text: HHS: 24 Percent of Enrollees Between 18 and 35 by John Sexton Jan 13, 2014 2:27 PM PT Share This: Print Monday HHS released a report which, for the first time, reveals demographic data on the people who have enrolled. Currently 24 percent of those enrolled are between the ages of 18 and 35. That figure is significantly lower than the 39 percent the White House indicated was necessary to consider the enrollment period a success. The newly published HHS report announces "Persons between the ages of 18 and 34 account for nearly a quarter (24 percent) of all Marketplace plan selections." It continues, "enrollment of young adults is...important to help to ensure a favorable risk mix." The 24 percent figure is slightly lower than the prevalence of this same age group in the population (26 percent). The 24 percent figure is also significantly lower than what the administration had said was needed in order to consider the enrollment period a success. Back in November Wonkblog's Ezra Klein indicated that in his discussions with the White House "It all came down to the ratio." Klein specified that this meant, "If 7 million people signed up for the exchanges -- as CBO predicted -- the Obama administration believed success meant ensuring about 2.7 million of them were young and healthy." That works out to about 39 percent. The administration is clearly aware that the figures released today fall below their own definition of success. In the announcement of the numbers on the HHS blog, Secretary Sebelius writes "Through December, 30 percent of those who enrolled were under age 35, with 24 percent being between the ages of 18 and 34 – consistent with the proportion of the population in this age group and in keeping with where Massachusetts enrollment was at this point." The link leads to New Republic story published last week which contains a month-by-month tally of the percentage of young people who signed up for an equivalent program in Massachusetts. Sec. Sebelius is correct that current enrollment is right about where Massachusetts was halfway through its enrollment period (which was 12 months rather than 6). What Sebelius does not say is that in Massachusetts enrollment topped out around 34 percent. That was its best month out of 12. The average result over the entire enrollment period was closer to 30 percent. If Obamacare is on the same course, as Sec. Sebelius seems to be arguing it is, then it is going to fall 10 percent short of the White House's definition of success. Of course the enrollment period is only half over but it would take a massive influx of young invincibles for Obamacare to overcome this slow start. If we assume the total number of enrollees will double by March 31st (which is roughly what happened in Massachusetts) then we would need to see 54 percent between the ages of 18 and 35 in order to finish with 39 percent overall. That's more than double their percentage of the population. Anything is possible but there is no precedent in Massachusetts for such an influx. The Obama administration has been claiming for months that they are following the path set in Massachusetts. If so they are very unlikely to reach the White House's own definition of success this year. ObamaCare death spirals and the individual mandate by John Hayward Jan 13, 2014 8:51 PM PT Share This: Print In response to HHS: 24 Percent of Enrollees Between 18 and 35: I know this will sound brutally cynical, but I find it necessary to assume every report pertaining to ObamaCare has been fudged or manipulated in some way, until proven otherwise. The 24 percent number of young enrollees from the report you cited is horrific - far, far below what ObamaCare needs to survive, when projected across the vast American population - but I suspect even that figure is higher than the unvarnished truth we'll discover in a few months, maybe after some oversight hearings. But let's play along with 24 percent for the time being. How many of those young folks are true Young Invincibles - young, healthy, and willing to pay jacked-up premiums for virtually useless insurance in perpetuity? Young people with significant pre-existing conditions are not financial assets on the ObamaCare balance sheets, and yet I suspect they're probably a strong component of the early customers in the 18-35 demographic. And, if I might be forgiven for putting this indelicately: how many of that young 24 percent has a clue how lousy their new ObamaCare policies are? A recurring theme emerging from anecdotal accounts of young folks encountering ObamaCare is their mistaken belief that they were getting some kind of "free" full-coverage no-expenses policy. On the contrary, they're paying exorbitant premiums to get coverage that won't do a bloody thing for them until they shell out $8000 or more in out-of-pocket expenses in a single year. I suspect a lot of them don't really understand how that works, and they might grow reluctant to pay those big premiums after the first time they attempt to use their benefits. At which point they'll run afoul of the notorious individual mandate, which (of course) uses a super-complicated formula that begins spiraling dramatically upward next year to compute the absurd and offensive "tax/penalty" you'll pay for refusing to buy insurance from the government's Little Partners in the insurance industry. Byron York cites industry expert and ObamaCare critic Bob Laszewski wondering if the mandate can survive a political backlash after it begins escalating: "In the first year, the mandate is useless," said Laszewski. "One percent isn't strong enough. The IRS can't really collect it anyway from anyone who wants to flaunt it. Then we get to the second and third year. Two percent in 2015 and 2.5 percent in 2016. Now we have real money. The IRS still can't collect it, but lots of people will still be troubled by it because they won't like getting nasty letters from the IRS." As Laszewski sees it, the mandate could become extremely unpopular — it's already by far the least popular part of Obamacare — if policies are not what the public wants to buy. Who would want to be forced to buy something he or she doesn't want? That something is not insurance itself — it is insurance that is ill-fitting and overpriced. "The problem is that the government will be hard pressed to collect a fine on something lots of people don't believe has value," Laszewski said. "This is when it will become a huge political albatross. At the core Obamacare is not sustainable, and the mandate/fine is not politically sustainable, if there are lots of middle class people who see Obamacare as a poor value." What he means by "the IRS can't really collect it anyway from anyone who wants to flaunt it" is that the individual mandate is siphoned from the annual tax returns of victims. The Democrats were afraid to write stronger collection mechanisms into the Affordable Care Act, or have the mandate begin in 2014 at the crushing $695 average level it will eventually reach, because they didn't want the public to freak out. As it stands, the IRS has no way to collect the penalty from people who don't get a tax refund. Most young people do, and since some of them might still fail to understand how the trans-Constitutional tax/penalty system works, the next couple of Tax Days should be interesting. (I wonder how all those businesses that specialize in offering tax refund advance loans - ranging from cash loans to discounts on new car purchases - are going to deal with not knowing if any given customer is a potential individual mandate target.) The mandate will become, in effect, a regressive tax on young and low-income people who really love those Tax Day "free money" windfalls from Uncle Sam. That might actually be a useful life lesson, because it's always a bit nauseating to watch Big Government purchase goodwill from financially ignorant people with their own money. But I suspect Laszewski is right about the political backlash, particularly after the mandate begins growing. And if the insurance industry is locked in a bailout-infused death spiral, who's to say the individual mandate will remain at even its projected Year Three maximum... or that the IRS won't using more aggressive collection methods? Without the individual mandate, the only things keeping ObamaCare alive are huge infusions of deficit funny money, and industry controls that lock competitors out of the government's pseudo-socialized insurance racket. If the American public calls ObamaCare's bluff and rebels against the mandate, the insurance industry will flip out, but it's actually rather difficult to imagine the public meekly accepting those huge hits to their tax returns as punishment for failing to purchase a product they don't consider valuable. Most pertinently, let's see what happens to the percentage of young and healthy ObamaCare consumers if the IRS isn't holding their tax returns hostage. advertisement Breitbart Video Picks advertisement advertisement Most Popular Fox News National Ferguson protesters rally across US for second day25 Nov 2014 Ferguson streets calm down as protesters disperse, National Guard remains on watch25 Nov 2014 Developers look to construct underground NYC park25 Nov 2014 Prosecutor faces renewed criticism over decision to call grand jury in Ferguson shooting25 Nov 2014 Police make 44 arrests after another round of protests25 Nov 2014 advertisement Send A Tip Sign up for our newsletter


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I have a potential client who wants me to just bake the cakes for her sibling's wedding, but not decorate them or anything because I guess her mom is going to decorate them. The cakes go up to 16", and I have never baked one that big before. I just don't feel right about it for some reason- every recipe is different and only you the baker can know how your cake can be handled, so if something were to go wrong, I don't want to be held liable. I'm not even sure if her mom has any experience with decorating cakes, and if she does, I wonder why she won't bake them? I kinda feel ambivalent about the whole situation, and I honestly think it's kinda weird for her to ask me this to begin with. I don't know what to do- I think I would like to turn to it down, but I just don't know what to say to make her understand. Any advice or help is appreciated!
