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2005/12/20: PLAINTIFFS PREVAIL! Judge Jones passed down a 139 page ruling which finds for the plaintiffs. Jones found the DASD policy violated both purpose and effect prongs of the Lemon test, asserts that âintelligent designâ is not science, and that the policy also violates the Pennsylvania state constitution. The PDF is linked from the NCSE KvD site.
Judge John E. Jones Wrote:The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Boardâs ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffsâ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwinâs theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Boardâs decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.
To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, ç 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID. We will also issue a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffsâ rights under the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been violated by Defendantsâ actions.
Defendantsâ actions in violation of Plaintiffsâ civil rights as guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States and 42 U.S.C. ç 1983 subject Defendants to liability with respect to injunctive and declaratory relief, but also for nominal damages and the reasonable value of Plaintiffsâ attorneysâ services and costs incurred in vindicating Plaintiffsâ constitutional rights.
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED THAT: 1. A declaratory judgment is hereby issued in favor of Plaintiffs pursuant to 28 U.S.C. çç 2201, 2202, and 42 U.S.C. ç 1983 such that Defendantsâ ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and Art. I, ç 3 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 2. Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 65, Defendants are permanently enjoined from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District. 3. Because Plaintiffs seek nominal damages, Plaintiffs shall file with the Court and serve on Defendants, their claim for damages and a verified statement of any fees and/or costs to which they claim entitlement. Defendants shall have the right to object to any such fees and costs to the extent provided in the applicable statutes and court rules.
s/John E. Jones III John E. Jones III United States District Judge
2005/11/04: (Warning: approximate quotes ahead.) At close, Pat Gillen remarked to Judge Jones, âYour honor, by my reckoning we have been here 40 days. That seems an auspicious number.â Jones replied, âSo it seems, but it was not designed!â At which point the courtroom burst out in applause. Jones let that go on for about 15 seconds, then adjourned the court. And that finished off the testimonial, in-court phase of this case.
During that last day, the cross-examination of Scott Minnich continued. Stephen Harvey explored a number of issues with Minnich, such as whether the âtestsâ that Minnich and Behe have proposed were actually being performed by anyone (they arenât), whether there could be multiple designers (there could be), and whether there might be an ⦠evil ⦠designer (yes, there could be). On that last, though, Harvey did not, at any time, hold his pinky up to the corner of his mouth.
Following lunch, the lawyers plotted out the remainder of the issues, such as the schedule for briefs (two weeks for initial, one week for revisions/responses). Judge Jones mentioned that it was his intention to provide a ruling on this case this year, meaning that the lawyers would be held to a tight schedule.
Exhibits⦠there were a number of exhibits entered into the record, including several things produced by Barbara Forrest that were not directly referred to in testimony. Among those items, one will find (once they go online) that in a draft of OPAP, there was an incomplete erasure of the word âcreationistâ, with an insertion of âdesign proponentsâ into it, meaning that students might have had the opportunity to learn the position of âcdesign proponentsistsâ on these matters. This verbal intermediate fossil was uncovered through the patient digging of Dr. Forrest.
2005/11/03: Testimony of Mike Baksa finished up. The defense put on Robert Linker, a Dover biology teacher who watched one of the ID videos. He said that it was the first time that he had seen âgaps in evolutionâ presented and found it âneatâ. But he still thinks that ID is religious, not science, and doesnât belong in the classroom. Later, Scott Minnich started testifying about⦠tada⦠the bacterial flagellum. ID is science, isnât religion, and all that. Somewhere in there, they tried to slip in the Meyer 2004b paper and referred to a newspaper article, which garnered a âhearsayâ objection. Judge Jones and Robert Muise had some back and forth concerning whether the reference was a public record. Jones sharply told Muise, âDonât insult my intelligence.â The objection was sustained. Steve Harvey got in fifteen minutes of cross-examination, where he showed a 1994 Creation Research Society Quarterly article about⦠tada⦠the bacterial flagellum. After going over the contents a bit, Minnich agreed that the same argument as he is making now was made then.
Update on Gentry: Robert Gentry was in the courtroom in the morning, and noticed me sitting with the plaintiffs. At a break, he told me that he was retracting his permission for me to provide his papers on my website. Along the way, he made a rather insulting insinuation that I would alter his materials in some way. Now, back at that press conference, Gentry complained that scientists did not want people to see his papers. I made a good faith offer to host them. I hosted âscientific creationismâ files on my BBS back in the old days of direct dial-up, and I certainly did not alter those. Iâm a scientist, and I definitely want to rebut the notion that Iâm somehow engaged in keeping people from seeing the arguments made by antievolutionists. Far from it. I think antievolution materials make the case for keeping non-science out of science classrooms quite well.
