sprint planning meeting: 1. Is this a good plan? 2. Can you do it?
- Look at the taskboard. Given this sprint goal and the stories planned here (and other stuff like the product vision on the wall over there). Do you think this is a sensible plan?
- Look at the table of who is available in this sprint for how long, at the tasks on the taskboard, at our list of impediments next to the taskboard, the recent sprint velocities in this chart here, etc. In light of that, can you do all the things on the board and thereby achieve the sprint goal, or is it wishful thinking?
The first question serves to draw out any discrepancies between individual goals and the team goal, and bring any doubts about the goal to the surface. Through the second question, I want the team to discuss all risks on the way to that goal, including the question of whether they are simply too optimistic.
These two questions work for me to replace the request for this mysterious commitment, which is, as mentioned above, especially awkward to ask for in German. Also, there is no waterfallish smell of a mini-contract, while addressing the questions of whether the organization is ready, and the dev team is willing and able to achieve the sprint goal.
The sprint may still fail, but I believe that this is the best way to get a forecast that is mostly reliable.
- Mike Beedle/Ken Schwaber, Agile Software Development with Scrum (2002)
- Ken Schwaber/Jeff Sutherland, Scrum Guide (2013)
- Agile Manifesto (2001)
- Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002)
- Christopher M. Avery, Teamwork is an Individual Skill (2001)
- Jurgen Appelo, Management 3.0. Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders (2010)
- Another way of testing commitment is described in this article.
Lately, we were facing many failed builds because of phantomjs crashing when executing our joounit tests. Grepping through the build logs did not give us much information. All we found was:
[WARNING] PhantomJS has crashed. [...]
Phantomjs did not do us the pleasure to crash when executing the same tests, not even when testing the same modules. In most cases, phantomjs did not even crash When running the next build. Fortunately, there are many others out there facing similar problems, see https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/issues/12002, for example. Using the reproducer given in that issue, we can derive a wrapper script to automatically retry the tests a few times. We can now replace the phantomjs executable by a wrapper script that evaluates the exit code of the phantomjs like this:
BIN=/usr/local/phantomjs-1.9.7/bin/phantomjs RET=1 MAX=5 RUN=0 until [ ${RET} -eq 0 ]; do ${BIN} $@ RET=$? RUN=$(($RUN +1)) # exit immediately after max crashes if [ ${RUN} -eq ${MAX} ]; then echo "got ${RUN} unexpected results from phantomjs, giving up ..." exit ${RET} fi # allowed values are 0-5 # see https://github.com/CoreMedia/jangaroo-tools/blob/master/jangaroo-maven/jangaroo-maven-plugin/src/main/resources/net/jangaroo/jooc/mvnplugin/phantomjs-joounit-page-runner.js if [ ${RET} -lt 5 ]; then if [ ${RET} -eq 1 ]; then echo "phantomjs misconfigured or crashed, retrying ..." else exit ${RET} fi else echo "got unexpected return value from phantomjs: ${RET}. Retrying ..." fi done
Fortunately, we have set up the joounit phantomjs runner to use exit code 1 only in the rare case that it is completely misconfigured, so any other valid test outcome, e.g., timeout, is still captured correctly.
Here at CoreMedia we write our documentation in DocBook using IntelliJ Idea as an editor for the XML sources. From this XML we generate PDF and WebHelp manuals.
The documentation is part of our source code repository and is also integrated in CoreMedia's continuous integration process with Jenkins, Sonar and the like. Naturally, the demand for a Sonar like quality measurement for documentation arouse.
The first task is to determine the metrics that we want to monitor. Unfortunately, there is, at least now, no way to automatically test for accuracy and completeness of the information, so we have stick to more obvious features, such as:
- Size of the manual measured through the number of chapters, tables, figures…
- Spelling errors
- Grammar errors
- CoreMedia style guide errors
The first point is easy; simply count the corresponding DocBook tags in the manual using XPATH. The others require a checker that can be integrated into the build process and that delivers a usable format for further processing.
After searching the web we stumbled upon LanguageTool (www.languagetool.org). LanguageTool is an open source tool that offers a stand-alone client, a web front-end and a Java library for all the checks we want to do.
Integrating the Java library in our adapted version of the docbkx-maven-plugin was easy. Adding the Maven dependency to the project and creating a new Maven goal which instantiates the LanguageTool object:
langTool = new JLanguageTool(new AmericanEnglish()); langTool.activateDefaultPatternRules();
The second line shows the big power of LanguageTool, the rules. Spell checking is done with hunspell but all of the grammar and style checks are defined in rules, either written in Java code or in XML. A simple XML rule that checks for the correct usage of email, would look like this:
<rule id="mode" name="Style: Do not write e-mail"> <pattern> <token>e-mail</token> </pattern> <message>CoreMedia Style: Its <suggestion>email</suggestion> not e-mail</message> <example type="correct">Send an <marker>email</marker></example> <example type="incorrect">Send an <marker><match no="1"/></marker></example> </rule>
More complicated rules are possible using regular expressions and POS (part of speech, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech) tags. LanguageTool comes with a huge chunk of predefined rules for common grammar errors and can be extended by own rules. So, we implemented our style guide with XML rules.
When we start the check we get the results as a list of RuleMatch objects:
List<RuleMatch> matches = langTool.check(textString);
From a RuleMatch objects we can get all interesting information, such as the error message, the position, a suggested correction and more. In our HTML result pages, we show, for instance, the following information from a predefined rule:
In the build process we generate an overview site for all manuals:
False Positives
At the beginning we got a lot of errors that were not real errors but shortcomings of the checker. There were mostly three reasons for this:
- Words not known by the spellchecker (all of these acronyms used in IT writing, for example)
- Grammar rules not applicable to the format of our text
- Words like file names or class names that can't be known by the spellchecker
We applied three measures to overcome the false positives:
- Creating a list of ignored words for the spellchecker. The list is managed in the repository so everyone can add new words.
- Deactivating rules in LanguageTool with
langTool.disableRule(deactivatedRule);. The list of deactivated rules is also managed in the repository
- Tagging all specific words with the appropriate DocBook element and filtering the DocBook sources.
With this approach we were able to remove nearly all false positives.
Having an overview page for the documentation enhances the visibility and leads to better quality of the documentation. LanguageTool is a great product for this. It's easy to integrate and to use and is very powerful. Questions in the forum or the mailing lists have been answered quickly. So, give it a try when you want to monitor the quality of your documentation.
For our fortnightly coding dojo I recently suggested to focus on API design instead of implementation – at least for one session. The idea was that APIs live much longer than API implementations and that consequently flaws in the API design hurt much more than flaws in the actual algorithms. And because developers code much more often than they design APIs, the need for practice should be expected to be much more urgent.
The Task
Our goal was to design a generic caching API. Some use cases were given:
- Lookup a value from the cache.
- Compute a value that is not currently cached.
- Let a value computation register dependencies. A dependency is a representation of a mutable entity.
- Invalidate a dependency. All values whose computation registered that dependency must be removed from the cache.
- Configure a maximum cache size.
- Let one cache be responsible for fundamentally different classes of value at the same time.
The approach was to write the API, only, and to provide test cases simply to evaluate how a client would use the API. No implementation of the actual API was allowed, just implementation of callback interfaces that are normally provided by clients of the cache.
Under this assumption the tests would not run, but the test code was using the API and had to look natural and understandable. Of course, the crucial aspect was to make the API convenient for clients. API documentation snippets were written only as far as absolutely necessary.
Our Experience
We decided to work on a single laptop connected to a beamer to allow all participants to comment and implement improvements alternatingly. It turned out that it is surprisingly difficult to build an API without building the implementation. There is the temptation to let the intended internal data structure shine through in the API ("But how are dependencies stored after all?") when the client of the API couldn't care less.
There is also the tendency to skip the 'test-driven' design and write down the cache interface immediately when in fact the tests given you a good feeling which information has to be provided to the cache somehow.
It was observed that some upfront drawing would have helped a lot. It wouldn't have to be proper UML, but an overview of the entities involved and their relationships would have given us a quicker start. Caching is more complex than the above use cases might suggest.
Java generics were a recurring topic. While we are all used to instantiating generic classes, actually defining the right type parameters for an interface is different matter.
We talked a bit about code style. The
@Nonnull annotation sparked the most intense discussion.
Your Turn
If you decide to repeat the kata, also think (after the API is done) about possible performance implications of the design choices. Look for further missing features. On the other hand, look for redundant features that only make the API harder to understand.
High Priority Mail
Last week a letter reached me that had the announcement IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS on the envelope. When I eagerly tore open the letter, awaiting some life-changing documents inside, it turned out they were not. It is a common pattern: You all receive e-mails stating URGENT in the subject, but they're not. And how many e-mails are flagged "!" important — but they're not? When I judge the importance of a communication to me, its outward appearance is not the only thing I take into consideration, it is also very much the sender that counts. If I know the author to be trustworthy, based on my previous experiences with her, I tend to treat those messages as much more relevant than messages from an insurance company (that usually wants to sell more insurances) or from a business I never dealt with before.
An Intermediate Artifact
This thought crossed my mind when at the #lkce13, "the" David https://twitter.com/lkuceo stated that a prioritized backlog introduces an unnecessary proxy variable. Agreed, stakeholders and dev team are better off talking to each other instead of capturing conversations in an artifact with only the product owner talking to each of the sides. Also, a backlog may imply a commitment to a path, when in fact it might just show alternate future directions in which the product may involve.
Backlog for Focus
On the other hand, if you have n stakeholders and m developers, and every developer is to talk directly to every customer, you will have n * m conversations taking place. When the product owner acts as information hub, only n + m conversations take place, which might be the only feasible way.
Also, the product owner is supposed to act as the business value expert, condensing the multiple voices of the stakeholders, and even opening up new options. It makes sense to me to have a domain expert drive this and not spread accountability for priorities all over the team.
The third and final point brings me back to the story about the "important" letter: it is about trust. When the dev team trusts the product owner enough to make good decisions on priority, there is less urgency to discuss priorities directly with stakeholders. Maybe the PO has shown good judgment in the past. Or the decision process is transparent enough, showing that all relevant stakeholders are involved, that all sides have been taken into consideration. If you do not trust your product owner to make good priority decisions, you might need to ask why, and address that issue.
Trust the Product Owner
The backlog is not to be used as a contract artifact on paper, inhibiting face-to-face conversation and feedback loops. There is a balance to strike: The team needs to alternate between an opening, questioning stance involving all stakeholders, and a focusing, deciding stance where the product owner is responsible to narrow down all possibilities to a manageable number. The product owner is supposed to lead by reducing uncertainty about the future, providing clarity for the team. She can achieve this task better when all parties trust her decisions, based on her openness, her focus, and her commitment to the job. A prioritized backlog is a tool to achieve this, but it is abused when just used for written "THIS IS IMPORTANT" statements.
So, watch out for backlogs that are used to hide information like value, options, or risk, inhibiting collaboration. Make your backlog a dual-use tool both to start conversations and to provide focus.
In our last post, we discussed a method for quantitative user research. In contrast to the specific topic of the last post, this post gives pointers on how products with a great user experience (UX) can be achieved in the context of an agile development process.
Nowadays 84 % of software companies apply agile methods – yet, how the topic of how UX can be integrated into the process is the topic of ongoing discussions between UX professionals and with other stakeholders within the organization.
Recently, a number of blog posts about UX in different settings were written and caught my attention. As the area of UX – especially in the combination of agile development of enterprise software – is quickly developing, these articles are definitely worth reading if you are a UX professional (or if you work together with UX professionals). I thought this worth to sharing some pointers.
Blog-Post Reviews
A must-read is Aviva Rosenstein's article "The UX Professionals Guide to Working with Agile Scrum Teams", published on Boxes and Arrows. As the title says, the article is focused on the Scrum methodology (a popular framework for organizing agile development). The article discusses a survey about the challenges UX professionals face in Scrum and gives detailed practical advice on how these challenges can be addressed. In particular, the article discusses the problems faced in creating a UX vision when UX work is aligned strictly with the Scrum teams' sprints or brought in too late in the process. Among the suggestions are the creation of user personas (and using these personas in the user stories or scenarios) and including the team in the design process.
The article "Fitting Big-Picture UX Into Agile Development" by Damon Dimmick was published on Smashing Magazine. For me, the important ideas in this article are 1) the idea of including UX-focused sprints in the agile development process and 2) the idea of a design owner whose role is to foster design and ensure consistency.
Jon Innes post "Integrating UX into the Product Backlog" on Boxes and Arrows suggests a UX Integration Matrix that allows including UX efforts into a products backlog. Jon highlights the necessity of a good feedback loop for agile and UX work. I do love Jon's idea to estimate UX complexity using Fibonacci numbers and to use task completion rate as a metric for the usability of a UI implementation!
The article also discusses the cause for the (perceived) different value of UX in consumer-oriented vs. enterprise-oriented businesses. While an enterprise company makes money even if user's can not handle effectively leverage the software or by selling professional services to fix problems that occur, a consumer-oriented business cannot operate that way. I would add to this argument that the perception of the value of UX is shifting. Buyers increasingly understand that an efficient interface design saves time and money by generating more – and higher – quality output faster. As a consequence, even analysts with a technical focus are integrating usability efforts in their reviews of market offerings as an evaluation criteria. Therefore, the perception that UX is less important in enterprise-oriented businesses that in customer-oriented businesses is misleading.
Paul Bryan's text "Is UX Strategy Fundamentally Incompatible with Agile or Lean UX?" on UX Matters focuses on the field of UX strategy and its compatibility with agile. It discusses two approaches for fitting UX better into modern development processes: Lean UX and Agile UX. The author identifies three key questions are discussed around the agile UX topic: 1) participating in an agile team structure, 2) modifying UX activities and deliverables such that interdisciplinary work gets more effective, and 3) scheduling the timing of UX activities to more easily fit to the sprints of the development team. Especially with respect to the third topic, Paul Bryan offers a number of quotes discussing the importance to do UX strategy and planning before the development starts.
The compatibility of lean UX within large companies is discussed and the author concludes that "[t]hey are fundamentally incompatible". The reasons are is that "[t]he lean UX form of UX strategy is too lightweight, too reliant on small data sets, too malleable, and too subject to the assertiveness of a just few individuals. For a large company that has a deep understanding of its market, its customers, and its competition, and the resources to fund the best path forward, it's not the optimal approach."
An older but valuable post is Jeff Patton's "Twelve emerging best practices for adding UX work to Agile development" published on AgileProductDesign.com. Among the suggestions Jeff makes are the usage of low fidelity prototypes in communication and the use of prototypes as documentation.
While there is still a lot of uncertainty on how UX is best integrated in the agile development process, especially in large enterprises businesses, there are some factors that are beginning to clarify.
The answer to the question if UX resources should be part of the agile (e.g., Scrum) team or a central resource from my perspective largely depends on the structure of the organization: In smaller organizations and agencies, the need for holistic tasks and planning (e.g., developing a UX vision and a style guide) is smaller than in larger organizations with multiple product teams. Thus, allocating UX resources in the agile team is less problematic. In larger businesses, in which multiple development teams work towards a common goal, the necessity for holistic tasks is much larger. As it is hard to integrate such holistic long-term tasks into a sprint rhythm (mostly two weeks), in such a setting, having UX as a shared resource is more beneficial.
A very lean approach to UX with largely reduced deliverables might be just too lean for large enterprises. Still, communicating both with development teams and with decision makers to create a shared understanding and a common goal based on a visualization of the UX team's product vision is the most important key factor to success and is more important than highly polished deliverables.
Making the design and research process open and transparent also reduces or eliminates problems with the perception of the work of the UX staff. To be able to achieve an efficient communication, it is very important to establish working processes and a language that everybody understands. For example, by establishing design personas that both, product owners and UX designers use in their stories and scenarios (tip: Make your personas available in your intranet or wiki and allow that stories and scenarios can be linked to them!).
Interdisciplinary thinking is beneficial, too. It does not hurt if UX designers have an understanding of the technical concepts of the software product, but it also does not hurt if developers and other stakeholders take pen and paper to sketch their ideas in visual brainstorming sessions rather than staying in the abstract.
Having somebody fulfilling the role of a UX design owner seems to be especially important in a B2B (business-to-business) settings. Here, the results of having a bad UX are not as immediately visible as in B2C (business-to-customer) settings. And as such, it is more important that somebody advocates the importance of UX. A bad UX in a check-out process in an e-Commerce setting will immediately result in a smaller conversion rate and loss of customers and can straightforwardly be identified with methods such as A/B testing. In contrast, the results of a bad UX in B2B software are much less directly visible (this is not to say they are less drastic!).
… go to to Jochen Toppe and Jesco von Voss for review and valuable comments.
System Usability Scale (SUS) – An Improved German Translation of the Questionnaire
written by Kris Lohmann and Jörg Schäffer
Usability professionals have a variety of choices when it comes to picking a questionnaire to evaluate and measure the usability of a software product or a website in a quantitative manner.
A particularly often-used scale is the System Usability Scale (SUS). This scale was developed and made available by Brooke (1). The SUS consists of ten items. Ratings are performed on a 5-point scale on which 1 corresponds to "strongly disagree" and 5 to "strongly agree". The evaluation results in an easy-to-interpret score from 0 – 100, similar to a percentage score. This intuitive score is a definitive plus when communicating the results to stakeholder and the management.
Aside from being a de-facto standard, the SUS has some advantages over other scales. It is scientifically validated and has been shown to outperform other scales in the sense of validity (it measures what it is supposed to measure) and sensitivity (the result shows small changes) (2, 3, 10). The SUS has been shown to be reliable (that is, if a study is repeated, the same outcome is can be expected) (10).
The SUS is free, and has been used in a lot of usability evaluations. In the words of the original author: "… [B]ecause it was made freely available has been picked up and used in many, many usability evaluations. (Cheapskates! But I'm glad so many people have found it useful)." (4)
Meta-Studies allow for comparison with other systems, the average SUS score measured by Tullis and Albert is 66 (3). Furthermore, a study by Bangor and colleagues has shown which semantic label people associate to a given SUS score. For example, a score around 20 is associated to an "awful" system and about "90" to the "best imaginable" system (9). Due to the fact that it only has ten items, the SUS is lightweight and, thus, participants are quickly done with it.
Yet, the SUS has some drawbacks to be considered when it is used. To start with, the SUS focuses just on pragmatic quality. The hedonistic quality (5) is not really in the scope of the evaluation (though, we are not saying that hedonistic aspects do not influence the result!). Furthermore, there is no tested German translation of the scale available – this issue is addressed in this post.
German Translations of the System Usability Scale (SUS)
The original author made the scale available in English. It was not officially translated to German. Recently there have been approaches towards translation (6,7). The most notable result was based on crowdsourcing the translation (8). We at CoreMedia reviewed the results and decided to develop our own version based on these approaches as we were not completely happy with the wording. This is the solution that we came up with:
- Ich denke, dass ich dieses System gerne regelmäßig nutzen würde.
- Ich fand das System unnötig komplex.
- Ich denke, das System war leicht zu benutzen.
- Ich denke, ich würde die Unterstützung einer fachkundigen Person benötigen, um das System benutzen zu können.
- Ich fand, die verschiedenen Funktionen des Systems waren gut integriert.
- Ich halte das System für zu inkonsistent.
- Ich glaube, dass die meisten Menschen sehr schnell lernen würden, mit dem System umzugehen.
- Ich fand das System sehr umständlich zu benutzen.
- Ich fühlte mich bei der Nutzung des Systems sehr sicher.
- Ich musste viele Dinge lernen, bevor ich mit dem System arbeiten konnte.
Why should you prefer the suggested German translation of SUS over other ones? Our translated version of the SUS has been used in a comparably large on-site study with 89 participants. Overall, there were no indicators of problems.
Furthermore, there is an important difference to the version proposed in the crowdsourced translation (8). Item 10, which is formulated "I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system" in the original SUS, is translated to "Ich musste eine Menge lernen, bevor ich anfangen konnte das System zu verwenden." in the crowdsourced translation.
From our point of view, this solution is suboptimal: In contrast to the original English version, the translation does not put any focus on the users' goal. Therefore, we suggest a slightly different translation of this item, namely "Ich musste viele Dinge lernen, bevor ich mit dem System arbeiten konnte." This puts more focus on the user being able to accomplish a goal with the system. Thus, the semantics of the translation of this item is closer to the original item.
Some Practical Hints for Augmenting the SUS
We augmented the SUS in two respects:
First, we used two free text fields in which the participants were asked to indicate what they liked about the software and what they disliked about the software to obtain qualitative input in addition to the quantitative measurement. The results were really insightful, hence, if a study has a formative aspect (finding problems) in addition to the summative aspect (evaluating an existing solution), augmenting the SUS with free text items should be considered.
Second, we added some in-detail items to evaluate certain aspects of the the software that are not directly covered by the SUS (e.g., quality of icons, microcopy, and visual appeal). This augmentation provided additional valuable information, as well.
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a lightweight and scientifically validated questionnaire and an effective tool to assess perceived usability. On the basis of existing attempts for a translation, we created an improved translation, which we successfully used in an on-site study with 89 participants.
As the SUS is a lightweight questionnaire with only 10 items, augmenting it with other items is unproblematic with respect to the time participants need to complete the questionnaire. Such an augmentation is suggested if a study has formative aspects and in circumstances when specific hypothesis need to be tested.
(1) Brooke, J.: SUS: A "quick and dirty" usability scale. In: Jordan, P. W., Thomas, B., Weerdmeester, B. A., McClelland (eds.) Usability Evaluation in Industry pp. 189—194. Taylor & Francis, London, UK (1996)
(2) A Comparison of Questionnaires for Assessing Website Usability
(3) Tullis and Albert: Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics. Morgan Kaufmann (2008)
(4) http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/5211/sus-scores-and-doubts
(5) http://www.flamelab.de/article/pragmatic-and-hedonic-quality-of-software-systems/
(6) http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/10181/what-is-the-standardized-german-version-of-the-system-usability-scale-sus
(7) http://www.sapdesignguild.org/resources/sus.asp
(8) http://isitjustme.de/2012/01/crowdsourcing-the-translation-of-sus/
(9) A Bangor, P Kortum, J Miller – Journal of usability studies (2009)
(10) Brooke: SUS: A Retrospective Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 8, Issue 2, pp. 29 – 40 (2013)


