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Posts from Entertaining at Home
Dinner Party Dilemmas: Solutions To Eight Awkward Entertaining Situations
Apartment Therapy's Home Remedies
You've planned everything down to the smallest detail, and then...you're in a terrible mood. Something goes horribly wrong in the kitchen. A guest is late. Another guest turns up uninvited. Here they are: our worst, most common dinner party dilemmas, paired up with some helpful tips on how to solve them.
Wake Up to a Well-Styled Coffee Station
Bar carts are beautiful, but they're not for everyone. If your idea of a stiff drink is a shot of espresso rather than whisky, set up a special space in your home to treat yourself to a morning (or afternoon, or after-dinner) caffeine fix. A coffee cart is the perfect place to gather and display your most beautiful coffee and tea accessories, with the added benefit of moving them off of counters and out of cabinets to maximize kitchen storage in small spaces.
Embracing an Open Door Policy: Your Guests Aren't Judging You
Apartment Therapy's Home Remedies
I don't entertain as often as I would like to. Everyone has a busy life these days; balancing work, school, family, errands, and home projects leaves very little time to have guests over for dinner or to stay for a weekend. And in all honesty, when plans are made and it actually comes down to it, I panic every time I have guests coming over. What if someone notices the dust on the bookshelf? Did I forget to put my shoes away? Is it obvious that I ran around cleaning everything and that I don't actually live this way? At that point it's time to take a deep breath and remind myself that no one is judging me. Guests are friends and family: they're happy to be invited into your home, and they are not judging you.
A No-Stress Neighborly Nosh
Gathering from The Kitchn Sponsored by Kraft Fresh Take
This week, I've been sharing the plan and menu for a casual weeknight dinner party I threw with our neighbors and their little kids. Today, we'll reveal how it all came together, how we kept it comfy and cheerful for the little kids while still making it a special night for us all. We hope it shows you, like it showed me, that dinner parties don't always have to be elaborately planned affairs, but can simply be a bigger, prettier version of your everyday family meal. Warning: you may be inspired to throw impromptu weeknight or weekend dinner parties all the time now, so grab your crayons and come on in!
St. Patrick's Party: Decor, Menu & Music
Apartment Therapy's Perfect Parties Ideas Guide
Although St. Patrick's Day falls on a Monday, you can still celebrate the weekend before. I am planning on hosting a cozy Sunday night dinner to celebrate the Irish and my favorite color, green. Small touches of green, hearty food, and lively music are all you need to celebrate Ireland's national holiday.
Easy & Cheap St. Patrick's Day Crafts You Can Make Before the Weekend
No-Stress Neighborly Nosh:
The Party Plan
Gathering from the Kitchn Sponsored by Kraft Fresh Take
It's a dreary Wednesday, and my neighbor Molly is tired of being cooped up in her house with her two little girls. "Why don't you all come over tomorrow for a family dinner party?" I ask, almost without thinking about it. Everyone is excited, including my daughter, who likes being the 8-year-old babysitter-in-training, and we grown-ups are looking forward to a break in the routine.
But what to cook? And how to make this casual dinner party special while still keeping it fun and comfortable for the kids (and parents)? This week we'll be talking all about our easy family dinner party, and how you can throw one of your own. Today we'll start with the party plan!
Be Ready to Entertain: High-end and Budget Bar Cart Inspiration, Buys & DIYs
There's just something so grown-up about a bar cart. A stylish one packed and stacked with delicious liquids to imbibe just totally throws off a "I've got my act together" kind of vibe. Not to mention it's a great addition to a space; a bar cart is a compact, moving entertaining system that just might make you entertain in your space more. Love the style of high-end bar carts but want a look for less? We've got your high and low bar cart buys after the jump.
Beat the Winter Blues: Host a Soup Party
Apartment Therapy Perfect Party Ideas Guide
Did Your Parents Entertain Often?
Reader Question
There are those folks whose parents were always throwing dinner parties, backyard barbeques and silly get-togethers. And there are those who come from more quiet, introverted homes, where parents made excellent guests but rarely hosted themselves. While it's certainly not the only factor that plays a part in how often and how well you host, we're curious: did you grow up with parents who entertained often?


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Cool. I like thicker at the heel knives. Definitely no flex at the handle.
"If theres something worth doing, its worth overdoing. - An US saying.
If my KKF Inbox is full (or not), please contact me via Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Beautiful Mario, and as usual...Great knife skills Salty. Is that the CPM154 knife i saw at Randy's? Either way, beautiful job, Two thumbs up brother
Yes it is CPM154 that was HT by Brad at Peters HT to a hardness of 61.5 I was very happy with how it sharpened up. Now I just have to finish 6 more
So how do you like the knife, Mario? Do you feel the grind is an improvement over your previous work? Looks pretty good, from here, btw.

subset: commoncrawl


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Find records of Thelma Hanson
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11/02/2013 03:17:40
Your best CD ever. The original tunes are great and your playing is great as usual .
Date: 12/27/2013
Time: 06:00 PM
Description: Kevin MacConnell and I will be doing our sax & bass duet, which has become an ongoing presentation at this lovely restaurant and Inn. Please join us and Happy Holidays.
Location: Whitford Rd. Exton, Pa.


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Schein: Greenway a "Tackling Machine" and Most Underrated LB in NFLPosted by on July 21, 2009 – 5:14 pm
In a video posted on MSN.com, Adam Schein has identified a handful of players to watch this upcoming training camp and season. One of the player's he's distinguished is Vikings LB Chad Greenway.
Schein identifies Greenway as a "breakthrough Pro Bowler" this year, the most underrated LB in the NFL and a "tackling machine." As Schein makes his case for Greenway, he astutely points out that the LB is often overshadowed by the Williams Wall, saying that Greenway doesn't get enough credit for "being skilled as a tackler, athletic and a team leader."
While there's no mistaking that Kevin and Pat Williams are vital to any success the Vikings defense experiences, there's also no denying that Greenway stepped his game up last year when MLB E.J. Henderson was lost for the season in Week 4. When the season concluded, Greenway led the team with 150 tackles. Schein contends that even if Greenway has a similar type season in 2009 as he had in 2008, it would be a "crime" if he wasn't named to the Pro Bowl.
Other players Schein identified as potential breakout players were Panthers LB Jon Beason, 49ers OT Joe Staley and Bears TE Greg Olsen.
Tags: Chad Greenway
Posted in All, Mike Wobschall | 1 Comment »


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(NNPA) Under other circumstances one could simply ridicule the explanations offered by the Ferguson police regarding the killing of Michael Brown. To suggest that the killing was the result of the alleged theft of a $50 box of cigars or, for that matter, an angry exchange in connection with jaywalking, defies belief. To think about the number of people in this country who, in their youth, engaged in some degree of shoplifting or who have jaywalked suggests that there would need to be mass executions on a scale never before seen in the history of humanity.
Clearly, the killing had to do with neither the alleged theft nor alleged jaywalking. It had to do with power and life. The power was the power of a White-dominated police department to assert its total control over the activities of a population that has been largely disenfranchised from a supposed democracy. In that sense, Michael Brown was at the wrong place at the wrong time. That said, while circumstances could have resulted in Brown not having been at that precise location, the reality with which African Americans are all too familiar is that we are all potentially Michael Browns. There are no safety zones; there are no no-shooting zones in the USA when it comes to Black America. It is that point that many Black youth are attempting to capture with photos, tweets and slogans.
The killing was also about life. What White people in the U.S. need to ask themselves is whether there are any circumstances in their respective communities where the killing of a young White man for either allegedly stealing cigars or for getting into an argument with an officer regarding jaywalking would be tolerated. If the answer is "no," then the follow up question is simple: Why should it be acceptable in African American communities?
The answer is implicit in the reality for African Americans throughout U.S .history: There is not an equivalent value on African American and White life in this society. There is not only the presumption of guilt, when African Americans have an encounter with the police, but an additional presumption that the police are justified in utilizing any means available against a Black alleged criminal, even if no crime has been committed.
Ferguson brought to my mind Gaza and the way in which Palestinian life has no value for the Israeli government. Three Jewish Israeli boys were brutally kidnapped and murdered and the Israeli political establishment decided to unite to punish all Palestinians, and especially those in Gaza, without a shred of evidence. No matter how many Palestinian civilians are killed, it is justified by the Israeli government on the grounds of their need to punish. What is implicit is the math: the deaths of three Jewish Israelis are compensated for by the deaths of more than a 1,900 Palestinians. When the proportions are that extreme the bottom line is simple: Palestinian life holds no value.