2005/11/02: I arrived in Harrisburg, PA today. I got to listen to the testimony of Alan Bonsell, Sheila Harkins, and Mike Baksa. Iâm not the only person who showed up in Harrisburg, PA today: Robert V. Gentry, final defense witness of the McLean v. Arkansas case, set up a press conference in the capitol rotunda to talk about the talk that he gave elsewhere this evening. He says his polonium halo work proves a young earth. He also said that scientists were censoring him and would not allow him to distribute his papers. After the press conference broke up, I offered to host his papers on the AE site. He said I could get them from his website⦠which I will do when I get some more moments all together.
2005/10/28: The last week of the trial approaches. This phase of KvD should wind up by November 4th.
2005/10/27: Former school board member William Buckingham testified today and promptly contradicted his sworn deposition. MSNBC has the details on his testimony and Ed Brayton shows how it conflicts with his sworn deposition. Buckingham seems to have a magical memory as well. Statements he couldnât recall making during his deposition, he suddenly remembers making and even remembers his precise state of mind when he made them.
In his deposition earlier this year, Buckingham said he did not know the source of the $850 donation to buy 60 copies of the book âOf Pandas and Peopleâ - an intelligent design textbook Dover students were referred to as part of the curriculum policy change.
Then Harvey produced a cancelled check from Buckingham for $850 to a Dover school administrator clearly marked for the purchase of the textbook and Buckingham confirmed it came from his church.
âYou lied to me in your deposition didnât you Mr. Buckingham?â Harvey said.
âHow so?â replied Buckingham.
âWhen I asked if you knew where the money came from,â Harvey said.
âI did not take a collection,â he said.
2005/10/26: Today, William Buckingham is set to testify. This is the highly controversial school board member who justified the ID policy by speaking about âsomeoneâ who âdied on a cross 2000 years agoâ and the need to âstand up for Him.â
2005/10/25: Warren Nord withdrew as a defense witness. That leaves, who, just Scott Minnich remaining on the defense roster as an expert witness. (William Dembski, John Angus Campbell, Stephen Meyer, Dick Carpenter, and Warren Nord have withdrawn; Michael Behe and Steven Fuller have testified; and Scott Minnich is their only expert left who might yet testify.)
2005/10/25: Two major developments in the case. First, the judge has struck a brief filed by the Discovery Institute because it was an attempt to get the expert testimony of Stephen Meyer and William Dembski into the record without having to be cross examined in court. Both of them pulled out as witnesses before the trial began. Second, the defense called Steven Fuller to the witness stand yesterday and he proceeded to help our side immensely. He actually testified that ID should be taught in schools despite the fact that it was still on the âfringeâ of science and did not have testable theories developed, because that would help them recruit young people to work on their ideas. He proposed a sort of âaffirmative actionâ program for fringe ideas in science. Ed Brayton has more here.
2005/10/24: Yes, Dick Carpenter was withdrawn as an expert witness, so on Friday, the court got to listen to Richard Nilsen failing to remember much at all. The defense said that Carpenterâs testimony was no longer needed, according to the ACLU blog. On Monday, the defense brought in Steve Fuller, to give the postmodernist version of why âintelligent designâ should be taught in the classrooms of Dover, Pennsylvania. Did you hear about the mafioso who studied French deconstructionist philosophy? He goes around making people offers that they canât understand. Well, Fuller at least was comprehensible when he told the court that what science needed was âaffirmative action for fringe ideasâ. Vic Walczak queried, âBut is the ninth grade science classroom the right place to apply that affirmative action?â Iâve been told that Fullerâs cross-examination was helpful to the plaintiffsâ case on several issues concerning the status of âintelligent designâ in the scientific community.
Oh, yes, Fuller also made the inexplicable claim that no evolutionary biologist had been awarded the Nobel Prize. While the Nobel Prize doesnât have an explicit evolutionary biology topic under which it makes awards, there have been several awards under the âPhysiology or Medicineâ topic that concern findings that touch upon evolutionary biology, going back to Thomas Hunt Morgan, forward through Muller, then Watson and Crick, and most recently Hartwell, Hunt, and Nurse. On the Nobel site you will learn that Nurseâs research establishes that cyclin dependent kinase is conserved during evolution. When one turns to the Crafoord Prize in the Biosciences, an award also administered by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, one finds such people as Daniel H. Janzen, Edward O. Wilson, William D. Hamilton, John Maynard Smith, Ernst Mayr, George C. Williams, and Carl Woese have won that prize. Judging a whole scientific field by the idiosyncracies of one social institution seems anomalous behavior for a social scientist, and especially one who casts himself as a champion of pluralism.