text:
- Mobile site
- E-Newsletters
- News feed
- Find us on Twitter
All the latest news and views from the T&A
All the latest sport from the T&A
Latest business headlines from the T&A
- Find us on Facebook
The Telegraph & Argus
Like us on Facebook
Sensation-Al! Golden oldie Morley stuns Bay Athletic (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)
Get involved: send your pictures, video, news and views by texting TANEWS to 80360, or email
Sensation-Al! Golden oldie Morley stuns Bay Athletic
Updated 9:59pm Tuesday 22nd April 2014 in County Am By Philip Rhodes
Tyersal pulled off the surprise of the season in the West Riding County Amateur League Premier Division with a 2-1 win at second-placed Bay Athletic.
The win was courtesy of a stunning 85th-minute goal from 40-plus veteran Alan Morley Snr, who, after spotting Bay keeper Graham McLachlan off his line, hit a shot from just inside the halfway line over his head and into the net.
Earlier in the first half Any Salm had deservedly put the home side ahead, before Tyersal levelled in the second period through Wayne Wright.
Leaders Ovenden West Riding saw their chances of lifting the championship trophy increase after beating Campion 5-1.
Andy Bailey and John Booth both netted twice to add to a Robbie Graham effort, whilst Ben Omelia netted for Campion in the first half.
Hall Green United – who have been rooted to the foot of the table for most of the season – delayed confirmation of their possible relegation with a 2-1 home victory over Steeton, with Lee Speight and Kyle Warden netting for the Wakefield side before Adam Spencer scored for Steeton.
Hunsworth moved closer to regaining their place in the top flight after beating Westbrook YMCA 3-1 in Division One. Andy Wood, Lee McKeown and Stuart McCallum hit the target.
Mirfield-based Lower Hopton have played two games more than Hunsworth and stay two points adrift in second following their 4-3 home victory over Wibsey.
Wakefield City kept up their chances of finishing in the runners-up spot with a 1-0 success at bottom club Bay Athletic Reserves.
Monday results – Premier Division: Steeton 3 (A King, M Kershaw, A Spencer), Golcar United 0. Division One: Campion Res 2 (C Helliwell, M Hussain), Bay Athletic Res 0; Division Two: Hall Green Utd Res 3 (L Pryde 3), Golcar United 1 (og).