Oppression and tyranny can continue and gain popular support when those who are oppressed are deprived of the recognition of their humanity. When African Americans are presumed to be dangerous criminals or when Palestinians are presumed to be murderers, then there is no need for a trial. There is only need for an execution…and be done with it.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. Follow him on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
More Commentary
A Black Life is Worth Less than a $50 Box of Cigars?
(NNPA) Under other circumstances one could simply ridicule the explanations offered by the Ferguson police regarding the killing of Michael Brown. To suggest that the killing was the result of the alleged theft of a $50 box of cigars or, for that matter, an angry exchange in connection with jaywalking, defies belief. To think about the number of people in this country who, in their youth, engaged in some degree of shoplifting or who have jaywalked suggests that there would need to be mass executions on a scale never before seen in the history of humanity.
From 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' to 'Hands Up, Vote'
(NNPA) Out of every momentous national tragedy that Black Americans have continued to endure in the United States, there has always emerged a redeeming moment to push harder and further on the long journey toward freedom, justice and equality. The continuing unrestrained fatal police killings of Black American males in St. Louis County, Missouri is now described as part of a national "open season" to kill Blacks in America. What should we do now? What is the redeeming action that should be taken?
In the aftermath of the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and so many others, what should be our next course of action? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writing in his last book, pointed the way.
Writing in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. King stated in 1967: "The persistence of racism in depth and the dawning awareness that Negro demands will necessitate structural changes in society have generated a new phase of white resistance in the North and South.''
Dr. King's prophetic words, written 47 years ago, are equally true today. With the "browning of America," there has been a steady increase in racially-motivated police violence against Blacks and Latinos.
The tragic murder of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has reverberated around the world. It is just the latest example of a society that refuses to end racial oppression or acknowledge its racist past. I remember that Dr. King responded to police brutality in the 1960s by telling his followers: "I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive."
As we say of faith-witnessing in the Black church tradition, "Lord, have mercy, we sure have received a lot of unearned suffering…… now it is time for us to get some redemption." This bring me to my central point. With all that is going on in Missouri, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, New York, California, Louisiana, Illinois, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, we must transform our anger over police brutality, poverty, and economic inequality into a massive voter turnout. We should be preparing right now in every voting precinct in every congressional district and in every state where we live to have an unprecedented high voter turnout this November. We did it in 2008 we did it in 2012 and we can do it again in 2014.
Too often we live in communities where we have the potential margin of victory for local, congressional, statewide and national elections, but we simply do not go to the polls and vote, even though so many of our people died, bleed, went to jail, and "suffered" for us to get the right to vote. Having a right to vote is not enough. We all must exercise the right to vote not once but in every election. It's extremely important that we do so this year because people expect us to because Obama's name will not be on the ballot and mid-term voting is traditionally lower than in presidential years.
Voting our political, economic and spiritual interest is not only "redemptive," it is also the right thing to do. Very often police officers are not prosecuted for acts of racial violence against Black Americans because locally "elected" prosecutors and district attorneys get elected and stay in office because we do not vote at the rate that we should. Citizens in Ferguson, Mo., a community that is at least 2/3 African American, only vote at a rate of about 12 percent – about a third of their representation in the population. That is a terrible reality that must now change. Understand, I am not saying that voting in record numbers will solve all the problems that we face in America. But what I am saying clearly is that our failure to understand the power of the vote holds back our progress in the United States.
I was so proud to see thousands of people marching nonviolently every day in Ferguson in protest to Michael Brown's murder. The unified chant, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," captured the energy and aspirations of millions more throughout the country and indeed around the world. Let's keep that energy going strong. Let's remain vigilant, vocal and visible. As we move forward over the next 60 days, let's also organize and mobilize to register to vote and to massively turnout the vote everywhere. Election Day should be Pay Back Day. Let's also begin to chant "Hands Up, Vote!" Let's make the difference.
Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is the Interim President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and can be reached for national advertisement sales and partnership proposals at: firstname.lastname@example.com; and for lectures and other professional consultations at: http://drbenjaminfchavisjr.wix.com/drbfc
Palestinians and the Black American Freedom Struggles
(NNPA) Knowing of my concern about justice for the Palestinians, a friend sent me a link the other day regarding Palestine and Black America. [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180382/students-justice-palestine#undefined]
The essence of this piece is the author's allegation that Palestinians cannot and should not compare their struggle to that of the African American struggle for justice. Actually, there is nothing new in this piece. Those who oppose justice for the Palestinians regularly drag out quotes from various historic African American leaders in order to attempt to make their case. While this may sway some people, it does not settle the matter of whether comparisons of the Palestinian situation and that of African Americans are legitimate.
To consider such comparisons you have to look at a few things. Let's start:
- Beginning in 1947, Palestinians, including Christians and Muslims, were removed from land that they had inhabited for thousands of years. The Palestinians, by the way, had not just appeared in that portion of the Middle East in the recent past. It is now clear that, genetically speaking, the Palestinians have their roots in the ancient Hebrews.
- With the establishment of Israel in 1948, a dual system was implemented that, among other things, permitted the expropriation of Palestinian land for alleged security reasons. The land was not returned to the Palestinians.
- A dual educational system was established, with Palestinian citizens of Israel receiving inferior and poorly funded education.
- Israel has held onto land that it captured in the June 1967 war in violation of international law, resolutions and precedent. It then began a process of settling the land, again, in violation of international law.
- The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have absolutely no security, with their homes subject to being destroyed or seized, and their land divided. The creation of the so-called Security Wall does not conform to the 1949 Armistice line but goes through Palestinian territory, frequently cutting off Palestinians from their own land.
- Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot settle in Israel with a Palestinian spouse who comes from the Occupied Territories.
- Israel refuses to accept the right of return for Palestinians who were driven from their land–or vacated their lands 'temporarily' (they hoped)–in the 1948-49 war or the 1967 war. Again, this violates international law.
So, the question is really who or what does this sound like? Does this sound like the workings of a democracy? Or, in the alternative does it sound more like the experience of Native Americans in the U.S; African Americans in the Jim Crow South; and Africans in apartheid South Africa?
The Palestinians have the right to compare their struggle with ours based on the profound similarities in experience. This is not a matter of rhetoric or sleight of hand; it is about history and current reality.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a racial justice, labor and global justice writer and activist. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. He can be found on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
The GOP: Chaos is Their Goal
(NNPA) Three events occurred in the tight confines of Capitol Hill last week that underscore the Republican Party's extraordinary institutional decline and its responsibility for the Congress' fully deserving its "do-nothing" label.
First, early in the week, all but seven Republicans in the GOP – controlled House of Representatives voted to give Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio the go-ahead to sue President Obama because they claim his executive orders are in violation of the constitution. The purpose of that "political stunt" – the president's words for the lawsuit, which he and the Democrats have come to relish for the 2014 campaign – is to keep alive the GOP's rhetoric about impeaching the president if the November elections give them control of the Senate.
Secondly, later in the week Boehner was forced to give up on a GOP-drafted bill to authorize emergency funds for the government's efforts to cope with the sudden crisis of undocumented immigrant children massing at the U.S-Mexico border. The first-level reason for that stunning rebuke of a Speaker of the House by his own party members was that GOP hard-line conservatives made it clear they wouldn't vote for their own party's bill.
But what made the rebuke to Boehner even more humiliating was the week's third noteworthy event –which was actually a facet the second. That was that the hard-liners had been urged on by the Tea Party's favorite U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz of Texas. According to numerous media reports, Cruz had met with a dozen or more of the House hard-liners the night before the scheduled July 31 vote to declare his opposition to it. The next day, Boehner, clearly seeing he didn't have the votes for passage, pulled the bill from consideration.
Boehner allies in the House pledged to try to get a spending measure enacted before Congress broke for the summer recess. But the real point of the week's developments had been made – reinforcing what has been evident since President Obama took office.
First, in the midst of a crisis, when America's national government needs to act swiftly, count on the Republican Party, driven by its reflexive anti-Obama mania, to oppose any positive action. Secondly, the GOP, which still boasts about its adherence to tradition and conservative principles, remains wracked by an internal battle between conservative extremists and establishment regulars only slightly less vicious than its war against the president.
That civil war these past six years has produced the electoral primary defeats of such staunch GOP veterans as former Senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Richard Lugar of Indiana and, in June, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor – all deemed not conservative enough by the GOP's Tea Party reactionaries.