2005/10/21: The York Daily Record reports:
The defense decided to continue with Dover Area Supt. Richard Nilsenâs testimony this morning rather than call expert witness Dick Carpenter, an assistant professor of leadership, research and foundations at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
So, is Carpenter just slipping back in the schedule (theyâd need to put him up somewhere over the weekend), or has Carpenter bailed after noting Beheâs cross-examination?
2005/10/19: âIs there a distinction to be made between science and science fiction?â Eric Rothschild asked Michael Behe. âYes,â responded Behe. âI have no further questions,â said Rothschild. And with those words (or ones quite similar â weâll get precision with the transcript release), Eric Rothschild laid to rest the remains of Beheâs scientific credibility. Preceding that, there was a day full of cross examination, in which one would learn that Behe wasnât as familiar with the scientific literature on the immune system as one might hope for someone billed as an âexpertâ, that rigorous peer review in âintelligent designâ can be obtained in a ten-minute telephone interview â without the reviewer even having to see the manuscript, that the blood-clotting system can be reduced to a âcoreâ of four parts â except that when one does so the result is claimed to be lethal, and much more. Why did the cross-examination of Behe sound so much like the lawyers were reading from the TalkDesign web site? Well, at least part of that would be due to the advice that the plaintiffsâ lawyers received from NCSE Public Information Director Nicholas Matzke, aka âNic Tamzekâ from the early TalkDesign days and regular PT contributor. By almost all accounts*, the TalkDesign material on various issues concerning Beheâs âirreducible complexityâ was put to good use. Expect a more complete eulogy for Beheâs scientific career â and a post-mortem, as it were, of the terminal handling it received on Tuesday and Wednesday â to be posted here later, after we have the transcripts in hand.
What has to be considered for the future is whether the on-the-stand demolition of Behe will influence the remainder of the slate of TMLC experts. They had a pretty high withdrawal rate pre-trial, and now that the preparation of the plaintiffsâ legal team has been shown, vividly, will all the rest of TMLCâs scheduled experts actually show up for a big helping of what Behe had?
* As one might expect, the DI thinks Behe weathered cross-examination without any trouble whatsoever, but when oneâs reports are apparently filed from Cloud Cuckoo Land, I think that we are permitted to âconsider the sourceâ.
2005/10/18: A Philadelphia Inquirer article reports on cross-examination of Michael Behe. Eric Rothschild is apparently taking the time to have Behe address the inconsistencies within âintelligent designâ advocacy. This could take a while to get through:
Behe also said intelligent design does not maintain that life began abruptly, and does not specify God as the unidentified designer.
But plaintiffsâ attorney Eric Rothschild produced documents, including Beheâs own writings, that suggested otherwise.
2005/10/16: A quick checkup on the last few days of the trial. First, the second part of Barbara Forrestâs testimony is now available for download. The plaintiffâs attorneys wrapped up their case with their last two witnesses testifying. Brian Alters, an expert in science education, broke down the school boardâs mandated statement phrase by phrase and showed why it undermines quality science education. Then Kevin Padian, a paleontologist, essentially gave a seminar on why we know evolution to be true and why many of the scientific claims in Of Pandas and People are false (reports here and here). The defense will begin calling witnesses on Monday.
The defense needs to defeat the plaintiffsâ arguments concerning both the purpose and the effect of the âintelligent designâ policy. For the second, they are most likely to try to convince Judge Jones that âintelligent designâ, and specifically the policy adopted by the DASD, are scientific in character, and thus have a place in the science curriculum regardless of any secondary effect they might have in the way of having implications for religious belief. We heard at the outset the apparent defense strategy concerning dealing with âpurposeâ: paint the outspoken religious statements of school board members as not having any appreciable effect upon the boardâs deliberations in adopting the âintelligent designâ policy. It is difficult to imagine Judge Jones buying that given what has been presented by the plaintiffs so far, but it should be entertaining to see the defense give it a go.