subset: commoncrawl


text:
More News
Mayor loses battle for commercial zoneMission City Council rejected a proposed zone change in the Melba Carter Subdivision on Monday that would...18 July 2014Read More...
Work on Bryan Rd to create detourConstruction Bryan will reroute traffic today through Monday, July 21. According to a news release,...18 July 2014Read More...
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
Local Weather
Current Conditions:
Partly Cloudy, 92 F
Tue - Scattered Thunderstorms. High: 91 Low: 78
Wed - Scattered Thunderstorms. High: 86 Low: 77
Thu - Scattered Thunderstorms. High: 90 Low: 77
Fri - Isolated Thunderstorms. High: 89 Low: 77
Sat - PM Thunderstorms. High: 93 Low: 76
Full Forecast at Yahoo! Weather
(provided by The Weather Channel)
MISSION - Petra A. Guerra, 82, passed away on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013 at her home in Mission.
Mrs. Guerra was born on Feb. 26, 1931 in La Grulla to Manuel and Romana Acevedo.
Survivors include her children, Yolanda G. Lara, Maria E. Espericueta, Jose Omar Serna Jr., Argelio Gonzalez and Pablo Gonzalez; and six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren.
Visitation will be held on Friday, Oct. 25, from 12 to 9 p.m. with a rosary at 7 p.m. at Lord & I Memorial Chapel in Peñitas. The funeral mass will be held on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 10 a.m. at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Peñitas. Interment will follow at Lord & I Cemetery in Palmview.
|< Prev
|Next >
Advertising Information
The Progress Times is the hometown newspaper for the local communities of Mission, Sharyland, Alton, Palmview, La Joya and surrounding areas in Western Hidalgo County. We have a staff of veteran reporters who work diligently every week to bring our readers the latest news as it affects their hometown area and people.