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4/29/12 at 7:45pm
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subset: commoncrawl


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Confused by the difference between 'the City of London' and 'the city of London'? Well, the City of London is where it all started: the Romans set up shop here 2,000 years ago, attracted by easy moorings and fresh water. Over the centuries things gradually moved west, first to the new city of Westminster, then the West End, but the City retained its flair for trade: today it is the most powerful financial centre in the world, home to the London Stock Exchange, the Baltic Shipping Exchange and the Bank of England, turning over £30 trillion per day in foreign exchange transactions.
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The couple reunite over dinner in the city. Plus: Gavin & Gwen, Ashley Olsen, Nick & Vanessa and more
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St. John Christian Methodist Episcopal Church »
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November 26, 2014
Three Virginia seniors were selected in Friday's Major League Lacrosse Collegiate Draft. Senior defenseman Scott McWilliams was the highest-draft choice and was selected in the first round as the eighth overall pick by the Boston Cannons.
Midfielder Rob Emery and attackman Mark Cockerton were also selected. The Cannons selected Emery in the third round with the 17th overall pick, while the Rattlers picked Cockerton in the seventh round with the 56th overall selection.
UVa now has 44 all-time selections in the MLL Draft, which trails only Syracuse (48) for the most in the nation all-time.
McWilliams is a two-time USILA All-American and finished second in the nation with 36 caused turnovers in 2013. McWilliams has picked up 97 career ground balls and has scored two career goals and assisted five more.
Emery is also a two-time USILA All-American and a member of the 2013 ACC All-Academic team. Emery is tied for No. 15 all-time at UVa among midfielder goal-scorers with 59 career tallies.
Cockerton, a senior from Oshawa, Ontario, led the nation in goals scored during the 2013 regular season. The third-team USILA All-American posted the fourth-best goal-scoring season in UVa history with his tally of 49 in 2013.
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Uh, the militants are ethnic Russian (or at least pro-Russian of some other ethnic group). Why does laying down illegal arms currently in the hands of pro Russians make it easier for the Russians to roll over them?The market liked this news. Russian-linked stocks went up a few points.
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...day late and a dollar short. Vlad has accomplished what was needed in this phase with no major loss of life and with the gratitude of ethnic Russians......as the pressure is turned down, Vlad can prepare for his next moves. The West would be foolish to think otherwise...
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That´s it, John Effen! Keep uttering dire threats. That´s the only thing Obama understands.Uh, er, I mean, Putin. That´s the only thing Putin understands.
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Samantha Jade – The X Factor Australia – Grand Finale Videos
Samantha Jade sang "Breakeven," "What You've Done to Me" (Winner's Single) and "Take a Bow" on The X Factor Australia Grand Finale. Watch the videos here.
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ooohh i hope she winss
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Curry conchHowie's Healthy Eating is on the A2 road at the turnoff to YS Falls, west of Treasure Beach on Jamaica's Southwest coast. Truckers and tourists alike make sure to stop in at this institution for all manner of Jamaican food cooked in large pots over pimento wood fires -- 24 hours a day. ... More >>
Cooking at Little OchiLittle Ochi Seafood Restaurant in Alligator Pond Manchester is reputedly the best restaurant on Jamaica's south coast, and has also been mentioned as the finest seafood establishment on the entire island; it was certainly the finest we tried. Evrol "Blackie" Christian starte ... More >>
Jackie SayetTop to bottom: Jerk Fried Shrimp Po' Boy with seasoned fries at The Spot and Shrimp & Oyster Po' Boy with sweet potato fries at Bulldog BBQFrom a pizza invasion to po' boy sandwiches. Ok, it's not quite an invasion yet, but down home Louisiana cuisine seems to be surfacing i ... More >>
Jacob Katel Former Top Chef contestant Howie Kleinberg has a restaurant in North Miami called Bulldog Barbecue (15400 Biscayne Boulevard). Short Order ran into Howie last night at Taste of the Nation, an event that tours the country raising money to end childhood hunger in America. We asked him s ... More >>
Junkie, jailbird, cat burglar, widow, bride, entrepreneur Laurie Lichtman keeps on truckin'.
A son pays his respects to a father who filmed a revolution
Heather Davis and Rose Max tend to Brazilian jazz
Howard Garrett carries the torch for an aging aquatic entertainer named Lolita
At first Cassis restaurant looked like a South Beach gold mine for its owners. Then the bottom fell out. Now come the investigators and allegations of corruption.


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Funeral reception recipe ideas
- k
- KathyP Jan 21, 2004 03:10 PM
The mother of my husband' best friend just passed away and her funeral is this Saturday. There will be a reception afterward at their home. I would like to bring a food dish or dessert but not sure what. The crowd will be a mix of black and white folk with a number of them coming in from South Carolina. I'm a New Yorker myself so any Midwest/deep South suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
Oh dear, my condolences. Hmmm...well, lasagna or casserole were what we always brought in Iowa. If you go to Garrison Keillor's site, you'll find lots of "hot dish" recipes, including Tater Tot hot dish and Funeral Hot Dish. Some of those are pretty comforting if that's the kind of food you're used to. Also, fried chicken is a good choice. Back home, we always put our name and phone number on the underside of the dish in masking tape so the folks would know to whom to return the dish.
re: The Dairy Queen
Sorry, I meant, but neglected, to provide the link to PrairieHome.org.
re: The Dairy Queen
As a native Minnesotan, I'd like to weigh in on the Prairie Home Companion recipes.
I think Garison Keilor is funny, but he makes too many generalizations about Minnesota cuisine.
We NEVER ate this kind of food. My mother would have been ashamed to show her face, serving her family minute rice and canned soup concoctions rife with ground beef and canned green beens or refrigerated biscuits. That would be the day she'd serve something like this.
Nor would the mothers of my friends have made or served this. The only place I ever ate this kind of food was at camp, or at the cabin (known as a cottage in the rest of the midwest -- a small second home, usually used only in the summer, usually on a remote lake) when someone's dad was cooking. We always thought it was kind of yucky in those days -- just survival-type food.
We grew up very middle-class in the north of Minnesota in the 70s, and we did not eat this way. In fact, I'd never even seen a "tater tot" until I went away to college and was confronted with one in the school's dining hall.
Wild rice we did eat in quantity -- and there are a number of wild rice hotdishes we made (and yes, we called it "hotdish" not a casserole). They were never made with canned soup, however, and were a pretty individual thing. This grain holds up well to this kind of cooking, and doesn't get mushy or disintegrate like white rice might (again, this would be real Minnesota wild rice, not from a paddy, hand-harvested and parched and very delicious).
I just wanted to defend Minnesota cuisine (if there is such a thing) and put the word out that not all people in the state eat like this :)
When I hosted a memorial service/reception for my dear departed boss, I made sure to serve all of his favorite foods, though I still have 5 cans of Cel-ray soda in my pantry (!). If there's anything that comes to mind that your friend's mom really loved, perhaps you could bring that.
My North Carolina relatives always had ham biscuits at funerals. Get packages of small appetizer-size biscuits (the prepackaged ones in the bread section at the supermarket. This is nothing fancy). Cut the biscuits in half and put a piece of Virginia ham slightly larger than the biscuit in the middle. That's it.
If you don't know what I mean by Virginia ham, it's the really salty cured ham that's thicker than regular cold-cut ham.
Maybe someone who's from NC/SC can expand on my explanation.
re: Candy
I can't smell Krispy Kreme doughnut s without thinking of my father's death - everyone showed up with doughnuts and our house smelled of them for days.