It is expected that the defense will call Discovery Institute Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture Senior Fellow and Lehigh University professor Michael J. Behe on Monday. Behe will testify as to the scientific character of âintelligent designâ and try to address the testimony of the plaintiffsâ expert witnesses, especially that of Miller, Padian, and Alters. Behe has already given an expert report, a rebuttal report, and a deposition, so the plaintiffs should have a good idea of what is up.
2005/10/12: Not much to report lately. The trial took two days off and resumes today with Dover science department chair Bertha Spahr finishing her testimony. Two more plaintiffs witnesses to go this week, then the defendants begin their case. The York Dispatch has an interesting article on the question of whether the Supreme Court would take this case if it gets appealed that far and what the possible outcome might be.
2005/10/10: PT contributor Burt Humburg is profiled and interviewed in this story in the York Daily Record. Burt seems to always be wherever thereâs a breakout of anti-evolution activity (first Kansas, then Minnesota, now Pennsylvania) and frankly weâre beginning to wonder if heâs really a spy from the Dark Side sent to get us drunk and loose lipped. Weâd noticed that he does like to buy endless rounds of Protostome Pilsners (âProtostome Pilsner - in one end, out the same endâ) for everyone else while he sips his white wine spritzers.
2005/10/07: The transcript of the direct examination of Barbara Forrest is now available from this page (and OCRâd etext on AE). The cross examination portion should be available shortly. The defense spent hours trying to discredit her to the judge and failed, finally being admonished for continually trying to bring up irrelevant things like the positions of groups she belongs to on totally unrelated subjects. The defense was absolutely desperate to throw mud at her and they failed.
2005/10/06: Yesterday brought perhaps the most contentious day of testimony yet, as Dr. Barbara Forrest took the stand for the plaintiffs. She testified on the history and development of the intelligent design movement and showed that the entire movement began primarily as a strategic response to the courts ruling âcreation scienceâ out of public schools. There are multiple reports on her testimony available online. The ACLU-PA blog has two reports, here and here. The York Daily Record has one report on Forrestâs testimony and another on the defenseâs frantic attempts to attack her testimony. The defense attorneys spent all morning objecting to her testimony but were repeatedly overruled by Judge Jones, then they tried to make an issue out of Forrestâs own views on religion, which are clearly not relevant in court, and were overruled again.
Ed Brayton has an analysis of that strategy and points out that it contradicts what the DI has been saying in their attempts to undermine her testimony. The DI went so far as to issue a press release attacking Forrest yet again, which can only mean that they recognize how damaging her testimony, particularly the examination of the book Of Pandas and People showing that the book simply replaced âcreationâ with âintelligent designâ during the writing process, is to their side. This is desperation in action, folks.
2005/10/04: The latest NCSE Podcast, discussing the testimony of Georgetown theology professor John Haught, is available here.
A group of scientists has filed a brief asking the court not to rule on the question of what is and is not legitimate science because they fear it will violate academic freedom and inhibit future research. This is the standard line coming from the Discovery Institute and Ed Brayton debunks it here.
2005/10/01: The York Daily Record has a brief report on the testimony of Georgetown theology professor John Haught. Ed Brayton argues that TMLC attorney Richard Thompson inadvertantly showed by his questioning exactly why ID is not falsifiable.
2005/09/29: The court has now made the transcripts of day 1 of the trial available. You can download them in PDF format from the NCSE website - AM session and PM session.
2005/09/30: PT: Why didnât they tell us?, where Nick Matzke covers some more of the evidence that âintelligent designâ is just another label for the same old creationism.
2005/09/30: News roundup: The York Dispatch: Meetings were like revivals, York Daily Record: Mural at issue, The Patriot-News: Dover board members pushed creationism, witnesses testify, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Ex-official: Board broke with curriculum policy, The Philadelphia Inquirer: Intelligent design a religious notion, scientist testifies.
2005/09/29: NCSE Podcasts for 2005/09/29.
2005/09/29: The court has now made the transcripts of day 1 of the trial available. You can download them in PDF format from the NCSE website - AM session and PM session.
2005/09/28: On Thursday, the primary witness was Carol Brown, a former member of the Dover school board for 10 years until she resigned in protest of the new intelligent design policy. She testified to the repeated statements of Bill Buckingham, chair of the curriculum committee, and Alan Bonsell, chair of the school board, that they were seeking equal time for creationism in science classrooms. She detailed a yearâs worth of proselytizing by members of the school board, their outspoken opposition to the separation of church and state, and much more. She testified that the search for an ID textbook began because several members of the board objected to the biology textbook (Ken Millerâs textbook, Biology) on the grounds that it did not give equal time to creationism or mention God. This follows on the heels of almost identical testimony from other former board members and teachers, including Bryan Rehm and Barrie Callahan.