Cruz, who's been running for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination since his election in 2012, has waged the war of disruption against the GOP congressional establishment in both the House and the Senate in unprecedented fashion. From the first, he's been eager to show his disrespect of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, and Boehner. His meddling in House matters last week marks the second time he's undercut Boehner in order to grab the spotlight and build support among the GOP's reactionary base. Last year, he was among the loudest voices urging GOP hard-liners to stand fast for a government shutdown.
Cruz's sabotage last week led New York Republican, Peter T. King, to complain to a New York Times reporter, "I do wish that Ted Cruz would stay in the Senate. Nobody elected him Speaker … it's really a cheap shot to be coming in from the side. To have some guy come in from the outside like the Pied Piper is wrong."
And yet, Cruz's behavior perfectly represents the political game going on on the conservative side of American politics these days – a game whose goal is sowing chaos. Cruz and his Tea Party confederates must disrupt the GOP's own time-honored political processes and lines of authority – sow internal party chaos – if they're to seize power from establishment figures like Boehner and McConnell.
That strategy has both intensified and yet, ironically, also undercut the commitment the GOP leadership itself made at the very beginning of Obama's first term to reflexively oppose his administration proposals – to sow governmental chaos – in order to re-capture the White House.
Those two dynamics adopted by the conservative movement and the Republican Party are the major reasons why the American politics of this era is so polarized: because, for them, political chaos is
Lee A.Daniels is a longtime New York journalist. His most recent book is Last Chance: The Political Threat to Black America.
Crimes against Gaza
(NNPA) So, let's be clear about what is transpiring before our eyes in Gaza. It most recently started when the Palestine Authority and Hamas declared that there would be a unity government. This was a significant breakthrough after years of hostility between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Almost immediately the Israeli government expressed outrage, attacking this agreement and proceeding to take a very threatening posture.
The next big event was the disappearance – and subsequent murder – of the three Israeli boys. The Netanyahu government, without a shred of evidence, immediately accused Hamas as being behind this. The Israelis then began a rampage throughout the Occupied West Bank allegedly searching for the children and the kidnappers. Leaders of Hamas were placed in jail and the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of Palestinians were thrown into complete chaos. The Netanyahu government understood precisely what it was doing: It was aiming to provoke a response by Hamas that would then give Israel the opportunity to engage in an armed assault on the largest open-air prison on this planet: Gaza.
Rockets were fired out of Gaza at Israeli targets and this was enough for the Netanyahu government to justify airstrikes followed by an armed incursion. We now witness the horror of hundreds of Palestinians being murdered as a result of the Israeli aggression.
The Netanyahu government did not want the Palestinian unity government to succeed. They were well aware that the creation of a unity government would help the Palestinian cause internationally. That is not what the Netanyahu government wishes. They wish for a weak, powerless Palestinian regime to capitulate to the desires of the Israeli government. Carrying out this armed aggression against Gaza is aimed at creating just that situation.
Here in the U.S., members of Congress have stumbled over themselves to support the Israeli aggression. There is nothing that the Israelis can do that will lead to a condemnation by Congress. The Israeli government can kill any number of civilians and the Congressional majority will applaud it. The Israeli government can starve the Palestinians in Gaza and the Congressional majority will figure out a way to declare it actually humanitarian. The Israeli government can only do this because they see the Palestinians as animals rather than as human beings.
This must stop now and it will only stop when you, along with your friends and family, pick up your phone and call your elected representatives, or when you send them an email telling them that U.S. support for the slaughter in Gaza does not have your support.
Do it now. There is no time to wait.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. He is a Senior Scholar with the Institute of Policy Studies and a former president of TransAfrica Forum. Follow him on Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
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Queen rearing – grafting methods workshop with Khara Matcham from Sorority House Queens – Saturday June 14th 2:30-4:30 followed by optional pot-luck supper and free presentation of Khara's experience in Nicaragua as a USAID Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer from 6-7 o'clock. Please email to register for queen rearing and/or confirm a seat at the Nicaragua experience.Read More
Brian gave an excellent presentation Tuesday to both students and faculty about bees and Colony Collapse Disorder. He was the Earth Day speaker invited by the Sustainability Committee at Middlesex Community College. The Bedford campus had 90 people in attendance and the Lowell campus had 60. He was also on WBZ radio in the morning…Read More
Our April Beginner Beekeeping Class has a few spaces still available. Come and learn how to be successful and confident Beekeepers. Check out the Classes page for more information.Read More
Since it will be a while before we have natural pollen and the bees will soon be out looking for forage, we will be putting out substitute pollen in pollen feeders. Excellent for giving the bees something to do. We have plenty of substitute pollen and a supply of pollen patties in stock. VideoRead More
Time to plant white clover seeds – Now available in the store: Dutch White clover, New Zealand white clover and Japanese Buckwheat. It is best to broadcast White clover seed on a shallow snow base. Works best for loams and clay soils. Sandy soils do not do well with frost seeding Seed Info Next month…Read More
Save the Bees – what you can do to help the honey bees. We've put together some suggestions for helping bees in these tough times. Document is on our Library pageRead More
Check out our new Herbal Class on Feb. 8th led by Herbalist Brenda PinetteRead More
We have added many new classes for this fall and winter! New Intro to Beekeeping classes, 6 week Beginner Beekeeping Courses as well as fun and educational Workshops are available. Check out our Classes page for dates, time and to register.Read More
Do you have the best tasting honey in this neck of the woods? Bring in a ½ lb sample of your honey between now and mid September. Or bring it to the next meeting on September 9th. During the month of September & October, we will have all the samples in unmarked containers in the…Read More
Bee Pride is now selling bulbs to be planted this fall that will provide an early source of pollen for your honeybees. All of them are deer resistant, Snowdrops and Scilla are rodent resistant. We have the following bulbs on order and will be available the first week of October. Snowdrops – Galanthus elwesil -10…Read More


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NCCU Big Band
- Website
The Jazz Studies Program at North Carolina Central University is under the leadership of saxophonist/flutist Ira Wiggins. There are nine ensembles in the program: two big bands, four combos, a guitar ensemble, a brass ensemble and a vocal jazz ensemble. Dr. Wiggins is assisted by the following: Assistant Director, Baron Tymas – Guitar, Robert Trowers -Trombone, Albert Strong – Trumpet, Arnold George – Piano and Vocals, Lenora Zenzalai Helm – Vocals, Ed Paolantonio – Piano, Thomas Taylor – Drumset, Brian Horton – Saxophone and Damon Brown – Bass.
These groups have performed with major artists including: Jimmy Heath, James Moody, Kenny Burrell, Branford Marsalis, Joey Calderazzo, Ed Thigpen, Vanessa Rubin, Fred Wesley, Louie Bellson, Alvin Batiste, Clark Terry, Frank Foster, Nnenna Freelon, Nicholas Payton, Steve Wilson, Geri Allen, Slide Hampton, David "Fathead" Newman and others.
NCCU's groups have appeared at numerous festivals receiving top honors, including first
place honors at the Villanova Jazz Festival held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Major performances include the Montreux Jazz Festival, Vienne Jazz Festival, Detroit Jazz Festival, New York City Jazz Festival, Notre Dame Jazz Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival. The group was invited to perform at a reception for the White House Staff and Congressional Aides and a week later for a National Press reception hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton. Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo serve as artists-in-residence for the NCCU Jazz Studies Program. The Jazz Studies Program at North Carolina Central University is dedicated to fostering a quality education, shaping the future of aspiring musicians, and maintaining the integrity of a great art form.
NCCU Big Band is presented in partnership with North Carolina Central University's 24th Annual Jazz Festival.


text:
Utah Utes football: Utes blast lowly Washington State to earn second-straight Pac-12 win (+video)
Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's upward climb continued Saturday afternoon at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The Utes won a second straight game for the first time this season with a 49-6 victory over Washington State.
The modest streak moves Utah (4-5, 2-4) to within two games of bowl eligibility and within three of a 10th consecutive winning season. The Utes visit Washington next week and then close out the campaign with a home game against Arizona and a road trip to Colorado.
As was the case a week earlier when they snapped a four-game skid with a 49-27 win over California, the Utes got off to a strong start with the offense, defense and special teams making contributions. Reggie Dunn highlighted the latter with his fourth career 100-yard kickoff return (the most in NCAA history) to open the second half.
"We're starting to play better as a football team," said Utah coach Kyle Whittingham. "We played another complete game this week, very much like last week. All three phases were functioning well."
Utah scored on five of its final six possessions over the first two quarters to build a 31-0 lead. John White headlined the effort with two rushing touchdowns and a reception for a score. The Utes racked up 285 yards of total offense and 17 first downs in the decisive half.