Take a nice substantial casserolte or stew. If you take something that freezes well, they will think of you gratefuully in a few days
re: hunter moore
In this situation I always make a chunky minestrone soup. It's not exactly ideal for a buffet, but it's a nice change. Based on my experience in this situation, kind friends and neighbors provided lots of meat, sandwiches, rich casseroles, and sweets. We went for days without a bite of vegetables, so the soup gives a little balance, while still being warm and comforting. And as suggested, a soup or stew will freeze if there's extra food.
Home made mac and cheese with a good parmesan crust and bits of ham folded in are always a pleaser. A large platter of small sandwiches (assorted varieties). Don't do a dessert. When my father in law died my m-i-l was overwhelmed with the sweet offerings.c
Good potato salad is beloved in the South. Ham biscuits are good, but we always made them from scratch. Folks would think badly of us for making packaged biscuits. Cornbread is good and mixed greens cooked with a ham hock are good, too.
That awful green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup and Durkee fried onions is great--everyone loves that (even I, who think its awful, love it) and it is comforting.
Think casseroles with creamy sauces.
re: BarbaraF
Hey! I was going to post to see if any chowhounds would own up to loving this. It sounds horribly good but have never come across it in real life. Now if only I can locate those canned fried onions...
re: julesrules
There are ways to improve it--like I've added sauteed fresh mushrooms (with caramelized onions or leeks in them, some sherry), and used frozen or blanched fresh green beans instead of canned, so they are actually green in color. Have added sour cream to the sauce bits, and then instead of using the fried onions throughout, since there are caramelized onions or leeks (garlic, too, now that I think of it) inside, I just use fried onions on top, then you only have to use half of them.
I've done it.
And then you know what happens? I get crap for gilding the lily, or some dink of a cousin says, "How can you go to chef school and mess up the green bean casserole?"
So, be forwarned--if you mess with the recipe, someone who is addicted only to the original, can-oriented version will whine and complain.
Oh, and by the way, those fried onions often are found in the condiments section or the canned vegetable aisle. Or they might hang out in the snacks section. Different stores tuck them away in different places. They are awful, purely awful for you, but, well, the casserole apparently ain't right without it.
At least, if you talk to my cousins, it isn't....
I will also cop to loving fried baloney sandwiches (only with kosher beef bologna, though) with durkee hot sauce on 'em. This fact horrifies my husband.
There are just a few things that will out me as a former redneck, and the love of that casserole, those sandwiches and Johnny Cash are three of 'em.
I just saw that the reception was today, so this will have to be for future reference. As a SC native, i can tell you that (at least at the funerals i've been to)they are dominated by pork products- a plethora of ham(canned, smoked, honey, country)and desserts(pound cakes,cobblers,layer cakes. Fresh vegetables and fruit are either feast or famine depending on the season. Also many cassaroles and jello salads(yes people really do still make those). At my grandmother's reception, and especially afterwards, we appreciated simple fruit salads, cooked veggies,and anything to put in the freezer for later. i also like to take homemade sweet potato or buttermilk bisquits to eat with all that ham.


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To nominate someone, you can send me a name through any means you like. Reply here, post on Twitter (use the #whitecamelaward tag so I'll find it), send me email, hire planes to skywrite, or something more creative. Note, however, that the method of nomination does not factor into our decision!
I received many fail reports for Business::ISBN, which I've been working on lately. However, it's from a test I hadn't touched for things I wasn't working on.
The failure looked odd. I've never heard of
Modification of non-creatable array value attempted, subscript -1 at .../Test/More/DeepCheck.pm line 82.
Then I noticed that all of the fail reports reported the same development version of
Module Need Have
-------------------- -------- ------------
ExtUtils::MakeMaker 0 6.99_14
Test::More 0.95 1.301001_045
There are a few other bad tests for things happening in v5.21, but for the most part I get the black eye on MetaCPAN or CPAN Search from the CPAN Testers using a bad version of
Test::More. It happens. Schwern once said that he could break all of CPAN.
The problem, though, is not a broken Test::More but a development version of one that we don't trust yet. I know that Andreas and Slaven want to test everything, but perhaps these sorts of tests don't need to go to CPAN Testers. In the last month I've spent a couple hours tracking down problems that weren't anything to do with anything I did and with what I think is some overzealous new development in
Test::More. If you want to write a better
is_deeply, make a separate module and let people play with it.
Fortunately, normal users won't have this broken
Test::More. Unfortunately, they still get to see the red bars for my module.
paste or my lightning talk at the Swiss Perl Workshop).
Some of these programs date back to the 1990s and I've discovered weird syntax things that Perl 5.22 won't support. Did you know that you could
%hash->{$key} with a normal hash? Not after v5.20 you can't! Also gone is
defined( @array ).
Dana Jacobson already fixed a bug in the
factor program, which now has tests.
Some of the programs needed modules for CPAN, but the distribution declared no dependencies. Where we can, I'd like to see some of those dependencies reduced with something like App::FatPacker.
Some programs shell out to other things. We need to be a bit careful there to ensure the right things happen. I'll have to make a decision about a least version of Perl, perhaps one that includes the three argument open.
I'd like to make the docs across all programs consistent.
There is plenty to do. I don't care so much about changing style or reimplementing everything. I want it usable by normal people. It has to install with the least hassle and do what it actually advertises.]]>
Matthias and Roman Baumer, the main organizers, have set out to discover the Perl community is Switzerland. They run the Swiss Perl Community Meetup and have been doing what they can to find the Swiss companies using Perl. It's a lot of leg work and old fashioned networking. You can't merely rely on social networking and email for that We talked a bit that it's not uncommon in my own work to find Perl programmers who don't know about CPAN or Stackoverflow. If they don't know about those, they probably aren't paying attention to other sources.
Matthias Bloch herding the cats
This is similar to what I spoke about in my keynote, The Whitespace in the Perl Community (which I need to write out). The Perl projects that survive and do well are the ones that have constant human input and have someone who pays attention to them everyday. It's not enough to have a webpage or a Twitter account, or to upload some code. I highlighted a few of one my involvements, such as the perlfaq, PAUSE, and Perl mongers--all of which work not because of tech but constant attention. It's not something that we can optimize or automate away. We've seen what happens when we do that: no one sticks around. If you want to build community, you need dedicated organizers and agitators who personally interact with people to find out what they think and want. You can't get that from surveys. Someone needs their finger on the zeitgeist.
Roman Baumer takes the pulse of the audience
The workshop was truly a workshop, too. I gave my Become a CPAN Author interactive class, which is getting better and better each time I give it, and Paul Johnson gave a Devel::Cover. In each of these, people had the chance to setup their environment with the help of experts.
Many events take on the title "Workshop", but they really mean "Mini Conference". They have talks where most people watch and one person speaks. I like that this event was an actual workshop and people knew that they would be able to go through a complete task with help. I'd like to see the events that call themselves "workshops" do much more of this, even to the point where we have a first-rate idea about which workshops do the most to bring people into the community.
My own workshop goes far beyond uploading your first distribution to CPAN. I now go through these steps, which seem simple when you've done it once but are daunting as a single task:
Several other good things came out of the conference. Paul Johnson mentioned that
cpan -T ..., which should turn off testing, doesn't but he doesn't know why. I was able to answer "Because I did it wrong! It's my fault!" I think that is no longer the case and the shame motivated me to send Andreas CPAN.pm pull request 77.
Tobi Oetiker talking about Callbackery
I think by accident that there was quite a bit of Mojolicious going on. Some of it comes Tobi Oetiker (who talked about callbackery), the author of RRDTool. His company exchanged some money for some consulting from me to help me afford to go to Switzerland. I'm not much for free money and prefer to work for it, usually through classes.
Lee Johnson talking about fun and non-profits
After the conference I moved on to Zürich for a two-day Mastering Perl class at Colab Zürich. I experimented with Kickstarter to use their multiple rewards system, unlike the campaigns I've run through Crowdtilt. I wanted people to be able to sponsor Swiss students to attend the class, and some did. That expanded the market so more people could participate and I could meet my goal more easily. Remember, the Swiss Perl community is still developing.