On 2005/09/28, the expert witness Robert Pennock of Michigan State University testified for the plaintiffs. He delineated the difference between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, produced evidence showing that the ID advocates recognize that their arguments cannot work within a framework of methodological naturalism, and defended the role of methodological naturalism in the practice of science during the cross-examination. (See the post concerning a quote of Nancy Pearceyâs that Pennock referred to in his testimony and check out the NCSE Podcast about Pennockâs testimony.)
Meanwhile, the Discovery Institute is going spare over the imminent demise of its âwedge strategyâ concerning âintelligent designâ, offering up a press release wherein they offer the explanation that whatever the plaintiffs discuss inside the courtroom, it isnât the real, true, honest-to-God, no-foolinâ, double-dog-dare-ya âintelligent designâ. Pathetic. Perhaps the committee charged with finding the next label for antievolutionists to apply to the same old tired antievolution arguments is having some difficulty. Nick Matzke covers some more of the evidence that âintelligent designâ is just another label for the same old creationism.
2005/09/27: The plaintiffs brought in three fact witnesses, plaintiffs Tammy Kitzmiller and Aralene âBarrieâ Callahan, and Brian Rehm, a Dover science teacher. Kitzmiller testified to the choice her daughter had to make about staying or opting out of listening to the DASD âintelligent designâ statement, where staying could be confusing concerning science, and leaving would expose her to possible ridicule and peer pressure. Callahan, a former school board member, testified to the school boardâs insistence that âequal timeâ be given to creationism when evolution was taught. Rehm testified to being pressured by the school board to downplay or not teach evolution in classes. (NCSE Podcast available.)
2005/09/27: NCSE Podcast about KvD opening day, about fifteen minutes of commentary on KvD and events of the opening day. More NCSE Podcasts on opening day and Ken Millerâs testimony.
The KvD trial got underway yesterday with opening statements from plaintiffs and defense, and Dr. Kenneth Miller of Brown University testifying as an expert for the plaintiffs.
Eric Rothschildâs opening statement for the plaintiffs charged that âintelligent designâ is simply an adaptation of creationism, and a concept without any legitimate scientific standing. He also strongly commended evolutionary biology as a well-established scientific field of study.
Pat Gillen, arguing for the defense, claimed that âintelligent designâ is science, not religion, and that the DASD didnât pay much attention to Bill Buckingham, former school board member and fulminator for creationism there. This goes against news reports at the time, such as the one reporting Yinglingâs resignation as a result of pressure she felt to support the curriculum change.
Yingling voted for the measure, but later said she did it only because she was called âun-Christianâ and pressured to vote with the majority.
Gillen also claimed that the DASD policy was a modest one, which rather goes against the content of a TMLC press release of 2005/01/18 that states, âa revolution in evolution is underwayâ.
Reports Iâve gotten from attendees have said that Ken Miller was âmagnificentâ and âa fabulous witnessâ. In other words, Ken was having another ordinary day for him. Miller paid particular attention to Of Pandas and People, pointing out its deficiencies in terms of accurate reporting of biology and its clear creationist wellspring of arguments.
2005/09/27: Satire from Swift Reports: New Law Says Science Teachers Must Recite âFootprints in the Sandâ
2005/09/27: PT: Blogging the Dover Trial, where Ed Brayton points out blogs of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Jonathan Witt blogging for the DI. Ed also explains why ID advocates continue to be confused over the concept of âfalsifiabilityâ.
2005/09/27: News Roundup: Stuck at Court, with no Circus in Sight, York Daily Record, Defense: It Isnât About Religion, York Daily Record, Doverâs Test Begins, York Daily Record, Institute: Both Sides Wrong, York Daily Record, Media Views on Dover, York Daily Record
2005/09/26: News roundup: NCSEâs Executive Director Dr. Eugenie Scott interviewed on Lou Dobbs, CNN (9:30 PM EDT, 6:30 PM PDT). Washington Post, York Dispatch, L.A. Times, WGAL, Collective Bellaciao, France, CivilRights.org, Orlando Sentinel, York Daily Record, York Daily Record, Family News in Focus, NC News and Observer, Minneapolis Star Tribune.