"The message this week was to just play with passion and energy. That's what it took today," said White, who finished with 101 yards rushing. "We just went out there and pounded them."
The defense, meanwhile, made five sacks while holding Washington State to just five first downs and 0-for-7 success on third downs. Cornerback Reggie Topps had a 21-yard interception return to set up Utah's first field goal since the BYU game on Sept. 15. Coleman Petersen made a 20-yarder as the Utes extended their lead to 24-0 with 8:03 to go in the second quarter.
Utah's point production began with a 47-yard touchdown run by White and a 5-yard scoring strike from Travis Wilson to Max Moala in the first quarter. White added a 2-yard TD run early in the second.
Following Petersen's kick, the Utes once again turned to White. The senior caught an 18-yard touchdown pass from Wilson with 21 seconds to remaining in the half.
Utah fans had more cheer about after the break — and it didn't take long. Dunn's third 100-yard kickoff return in seven days gave the crowd of 45,069 more reason to rise and shout.
"I knew it was going to happen because before I went out I saw it in the kickoff return team's eyes," Dunn said. "They were ready to make it happen again."
The Utes' lead swelled to 39-0 when Jake Murphy took a direct snap into the end zone for a two-point conversion. On the ensuing drive, Trevor Reilly sacked Washington State quarterback Jeff Tuel and jarred the ball loose. Star Lotulelei recovered the fumble on the Utah 28 as the defense continued to shine.
"We brought a lot of pressure with the stars we have up front," Topps said. "We were only rushing three or four and we were still able to get pressure."
The Utes had a shutout going until Tuel connected with Kristoff Williams on a 5-yard touchdown throw on the final play of the game.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, Utah extended its lead to 49-0 on a 22-yard field goal by Petersen and a 9-yard touchdown run by Lucky Radley — capping a 453-yard performance by the offense.
"It was a good effort all-around and we needed it, obviously. Our backs are to the wall and they'll still be to the wall the rest of the way," Whittingham said. "That's the approach we've got to take — keep fighting our way out of the corner. That's our mentality."
Speaking of fight, Washington State coach Mike Leach didn't like what he saw out of his team.
"If five of our guys went in an alley and got in a fight with two of theirs, we would have gotten massacred," Leach said. "That's just ridiculously inexcusable. It was one of the most heartless efforts up front I've seen and our defensive line wasn't any better."
The Cougars fell to 2-7 overall and 0-6 in Pac-12 play with the loss.
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text:
Year two is getting heavy. This past week consisted of lectures, labs, a simulation, a wedding in Nashville, and finally an exam yesterday. This next week holds even more: three meetings, many lectures, two labs, another exam, Osteoblast (event to introduce all of the first years to the various clubs on campus), our first PM&R club meeting, and a practical exam. The following week looks about the same. And I assume all the rest after that – until Christmas.
Some of the pictures I took for Instagram last week:


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To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild
places of the earth
44 Oak St, Suite 301,
Portland ME 04101
(207) 761-5616
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Sign up by contacting
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like fitness level, equipment, and get directions to the meeting place.
Read the standard
waiver you'll be asked to sign at the beginning of the outing. It can be found
on the web at
Bring the Ten
Essentials on any outing
2. compass
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5. food & water
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8. candle
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text:
Breath Analysis by Ion Mobility Spectrometry
This study is currently recruiting participants. (see Contacts and Locations)
Verified May 2011 by Lung Clinic Hemer
Lung Clinic Hemer
Information provided by:
Lung Clinic Hemer
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
First received: February 29, 2008
Last updated: June 22, 2011
Last verified: May 2011
- Full Text View
- Tabular View
- No Study Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
No Study Results Posted on ClinicalTrials.gov for this Study
|Study Status:
|This study is currently recruiting participants.
|Estimated Study Completion Date:
|June 2015
|Estimated Primary Completion Date:
|May 2014 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)
Bunkowski A, Bödeker B, Bader S, Westhoff M, Litterst P, Baumbach JI. MCC/IMS signals in human breath related to sarcoidosis-results of a feasibility study using an automated peak finding procedure. J Breath Res. 2009 Dec;3(4):046001. doi: 10.1088/1752-7155/3/4/046001. Epub 2009 Sep 23.
Westhoff M, Litterst P, Freitag L, Urfer W, Bader S, Baumbach JI. Ion mobility spectrometry for the detection of volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath of patients with lung cancer: results of a pilot study. Thorax. 2009 Sep;64(9):744-8. Epub 2009 Jan 21.
Westhoff M, Litterst P, Freitag L, Baumbach JI. Ion mobility spectrometry in the diagnosis of sarcoidosis: results of a feasibility study. J Physiol Pharmacol. 2007 Nov;58 Suppl 5(Pt 2):739-51.
Bunkowski,A, Bödeker B, Bader S, Westhoff M, Litterst P, Baumbauch JI.Signals in human breath related to Sarcoidosis. — Results of a feasibility study using MCC/IMS. Int. J. Ion Mobil. Spec. (2009) 12:73-79
Vautz W. Baumbach JI, Westhoff M, Züchner, K, Carstens ETH, Perl T. Breath sampling control for medical application. Int. J. Ion Mobil. Spec. (2010) 13:41-46


text:
Important: variadic templates are only available from C++11, make sure your compiler supports it.
Who has never used the Observer pattern? As long as you have been involved in any medium sized project, chances are you have come across it at some point.
The problem
It is extremely common to have an event generating system other components would like to subscribe to. However, oftentimes I see code to manage a collection of listeners being unnecessarily duplicated on a per system basis. That is registration, un-registration and notification. A lot of nonsensical boilerplate, which makes for code that is harder to read and easier to get wrong.
Let's take a look at a typical input event dispatching system, simplified for the purposes of this article. We could have an
IInputListener interface that handles a couple of events,
keyDown() and
struct IInputListener { virtual ~IInputListener() {} virtual bool keyDown(KeyCode code) = 0; virtual bool keyUp(KeyCode code) = 0; };
InputSystem class could hold an
std::set of
IInputListener pointers. Registration and un-registration is made possible through
addListener() and
removeListener() respectively. Bad news is that, every single time we want to send an event to the listeners, we are forced to iterate over the collection. Also, God kills a kitten.
class InputSystem { public: void addListener(IInputListener* listener) { m_listeners.insert(listener); } void removeListener(IInputListener* listener) { m_listeners.erase(listener); } void update() { // Touch down detected for (auto listener : m_listeners) { listener->keyDown(code); } ... // Touch up detected for (auto listener : m_listeners) { listener->keyUp(code); } } private: std::set<IInputListener*> m_listeners; };
As if this wasn't enough, there is another important gotcha here. What happens when a listener un-registers as a result of an event? The
m_listeners collection is modified in the middle of the
for loop, thus current iterators are no longer valid. The second we try to increment the internal iterator to fetch the next listener…
Not good…
The solution is simple but annoying. We can just add new listener registration and un-registration requests to a pending list while in the middle of a dispatch. Those pending lists would be processed once it's safe to modify the collection of listeners.
Moreover, some people use
std::vector instead of
std::set for performance reasons, which is completely legit. However, that involves adding code to ensure listener uniqueness in the collection.
Every time.
Honestly? I'm lazy so I don't want to be the guy who implements this over and over.
Okay, so what do you suggest?
The way towards the solution
Following our intuition, we realise that a way to generalise this behaviour is in order. Ideally, it would meet the following criteria.
- Avoids all code duplication.
- Ensures listener uniqueness.
- It is safe, can register, un-register while notifying.
- Avoids manually going through the listener collection to send an event.
- Compatible with any kind of event listener.
Intuitively, we could have a
ListenerSet<Type> template class that handles listener duplication as well as registration and un-registration safety.
Note: we'll be using
std::set rather than
std::vector for simplicity. Both can be used as long as the appropriate precautions are taken.
template <class Type> class ListenerSet { public: ListenerSet() {} virtual ~ListenerSet() {} inline void addListener(Type listener) { if (m_notifying) { m_pendingAddition.insert(listener); m_pendingRemoval.erase(listener); } else { m_listeners.insert(listener); } } inline void removeListener(Type listener) { if (m_notifying) { m_pendingRemoval.insert(listener); m_pendingAddition.erase(listener); } else { m_listeners.erase(listener); } } private: bool m_notifying; std::set<Type> m_pendingRemoval; std::set<Type> m_pendingAddition; std::set<Type> m_listeners; };
We're missing the notification functionality, that's the tricky part. We would like to have an interface such as to be able to do something like this.
m_listenerSet.notify(&IInputListener::keyDown, keyCode);
ListenerSet::notify() would iterate over all the registered listeners calling
IInputListener::keyDown and passing
keyCode as a parameter.