I think Kickstarter worked well, but I don't know if it's that effective for discovering new people to bring into the community. Getting someone to create an account on a service they might not use otherwise is a tough sell, especially if it's a US-centric service. But, as I said before, these things go off with constant human involvement and encouragement.
I'm about to present to the Swiss Perl Workshop this idea that David Farrell and I have been working on.]]>
head, and
tail. I think I tend to learn more from my answers than anyone else.
The question posed on the Freelancers site is oddly specific for someone who wants to pay for the program. It specifies acting like a program that already exists but isn't one a newbie would reach for. It's specifies a particular implementation language although many other languages could handle it. It's oddly specific about writing a shell script as a test instead of Perl's testing framework. Homework? Maybe.
I'm curious, so I create an account and bid on it. Of the total bid, some goes to Freelancers.com and most to me. I expected that. No big whoop. I mention in my bid that they don't need me at all. Just read the Stackoverflow answer and steal my gist from it. If anyone else wants to make money off it, underbid me and take the paste from Perl Power Tools to make the
-s on by default.
Once I submit my bid, I see what's going on and suspect that the question isn't even homework. The website immediately starts asking me for money to improve my chances of getting the job, or, as they say, improving my bid. I can spend a couple of bucks to promote my bid:
I can also buy badges, such as a level 1 English badge with, apparently, several other people completed with 100% accuracy in less than a minute after paying $5.
Doesn't that look suspicious? I spend a bunch of money to bid on work that I probably won't ever get and probably isn't a serious job. How would I ever know if the bid selected was actually going to do the work?
Maybe they are on the up and up and it's only this entry that looks suspicious, but I'm still disappointed that there wasn't something interesting about
Several hours later the job mysteriously disappeared, although I got this email still trying to sell me the exam:
And the job showed up on elance:
$. uses.
It all started very simply. I was going too far in my answer to How do I add the elements of a file to a second one as columns using Perl?, a question I found by looking for the most down voted open questions without an accepted answer. As usual, I thought the answer would be easy. And, for the most part it was.
Then I wanted to make it even easier. I thought Perl might not be necessary at all when we have things like
paste and
head and
tail and other command-line thingys. The problem was a header in one input file and no corresponding header in the other. How could I make
paste ignore the header?
I bet there's something that I'm missing, but I started working with the Perl Power Tools version of
paste. To fast forward through a file to get to the right starting point, I wanted to look at
$. to know when to stop, but that only works for the last read filehandle. To use it on another filehandle, I need to do something to to that handle without disturbing the data. tell was just the thing.
tell( $fh )
readline( $fh ) while $. < $starting_line - 1;
But, now I think that's also stupid because I didn't need the magic because I don't need to know the number of the currently read line:
readline( $fh ) foreach 1 .. $starting_line - 1;
As Perl gives, so Perl takes away (brain cells).]]>
There's an undercurrent idea in the open source world that money is dirty and paying for services is bad. YAPC started as a reaction to the much higher priced (and much higher produced) The Perl Conference that only met on the west coast of the United States save for a couple of tries in Europe. At the first YAPC, Kevin Lenzo literally passed the hat at the end to make up for the shortfall. Mostly, YAPC still acts like that and waits for a big sponsor to fix it.
As Curtis mentions, he can't attend every Perl event, and there are so many of them now. That's a great thing, and some of us tried to keep up with the schedule. It was all volunteer and financially uncompensated, but the dirty secret is that it's all subsidized by corporate money, whether through direct sponsorship or by paying or reimbursing employees to attend. Barbie's YAPC Surveys tracks this. It's also curious that Barbie asks which speakers attendees wanted to see but weren't there. Damian Conway is at the top by an order of magnitude (I do decently for normal fold), but until we get the gravity train from Australia to the UK like in the awful remake of Total Recall, he's still going to have to spend a couple of days in a flying metal tube.
For YAPC::Chicago 2006 (the first one), I had anticipated this problem with money and started the YAPC Master Classes. I don't go to conferences without someone else covering my expenses (unless it's somewhere I really want to go). Even though I lived in Chicago at the time, I wanted to set up something that would pay Damian's and Randal Schwartz's travel costs. It all worked out, but I also learned that if Damian is teaching, everyone else gets the leftovers. Always give Damian the big room. People who run their own business are usually the ones who need the financial help attending.
That people got to see a little of how the world worked was a little unfortunate. Some people may object to payment due to their philosophy of these events, but most attendees don't share that view. They want to see Damian.
Curtis says that he has "never asked for a speaking fee for a Perl event" and even uses a bold font face to emphasize that. I, on the other hand, always at least inquire. Some places I can't travel to without someone covering the expenses. But, at the same time, I offered (and almost insist) on teaching a class to earn that money. It's a service I offer to almost any Perl event as long as I make back expenses and get a little extra to contribute to my everyday living. The YAPC Master Classes were often the same classes the experienced trainers listed for 10 times the price in every day commerce. Attending a class at a deep discount, or offering free seats to sponsors (especially local ones), usually makes it work out for everyone.
Still, YAPC has mostly worked to keep earned revenues down because it still acts like the grassroots conference it once was. I think it's actually fancier than the original The Perl Conference that it tried to replace. It's certainly the premier Perl event, whether in North America, Europe, or Asia. Getting used to that status over the grassroots background may help move things along.
Curiously, Peter Rabbitson and Leon Timmermans used crowdfunding to go to recent conferences. They met their modest goals quickly. The community responded positively and enthusiastically.
I think that's a great way to get interesting speakers to events and we should do more of it. I even think we should have some way to make stretch goals--if we raise $1,000 we get Curtis to come, if we raise $2,000 we get Curtis and Tom Christiansen, if we raise $15,000 we get Curtis and Tom and Damian, and if we get $5,000,000, we get Curtis and Tom and Damian and an unlimited NetJet pass for Damian. And, running a good campaign takes care of some of those communication problems past conferences have had.
The problem, however, is that crowdfunding raises money from the people paying attention. You get bizarre situations such as Perl's Gittip community that mostly pass around the same money between people. We need a way to reach out beyond the same people so someone gets real money to pay real bills.
Still, maybe I should try this sort of thing for The Swiss Perl Workshop.]]>
If you plan to be there, make certain that you request a PAUSE account ahead of time.
If you'd like to participate in CPAN Day on August 14, this is a good way to get ready.
Although I won't have time before CPAN Day to do this for other groups, I'd be delighted to give this workshop again wherever someone wants to host it.
[*] cPanel is at 3131 W. Alabama, Houston, TX.
I'm taking suggestions for the namespace to use for this CPAN Workshop. People upload modules to the real CPAN. I'll send a Perl Nerd Merit badge to the suggester of the name we choose. If you don't have a suggestion, verbalize your support for another one. (Wow, I think I want a poll for this on blogs.perl.org!)
Suggestions so far:
Our idea is to travel to anywhere people want to hear us talk about Perl (or whatever) toward the end of summer around YAPC::EU and the Swiss Perl Workshop.
I have a long wish list of places I'd like us to go (and maybe anywhere within reach of a Eurorail pass?), in a general west to east direction: Amsterdam (where Sawyer is based), Oslo, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, Olten, Bratislava, and many more places. We're just trying to cover expenses right now, but we appreciate extra.
You can help. We might be the names on the posters, but the Perl community has always been great in its behind-the-scenes, unheralded support (one of the reasons I set up the White Camel Awards).
Once we start doing this, there will be plenty of ways for people to participate. We want to be all over the social webz with videos, posts, and anything else. It might even turn into a mini reality show (what is Sawyer going to say about me in the confession room?).
We're a month into spring and some of the world just celebrated Earth Day, so it's time for the thousands of PAUSE authors to each delete one old distribution (which is three files in your CPAN author directory). Visit your delete files PAUSE page to "increase the Schwartz". You can even clean up your directory with WWW:::PAUSE::CleanUpHomeDir or with App::PAUSE::cleanup.