2005/09/26: Trial begins: opening arguments from both sides, then plaintiffs call Prof. Ken Miller of Brown University. Miller gives direct testimony, and part of the cross-examination by the defense.
2005/09/25: News roundup: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, York Daily Record, New York Times, LA Times, Independent UK, MSNBC, New Scientist, Peopleâs Daily Online.
2005/09/24: PT: Of Pandas and People: Creation Relabeled, reports on the oral testimony taken earlier that shows that âcreationâ and âintelligent designâ share the same definition, going from a draft of Of Pandas and People to the published version.
2005/09/23: As of September 13, 2005, the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District case was headed for trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania starting on September 26, 2005. Judge John E. Jones III denied the Thomas More Law Center motion for summary judgment in an order delivered on September 13, clearing the way for the full trial. This post will provide a convenient place for links to articles and commentary on the Kitzmiller v. DASD proceedings. Not since the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas trial has there been a legal case of this size and complexity on the subject, with a slate of expert witnesses on each side scheduled to give testimony.
Back in 2004, the Dover school board held a series of meetings in which they discussed putting creationism into the science classes. Former board member Bill Buckingham was reported to have said, âTwo thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Canât someone take a stand for him?â Later, Buckingham vehemently denied making that statement in discussion of the science curricula. The school board first approved the acceptance of nearly sixty copies of the âintelligent designâ textbook, Of Pandas and People (OPAP), for the school library. They then also adopted an âintelligent design policyâ, that was to inform the students in ninth-grade science classes about âintelligent designâ and the availability of OPAP in the library. Following this, several parents sued the DASD over the âintelligent design policyâ. After several months of discovery, depositions, and other legal paperwork, the suit is now ready for trial.
2005/09/13: Judge Jones denies TMLC motion for summary judgement.
2005/08/11: PT: Sandefur on defense motion for summary judgment
2005/08/10: PT: Revelations in Dover
2005/08/06: PT: Design on Trial, reviews the state of play concerning KvD and OPAP93.
2005/07/16: PT: Creationist Credibility, reports on the FTE motion to intervene in KvD.
2005/06/25: PT: Dembski threatens to sue Dover defense, reports on Dembski delivering a $20K+ bill to TMLC for his services, which they are no longing using.
2005/06/20: PT: Conflicting Explanations for Withdrawal of Dover Experts?, reports on the start of differing explanations for the withdrawal of three DI Fellows as experts by TMLC.
2005/06/19: PT: ID Experts Withdraw from Dover Trial, reports on TMLC withdrawing three Discovery Institute Fellows as experts in the case because they insisted on having separate legal representation for themselves.
2005/03/28: PT: Dover, PA Experts Revealed
2005/03/20: PT: Dover Dithers Over Donations, reports on donations of science books to Dover school library and the DASD resistance to accepting those books.
2005/03/13: PT: New news from Dover, reports that the Rutherford Institute motion to intervene in KvD was denied, and that Of Pandas and People 1993 edition would not have been recommended to the Dover school board by its own publisher.
2005/01/28: PT: Dover science teachers take a stand, reporting on science teachers refusing to deliver the administrationâs prepared speech on âintelligent designâ to 9th grade science classes.
2005/01/12: PT: This just in: Plaintiffs give up in Dover, comments on hilariously false religious reporting that confused the plaintiffs not having filed a motion to stop the DASD from implementing its âintelligent designâ policy with their having dropped the KvD lawsuit.
2005/01/07: PT: Another twist on the Dover story, reports on the Dover science teachersâ letter to the administration stating their intention to opt out of reading the âintelligent designâ policy statement to children in science classes.
2005/01/06: PT: More PA scientists speak out against ID, reports on scientists at the University of Pennsylvania taking issue with the DASD âintelligent designâ policy.
2004/12/21: PT: More Dover reports on the DASD and the likelihood that the Thomas More Law Center would represent them in the lawsuit.
2004/12/15: PT: Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, reports on the filing of the lawsuit against DASD.
2004/12/11: PT: Doverian doings, reports on area responses to the DASD policy and criticism of OPAP93.
2004/12/07: PT: Analysis of Dover Biology Curriculum, looks at claims made by the DASD âintelligent designâ policy.
2004/12/07: Panda-monium: NCSE Resources Page on Pandas, points to the NCSE resources page on OPAP.
2004/12/06: PT: Dover School Board Done to a Crispy Crunch, links to an op-ed by Paul Gross and Barbara Forrest concerning the Dover school boardâs âintelligent designâ policy.