Maybe easier said than done?
ListenerSet::notify() needs to support an arbitrary number of arguments, as different event handlers won't necessarily have the same signature. Moreover,
IInputListener::keyDown(and every other potential handler) needs to receive a
this pointer along the remaining arguments.
This is where variadic templates come into play. Basically, they're templates that can take an arbitrary number of parameters of any type.
Interestingly enough,
std::bind() also takes an arbitrary number of parameters. That means we can create an
std::function> object that has everything we need: the event handler function pointer,
this and the remaining arguments.
Take a look at the code.
template <class Function, class... Arguments> inline void notify(Function&& f, Arguments&&... args) { m_notifying = true; for (Type listener : m_listeners) { auto callback = std::bind(f, listener, args...); callback(listener); } m_notifying = false; for (Type listener : m_pendingRemoval) { m_listeners.erase(listener); } m_pendingRemoval.clear(); for (Type listener : m_pendingAddition) { m_listeners.insert(listener); } m_pendingAddition.clear(); }
Note how we process the pending requests to add or remove listeners after we finish sending the events, that's when it's safe.
Now we can do exactly what we wanted!
ListenerSet<IInputListener*> listeners; listeners.addListener(new PlayerInputListener()); listeners.addListener(new UserInterfaceInputListener()); m_listenerSet.notify(&IInputListener::keyDown, keyCode); m_listenerSet.notify(&IInputListener::keyUp, keyCode);
Templates are instantiated at compile time, which means the compiler will complain if we're doing something dodgy such as trying to bind the wrong thing. Compile time checks are good.
Managing a set of listeners and sending events is now a lot easier, safer and readable. Last but not least, it's significantly less error prone.
Full source
For those interested, I've made the code available as a GitHub Gist.


text:
Severn, MD
The Patuxent Research Refuge is a 12,841-acre wildlife preserve directly to the West of Severn. The site is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge is divided into three areas: The North Tract is the area reserved for fishing and hunting the managed wildlife populations. The Central Tract is where the research biologists have their laboratories and offices. And the South Tract is is where the visitor center is located, as well as many hiking trials to be explored. Keep an eye out for special events at the refuge throughout the year.


text: Jewish Congregations Rebel Against Obama in Florida Print article Send a Tip by Joel B. Pollak 29 May 2012 post a comment President Barack Obama and his allies have made an unusual number of "official" visits to states that just happen to be critical to his re-election effort. Critics charge that these visits, already the subject of a complaint to the Government Accountability Office by the Republican National Committee, use taxpayer funds for what are essentially campaign purposes. In swing-state Florida, one of the few states in which Jewish voters are numerous enough to make a difference, the Obama administration and its surrogates have attempted to arrange appearances in Jewish congregations--and have been met with vociferous resistance by community activists. Earlier this month, UN Ambassador Susan Rice--a key mouthpiece for the Obama campaign in 2008--appeared at B'nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, Florida. Several dozen members of the community staged a silent walkout; many more who were suspected of planning a protest were barred from entering. The spectacle of Jews being told they could not enter a synagogue--or threatened with trespassing for having entered one--was recorded and made its way onto YouTube, where activists raised outrage against the synagogue and its rabbi. Breitbart News contacted B'nai Torah Rabbi David Steinhardt as he prepared to leave for a trip to Israel over the recent Shavuot (Pentecost) holiday. He pointed out that the synagogue had hosted many Republican speakers in the past, and lamented the fact that the event with Ambassador Rice had led to a vicious online campaign--including unfounded personal attacks--against him. Rabbi Steinhardt insisted that the synagogue had no obligation to admit people whose intention was to disrupt the event, and had an obligation to ensure Ambassador Rice's security. He said that he suspected the visit could have political implications, in an election year, but added that felt he had been "naïve" to believe it would not trigger so much opposition. It was sad, he added, that tensions in the Jewish community had become so severe that people could no longer have normal dialogue or debate about political issues. Last week, Temple Israel of Greater Miami cancelled a planned appearance by Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). Though Wasserman Schultz is from south Florida, the event was to be held just outside of her current district--again, as part of a pattern of shoring up Jewish support in a community that is unhappy with President Obama's record among Israel and which could play a decisive role in the fate of Florida's 29 electoral votes. Her appearance promised to draw even more vociferous protest--and synagogue leaders backed out, fearing a repeat of what had happened in Boca Raton. A press release by the synagogue stated: "...we face the reality that the level of discourse within our community and across our great country has often become rancorous and disruptive when involving matters of public policy." The release cited events in Boca Raton, and while acknowledging that the Boca Raton demonstrators had not been violent, lamented the publication of "a one-sided and unfair accusation" against that congregation. "Going forward, Temple Israel will not invite any candidates for public office or their supporters to speak during this election season." An e-mail circulated by an activist group thanked its members "for helping to expose the fraud contemplated by the Obama Administration in crafting its South Florida (and perhaps elsewhere) surrogates' synagogue tour," noting that at least one member had severed "a 70-year family relationship" with Temple Israel in protest of its willingness to host Wasserman Schultz. From the perspective of the Temple's leadership, the cancellation of election-year appearances marks a low point in the Jewish community's willingness to "embrace...freedom of thought, expression, and civility." From the perspective of congregants angered by a Jewish establishment that has enabled and flattered the Obama administration's poor record on Israel, it is better to have no politicians in the pulpit than to be forced to welcome a barrage of pro-Obama speakers on "official" election-year visits.


text:
Los Angeles, 1950s
As one commenter pointed out on the Los Angeles Metro Transportation Library and Archive's Flickr page for the above photo, taken in the late 1950s looking north on the Harbor Freeway from about Gage Avenue, you can't see much – if any – of a downtown skyline here. Angelenos can probably tell us whether that's because the skyline hasn't been built yet, or because the smog is obscuring it. As for the date, the Metro Transportation Library says circa 1957; based on what you see here, does that date make sense?
34 Comments - Leave a Reply
34 Responses to "Los Angeles, 1950s"
While I can't spot any `57 models, the date is possibly quite correct. The newest I see are the `56 Fairlane HT on the left, and the `56 Belvedere front & center. I spot a few `53-`54 Fords, always popular. A little (beep! beep!) `52 Nash Rambler hardtop is at the front of this pack, and the oldest car I spot seems to be the `46-`48 Chevy sedan in the far left lane. Hopefully, the bus can time his merge with the large gap in the right lane.
It wouldn't surprise me if the skyline IS hindered by smog; it was just as much a problem then as it is now out there!
There is a 56 Chevy wagon in front and to the left of the Plymouth. Nothing I can spot newer than that date as well, so I go for 1956. It could be smog obscuring the skyline, and here is a link to a picture of the LA skyline in 1956 to compare:
The City Hall photo with smog is iconic. I remember having a pain in the chest when we visited LA in the 60s. The '57 Ford billboard ad is classic.
I'm sure that's a '56 Ford pickup; it looks like a wraparound windshield there. Of course no picture is complete without at least one of my favorite shoeboxes in it. That'a got to be a '52-'53 Ford Customline driving past in a bit of a blur.
Keep in mind too that in the 1950′s, other than City Hall, Los Angeles did not have much of a "skyline" due to earthquake restrictions.
It is the smog obscuring the view. As a kid in LA in can clearly remember my lungs hurting on the inhale. Smog was much worse then than it is now.
Amen to that George. I came out here from Detroit in '65 and smog was terrible on hot sunny days. By the 70s and 80s I would have to leave work and go home it hurt so much to breath. Yeah, it was that bad. It took Fed regs to cap it and by the early to mid 90s here in LA it was vastly improved. And still is.
You think THAT'S bad? In the coal-mining towns of the Era, the local slate dump would periodically catch fire due to spontaneous combustion. If it happened during a thermal inversion, senior citizens would DIE.
I was born in '53, and so the vehicles in the photo were the ones I grew up with. But, even then, I ALWAYS thought that the "Old Look" buses, such as the one on the right, really did look outdated & obsolete.
What a sigh of relief when the GM "New Look / Fishbowl" buses began to appear '59. Still, by the time I was taking the bus to HS in '67-'68, we were still climbing into smoke-belching Old Look buses, still soldiering on.
Looks like a nice sunny California day. I guess that white-walled, fender-skirted '52-'53 Ford has it's windows up, b/c the AC is on. Ya think?