It's not quite enough for you as the PAUSE author to delete your files. We want to get the word out, so I'd like you to get one other PAUSE author to do the same. Use your social media networks, peer pressure, begging, or whatever your favorite method is, not because there's any danger of running out of space, but because it's fun to delete things and see them disappear.
This is also a good time to pass off modules you don't think you'll maintain anymore. You can use the virtual co-maintainers ADOPTME, HANDOFF, or NEEDHELP.
If you are feeling left out, you can take over or help with a module. Neil Bowers lists other virtual comaintainers that signal owner intent in Marking modules as 'available for adoption' and maintains the CPAN adoption list to help you find a project.
|Running total
|Neil Bowers
|Toby Inkster
|Karen Etheridge
|Gabor Szabo
|Sawyer X
|Shlomi Fish
|Brian Cassidy
|David Golden
|Dana Jacobsen
|brian d foy
|Ricardo Signes
|Joel Berger
|Steffen Müller
|Sinan Ünür
|Renée Bäcker
|John SJ Anderson
It started with a customer who wanted to limit what could happen, but the Safe compartments weren't sufficient to limit that. I had advised against Perl for this situation, but they were adamant that it had to be Perl. So, I and some of their programmers set about removing or disabling parts from core.
Some stuff was easy. Smart-matching and overloading were gone the first day, but that was only a warm up.
Perl has this backronym as the Practical Extraction and Report Language. There's even an extra A in there from a previous name. While looking at this particular scenario, we realized that we didn't need most of the extraction stuff. We ripped out all of that. Since this is a new language, really, and we can't use the same name (see the Artistic License) for it, we called it PRL: Practical Report Language. It was pretty good. Malicious users could send all the malicious input they wanted, but there was no way to process it. We'd cut out most of the problems with programming in this step.
Things got a bit heated in the next phase when we were hard up to remove even more. We needed the reports, and we needed the language, so we set our sites on Practical. After all, we had to admit to ourselves that most people's use of the language isn't practical at all, so if no one on the team is going to use the P, we didn't need to keep it in. We called Phase 2 RL.
One of the other team members had gone off on his own in an experiment to create PL by getting rid of the reports. His reduction was elegant since the programmer was freed from both input and output. He wanted to release an alpha, which he called PL/1, but after he found out that name was taken, he gave up. He disappeared into Crowdtilt, a Perl shop, last I heard, and was working on PL/2.
We still weren't hitting our milestones though, especially since cPanel and Booking had been poaching Perl developers with lucrative offers to live below sea level while working on things that don't do well when they get wet. Under management pressure to cut the size in half, we stopped working on the language side of it and got rid of the L. Our new language was called R.
Our code base passed it's one test (that the tar ball existed), so we also turned off the integration and continuous testing services. We didn't need CPAN testers anymore because you couldn't use third-party modules--those bits on untrusted code that mess up most projects by adding even more functionality to your program.
Once we got to this point, we were done. Maybe not finished, but we weren't going to work on it anymore. We told management we were done, sent in the invoices, and pointed them at www.r-project.org to get our new language (some executives went to www.our-project.org and were really upset that we didn't go through international sales to set this up). After we told them that we were giving them the R website and community for free, they were happy again.
But, someone else in management didn't get the memo about the work we'd done, got nervous about Windows XP being marked as end-of-life, and pressured the executives to use his nephew to redesign everything in VBScript since they already had a license for Excel. I got them to release our internal work to the public so it wouldn't go to waste.
If you want to use it too, it's all open source and on the web. Good luck and don't let me know what you think!]]>
My first article was CPAN's social continuity of code.
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I've had the good fortune to have many excellent programmers, and none of the people I know in that category really care too much about the language. Sure, they really like Perl, but if they had to drop in C or Smalltalk or Python or whatever, they just got the job done. They weren't thinking about syntax because they were focused on story. The code at the low-level may have been kludgy, fugly, or just odd, but their skill at the high level interfaces, compartmentalization, and communication meant that the problem was just one of incremental improvement or refactoring instead of a completely new design or code base.
Larry Wall, Perl's emeritus linguist, talks about his creation in terms of nouns and verbs, and when I teach people the Perl language (not how to program, but the language), I talk about that too. But, nouns and verbs are the first couple years of elementary school. After a couple of years of tortured sentence diagramming, students move on to thinking about phrases as a whole, then paragraphs, then essays, and so on. These language debates aren't even to the level of sentences. We pick at phrases and fragments so we can declare a winner.
When I think about readability, I don't think much about the particular syntax. If we're really hard-core programmers, we know we're pushing all that stuff into subroutines or methods. I'm much more interested in the interfaces we create and how that makes the intent of the program (not just a statement) readable and understandable. Appropriate data structures (or relational schema) do the same things for us. If you want to save programmer time, it's not about Perl missing a list comprehension. It's about people thinking at the sentence level writing books.
As part of what I do when I'm not writing books, I get to see plenty of Perl code bases that companies want to improve. Almost none of them are in trouble from syntax or features. As chromatic has said (citation needed), most are at the level of Perl 3 so they don't even get to the complex features (compare that to the low uptake of Python 3). Indeed, in the comments to Joel's post people note the common fear of map and grep, even though it's something that my intermediate Perl students get used to in an hour. The people working at this level often have "Senior" in their title, given for longevity more than skill. (There are other factors here, such as constant fire fighting, that prevent people from spending the time on self-improvement, but that's a different post).
Even with a slightly deficient language, for all the low level syntax people like to debate, a better design makes everything far more readable than switching languages (which Ovid recently meditated on) or meddling with syntax.
And, if we really cared about clean syntax, Randal would have us all moving to Smalltalk where he has repeatedly told me he can teach anyone the five language constructs in 20 minutes. Of course, it's not the language that's the actual hard thing there, just like it's not the language. Again, that's not how we are choosing what we like to work in.]]>
sigzero recently asked if the Perl community was atrophying, someone else pointed me to Tim O'Reilly's State of the Computer Book Market, and there's a Wikipedia revert war over Tiobe's Programming Programming Index. All of these suffer from a misunderstanding of percentages and their value in making decisions and reaching conclusions. This is especially egregious when people divorce the percentages from the absolute numbers (either because the original data are restricted or the people know that they tell a different story).
I start with six topics I'll call { A, B, C, D, E, F }, and I'll arbitrarily assign them a number. It doesn't matter what this number actually is. It could be hits on a web search engine, book sales on the topic, number of users moving to a town, or anything else. I'm just making all of this up to show that when people talk of trends in growth using percentages, they get the wrong answer because percentages remove information. The real answer involves some simple calculus (although without the fancy symbology) and a realization about what I should actually measure.
Let's get to it then. I make up two sets of numbers. I'll say one was from last month, and one was from this month. Since the universe is growing, the total results for this month are not the same as the that from last month. This is very important, because this is where percentages fail and how people use percentages incorrectly. Notice that in every case except one, the number for each topic increased. In the other case, the number stays the same.
Table 1: Size of topic, in absolute numbers,
for two consecutive months
I'll change these numbers to percentages of the totals now. I round off to the nearest integer, but that won't matter much. This is the first place where I'll lose some information. With percentages, the difference in the totals between the two months disappear, but I'll compare the percentages as if the totals were the same, and I'll end up with the wrong answer.
Table 2: Size of topic, in percentage of total number,
for two consecutive months
First, notice in Table 1 that B had the greatest overall change (20,000), but actually dropped by 3% in Table 2, while A had a smaller change (17,000) in Table 1, but shot up 6% in Table 2. A has a relative percentages growth of 9%, although it's growing more slowly. All topics except F had an increase in absolute numbers, but four actually dropped in percentages. Both C and E increased by a fifth of their absolute number, which is remarkable growth in a month, but their percentages dropped. That is, although they actually trend upward, the percentages trend in the opposite direction of their growth. B, which contributed the most absolute growth, dropped as much as F in percentages, although F had no absolutely no growth. According to the relative numbers, B is losing in relative size as fast as F, although it added double the total number of F just in growth in one period.