text:
Tuesday's video of the day features a grandma-to-be who is videotaped as she gets the big news.
The in-laws of the mom to be got together for the father-in-laws 60th birthday. This was another reason to celebrate.
The baby is due in September.
Follow @fox32news
35 Skyline DriveLake Mary, FL 32746
Phone: (407) 644-3535News Tips: (866) 55-FOX35


text:
Aaric Armstead scored 14 points and Jordan Threloff added 13 as Northern Illinois edged Ball State 67-65 in overtime Saturday.
Travon Baker made 1 of 2 free throws with 17 seconds left to put Northern Illinois up 67-65, and Chris Bond's shot with 3 seconds remaining missed as the Huskies (9-11, 3-5 Mid-American) held on. Armstead had a steal with 18 seconds left, setting up Baker's free throw attempts.
Baker tied the game at 60 on a 3-pointer with 9 seconds remaining in regulation, and Bond's runner at the buzzer missed.
Ball State (4-15, 1-7) led by 15 in the first half and 10 in the second half before the Huskies came back. Northern Illinois took its first lead since the game's opening minutes at 55-54 with under 4 minutes to go, setting up a tight finish.
Bond scored 16 while Jesse Berry had 13 and Zavier Turner added 11.
(Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Links to the FCC website to view WTHR and/or WALV's on-line public inspection files:
WTHR: https://stations.fcc.gov/station-profile/WTHR || WALV: https://stations.fcc.gov/station-profile/WALV
Individuals with disabilities may contact Jill Pursell at firstname.lastname@example.com, or 317.655.5602, for assistance with access to the public inspection files.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2014 WorldNow and WTHR. All Rights Reserved. For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.


text:
Thinkfinity Content Providers
The Thinkfinity resources, provided by leading educational organizations and the Verizon Foundation, are as follows:
- ARTSEDGE, a program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, provides art education resources
- EconEdLink, developed by the Council for Economic Education, offers economic and personal finance lesson materials for K-12 teachers and students
- EDSITEment!, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, includes information in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies
- Illuminations, created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), provides creative resources for teaching mathematics
- Literacy Network, a program of the National Center for Family Literacy and ProLiteracy, offers resources for literacy instruction and lifelong learning for adults and family literacy programs.
- ReadWriteThink, from the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), includes resources for reading and language arts instruction.
- Science NetLinks, developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), provides standards-based science resources including downloadable 60-second science updates.
- Smithsonian's History Explorer, created by the National Museum of American History, features resources and artifacts from the museum's collections.
- Wonderopolis, developed by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), is specifically designed to appeal to the very young student and their families
- Xpeditions, from National Geographic, offers geography resources including printable maps and an interactive atlas.


text:
field & table: firefly handmade show
Having a really great time showing products at the first annual Firefly Handmade show in Boulder this season! Some of my 2011 calendars are available here.
I cannot help but peruse the other vendors tables..one of my favorites is Field & Table that made these lovely succulent branches. Also available from them are handmade cutting boards and knives made from recycled saw blades plus various wooden containers.
Posted | Tags: handmade


text: She plays the "young girl" in Noah Baumbach's new film Greenberg, but I can't help but watch this new trailer and feel like lovely/talented Hannah Takes the Stairs and Baghead co-star Greta Gerwig's all-grown-up! It's also an odd thing to feel, because she's always been so mature in her indie films (well, except for Yeast). Regardless, super excited for her, and excited to see Greenberg. See her with Ben Stiller, in the upcoming film:


text:
Kid-Friendly Cadbury Egg Recipes
15 Kid-Friendly Cadbury Egg Sweet Treats
Photo 1 of 18 View on One PageNext
What's Your Reaction? 0 0 0 0 0 0
15 Kid-Friendly Cadbury Egg Sweet Treats
The highlight of many kids' Easter baskets is a decadent, foil-wrapped Cadbury Creme Egg or a little purple packet of crunchy Cadbury Mini Eggs. While either sweet treat is wonderful on its own, this year, why not up the ante at your Easter dessert table? These recipes incorporate Cadbury eggs in the most clever, creative, and delicious ways!
Source: Two Peas and Their Pod


text:
CAMDEN, N.J. - New Jersey's most famous fat cat "looks great," according to officials at the Camden County Animal Shelter, after an initial visit to the vet by the 44-pound feline -- known to the world as "Prince Chunk" -- found no immediate signs of health problems.
The vet visit revealed the cat boasts beautiful teeth that look like those of a seven-year old, not a 10-year old, reported Catherine Harr, president of the animal shelter's board. The previous owner of the cat said that he was 10, said Harr.
Prince Chunk's exam included blood work, the results of which are expected later this week. Those results may yield some clues as to why the cat is so fat, shelter officials said.
"He did have an initial wellness exam. Apart from how obese he is, his teeth look great. Until blood work comes back, we can't say anything about choosing an adoptive family because if the cat has a thyroid condition or diabetes, we want to make sure that the adoptive family would be comfortable administering any medication he may need," Harr said.
The vet intends to put Prince Chunk on a weight-loss plan as soon as possible, Harr relayed.
Following last week's expansive media coverage of the portly pussycat, found on July 30 in Voorhees, N.J., by Animal Rescue, Prince Chunk was moved to a foster home until an adoptive family is chosen for the famous feline.
"It really was necessary to protect (Prince Chunk) because the media had gotten so aggressive (with) photographers hiding out in the bushes," Harr said.
In the last two weeks, as the celebrity cat has generated national media attention and caught the attention of animal lovers from coast to coast, the Camden County Animal Shelter has received more than 500 applications from individuals wishing to adopt him.
When shelter officials informed applicants that the shelter had many other animals who also needed homes, the response from most people has been that they only wanted Prince Chunk, said Harr.
"That's unfortunate because we have so many animals that aren't celebrities and therefore aren't receiving this intense media attention," she said.
Regis Philbin pets Powder, a 44-pound stray cat found wandering in southern New Jersey, on the set of "Live with Regis and Kelly," Thursday, July 31, 2008 in New York.
View subscription options


text:
The Baltimore Ravens offensive line struggled on their first drive of the second half. The Ravens tried to run Ray Rice on the first two plays. Space was hard to find, and Rice picked up just four yards to set up third-and-four.
SI.com: Live Texans vs. Ravens Box Score
The line struggled with Houston's defense again on third down. Multiple defenders broke through as quarterback Joe Flacco held the ball far too long. After dodging three tackles, Flacco was eventually sacked for a six-yard loss by Brooks Reed.
Baltimore's line has made running difficult for Ray Rice. He's averaging just 3.4 yards per carry. Credit the Houston defense too. Wade Phillips' unit has played a very good game.
Keep up with the latest news, score updates and video highlights on our Texans vs. Ravens StoryStream. For more on the Ravens, check out SB Nation's Baltimore Beatdown and for more on the Texans check out Battle Red Blog. Here's a look at the complete 2012 NFL playoffs schedule.


text:
School is almost out and the 4th of July is just around the corner~ I made a series of patriotic crafts for you guys to enjoy! First up is my Denim Flag Wreath! I love making wreaths and finding unique items to make into them. So I started thinking about what materials to use…when I think of red white & blue, my thoughts automatically went to denim. What could be more American than Blue Jeans?!! So here is my cute version made from a pair of shorts and some old thrift store jeans!
Flag Wreath
Materials needed: 1 Styrofoam 18 inch wreath, 1 pair of blue denim shorts, 1 pair of red denim jeans, 1 pair of white denim jeans, a few silk flowers, twine, patriotic banner (Michaels Stores), small star glitter cut-outs (Michaels Stores), hot glue & gun, rotary cutter and mat.
Take your rotary cutter and cut all three jeans up into 3 inch wide strips. I cut the shorts across the pockets so I could use them for added texture and design. The jeans I just cut up one leg of each. Start wrapping your red and white stripes around the Styrofoam wreath, make sure you make the stripes equal distance apart and hot glue. I then wrapped the blue denim shorts around using the pockets and belt loops for the blue design area.
For the flowers I pulled apart the silk flowers and added a fabric wrapped rosette flowers made from the denim to the center for a more handmade look. Hot glue them back together and add them to the wreath. For how-to's for making fabric flowers check out my Spring Wreath Tutorial or my Pinterest Fabric Flower Board. I took twine and hot glued it in a spiral pattern and added it to the center of the blue flower. Add a cute little Red White & Blue Paper Banner and some single glittered stars to the blue denim. And that's it!! Soo cute & easy!
Featured on:


text:
- Size & Width
- Color
- Price
- Brand
- Store Availability
J. Reneé 'Candra' Slingback Wedge SandalWas: $99.95Now: $55.6840% OFF(1)
J. Reneé 'Joslin' SandalWas: $84.95Now: $60.2625% OFF(22)
J. Renée 'Diamond' PumpWas: $89.95Now: $44.3250% OFF(4)
J. Reneé 'Trudi' Pump (Online Only)Was: $89.95Now: $60.2633% OFF(5)
J. Reneé 'April' PumpWas: $89.95Now: $44.3250% OFF(1)
J. Renée 'Tipple' PumpWas: $94.95Now: $55.6840% OFF(1)
J. Reneé 'Trudi' Pump (Online Only)Was: $89.95Now: $55.6835% OFF
J. Renée 'Diamond' PumpWas: $89.95Now: $60.2633% OFF
J. Reneé 'Candra' Slingback Wedge SandalWas: $94.95Now: $55.6840% OFF
J. Reneé 'Tattle' Sandal$94.95
No items match all your filter selections.
Clear all to see unfiltered results.
Did you know …
We have lots more in your local store! Every Nordstrom store has a unique inventory, and many items are sold exclusively in our stores, never offered online. Head to your nearest Nordstrom and check it out!
Complete Looks with "non leather shoes" See more


text:
Admit it. We've all done it at some point. And we're going to keep doing it. So if you re-gift, here are some guidelines from gift expert Lisa Hammond, the founder of women's catalogue Femail Creations. Hammond says there are a number of circumstances when re-gifting works well.
5600 Avenue A
Lubbock, TX. 79404
FCC Public File
EEO Report
Closed Captioning


text:
He's still long, but his view is growing dimmer.
According to Teri Buhl at Forbes.com, he's lowering his outlook for the company's earnings to $2.66 for 2012 (from a previous estimate of $3). Still though, at a 10x multiple, that would value the company well beyond where it is now.
Click here to see a background on Bank of America's possible mortgage putback exposure >


text:
As you are aware by now, this is my last week as a site manager here at Dawg Sports, so I am reviving for the final time a few formerly standard features from days gone by, including Kyle Gets Contrary on Monday and Slow News Day Tuesday on Tuesday (duh!). We now turn to an oldie but a goodie, the Weekly Weblogger Challenge, which initially appeared at Dawg Sports in February 2006 after debuting at my old weblog, Kyle on Football, two weeks earlier.
Because 2006 was the Pleistocene Epoch in blog years, a word of explanation is in order. First, though, here's a tweet related to Georgia Bulldogs bass fishing:
#GetAfterTheirBass RT @dawgsports: It's college bass fishing season at Lake Lanier! #GoDawgs fb.me/1W5jPtJFz twitter.com/BassinDawg/sta…— GATA Dawgs (@BassinDawg) February 19, 2013
Now, to the matter at hand. As a student at the University of Georgia, I was an active member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society, which meets in Phi Kappa Hall on North Campus every Thursday night for creative writings, debate, and oratory. Occasionally, a fellow Phi Kappan, Pete Allen, and I would add to the adventure of speaking extemporaneously by giving one another lists of five more or less random nouns, which each of us was to work into his speech on a given topic.
The rule was that you couldn't just stand up and list the five nouns; you had to integrate them into your speech in a coherent way. I introduced this concept into the college sports blogosphere in 2006, when what is now an exploding industry was a ragtag collection of closely-knit hobbyists, and it got a nice response for the brief time that it lasted.
My challenge to my fellow sports bloggers, both here and elsewhere, and to those loyal readers who wish to participate, is to author and publish a weblog posting, fanpost, or fanshot incorporating the following five concepts in a cohesive manner, either here at Dawg Sports or at another site, and post the link to it in the comments below. You have 36 hours within which to do so; the competition will close at 9:00 p.m. Athens Standard Time Thursday night, roughly at the same time tomorrow night's basketball game ends, and I will announce the winner in my final Instantaneous Ill-Informed Roundball Wrapup. The winner will receive the eternal gratitude of a retiring sports blogger, for whatever that happens to be worth.
Here, for the final time, I bring you . . .
The Weekly Weblogger Challenge
- George Washington
- The Battle of Toulon in the War of the Austrian Succession
- Charlotte York MacDougal Goldenblatt
- Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
- Joseph Henry Lumpkin
My thanks go out in advance to all who participate.
Go 'Dawgs!


text:
Credit Union Youth Week is April 21st – 27th, 2013. This year, credit unions nationwide are encouraging their youngest members to solve the mystery of saving by becoming a Savings Sleuth. If you've been meaning to open a savings account for your kids, there's no better time to visit a participating credit union. Your kids can participate in fun, detective-themed Youth Week celebrations that might include prize drawings, free piggy bank giveaways, coloring contests, kid-friendly financial literacy games, and more. Sign your child up for the Credit Union National Association's Savings Challenge, and they could even win $100. Being a big saver has never been more fun.
Credit unions have Youth Week spirit
Every credit union that participates in Youth Week promises a fun time for kids and teens alike, and a chance to win big in the Savings Challenge. However, we recently learned about credit unions that are going above and beyond to celebrate Youth Week with their own unique activities. Whether it's a bowling party, a "guess the famous mustache" competition, or a musical iTunes gift card giveaway, we applaud these credit unions for embracing the Youth Week spirit and setting a fabulous example for all credit unions nationwide. We hope these awesome events inspire you to check out your neighborhood credit union during Youth Week!
Most Fiscally "Fit": Pen Air Federal Credit Union (Pensacola, FL)
Pen Air Federal Credit Union encourages their youngest savers to stay "Young & Fit" during credit union youth week. Bring your Penny Savers (kids 11 and younger) to the Robertsdale or Nine Mile branch on Tuesday, April 23rd to participate in Money Moves!, a savings game with music, movement and, of course, money! Teens and tweens can stop by later in the evening for Jump into Savings!, an interactive presentation about saving, budgeting and credit union benefits. Pen Air Federal Credit Union has branches in select areas of Alabama and Florida. Membership is open to active or retired military members and their families, but there are many other ways to qualify, too. See their membership page for complete details.
Best Ongoing Bonus: Frontier Community Credit Union (Leavenworth, KS)
The Savings Challenge won't last forever, but when your child joins the Kids' Club at Frontier Community Credit Union, they'll have a chance to win big every quarter with a $50 prize drawing! All your child (12 and under) needs to do is make a $5 deposit in their existing account, and they'll automatically be entered to win. Kids' Club members will have yet another chance to claim a special prize on their birthday, too. Frontier Community Credit Union has branches in Leavenworth and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Membership is open to anyone who lives or works in Leavenworth County, Kansas, and eligible surrounding counties. There are many other ways to qualify for membership. Please see their About Us page for complete details.
Most Mustache-y: Hudson River Community Credit Union (Corinth, NY)
What do Hercule Poirot and Inspector Clouseau have in common? They're both famous detectives, of course, but they also have marvelous mustaches! Hudson River Community Credit Union is celebrating all-things mustache with a mustache identification contest throughout the entire month of April. Visit their website or stop by in person for game sheets. Your child will have $5 deposited into their savings account for each worksheet they complete. There's never been a better time to 'stache your cash in a credit union. Hudson River Community Credit Union's main branch in located in Corinth, New York. Membership is open to anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or owns a business in an eligible county.
Most Quizzical: Kellogg Community Federal Credit Union (Battle Creek, MI)
Kellogg Community Federal Credit Union will help make saving exciting this year with their teen-friendly financial literacy quiz. Teens 12 – 17 can stop by a branch to participate and possibly win $20. It always pays to save, but it never hurts to have a little extra incentive! Mix that with real-world financial literacy, and everyone wins. Kellogg Community Federal Credit Union has branches in Battle Creek, Galesburg, Marshall, Portage, Kalamazoo and Three Rivers, Michigan. Membership is open to all residents and businesses located in Allegan, Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph or Van Buren counties in Michigan.
Best Bowlers: Fulda Area Credit Union (Fulda, MN)
Fulda Area Credit Union wants your kids to score big at a local branch and at the bowling alley! If you live nearby, join them at Oxford Bowl for to win door prizes and possibly a bowling trophy. The first 150 attendants receive a free goody bag. Plus, you'll receive a tasty treat for turning in your completed Collect the Clues packet (available online). Fulda Area Credit Union has branches in Fulda, Windom and Worthington, Minnesota. Membership is open to anyone who lives or works in Noble, Murray, Jackson or Cottonwood counties, Minnesota.
Most Musical: Heritage Community Credit Union (Rancho Cordova, CA)
Heritage Community Credit Union gives teens ages 13 – 17 plenty to sing about during Credit Union Youth Week. Stop by a branch to open a new teen checking account, and you'll get a free $10 iTunes gift card. Kids 12 and under have plenty to celebrate too, of course. When they open a Junior Savers Club account, they'll get a special piggy bank with a $5 bill inside. Heritage Community Credit Union has branches in Folsom, Fair Oaks and Rancho Cordova, California. Membership is open to anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school in Sacramento or Placer counties.
Best for Super Savers: Central Communications Credit Union (Kansas City, MO)
In addition to games, prizes, snacks and beverages, Central Communications Credit Union is offering something extraordinary during Credit Union Youth Week: a 4.00% APY year-long certificate of deposit! That's practically unheard of these days, but it's a great way for kids and teens 17 and under to save long-term. Central Communications Credit Union has branches in Kansas City and Independence, Missouri. Membership is open to anyone who lives or works in Jackson or Clay counties, or the following U.S. zip codes: 64150 and 64151.
Most Poetic: Valley Communities Credit Union (Mosinee, WI)
"Put your cash in a savings account, and soon you'll have a large amount." Does your child think they can write a better money poem? Let them prove it next week at the Valley Communities Credit Union poetry contest! They're celebrating Youth Week for the whole month of April, so you still have plenty of time to find your inner Shakespeare before submitting. Valley Communities Credit Union has branches in Kronenwetter, Mosinee, Marshfield, Stevens Point, Wausau and Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Membership is open to anyone who lives, works or owns property in Adams, Clark, Juneau, Lincoln, Marathon, Portage, Shawano, Waupaca, Waushara or Wood counties.
Best Double Bonus: Directions Credit Union (Sylvania, OH)
What's better than a chance to win $100? How about a chance to do it again? When your young saver opens an account at Directions Credit Union during Youth Week, they'll have a chance to win $100. That's in addition to the $100 they could win by participating in the Youth Week Savings Challenge. Even if your child doesn't win, they'll always earn a small prize from a treasure chest when they make a deposit in their MyLife Savings account. Directions Credit Union has branches in the Toledo area and Central Ohio. Membership is open to anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or volunteers in Wood, Fulton, Lucas, Ashland, Huron, Crawford, Knox, Richland, Wayne or Tuscarawas counties.