Did Ford offer A/C in 1952-1953?
Did some research. If Wiki is correct, the first factory installed A/C on the regular Fords was 1955.
Windows were up to keep the air out, I'll bet.
i will take the ford truck in the left lane. does the bus merge onto the highway or stay on bus only lane the whole way downtown?
I'm thinking 1956, as in L.A., you'd think you'd see at least 1 new car, and nothing newer than the '56 Ford, Plymouth, and possibly the Ford truck. The transit bus is no help, as they had that "loaf of bread" look since just after the war(I think). Due to the heavy inbound traffic, and little outbound, I'd say it's the morning commute.
let's go pal !
If you click on the link and see the google maps picture from today, there is less smog and less traffic…who woulda thought?…
……..I think the full length sidespear and small chrome scuffplate suggest that's a '54 Ford Customline in the foreground, hopefully with the brand new optional ($76) overhead valve "Y-Block" V8…….as far as most young guys were concerned, a 2 door Ford V8 3-spd with skirts and duals was about as good as it got……..Chev finally got on the radar the next year with their own modern V8..
…….check those oily blow-by streaks in the middle of all the lanes, a little bit of rain probably turned that thruway into a giant skid-pad. Today, some cars consume no oil at all.(and in the HOV lane, some have no oil to consume!).
I received very good advice when I learned to ride a motorcycle in 1968. If it had not rained for a while and you were riding when it started the road would turn into a skid-pad due to the oil build up in the middle of the lanes. It was true, due to detergent oils you could actually see bubbles in the road. No where near as bad nowadays. We forget about the way things used to be. Back then a cement driveway of any age was usually full of oil stains. You used to have to Gunk degrease them sometimes.
There was a lot of stuff to be seen off the sides of the freeway – it's the smog that makes it difficult to see. When I was a kid growing up in the LA area in the 50s and 60s, I often wondered what the big deal was about Superman coming from a planet with a red sun – I had one every day, too! I still can't fly and no x-ray vision either, darn it!
I was born in 61 and never lived in LA, but is that not a 57 Ford just ahead off of the left front fender of the 52(?) Ford and behind the F100 on the far left of the photo?
I believe that is a '56 Ford.
I can just spot the left-side taillight of what I think is a '57 Chevy in the left lane, to the left of the Nash roughly in the center of the photo. But all the other cars appear to be earlier than that, in some cases dating to the '40s, which would be completely appropriate. A common mistake in movies meant to take place in a particular year is that most of the cars are of that year—rather than earlier. (I remember still seeing plenty of bullet-nose Studebakers and even a few late-'30s Packards in the early '60s, for example.)
I think you are right, Fred! Looks like a 57″ Ford to me also! My dad bought one brand new in 1957 (How could I forget sitting in the back seat and being told: "Don't touch anything"!)
Unfortunately, he traded it in on a 1960 Dodge Dart the Summer of 1960!
Not much of a center divider, more like none!
I believe that in a '56 Ford. Can't see the taillights well, but the trim line looks like a '56.
Looks pretty much the same, except for zillions of cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
I lived in Glendale, and worked at LAX for over thirty years, so I spent half my life stuck in traffic on the 110 Harbor Freeway.
The traffic was so bad in the late 80′s, that I could ride a '59 Cushman Super Eagle to work, and split lanes all the way from Silverlake to the Florence exit.
And the smog is back btw. Too many cars.
I do not think the smog ever left.
I did that commute, LaHabra to LA, in 1955 in a '52 Ford. Also in a MGTD with the top down and tears streaming from my eyes in the smog. No AC in car or workplace. $485 a month after getting MA..
The traffic is nothing like it is now. It looks like the City is not built up yet. In the old days Santa Monica had the same sort of feel to it with one freeway in and out.
Looks like a stock shot out of Dragnet: "This… is the city…"
Also reminiscent of Karnak the Magnificent giving the questions to answers posed by Ed McMahon:
"What happens when the smog lifts in the Valley?"
HEY! Izzat an Ohio-made Flxible I see on the right? I agree with Dan about how wonderful the "new look" buses were when they came out; big and roomy inside, with gigantic windows and cushy ride, in the days before I was able to drive, "The Valley" [Wheeling-Steubenville Area"] had a wonderful bus system that took us young teens on a magic carpet anywhere in the Valley, quickly and conveniently.
Based upon my years living in the LA area in the 60s-early 70s, this is a pretty smog-free day! You wouldn't have even had a hint of horizon on a bad day back then. It really is so much better now.
Lived in LA from 1940 till 1992. All the preceding commentary is accurate, in my opinion.
After 2 maybe 5 White Russians, I think that I see Howard Hughes in the 49′ Chevy.


text:
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Ingeborg E Cowens (1934 - 2007) was born on July 15, 1934. She was born into the Cowens family.
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Zinken Citrus
The DJ Headphone
Zinken Citrus is a full-size on-ear DJ headphone in juicy bright yellow shade. Designed to thrive in a DJ environment, but also excel at day-to-day use, Zinken features a full-size on-ear fit that provides deep bass, crisp mids and highs, in addition to reducing outside noise. Add in some swivel ear caps, an adjustable headband, the super handy TurnCable and a built-in microphone and remote and you've got one tasty headphone cocktail.
Also available in these colors:
- Zinken Lilac
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- Zinken Forget-Me-Not
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- Zinken Black*
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- Zinken Coral
TurncableOur solution for an adapter-free life
Completely detachable, the TurnCable comes with two plugs, one on each end. There's a 6.3mm plug on one end for DJ sessions and a 3.5mm plug for music listening on the other, because as much as you want to, you can't spend all hours of the day plugged into your mixer.
ZoundplugInstant music sharing
The ZoundPlug is not really a plug, but a socket that lets you share your music with a friend. Simply plug another pair of headphones in via the empty outlet on the ear cap and enjoy.
CollapsibleTake them everywhere
We know you take your headphones with you wherever you go, so we made sure to design ours to be fully collapsible so you can easily fold them down and be on your merry way.
Microphone & RemoteFor hands-free talking
Most music devices today are also cell phones. That's why all our headphones come with a built-in microphone and remote. Use it to pick up calls, or fast forward or rewind your music.
- 40mm Handmade Drivers
- Frequency Response 20Hz-20kHz
- Impedance 85Ω
- Sensitivity 98dB
- Max Input Power 50mW


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US judge excoriates Harvard team's P2P defense
As expected, a federal judge has affirmed a $675,000 fine against a graduate student for illegally sharing 30 copyrighted songs. What came as a surprise were the unusually harsh words the jurist had for the defendant's attorney. In an opinion published Monday, US District Judge Nancy Gertner excoriated Charles Nesson, co- …
Try to contain my amazement!
"Meeja" corps in court win shocker!
We all know the judiciary are in cahoots with the media corps, did these people really think they stood a snowball's? I genuinely admire their courage for trying, but with Mandy's Witch-hunts about to start and Google at long last revealing what most of us already knew, that we are simply stats to be harvested, was this really any great surpise?
Did you even read the artical?
Or did you see the title and go "oh downloading. It must be evil media people"?
This has nothing to do with anything but a truly bad defense. The Judge all but says "I agree with you but your lawyers to much of an ideot".
Oh, and Meeja is used to discribe oh so hip companys with a love of whale song and painfully hip bars, normaly baised on Soho.
Presumably Tenenbaum will sue his lawyers?
After all, the judge has made it clear that the size of the award was their fault.
Don't get it
As it's a civil case, surely the RIAA (et al) must prove that Tenenbaums filesharing of 30 songs cost them $675,000 in lost revenue or reputation?
The award can't be punative (can it?), as the industry have now valued their own product at 99c per track, this equates to those tracks causing the loss of over 6,800 sales (at 99c ea.), which seems untenable and unproveable.
No they do not
If Vogue pinches a photo from David Bailey for their front cover there is a market price that the usage would have been, if on the other hand they've pinched it from some unknown photog on flickr the market price isn't so clear. If its some local newspaper that has done it, or some small website then it is even less clear, and if it is someone uploading a song to the interwebs for the world to download even less clear.
In the UK for example where you need to prove actual loss the small content producer is fucked as it would cost far more than the £100 or so that they could claim for the violation. So copyright legislation is no real deterrent to the likes of The daily Mail if they decide to rip off some small producers works.
In the US they have a minimum price, plus lawyers fees, for usage of a registered copyright work which is $750 but may be as high as $150,000 if the violation was willful. This establishes a deterrent to copyright violation.