2004/12/05: PT: Science Teachers Balk at Dover Decision.
2004/11/23: PT: Dover School District Wades Into Troubled Waters, reports on the DASD adoption of its âintelligent designâ policy and how that will very likely lead to a lawsuit.
2004/11/12: PT: Dover creationism update, reports on the legal liability that DASD will be taking on by adoption of its âintelligent designâ policy.
Comments in this thread are for pointers to KvD resources only; all others will be deleted at the PT administration discretion and convenience. Please utilize the After the Bar Closes forum area for wider-ranging comments.


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Basketball News
June 30, 2011 by TMO · Leave a Comment
By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, firstname.lastname@example.com
In National Basketball Association news, Oklahoma City Thunder issued the following press release regarding center Nazr Mohammed:
The Oklahoma City Thunder have signed center Nazr Mohammed to a contract extension, it was announced today by Executive Vice President and General Manager Sam Presti. Per team policy, the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to be able to keep Nazr in the Thunder family," said Presti. "He is a valuable part of our organization both on and off the floor. His professionalism, experience, and on-court play have had a positive impact on our young and evolving roster." The six foot ten inch Mohammed owns career averages of 6.9 points, 5.4 rebounds in 17.9 minutes in 771 career NBA games.
In other NBA news, Iranian-American center Hamed Haddadi received a qualifying offer from the Memphis Grizzlies, making him a restricted free agent this offseason. The Grizzlies will now have the right to match any contract offers Haddadi receives from other teams this offseason. The qualifying offer will pay Haddadi $2 million for the 2011-12 season if he doesn't sign a new deal this summer.
The seven foot two inch Haddadi just finished his third season with the Grizzlies. He originally signed with Memphis as a free agent on August 28th, 2008. This past season he averaged a career-high .517 shooting percentage in 31 games, and he developed a bit of a cult following among fans for his energetic play and hustle. However, the start of the next NBA season, let alone the start of the offseason, is in doubt with an impending owner-imposed lockout that is likely to take effect July 1st.
Samir Nasri in Demand
June 16, 2011 by TMO · Leave a Comment
By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, email@example.com
France's Samir Nasri controls the ball during their Euro 2012 Group D qualifying soccer match against Belarus at Dinamo stadium in Minsk June 3, 2011. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko |
The agent of Arsenal scoring sensation Samir Nasri indicates that talks between the player and Arsenal are still ongoing, despite reports to the contrary. There have been rumors of interest on the part of Manchester United amidst reports of Nasri's displeasure with Arsenal's attempts, or lack thereof, to improve thus far in the offseason.
"I want to clarify that there has been no break with the Gunners over the contract's renewal and we should meet again soon with Arsene Wenger," Nasri's agent Alain Migliaccio told calciomercatoweb. "There are a few clubs interested in Samir, but it is useless to name them. Before listening to other teams, we need and we want to talk with Arsenal."
Nasri had a prolific season with Arsenal, making for a nice bounce-back after having been left off of the French World Cup team last summer amidst politics and infighting. However, much of the mayhem has since tied to outgoing French coach Raymond Domenech, so Nasri's reputation has been rehabilitated sufficiently with his play for Arsenal this past English season. And with his value at an all time high, Arsenal owner, American Stan Kroenke, is reportedly set to break the bank to keep him.

subset: commoncrawl


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crop rotation
crop rotation
Successive cultivation of different crops in a specified order on the same fields. Some rotations are designed for high immediate returns, with little regard for basic resources. Others are planned for high continuing returns while protecting resources. A typical scheme selects rotation crops from three classifications: cultivated row crops (e.g., corn, potatoes), close-growing grains (e.g., oats, wheat), and sod-forming, or rest, crops (e.g., clover, clover-timothy). In general, cropping systems should include deep-rooting legumes. In addition to the many beneficial effects on soils and crops, well-planned crop rotations make the farm a more effective year-round enterprise by providing more efficient handling of labour, power, and equipment, reduction in weather and market risks, and improved ability to meet livestock requirements.
This entry comes from Encyclopædia Britannica Concise.
For the full entry on crop rotation, visit Britannica.com.