text:
Welcome Visitor.
News Sections
Front Page (home)
Lastest Stories
Rochester News & Politics
Society and Culture
About Us
Proud Sponsor
Become a Member
Member Preferences
Stay Connected
Share this on:
Advertise with Us
Contact Us
Sponsored by
About the Smugtown Beacon
"Smugtown USA" and the Smugtown Stompers
Site Map
RSS Feeds
Carla Palumbo Could be a Disaster in the 131st A.D.
By: Christopher J. Wilmot
Posted: Thursday, February 4, 2010 7:15 am
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Rochester, NY - If one can say anything about Ms. Carla Palumbo, she is a known entity in local Rochester politics and government. And she deserves it. Quickly, the short bio of Ms. Palumbo:
* In her other job, she is the Director of the Civil Division, Legal Aid Society.
* 20-year resident of Glide Street,on the City's northwest side.
* Served in the Monroe County Legislature, 2001-2007.
* Graduate, SUNY Albany, Bachelor of Arts, 1979.
* Graduate, Syracuse University, College of Law, Juris Doctorate, 1982.
And that's only a partial list of her accomplishments as a professional. She also has significant experience on a number of local volunteer boards and organizations. Carla could have made quite a bit of money as a private practice attorney, but she chose to enter public service, both as a legal advocate for those needing a voice in our expensive legal world and myriad system of courts; and, as previously mentioned, as an elected official. She has earned her progressive-liberal stripes, yet also comes by them naturally.
New Opportunities in the State Assembly Bring with them Questions of Temperament
The Honorable Susan V. John was first elected to the New York State Assembly (131st District) in 1990, the same year Joe Morelle made his ascendancy to that legislative body. Yet unlike Joe, Susan doesn't need to be a 'career politician'. Susan, like her possible successor, is also an attorney, but with a background in private practice law (Phillips Lytle, et. al.). As we all are now aware, Susan John recently called it quits, and announced she will not run again for the 131st Assembly District seat. And the scramble is on.
I will attempt
to cover journalistic territory previously combed over extensively by my co-owner, and fellow journalist, Aaron Wicks. Mr. Wicks, in his usually thorough way, has mentioned candidates for Ms. John's seat such as Willa Powell, Harry Bronson, and I'm sure others. But it is the candidacy (Palumbo has not yet officially announced) of Carla Palumbo that this article will focus on exclusively. And therein lies the rub: Fore one would be hard pressed to find a more qualified candidate to take the place of the very able Susan John, but Palumbo's advantages are too often intertwined with her foibles; among them being her tendency to be quick to anger, to be a 'back stabber' (I still have scars), and to show two distinct faces--one kind and bright, yet the other cold and calculating, and downright mean.
Errand Girl?
I never knew Carla Palumbo until she was elected to the Monroe County Legislature. I had already been serving as a Legislator for several years by the time Carla entered our chamber, and the Democratic caucus. Once a member of our caucus, it was immediately clear that Ms. Palumbo had done her homework. She was a formidable rival to Democratic stalwarts like Kevin Murray and Bill Benet (and to be fair, H. Todd Bullard), two of the smartest and most capable Democratic legislators of that time (late 1990's-early 2000's). Murray and Benet had the institutional knowledge that can be so crucial in any elected body, but they also possessed--especially Murray--natural intelligence, which made them invaluable to those younger and 'greener', like myself. When I was first elected to the Monroe County Legislature, I was easily the youngest Democrat to serve at that time. However, County Legislators like Joe Morelle and Charlie Eber were significantly younger than I, when they were first elected to that honorable body (Eber and Morelle were in their early to mid-20's, while I was 33 the day I won my seat in the legislature for the very first time, in 1995).
Palumbo entered debates--in caucus and in the legislative chamber--with confidence and lucidity. Being a woman is never easy in the old 'white boy' game of politics, but Palumbo never allowed that fact to inhibit her debate, or attempts at forging legislation, even though a Democrat in the Monroe County Legislature rarely had the votes to pass any bill, due to the fact that during my 10-year
, Democrats were a perpetual minority. But Palumbo was undeterred, and would never say die.
However, despite her strength of character and intelligence, soon after her first electoral victory, I noticed that she was awfully chummy with the Morelle camp. Back in those days, it seemed a Democratic County Legislator felt forced to align themselves with either the Gantt or Morelle camps. Palumbo could certainly stand on her own two feet, and remain a non-aligned County Lej Democrat, but she chose Morelle, and he was happy to choose Carla. One reason I got into trouble in the Democratic caucus, and eventually left the Democratic Party was because over time, I refused to align myself with either the Morelle or Gantt factions. To be fair, there were other Dem's in our caucus that would not carry water for Morelle or Gantt; like Kevin Murray, Bill Benet, David Proud, etc.
But because newly elected County Lej Dem's like Palumbo and Jose Cruz were so heavily aligned with Morelle, open political and verbal warfare began to dominate the Democratic Caucus of the Monroe County Legislature. And this caused me to lose respect for Palumbo and Cruz, among others.
The Non-Aligned, and the 'Ping Pong' Balls
Initially (though my independence could not be kept down) I was far more inclined toward the wishes and agenda of legislators above me, like Joe Morelle. Joe and I had been friends since 1984, when we worked on the Gary Hart for President local campaign. I became so close to Joe, that by 1989-1990, Fran Weisberg and Morelle put me on the campaign payroll, and I, among dozens of others, helped Joe win his first election to the NY State Assembly in November of 1990 (replacing a retiring Audra "Pinny" Cook). The night Morelle won, we were all on
cloud nine
, and could not contain ourselves. But that's the kind of charisma Joe had, and perhaps still has (I don't know the man any more).
Morelle's Marauders
, as we called ourselves in those days, included pols like Kathi Smith, Kathleen Muzdakis, Denise Murphy, Patrick Morris, Lynda Garner Goldstein, Jill Lemke, Jim Plasterus (sp), Fran Weisberg, but of course, and many others. Working for, and with Joe was energizing, fun as hell, and seemed to satisfy our collective need for a real life expression of youthful idealism (most of us were in our 20's in 1990). Joe was a smash hit in Albany, Rochester, and Irondequoit. Despite our problems over the years, I have never regretted, nor will I ever, working for Joe, and helping him win state office for the first time.
But I was somewhat naive in those days, and I didn't realize the protocol of patronage until I was elected to office, and watched Joe and David Gantt jockey for position inside our caucus, where they clearly did not belong.
As previously stated, Palumbo and Cruz were unequivocally Morelle people, but so was the shrill and very unlikable Lynda Goldstein, and for a time, Stephanie Aldersley (Stephanie became a 'ping pong' ball, for a time bouncing back and forth between Gantt and Morelle). And Gantt certainly had his die hard followers in our caucus: Calvin Lee, Ronnie Thomas, the late Willie Lightfoot (?), and perhaps others that escape me after all these years.
And then there was Todd Bullard. Todd was too smart and confident, as well as possessing a rugged independence, to align himself with anyone, other than, Todd Bullard. But that's a complement to Todd, and not even a left-handed one. Todd and I unseated Kevin Murray and Fred Amato in 1999, and took over caucus leadership for several years. That's about the time I learned that like Todd, I needed to form an alliance, with---myself. Like Todd, I carried no one's water, and no one had to carry mine. But then soon after, Morelle got his hooks back in to the center of the caucus, and all hell broke loose (but that's another story I've already written).
Conclusion: Palumbo's Capable, but is She the Wrong Kind of Democrat?
Carla Palumbo may indeed win the nomination, and/or a primary to succeed Susan John. But if Susan John has been too beholden to the labor movement, especially the public employee unions, then Carla is still too beholden to the Morelle crowd. And that's awfully bad news, at a time when all Democrats in Albany must buck the high tax tentacles of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. And speaking of those who carry the water of others, and who are only too glad to run errands, Joe Morelle is all that, and more, for Sheldon Silver.
Can Carla Palumbo prove to her present (and future?) constituents that she is independent thinking enough to not be a shill for Morelle, Silver, and the public employee unions? This is vital, because it is exactly these forces, and individuals, that continue to drive up state governmental costs, and thus state taxes, and drive young adults out of this state, and especially Western New York, where we are still a net population loser. Palumbo has the high I.Q. But does she have the pragmatic ability to cut the size and cost of state government? Only her campaign literature and stump speeches--and time--will tell, along with her previous voting record in the Monroe County Legislature, and presently, on the Rochester City Council. Carla deserves a chance to prove herself on the campaign trail, but be forewarned: She is used to taking orders from the likes of Joe Morelle.
Christopher J. Wilmot,
Pittsford, NY
We'd like to hear from you!
If you'd like to share your opinion on this article, please login (or
create a membership login
) and enter your comments in the "What's your opinion?" field. We ask that underneath your opinion, you provide your first and last name and the city and state in which you live. Only opinions that include full attribution will be approved by our authors. Thanks very much!
Click here
to get email updates!
Printer-friendly format
Member Opinions:
on 2/4/10
I think that Carla Palumbo belongs "ping-ponging" between the County Legislature and the City Council. She doesn't have the spine to stand up for Upstate New York because she doesn't have a spine to stand up for herself.
I am sick of this woman constantly updating her resume at the risk of her taxpayers of her constituency. She belongs where she can do the least amount of harm for the least amount of pay.
Anthony Morelle
Rochester, NY
Login and voice your opinion!
Do you know someone else who would like to see this?
Your Email:
Their Email:
(Will be included with e-mail)
Secret Code
In the box below, enter the Secret Code exactly as it appears above
Sponsored by
Copyright © and Trademark ™ 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved
Copyright Statement
Privacy Statement
Terms of Service
Host your Web site with IPOWER!
Powered by
Newspaper Software
Connect Email Marketing
Express Website Builder