In Tenenbaums case he continued filesharing even after he was sent a cease and desist letter from the copyright owners, denied that it was him, and blamed his sister or friends. As such the jury found his violation willful and whacked him with $22,000+ per song complained of.
Thus proving the old adage
Those who can, do - those who can't, teach
Is this a case of
those who can do those who can't teach?
$675K for 30 songs!
That's $22, 500 per song. Whilst I cannot see what he was doing as "fair use", the amount awarded seems extortionate when compared with the alleged damage.
'fair use' poorly understood
'Fair use' tends to be used for 'I didn't take very much and I didn't profit by it (much).' But is is a restricted use of someone else's copyright, well-defined in law, and Nesson was a bit mad to try to ram fair use through for 'I took and shared lots of someone else's work without paying for it.'
@ Coward
You didn't read the article then. It suggests the judge sat there and expected a fair use defence which would have (apparently) been just dandy. How that makes her in cahoots with 'the media corps" is very unclear...the article made out she was against such suits and tried her best to get this little sailor into less stormy waters.
Luckily this pirate decided (or I should say his hugely overqualified leagal team) that instead of defending his actions, he was going to waffle on about "out dated business models" like other pirates and it was clearly to his detriment.
Hurray for another victory for decency and morality.
Alternative readings of this result
1) defendants actions were not defendable
2) lawyer mucked up defence
3) mixture of 1 and 3
Just because some people thought that the defendant was morally right doesn't mean he wasn't in the legal wrong.
Hope the lawyer was pro bono. Mind you in that case "you get what you pay for"
I may be mistaken...
... but im pretty damn positive that yes where someone is found to delibrately and willfully cause "damage" in a court case then punitive fines can be applied.
Admittedly, in this case, i would say its damn excessive but hey use a shit laywer and your bound to be screwed. And this guys supposed to be a professor - one can only imagine the "calibre" of young laywers he's turning out!
Erm, just one thing...
Given that the guy is a student, and assuming he loses the appeal. Do they actually think they're ever going to get a cent from him? When will they learn? If you want to recover any kind of costs, then make the fines "payable"!!! $5k maximum.
Well for one thing ...
... the copyright owners have been willing to come to a deal throughout this saga. The defendant was refused to come to any terms.
Oh they will, poor sod will be held in permanent debt for the rest of his natural, even if he pays it off at $1 a month!
Far better to have an attachment of earnings for life of, say, 5% of your monthly gross? Fantastic. His punishment will be more than some murderers here in the UK.
The point of the large damages isn't to make money from poor students - everyone knows he can't pay and probably couldn't be made to pay, however:
(1) The damages are more a means to warn others against file sharing - sure he may have exactly fuck all to his name but many sharers do have some assets they would rather not lose, like houses, cars and meagre savings. Sure I couldn't pay £400,000 either, but I could lose quite a lot if a similar judgement was made against me.
They want normal people to ask themselves "is stealing that album really worth risking my house for?"
(2) in concert with (1) above there is the threat to parents that they could be held liable for their kid's sharings (dad's computer + dad's broadband = dad's liability) - where this is unlikely to happen it is another stick to make adults prevent their children from sharing.
(3) damages are based on the cost of the "damage" caused not the ability of the damager to pay. If you claim sharing x songs for y time = $Z damage then that is the amount that will be awarded.
(4) Being awarded a large amount here sets the precedent for the future. Remember that the assorted associations (ass. ass.) have 3 main goals regarding filesharing: they want to stop it happening, they want to be given more rights and enforcement powers and they all want to be the first to stick a really big infringement suit on Google so that they can get a huge windfall and then "tax" the interwebs.
This award goes towards all 3 of these
- it will discourage at least some filesharers (or at least make their parents discourage them)
- it will be used as a stick to beat congress into granting more powers (look how much we lost from one guy, we are soooooooo poor, you need to pass laws allowing us to sue anyone with an internet connection for going equipped to steal our music - think of the taxes and political "donations" that will bring in."
-it allows for multi-billion dollar payouts when they finally get a sympathetic judge who deems Google liable for all the infringements on YouTube or found through Google search.
"(1) The damages are more a means to warn others against file sharing"
This the same sort of thinking that got starving people deported to Australia for life because they stole a loaf of bread.
It actually goes against the basic justification for punishment that the nature of punishment must match the crime. (but this in 'Merkin land), and that the punishment should compensate the victim of the crime, or the society in general, by way of fines or compensation, and such compensation should match the loss caused by the crime.
However this is not a criminal case, it is a civil case involving breach of copyright, did the plaintiffs demonstrate that the actual loss to themselves was $675,000? No they didn't
What we are seeing is the payoff to the copyright MAFIAA as a result of all their lobbying behind the scenes to change the basic principals of law to protect there monopolistic control of the music industry, their continuing "lobbying" to have the law changed to protect their monopoly stranglehold on the music industry with the help of their paid sock puppets in the US Senate tried to have copy right infringement made a federal offence so the Merkin judicial system would be forced to protect the MAFIAA strangle hold on music so they can continue to thrower vast amounts of money from somebody else's hard work and talent.
I think reading amanfromMars posts is beginning to affect me....
Well that settles it
Any thought I had of studying law at Harvard is now in the trash bin.
Waiting for the big 4 to get a more deserved shafting in Canada
The big 4 labels have got into the habit of releasing compilations without licensing agreements in place, and haven't been very good at paying up. Now the artists are going to court over it using the labels' own list of over 300,000 tracks. I would hope this systematic commercial infringement would be treated more harshly than a bit of filesharing, but the maximum penalty in Canada is $20k per infringement rather than the $150k in the US.
More details here:
Mirror Mirror who is the most
openly corrupted judge in the USA?
Well: Judge Nancy Gertner of course.
The real enemi of the USA is not Terrorists, it is the MPAA/RIAA working hard every day to DESTROY AND RUINE lifes for ever.
i wonder what was her price to render such a flawed verdict that destroy the life of young person forevere?
Destroying lives forever?
"The real enemi of the USA is not Terrorists, it is the MPAA/RIAA working hard every day to DESTROY AND RUINE lifes for ever.
i wonder what was her price to render such a flawed verdict that destroy the life of young person forevere?"
That's one of the dumber things I've heard online. The guy can just file for bankruptcy and never pay the RIAA a cent. Seven years later and that bankruptcy will fall off his credit report and it'll be as if it never happened.
Wow, I don't know who's most stupid
Nesson, Tennenbaum, or the wankers here who think "oh, the poor baby was unfairly found guilty (by a JURY mind you) and then this massive fine imposed by the bad old judge (NOT; fine set by the jury again).
Read up a little folks before posting stupid. He was notified MULTIPLE TIMES and continued to share files (that weren't HIS to share). He was offered small settlement amounts multiple times and refused every offer. He got an idiot for a lawyer and lost his case. The judge did her job (and pretty well from what i've read of the case). The RIAA is doing their job (trying to protect IP from blatant copyright violators). Joel ADMITTED to file sharing, under oath, on the stand. Joel also tried to throw his family and friends under the bus by accusing THEM of doing HIS sharing. The jury COULD have set the fine much higher, but didn't. Will he ever have to pay all that? Not likely. Maybe he will have learned his lesson, but it's going to hang over him forever because of his poor behaviour.
And then...
... We will finaly have our revenge and feel better about our selvs because we really beat this guy. USA USA USA USA
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Accepted for Google Summer of Code 2014
This year I've been accepted for Google Summer of Code 2014 with Gentoo Foundation for the Gentoo Keys project and my mentor will be Brian Dolbec (dol-sen). Gentoo Keys is a Python based project that aims to manage the GPG keys used for validation on users and Gentoo's infrastructure servers. These keys will be any/all of the release keys, developer keys and any other third party keys or keyrings available or needed.
Participating in large communities and being a developer has great responsibilities. Developers have access to commit their new changes to the main repository, however, even an unintended incorrect commit in the main repository would affect the majority of the users. This issue could be addressed easily by the developer that did the mistake instantly. A less innocent case is that if a developer's box is compromised, then the malicious user could commit malicious changes freely to the main tree. To prevent this kind of incidents, developers are requested to sign their own commits with their GPG key in order to ensure who they claim to be. It's an extra layer of protection that helps to keep the integrity of the main repository. Gentoo Keys aims to solve that and provides its features in many scenarios like overlays and release engineering management.
Gentoo Keys will be able to verify GPG keys used for Gentoo's release media, such as installation CD's, Live DVD's, packages and other GPG signed documents. In addition, it will be used by Gentoo infrastructure team to achieve GPG signed git commits in the forthcoming git migration of the main CVS tree.