I'll do this for another month, adding the same absolute numbers as before to each topic. Each topic has the same absolute growth from month to month. Each is steadily increasing in absolute numbers except for F, which stays the same.
Table 3: Size of topic, in absolute numbers,
for three consecutive months
What happens to the percentages in steady state growth? I see the same relative downward trends in most cases, despite the fact that all but F are growing in actual size.
Table 4: Size of topic, in percentage of total number,
for three consecutive months
Now, in Table 4, the percentages are even worse for B. Again, the total increased by 48,000 hits, and again, B provided 20,000 new hits. But, by the percentages, B falls 1%. B is responsible for most of the growth, but also looks as if it is atrophying, while A is just getting up to the level where B started. Although all but one topic increased their absolute numbers, four fell in relative percentages.
Let's go a year later than the last column, adding 12 times the same number of absolute growth to each result. Every topic continues a steady state growth.
Table 5: Size of topic, in absolute numbers, for three
consecutive months, and one year later (covering
15 total months)
What happens to the percentages a year later, shown as the last column in Table 6?
Table 6: Size of topic, in percentage of total number,
for there consecutive months, then one year later (covering
15 total months)
It's the same decline. Although B has over six times the absolute number it did 15 months ago, it lost 7% in relative numbers. It's still the largest and the fastest growing topic by absolute numbers, but the relative numbers make it look like the fastest declining topic.
The relative numbers are based on the total absolute number, and the problem comes in when I compare the percentages from month to month since the total number changes. Percentages remove information to make things easier to see, but they aren't there to be compared to percentages from another measurement. If the total number stays the same, the trend in percentages might have meaning, but if I don't report the total size, the percentages don't enough information for me to compare them across measurements.
If I used this analysis to figure out which books to publish, I'd miss the biggest and fastest growing market. If I used them to decide which city to do business in, I'd miss the one with the most customers and the one that's adding the most customers. Analysts used to like to use this sort of thing to show why Apple Computer was a poor bet since it only had a miniscule percentage of the market, but that was clearly wrong. If I'd bought APPL 3 years ago at $11, I would have gained over 400% in value, compared to MSFT, selling at $26, losing 14% in the same time period. It's because relative numbers aren't the important ones.
So how do I do it then? I want to see how things are growing and what I should pay attention to. I could plot the absolute numbers, but a first-derivative plot makes it easier to see the real change. Like percentages, it removes the total number, but it leaves in the information about the direction and magnitude of the change. That's the number I really want to compare. The first derivative is simply the change in the number over the time period. It's a bit of calculus, although I won't take it to an infinitesmal time slice.
Table 7: First derivative table, showing the change over three consecutive
months, and one year later.
Compare the utility of Table 7 to Table 6 for decision making. In Table 6, topics A and D look like they are the fastest growing, when in reality topic A grew more than either of them and continues to have a faster rate of change over the next year. The percentages have the least information, doing away with the absolute change and the absolute total size. If I'd bet my money on A because it looked as if it was growing fastest by percentages, at the end of the year I would have missed the top by 55,000, over a fifth of the absolute total for B.
Now, consider the business reason for looking at these sorts of numbers, and, for simplicity, imagine that the products for each topic have the same price. I don't make more money by the higher rate of growth. Topic A doubled in its first month, but still sold less than Topic B. Betting on the fastest growing relative percentage (Topic A) in that case would have meant ignoring the greater number of sales I could get from Topic B. I make more money by making more sales, not more growth, and in this case, the worst-performer, percentage-wise, is the highest volume seller in every time period.
The first derivative plot shows that Topic B is the fastest growing market. I don't care about the growth in terms of the size of the market, but the number of units I can sell. In business parlance, the percentage is the "market penetration", but that's not the interesting number to anyone other than those trying to drive someone out of a market (as in the case of the silly business between Microsoft and Apple arguments). Market penetration is the false idol of stock speculators. The totals and first-derivatives are the numbers that translate into real money and real value.]]>


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Nebraska Prison Guards Sue Citing Racism
Posted: 11/18/2010 - Four prison guards have sued the Nebraska prisons director and their warden in federal court, alleging racism at work.
Posted: 11/18/2010 - Four prison guards have sued the Nebraska prisons director and their warden in federal court, alleging racism at work.
Updated: 11/18/2010 - With the holiday season upon us, many families use this as a time to give back. And with more families in need this year than past years, volunteers and donations are needed. But how do you find an opportunity that will work for your family? One website is a one-stop-shop for finding volunteer work.
Updated: 11/17/2010 - The sentence...life with no chance of parole. Patrick Bauldwin will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the 2006 killing of local actress Pasinetta Prince.
Posted: 11/17/2010 - A cold that never ends is making the rounds.
Updated: 11/17/2010 - A White House official says billionaire investor Warren Buffett is to be awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Updated: 11/17/2010 - Patrick Bauldwin learns his fate after being found guilty in the death of his ex-girlfriend.
Posted: 11/17/2010 - Surprise search Tuesday morning at Plattsmouth High.
Updated: 11/16/2010 - Drivers leaving a southwest Omaha neighborhood are worried about creeping out into traffic.
Posted: 11/16/2010 - A body found in a wooded area of Pottawattamie County last month has been identified as Brian Thomas MacLean. His last known address was in California.
Posted: 11/16/2010 - A 17-year-old Papillion boy made his first court appearance today following the shooting death of his 13 year-old brother.
Posted: 11/16/2010 - Conestoga students will remain on a four day school week.
Posted: 11/16/2010 - Iowa's Fourth Judicial District has announced that it will be participating in National Adoption Day on Saturday, November 20.
Updated: 11/16/2010 - State officials are warning restaurants and conveniences stores about a phony health inspector who claims he needs an employee's cell phone number to investigate a complaint.
Updated: 11/16/2010 - Omaha firefighters responded to a report of a building collapse near 25th and Farnam Monday night. When they arrived, they found that part of a roof collapsed. It appears two people suffered minor injuries. One was transported by ambulance.
Updated: 11/15/2010 - Lincoln police say a woman tried to slice a tattoo of her name off her boyfriend's neck.
Updated: 11/15/2010 - Authorities say officers chased two men in a stolen vehicle for 150 miles along Interstate 80 before the men were caught and arrested near Sutherland in western Nebraska.
Updated: 11/15/2010 - A benefit aims to help 8 different families who suffered during Fontenelle Hills Apartment Fire.
Posted: 11/15/2010 - The 40-Foot Blue Spruce will be transported by Union Pacific to the Durham Museum.
Updated: 11/10/2010 - Joann Schmitt bought two tickets to see the world without leaving Omaha. For years she had purchased a membership in a travelogue series that has been abruptly canceled.
Posted: 11/10/2010 - A Brief View of Veteran's Day Weather
Updated: 11/10/2010 - Domestic violence case brings jail time.
Posted: 11/09/2010 - An early monring fire Monday destroyed a hay barn.
Posted: 11/09/2010 - A family of four was able to escape an early morning house fire near 40th and Grant in Omaha. The Humane Society also responded to the scene.
Posted: 11/08/2010 - A Nebraska man has been sentenced to five years probation for interfering with crew members during a passenger flight.
Posted: 11/08/2010 - Electric rates for retail and wholesale customers of the Nebraska Public Power District will increase January 1, 2011


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There are quite a few iconic moments in the�Batman�franchise. But for Fox's new prequel series�Gotham, there's one scene that sets the stage for all of those future instants to come.
Twentieth Century Fox is finally moving forward with the anticipated Deadpool movie,�Entertainment Weekly�reports.The...
County Bank recently welcomed Terry Brewster and Sandra Walker to its staff.
He knows kung fu — but he didn't even have to use it! When an intruder broke into his home�Monday,�
Jennifer Lopez�and�
All branches of the U.S. military have a pledge that no one will be left behind in combat.