text:
As if you were jumping from one rock to another, exaggerate your normal running stride's height and length. Run in slow motion, alternately letting each foot do all the work of absorbing impact, then pushing off. This drill improves coordination and strengthens glutes and calves.
Stride Drills Can Help
Most world-class runners do some sort of stride drills after their daily workouts.
August 29, 2001


text:
Baltimore Ravens
Chris Canty - DT
|6' 7"/ 317 lbs.
|Bronx, NY
|Years played
|2005, 4th round, 31st pick by Cowboys
AFC North Spin cycle: Bengals primed to rally?
The Bengals started the second half with a huge win. Now, can they make a run? We explore in the AFC North "Spin cycle."
Ravens set club record with 55 points in blowout win
Joe Flacco threw for 341 yards and three touchdowns, and the Ravens set a club record for points in a 55-20 rout of the Raiders on Sunday.
Week 11 Patriots-Colts game flexed
The NFL announced Monday that the Week 11 game between the Colts and Patriots will be flexed to a late-afternoon time slot.
AFC North Spin cycle: Ravens, Steelers separating from pack
At the season's midpoint, it's business as usual in the AFC North.
Ravens beat Browns for 10th consecutive time
Joe Flacco threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Torrey Smith with 4:26 left as the Ravens beat Cleveland 25-15.
Key matchup: Browns running game vs. Ravens run defense
If the Ravens want to sweep the season series with Cleveland, they will need to be stronger against the run than they have been of late.
Ravens using Rice less, but not that much less
Ray Rice is on pace to touch the ball less than in any of this other seasons as a starter, but his workload isn't much different from a season ago at this time.
AFC North Spin cycle: Here comes Pittsburgh
Here come the Steelers. And hey, look, the Browns won! We recap how the two AFC North teams in action fared in Week Eight.
Ravens fined for not disclosing Reed's injury
The Ravens were fined $20,000 for not listing S Ed Reed on their injury report with a shoulder injury.
AFC North Spin cycle: Steelers impressive in key win
The Steelers, in a much-needed strong performance, won at Cincinnati and took a step forward. The rest of the AFC North? Not so much.
Texans rout Ravens in battle of AFC's best
Matt Schaub threw two touchdown passes and the Texans dominated a showdown of the AFC's two teams, routing the Ravens 43-13 on Sunday.
Ravens activate Suggs, cut Kindle
The Ravens activated OLB Terrell Suggs and cut former second-round pick Sergio Kindle on Saturday.
Depth, technique issues to watch on Ravens' 'D'
The Ravens' depth and technique are areas to monitor on their injury-hampered defense.
Ravens' Lewis placed on I.R. with designation to return
The Ravens placed LB Ray Lewis on injured reserve with a designation to return. Lewis tore his triceps muscle in Sunday's win over Dallas.
Week Six Players of the Week
This week, PFW selects Aaron Rodgers, Antrel Rolle and Jacoby Jones as its Players of the Week.
The Baltimore Ravens have signed Canty, who spent the previous four seasons with the New York Giants. Canty announced the signing Tuesday on Instagram with a photo of the signed contract, according to the Ravens website.||||||| The 30-year-old Canty was released in February by the Giants. The 6-foot-7, 317-pounder was a starter the last four years in New York, but he missed seven games in 2012 with a knee injury. He finished with 26 tackles and three sacks.
The New York Giants continued their roster purge after missing the playoffs, cutting halfback Ahmad Bradshaw and Canty. The Giants announced the moves on Wednesday. The release of the two starters came one day after New York let starting weakside linebacker Michael Boley go after four seasons.||||||| The three players were all veterans who contributed to the Giants' Super Bowl win over the Patriots a year ago. They also had big salaries and battled injuries last season. Canty, who had knee problems, was set to earn $6.5 million next season.
Canty and rookie cornerback Jayron Hosley are not active for the New York Giants must-win game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.||||||| Canty sprained a knee last week. Rocky Bernard started for Canty.
The New York Giants have activated Canty for Sunday's NFC East game against Washington.||||||| Canty started every game in the Giants' 2011 championship season but had offseason knee surgery and had been on the physically unable to perform list since the start of training camp.
The Super Bowl champion New York Giants have placed Canty on the reserve-physically unable to perform list. "I'm not gonna say I saw it coming," Canty said "Obviously, I was optimistic about it. I feel good, I feel in pretty good shape considering all the factors. I stand by the position my knee is better than it was November, December, January of last season."||||||| Canty had knee surgery in the offseason and was not ready for training camp.