Gentoo Keys is an open source project which has its code available from the very first day in Gentoo's official repositories. Everyone is welcome to provide patches and request new features.
Source code: https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-keys
Weekly Reports are posted here.
Wiki page: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gentoo-keys
Mailing list: email@example.com
What happened to all the mentors?
I had this post in the Drafts for a while, but now it's time to publish it since the situation does not seem to be improving at all.
As you probably now, if you want to become a Gentoo developer, you need to find yourself a mentor[1]. This used to be easy. I mean, all you had to do was to contact the teams you were interested in contributing as a developer and then one of the team members would step up and help you with your quizzes. However, lately, I find myself in the weird situation of having to become a mentor myself because potential recruits come back to recruiters and say that they could not find someone from the teams to help them. This is sub-optimal for a couple of reasons. First of all, time constrains Mentoring someone can take days, weeks or months. Recruiting someone after being trained (properly or not), can also take days, weeks or months. So somehow, I ended up spending twice as much time as I used to. So we are back to those good old days, where someone needed to wait months before we fully recruit him. Secondly, a mentor and a recruiter should be different persons. This is necessary for recruits to gain a wider and more efficient training as different people will focus on different areas during this training period.
One may wonder, why teams are not willing to spend time to train new developers. I guess, this is because training people takes quite a lot of someone's time and people tend to prefer fixing bugs and writing code than spending time training people. Another reason could be that teams are short on manpower, so try are mostly busy with other stuff and they just can't do both at the same time. Others just don't feel ready to become mentors which is rather weird because every developer was once a mentee. So it's not like they haven't done something similar before. Truth is that this seems to be a vicious circle. No manpower to train people -> less people are trained -> Not enough manpower in the teams.
In my opinion, getting more people on board is absolutely crucial for Gentoo. I strongly believe that people must spend time training new people because a) They could offload work to them ;) and b) it's a bit sad to have quite a few interested and motivated people out there and not spend time to train them properly and get them on board. I sincerely hope this is a temporary situation and things will become better in the future.
ps: I will be in FOSDEM this weekend. If you are there and you would like to discuss about the Gentoo recruitment process or anything else, come and find me ;)
[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2#doc_chap3
Proxy Maintainers – How do we perform?
Following my recent recruitment performance post, here comes the second part of my Gentoo Miniconf 2012 presentation. The following two graphs aim to demonstrate the performance of proxy-maintainers aka, how Gentoo users help us improve and push new ebuilds to the portage tree
One can notice the increased number of maintainer-needed@ packages but this is because we "retired" a lot of inactive developers in the last 2 months. I expect this number to not increase further in the near future.
I would like to thank all of you who are actively participating in this team. Keep up the good work!
Gentoo Recruitment: How do we perform?
A couple of days ago, Tomas and I, gave a presentation at the Gentoo Miniconf. The subject of the presentation was to give an overview of the current recruitment process, how are we performing compared to the previous years and what other ways there are for users to help us improve our beloved distribution. In this blog post I am gonna get into some details that I did not have the time to address during the presentation regarding our recruitment process.
Looking at the previous graph, two things are obvious. First of all, every year the number of people who wanted to become developers is constantly decreased. Second, we have a significant number of people who did not manage to become developers. Let me express my personal thoughts on these two things.
For the first one, my opinion is that these numbers are directly related to the Gentoo's reputation and its "infiltration" to power users. It is not a secret that Gentoo is not as popular as it used to be. Some people think this is because of the quality of our packages, or because of the frequency we cause headaches to our users. Other people think that the "I want to compile every bit of my linux box" trend belongs to the past and people want to spend less time maintaining/updating their boxes and more time doing some actual work nowadays. Either way, for the past few years we are loosing people, or to state it better, we are not "hiring" as many as we used to. Ignoring those who did not manage to become developers, we must admit that the absolute numbers are not in our favor. One may say that, 16 developers for 2011-2012 is not bad at all, but we aim for the best right? What bothers me the most is not the number of the people we recruit, but that this number is constantly falling for the last 5 years…
As for the second observation, we see that, every year, around 4-5 people give up and decide to not become developers after all. Why is that? The answer is obvious. Our long, painful, exhausting recruitment process drives people away. From my experience, it takes about 2 months from the time your mentor opens your bug, until a recruiter picks you up. This obviously kills someone's motivation, makes him lose interest, get busy with other stuff and he eventually disappears. We tried to improve this process by creating a webapp two years ago, but it did not work out well. So we are now back to square one. We really can't afford loosing developers because of our recruitment process. It is embarrassing to say at least.
Again, is there anything that can be done? Definitely yes. I'd say, we need an improved or a brand new web application that will focus on two things:
1) make the review process between mentor <-> recruit easier
2) make the final review process between recruit <-> recruiter an enjoyable learning process
Ideas are always welcomed. Volunteers and practical solutions even more ;) In the meantime, I am considering using Google+ hangouts for the face-to-face interview sessions with the upcoming recruits. This should bring some fresh air to this process ;)
The entire presentation can be found here
Gentoo, TOR Relay and Freenode with irssi
I have a really slow ADSL connection but it's enough to share some bandwidth. Since I'm a strong supporter of privacy, the least I could do – especially now that I'm leaving the place for the summer - was to setup a TOR Relay server. I would love to see more relay servers all over the place. TOR is considerably faster than a couple of years ago for browsing, IRC and other low-bandwith operations. That's very encouraging.
Since I run a 3350MX box as a home Gentoo server, I just emerged tor, privoxy and g-cpan in order to be able to access Freenode through a "torified" irssi client.sudo ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=\"perl ipv6\" emerge tor torsocks privoxy irssi g-cpan
Just add this line your torrc, after you do your relay or single tor server configuration:mapaddress 10.40.40.40 p4fsi4ockecnea7l.onion
It's good to configure also tor-tsocks.conf file in the /etc/tor directory. Then we add the following line to /etc/privoxy/configforward-socks4a / 10.0.0.4:9050 .
Then change the configuration at /etc/torsocks.conf to match your network setup. At this point we must emerge some perl CPAN libraries. These are going to be used by irssi SASL script. In theory this step could be made using directly the CPAN manager like:cpan> install Crypt::Blowfish Crypt::DH Crypt::OpenSSL::Bignum Math::BigInt Math::BigInt::FastCalc Math::BigInt::GMP
However this approach created a myriad of problems to me. It stalled too many times and was not able to compile successfully the Math::FastCalc library. We need this library for faster calculations, since we're going to encrypt/decrypt packets. Anyway, under Gentoo the approach that worked flawlessly is the following:g-cpan -iv Crypt::Blowfish Crypt::DH Crypt::OpenSSL::Bignum Math::BigInt Math::BigInt::FastCalc Math::BigInt::GMP
Now we need to configure irssi client. First grab the Freenode SASL perl script. Install it under ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun like:mkdir -p ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun && cd ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun && wget http://freenode.net/sasl/cap_sasl.pl
Now we just need to add some configuration to irssi. Start irssi preferably on 'screen -U' session and run it like:torify irssi
Now if you see any complaints about 'cap_sasl.pl' script then, you need to check the perl installation, make sure that irssi has been compiled with perl support, that the above mentioned libraries are installed etc. If you see no messages then everything is fine. Now let's configure Freenode and SASL auth:/network add Freenode /server add -auto -network Freenode p4fsi4ockecnea7l.onion 6669 /sasl set Freenode <primary-nick> <password> DH-BLOWFISH /sasl save /save
Now you should be all setup . We don't need SSL connection because TOR hidden services are encrypted tunnels, so it would be redundant to use SSL upon hidden services.
Enjoy Freenode anonymity!! You might encounter a bit of lag, usually is something like 4-5 seconds. It's the current cost of cloak-ed host on IRC but pays well
Related posts:
Πρόσβαση στο gentoo-el.org μέσω SSH;
12 Μαρ 2012: στόχος μας ως Ελληνική Κοινότητα Gentoo (gentoo-el) είναι να συνεργαζόμαστε με όλους τους εθελοντές και να συμβάλουμε στην δουλειά που γίνεται από κάθε εθελοντή, θα δούμε το πρόβλημα
της πρόσβασης που αναφέρεις και θα σου απαντήσω άμεσα.
Εξακολουθώ να μην έχω πρόσβαση στο gentoo-el.org μέσω SSH. Ο Θοδωρής Χατζημίχος (gentoo-el) κωλυσιεργεί στην ενεργοποίηση πρόσβασης στο gentoo-el.org.