Many observers will try to compare Elizabeth McCord, the fictional Madam Secretary (of State)...
After Scotland voters approved staying in the United Kingdom yesterday (55 percent supported the move), what comes next? For the moment, not much will change, but British Prime Minister David Cameron promised more autonomy to Scotland. Among his...
Healthy Habits is a new health food store in Dagsboro that sells mainly vegetarian and vegan foods, as well as herbal products, including teas, lotions and soaps.
- Events Calendar


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|List A - Z | Top 1000 | Random | Origins
CollenRate Collen: Do you like this name?
Get creative with Collen | Add to list (0)
Collen meaning and name origin
Collen \c(ol)-len\ as a boy's name is a variant of Collin (Scottish): variant of Colin.
Collen is also pronounced similarly to Caelen, Callan, Colan, Colin, Colwin, Colwyn, Colyn, Cullan, Cullen, Cullin and Kellen. Other suggested similar baby names are Colden, Collden, Colle, Colley, Colten and Conlen.
Popularity of Collen
Collen is not a popular first name for males but a very popular surname or last name for all people (#26704 out of 88799) (2000 U.S. Census).
Displayed below is the baby names popularity of Collen name for boys (2012 statistics). Compare Collen with its source form and related boy baby names.
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eBay has updated their online auction app to version 3.4.0.
Sellers can now select and donate to their favorite charities via eBay Giving Works when listing items for sale. The new seller features also include buyer's location and the ability to send a payment reminder.
For buyers, eBay has improved search results, made photos larger, and included product reviews for items. You can also find bonus offers from eBay sellers and some items will be available for in-store pick-up, or same-day and scheduled delivery.
You can download the updated eBay app for free.


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Well that was rough. Apparently Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau screened Hoosiers for his team while Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra showed his guys Atlas Shrugged prior to their Game 1 Eastern Conference Finals showdown. Because the Heat were out muscled, and out-hustled by ... More >>
We posted a link in the news roundup to this story about the Miami Beach men who were arrested as part of a Lehman Brothers insider trading scandal, but there's a part of our brain that shuts down when confronted with too much business-numbers-money nonsense. Now we have sexy new information! Like a ... More >>


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Q: I'm on a journey of self discovery and am now seeing my past relationships in a new light. I've had dysfunctional relationships before. I am hoping the planets can shed some light and answer honestly my questions about love and family. Will I ever have children? Will I ever be a wife? I was born August 17, 1978 at 7:00pm in Newton, NJ
A: As someone born shortly before sunset, your Leo Sun falls in the 7th House of Relationships. This shows that developing supportive partnerships is one of life's truest lessons for you. It can mean that at times you unnecessarily compromise yourself to keep a relationship going, so learning to stand your ground in love is a must. A win/win is only true f it works for both people, not just everyone else! Close friendships and functional business partnerships can be areas where you develop self confidence to be loving but firm with others.
With your personal planet of children, Mercury, close to the Sun, your desire to have – or be around – children is authentic and deep. In a sense, you define yourself by your projected sense of your self as a mother. While this is lovely – and shows you'll put your heart and soul into mothering when the time comes – it can leave life feeling empty in this period where you don't have children. Developing interests, hobbies or work that helps you connect with children, especially creatively, will help bring more positivity into your life. Letting your artistic, creative talents shine is key!
Share a free sample Self-Empowerment Guide. How did the planets shape you? Discover the shocking details with our Self-Empowerment Guide!
Power planet Pluto is aligned (conjunct) both your relationship planets, Venus and Mars, showing that control themes can emerge in romantic situations when you don't stand up for yourself. You can be a strong and confident woman without controlling others; developing the self belief – and a sense of self worth – that helps you ask for what you need and know you deserve will help change your love dynamics for the better.
Your journey of self discovery is the best place for you right now – and will help you better understand yourself in love. All of which helps put you in the best position to honour The One when they come along. And you're right, relationships before babies!
I'm Adam -- also, known under the moniker of "sOma" (but, only digitally). I came into this world a Gemini, and will go out with a smile on my face. Yes, i'm an Astrologer, but that's not all I am.... read more
During these last six days of November, the gremlins of the universe still have some shenanigans up their sleeves with... read more »
Be Alert! Your relationship life turns interesting this week, thanks to a harmonious trine from Venus to Uranus on... read more »


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From the Beckhams in black leather to Elton and David in eye-watering Versace and Justin and Britney (*wistful*) in top-to-toe denim, we're all aware that matchy-matchy dressing is essential for a couple establishing themselves as major players on the global stage. And look! The latest twosome to get in on the act is our very own K-Mid and Willykins. HA!
Lovely Kate Middleton and Prince William were spotted earlier this week wearing very similar (obviously cashmere, because why wouldn't they be) jumpers in a lovely regal shade of purple. The things we love about this are threefold:
1. The preppy popped out white collars are just SO 'our favourite film is The Lion King, isn't it Wills?'
2. The fact that both their jeans fit like formal trousers. C'est possible how?
3. The distinct lack-of-a-hangover, in spite of this being the day after Zara Philips' wedding. *wonders if not drinking quite so much Sancerre rose of a weeknight might enable self to also look this fresh-faced.* Nah, it's probably all in the genes.
So are we about to see Kate and William decamp to LA and establish themselves as a media-savvy global power-couple? (No.) Has Simon Fuller already been sniffing at their door? (Possibly.) Were we just looking for another excuse to write about our favourite people? (You almost certainly know that answer to that last question.) J'adore.


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Happy Birthday!
1 year closer to the big 40!
1 member is celebrating their birthday on 08-11-2009:
-sparkeh (born in 1979, Age: 30)
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
1 year closer to the big 40!
Happy Birthday Mate! Have a good day
Happy Birthday!
Don't listen to them, i'm from '79, 30 is no way near 40. We have a decade of fun and living dangerously before we go Porsche shopping
Happy Birthday Fella
All the best mate.
Happy birthday fella, have a good one
Happy Birthday!
Have good one Mark.
Thanks everyone
I did indeed have a good birthday. The missus whisked me away to a luxury hotel and also had Guitar Hero waiting for me when we got back - shes the best!
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)


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Recent entries
- Hunger Games bad for your brain?
- New release movies, November 20
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- New release movie reviews, Nov 14
- Finding Vivian Maier interview
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New Release Movie reviews - September 4
YOUR SISTER'S SISTER *** (90 minutes) M
A trident of terrifically earthy performances grounds this sharp, twist-laden romantic comedy from American independent director Lynn Shelton (Humpday). In dire need of quiet time on the first anniversary of his brother's death, Jack (Mark Duplass) is sent to a remote cabin by his friend Iris (Emily Blunt). Expecting to find the place vacant, he encounters her sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), who has just broken up with her girlfriend. They bond awkwardly, both emotionally and physically, before Iris turns up to make matters even more complicated. In lesser hands what transpires between the three could have descended into farce, but Shelton, who also wrote the screenplay, keeps focus on the shifting emotional heart of the story. It remains an interesting facet of 21st-century American relationship comedies that, however broad or refined, they all end up consciously punching the values of friendship and family.
MONSIEUR LAZHAR (95 minutes; subtitled) M
After the puzzling on-site suicide of a much-loved primary school teacher, Algerian refugee Bashir Lazhar (Mohamed Said Fellag) is hastily hired to fill the position. With sketchy qualifications, a broken-heart full of baggage and a limited understanding on laws regarding working with children, he has a bumpy time confronting a classroom crammed with kids still recovering from their loss. Lazhar's colleagues also present him with a raft of thorny issues, especially when it comes to corporal punishment. A best foreign film contender at this year's Oscars, writer/director Philippe Falardeau bores into the insecurities of his main character to weave a touching, school-hall drama. Thankfully, the impressive cast of child actors actually behave like children, not like miniature adults. (See our list of best substitute teacher films).