text:
There are citizens right here in the City of Hattiesburg who need your help. Did you know that every two seconds, someone is in desperate need of blood? WDAM is dedicating the month of July to blood donation.
The phones at United Blood Services in Hattiesburg were ringing off the hook today as nurses scrambled to provide blood to area hospitals, but there simply wasn't enough.
Kristi Womack, donor recruiter at United Blood Services answers the biggest question most people have... Does it hurt?
"No, it does not hurt. It's just a small pinch," Womack said.
"Unfortunately, we've got patients in our local hospitals that don't have a lot of family and friends around, so you know we like for people to come out and give blood."
As far as blood types go, O Negative is the universal blood type, which means O Negative blood can go to any patient in need of blood.
According to Kristi, people feel motivated to give blood when tragedy strikes. That's the case with Amanda Jones.
"I started giving blood back in 2009 when my sister was diagnosed with cancer," Jones said.
"I just wanted to see if I could help give blood, so I began donating plasma."
She pays tribute to her sister who died in 2010.
"I just come in and give blood anytime I can," Jones said. "As long as I'm able to give it, I'm here to give."
2362 U.S. Hwy 11
Moselle, MS 39459
Email Us
FCC Public File
EEO Report
Closed Captioning
Children's Programming


text:
UFC On FOX Sports 1: 3 has quickly taken shape as the UFC has shifted into overdrive announcing fights the past 24 hours. A bantamweight bout between Raphael Assuncao and TJ Dillashaw and a welterweight scrap between Sean Spencer and Yuri Villefort have been added to the card set for Brazil.
Dillashaw will be looking to add to his four fight winning streak when he gets into the octagon in Brazil. His most recent win came over Hugo Viana via TKO at the end of the first round at UFC On FOX In April. Assuncao is also riding a four fight winning streak since dropped to bantamweight in 2011. His most recent win came over Vaugh Lee at UFC On FUEL in June.
Spencer will be looking to rebound from his UFC debut loss against Rafael Natal at UFC On FOX 6 at the beginning of the  year. Villefort was undefeated when  he entered Strikeforce in 2012 but now has two losses after losing in his Strikeforce and UFC debuts. Villefort's most recent loss came by way of unanimous decision at UFC 157 to Nah-Shon Burrell
UFC On FOX Sports 1: 3 Teixeira Vs Bader takes place on September 4, 2013 at Mineirinho Arena in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In the main event, Glover Teixeira and Ryan Bader will scrap to see who gets one step closer to the light heavyweight title.
Front-Page Photo Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports


text:
The liberal watchdog Media Matters on Tuesday pounced on a tweet sent by Fox News anchor Heather Childers, which linked to an article that claimed Obama's 2008 campaign staff had threatened to kill Chelsea Clinton.
"Thoughts? Did Obama Campaign Threaten Chelsea Clinton's Life 2 Keep Parents Silent?" Childers asked on Twitter, linking to the article in question.
The article accused the Obama campaign of coordinating a "reign of terror and intimidation" in 2008 to prevent information about his eligibility to be president from being revealed. Part of that "reign of terror" included threatening to kill Chelsea Clinton if her parents, Bill and Hillary Clinton, disclosed information that could prove Obama was ineligible.
Many of the so-called "birthers" believe there is persuasive evidence that Obama was born in Kenya in 1961 and that his birth certificate was faked in order to make him eligible for the president.
Childers has since defended tweeting the article to her more than 3,000 followers, claiming she only wanted to hear others' opinion about the story.
"Here's the thing folks… that ONE topic sure got alot [sic] of you tweeting. Why? I apologize if the article offended anyone. Very interesting," she tweeted.
By Roy Greenslade, The Guardian
By Katie Halper
By The Conversation
By TBogg
Raw Story is a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media. While giving coverage to the big stories of the day, we also bring our readers' attention to policy, politics, legal and human rights stories that get ignored in an infotainment culture driven solely by pageviews.
Founded in 2004, Raw Story reaches 9 million unique readers per month and serves more than 30 million pageviews.
Copyright © 2004-2013 Raw Story Media, Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
New research has revealed that a type of cockroach has adapted to avoid poisons that contain glucose -- a type of sugar that's supposed to attract them.
The roach is the German cockroach, the small ones that are seen in the kitchen at night. Lots of local homeowners see them from time to time, no matter what they do to keep them away.
"We'd spray in the kitchen, in the drawers, around the doorways, around the windows," said Kailua resident Van Johnson. "It didn't seem to help too much."
A lot of roach bait has contained glucose, which is attractive to just about anything. But in a study published in the journal "Science", researchers at North Carolina State University discovered that the German cockroach rearranged its internal chemistry so that glucose would taste bitter to them.
"We may look at getting away from sweet-based baits. Or having new products come on the market that have a different taste to them," said John Speed, president of Kilauea Pest Control.
According to Speed, the German cockroach can reproduce rapidly, resulting in major infestations. He also said the pest is capable of eating almost anything.
"It's just like humans. We all like different things. And some roaches grow accustomed to a certain type of food, probably in different people's houses," he said.
But it apparently has learned that sweet stuff is mixed with poison, and so now, the German cockroach avoids it.
According to Speed, the pest control industry will likely have to come up with different bait formulas. But there are things that homeowners can do to keep roaches from adapting.
"Throughout the year, you have to change up what you're using, and so they don't become accustomed to, or become resistant to that one brand of pesticide," said Speed.
And the best thing: keep it clean. "Sanitation wise, how am I doing? Am I leaving the dishes in the sink? Is the moisture content high? Am I leaving food out? That sort of thing. Cleanliness is going to help out a lot."
Copyright 2013 America Now. All rights reserved.


text:
In English
Radio Helsinki
You arrived here at 14:25 Helsinki time Saturday 23.8.2014
Competition lowers price of beer to level of soft drinks
Losses of beer war regained in prices of bottled water
print this
Finnish supermarkets are now selling beer at discount prices equal to those of regular-priced soft drinks. The difference in price for one litre of beer or mineral water can also be as low as 50 cents.
The cheapest price for one litre of beer on Tuesday was around EUR 1.60, the same as the normal price for sodas. Mineral water costs around one euro per litre.
Beer has never been as cheap as it is now this summer. It has become the prime loss-leader item for supermarkets, and although Midsummer was the most intensive campaign season, at least one brand is on sale at starkly reduced prices at any given time. However, prices and campaign products vary significantly in different parts of the country.
The beer specials
are so expensive for stores that the losses must be recouped in the prices of other products. For example, mineral water has been discounted on sale much less frequently this summer. Soft drinks have also remained at normal prices most of the time.
Supermarket chains keenly watch each other's prices. When one store lowers its beer price, others quickly follow suit. The largest hypermarkets have been most active in their campaigns.
The current hit product on the shelves is the "dachshund", or a pack of 12 bottles, totalling 4 litres.
Many store owners
are hoping the price war will quieten down once the weather grows cooler.
Pentti Kalliala
, the owner of a K-Supermarket, admits that the offers are not good business. He points out that breweries are not participating much in the campaigns by giving discounts of their own, so the losses are almost all incurred by the retailers.
Kalliala estimates that in order to make a regular profit, a 12-pack dachshund should be sold for 12-13 euros, not for the current 8-10 euros.
Eino Pieskä
from a Helsinki Prisma supermarket does not believe that the beer price war will end any time soon. "But it may be that the significance of beer is different in the summer from what it is in the fall. When you go to the summer cabin, you buy at least a dachshund."
Store owner Toni Pokela
from the Citymarket at the Iso Omena shopping centre in Espoo says that as the store is geared toward families, they would rather use a different loss-leader. However, the market situation determines what customers must be offered, he remarks.
"The beer equation is quite unhealthy now. The cut in alcohol taxes lowered the wholesale price of beer by about ten percent, but stores dropped the prices of dachshunds by twenty percent", Pokela explains.
Pokela also hopes that the situation would soon calm down, and that competition would return to other products as well.
Helsingin Sanomat
Competition lowers price of beer to level of soft drinks
WHO study shows Finnish teenage boys as heavy computer users
Flood aftermath: Riihimäki residents boil tap water, swimmers cautioned in Helsinki area
Left Alliance begins work on shadow budget
Search for wartime bombs in Imatra
Minister of Defence: Abandoning land mines would cost more than 200 million
Vantaa police officer fined for unlawful overnight detention in the cells
Format of Finnish TV show sold to UK;
a parody of making a talk show
Back to Top ^


text:
Chef Marshall O'Brien shares recipes and tips for cooking fresh fish.
Mediterranean Salmon
Serves 4
Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time – 25-35 minutes
1 – 1 1/4 lbs Salmon fillet, whole (or pre-portioned if you desire)
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup kalamata olives, rough chop
1 1/2 cup grape tomatoes (or any kind is fine), rough chop
1 cup yellow onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1 squeeze fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, onions, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil together.
On a cookie sheet pan, lay salmon fillets on top of foil, large enough to wrap up salmon. If you need to cover the top of the salmon when wrapping it up with another piece of foil to completely enclose it, that is fine.
Cover salmon with mix, and then enclose salmon with foil, keep on sheet pan.
Bake in oven for 25-35 minutes until fish is firm and light pink.
Remove from oven, serve either as a whole presented on a platter or portion out as desired.
Serve and enjoy.
Phone: (952) 944-9999
Didn't find what you were looking for?
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2014 Fox Television Stations, Inc. and Worldnow. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy | New Terms of Service What's new | Ad Choices


text:
With Reba McEntire's new tour just out, the singer/songwriter took some time to pose with legendary designer and Concert Master Classes faculty member Steve Cohen (center) and personally thank him on her WhoSay page. This appeared with the caption:
"Thanks Steve Cohen for a wonderful stage to get to work on! Great job!!!!! You and my Starstruck crew make a wonderful team!"
And here's a shot of the stage Cohen designed:
Reba McEntire on WhoSay
Related Articles
See Steve Cohen and other concert designers speak a the 2011 Concert Master Classes in December in Los Angeles.