HIT & RUN *** (100 minutes) MA
Fast cars, firearms and a likeable bad guy hungry for revenge fuel this pacy, feather-weight, throwaway chase movie. Charles (Dax Shepard from TV's Parenthood) is a criminal enjoying a happy rural life in witness protection who inexplicably violates the conditions of his contract when he decides to drive his girlfriend (Kristen Bell, aka Veronica Mars and still struggling to get her film career to fire) to Los Angeles to make a job interview. Eager to intercept them are a bumbling US marshall (a funny Tom Arnold) and the guy Charles squealed on (Bradley Cooper). The wafer-thin story, written by Shepard (who also wrote for Parenthood), is little more than an excuse for a series of nifty chase sequences and comic interludes, all mounted with the kind of fizzy enthusiasm essential for an inconsequential, enjoyable road movie lark to work.
KATH & KIMDERELLA DOG (86 minutes) PG
This isn't a comedy; it's a horror. With their dumpy mate Sharon (Magda Szubanski) in tow, Kath (Jane Turner) and whingeing daughter Kim (Gina Riley) leave the familiar streets of Fountain Lakes for a holiday in Italy where they encounter a financially strapped despot (Rob Sitch) and his scheming acolyte (Richard E Grant). Thus ensues a succession of semi-farcical set-pieces that laughlessly riff on fairy-tale cliches and romantic subterfuge, with Kath's husband Kel (Glenn Robbins) eventually being dragged into the proceedings when he sees them on TV. Almost every fear anyone could have about what could go wrong with a film version of the brilliant Kath & Kim TV series is realised here. Kath & Kimderella unspools like a Carry On movie, minus the wit. With truly dreadful production values, it's a clunky, ugly-looking, unfunny film that feels carelessly slapped together. While every member of the Kath & Kim troupe are rightly acknowledged as immensely talented, occasionally brilliant comedy talents, the film captures the cringe-worthy spectacle of their comic instincts deserting them. And why the story had to leave Fountain Lakes at all is baffling. It's as though the creators forensically identified everything that made the TV series - one of the best character comedies from anywhere in the past 20 years - and had then surgically removed. Brand loyalty is likely to see Kath & Kimderella enjoy an initial pulse of popularity before word-of-mouth takes hold. The 2005 tele-film Da Kath & Kim Code was much better.
WUNDERKINDER (96 minutes; subtitled) M
Seeing the moral terror of war from the perspective of children has rarely been done as well as it is in Marcus Rosenmuller's thoughtful, moving wartime drama. With the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin in place, three musically gifted children from Ukraine embark on a tour of Russia. The fragile friendship between the two Jewish children Larissa (Imogen Burrell) and Abrascha (Mathias Eysen), and the lonely Hanna (Mathilda Adamik) takes on a new dimension when the pact breaks and the Nazis invade. With all Jews marked for special attention, SS officer Becker (a chilling performance by John Friedmann) takes a special interest in the children. His quiet, cultured manner is unnerving and leads to an expression of Nazi cruelty that puts one in mind of Sophie's Choice.
Movies with Jim Schembri
Jim Schembri is one of Australia's most respected film critics. Find out Jim's thoughts on the latest movies, interviews and more!


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Posts by Charles Palmer
6 posts • joined 16 Oct 2007
Open source anti-Semitic as well as communist shock
I'm afraid you'd have to go back to the 19th Century to correct the usage of the term anti-Semite. It's been used specifically by people talking about racism towards Jews since then.
For some dictionary definitions of the term:
anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism?
Anti-Semitism is specifically racism directed at Jews. The wikipedia article on the subject gives several references in support of that fact.
Just because someone uses the term Zionist doesn't necessarily mean they aren't being anti-Semitic. It also doesn't mean they are being anti-Semitic. Further reading into what they are actually saying is required.
'Jews controlling international banking' is a famous anti-Semitic trope and merely changing Jew for Zionist isn't a very clever ploy to disguise it. The fake mail also thens goes on to talk about 'Jewish Supremacy' which plays directly into the well known Jews trying to control the world conspiracy theory which is famous through history as an example of anti-Semitism.
So for those responding with a knee-jerk crowing that, "anti-Zionism isn't anti-Semitism," do a little more thinking about the statements you are defending. If you really think Obama is stealing trillions of dollars for 'Zionist international bankers' and that there is a conspiracy of 'Jewish Supremacy' then you might just be an anti-Semite yourself.
UK game-development degrees not up to snuff, claims industry
A view from a games degree graduate and industry professional.
I graduated from the BSc(Hons) Computer Games Technology degree at Abertay in 2005 with a 2:2. I've been working in the Games Industry as a Software Engineer since June of 2005.
Getting a Desmond wasn't an ideal way to end my academic career but thanks to me being able to prove my skills I still got an 'in'. Getting a first isn't mandatory if you are able to prove your skills although I'd heartily recommend it as it looks better on your CV!
If you really want to work in the Games Industry in any form of programming position you are going to have to demonstrate your skills with a polished demo. Especially coming into it as a graduate. This could be a complete small game or some form of tech demo if you are applying for a more physics/rendering oriented job. You should also be able to provide the source or code samples that show you understand Software Engineering concepts. It doesn't have to be beautiful but it shouldn't be a mess of hacked together rubbish!
Going back to the subject of education, at a degree level you essentially get out what you put in. The lectures, tutorials and assignments give you a base level of knowledge. It is up to the student to get out there and learn more. Universities recognise this and give a lot of students a ludicrously large amount of free time. This in part gives you a chance to up your academic grade (important!) but leaves a large amount of time where you can make games or learn techniques (e.g. the demo mentioned above). You can also fill in the gaps that the degree doesn't teach; for example project management, software estimation, technical documentation and mathematics.
Selection of degree is also important. There are some really dross Computer Science and Games Development courses available. There are also some really good ones although fewer in the latter category. Apply to the very best institutions that you meet the grade requirements for. If you can't get on to one of the good Games courses or want a more general education then apply to the good CS courses. It won't hold you back in my opinion.
Games development is becoming more and more about being a good communicator as well. As the average team size ramps up this is fast becoming a core skill. The ability to explain problems to people of varying technical expertise is important. A healthy and varied social life is important. The days of the anti-social uber nerd with bad hygiene and no interpersonal skills are numbered.
Universities and educators also need to wake up and supply quality content to their students. They need to be more discriminating about who they take on as a course with decent content will be as challenging as many top CS degrees. Games Development Studios also need to work with the universities to provide information about their requirements and if necessary review course components. This will never be critical to the business but is important if the talent we want is to be found.
The other criticisms regarding poor working practices, low-pay and long hours are all valid reasons the games industry doesn't attract staff. Hopefully these things are being addressed. For the record in the three years I've worked in industry I've perhaps done a total of 6 hours overtime. Pay still isn't great but I've worked at a couple of forward thinking studios with regards working practices.
Home Sec: Tasers could become standard police kit
Laughable myths in the comments so far...
1) Tasers are non-lethal "officially". No they are less-lethal.
2) The UN designated them as torture instruments. Which is true of anything at all. A glass of water could be used as an instrument of torture. The UN actually said (paraphrasing) that Portugals laws on torture would not include the use of the Taser as they require 'physical harm' to happen to the subject, which the Taser doesn't cause. The law needs to be updated to include Tasers. That does not mean the UN considers Tasers to be exclusively torture implements as implied by some.
Tasers can be instrument of torture, says UN
If only this was the case...
The headline is very misleading if you read the original source documents.
The problem the UN had with the Taser in Portugal is the Portuguese legal definition of torture. They define it as causing physical injury which is often not the case with the use of the Taser.
It's blatantly obvious that the Taser could be used as a form of torture.
Met used 'dum-dum' ammo on de Menezes
Have the suicide bomber command detonated.
There are lots of ways around stopping someone from interfering with the detonation of a bomb. Unfortunately without prior knowledge of the device the Police can only respond in a way that is most likely to prevent it's detonation. That is to kill the person carrying it outright.
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