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2 Responses to "Khmer vs Laos presser"
cheyo kampuchea!!! waiting for results!!! lol
Pindara - November 9th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Thank you Mr.Paddy for bringing the Lao boxers to fight
in Cambodia… Im a very big fan of Muay Lao and kun khmer hopefully in the future you will bring the Lao boys back for a rematch…suriyah - December 1st, 2010 at 8:07 pm


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Our company manufactures enclosures for the medical and telecommunications industries. Recently, we've had rejected parts because the black dye is coming off when the parts are wiped down with DI water. The customer also complained about a greenish tint on the part that does not match the color of the other anodized parts made by someone else. These parts do get a yellow chem film before the black anodize. I am thinking this could be part of the reason they're seeing the greenish tint. The material is 5052-H32 × 0.060 inch thick.
I reviewed the MIL-A-8625F spec and didn't see anything about an acceptable amount of residue or dye that can be wiped off. We've been trying to just wipe down the stock we already have. Should these parts be rejected and re-anodized? I would just like to get a little more knowledge before talking with our anodizer again. B.H.
This is a tough one to pinpoint. Let's look at the chem film (chromate conversion coating) part first. The only reason I can think of for parts to be chem filmed is if there is masking required. You don't say anything about this, but I'll assume that's the case.
The parts are being cleaned and then the chem film is applied. The chem film needs approximately 24 hr to cure before adhesive masking is applied. Once the masking is applied, the chem film is normally stripped off the rest of the part before it's anodized. This can be done by either soaking the parts in nitric acid, or maybe whatever deoxidizer the anodizer is using. Or the parts could be given an alkaline or an acid etch, etching only long enough to remove the chem film. Now the parts are ready for anodizing.
This is where I might say that the "greenish tint" you see is probably not due to the chem film, because the chem film has been eliminated from the part prior to anodizing. The black dye itself may be the culprit. There are several types of black aluminum dyes. Many of these have a characteristic tint, particularly when you look at reflected light from the part. These tints can be greenish, reddish, brownish, bluish, or purplish.
Some of the black dyes are actually "blackish." You should consult with your anodizer about this. The anodizer can seek the advice of the dye supplier to find which of these is most acceptable for your product.
Let's look at possible reasons why some of the black dye wipes off. I can't tell you exactly what's causing the problem—it's up to your anodizer to make sure dyeing conditions are optimum. But here's a list of items to keep under control in the process:


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The Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel
The Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel is a Casino in Taipa, Macao and is open daily 24 hours. The casino's 550,000 square foot gaming space features 3,000 gaming machines and 950 table and poker games. The property has twenty restaurants, one bar and a hotel with 3,000 rooms.
Estrada da Baia de North Senhora de Esperança, s/n
The Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel Tweets (Powered By Twitter)
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Macau suffers fourth straight monthly gaming revenue drop
7 October 2014
Analysts warned Monday that the Chinese gaming enclave, which has experienced four straight monthly revenue dips, hasn't bottomed out.
Las Vegas Sands: Strong growth in Q2 profit
17 July 2014
The casino operator Wednesday credited another strong quarter from the company's casinos in Macau with producing double-digit increases in both revenues and earnings. But the figures didn't meet analyst projections.
Macau casinos report 7 percent increase in January, collect $3.6 billion
6 February 2014
The Macau casino market ended 11 straight months of double-digit gaming revenue increases in January and recorded its lowest single-month growth rate since October 2012.
More The Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel News »
Website - www.venetianmacao.com
Facebook - facebook.com/VenetianMacao
Youtube - www.youtube.com/user/MacaoVenetian
General Information - +853 2882 8888
Hotel Reservations - +853 2882 8877
Show Reservations - +853 2882 8818
Gaming Machines - 3,000 total
Facebook - facebook.com/VenetianMacao
Youtube - www.youtube.com/user/MacaoVenetian
General Information - +853 2882 8888
Hotel Reservations - +853 2882 8877
Show Reservations - +853 2882 8818
- 456 Modern Shanghai Restaurant - Shanghai
- Bambu - Asian
- Bar Florian - Bar
- Café Deco - International
- Café Siam - Thai
- Canton - Cantonese, Chinese
- Edo Japanese Restaurant - Japanese
- Fogo Samba - Barbecue, Western
- Imperial House - Dim Sum
- International Food Court - Food Court
- Lei Garden - Cantonese
- Madeira Portuguese Restaurant - Portuguese
- McSorley's Ale House - Hamburgers
- Morton's The Steakhouse - Steakhouse
- North - Chinese, Sichuan
- Old Neptune Restaurant - Seafood
- Portofino - Italian
- Red Dragon Noodles - Asian
- Shanghainese 456 Restaurant - Restaurant
- Starbucks - Coffee House
- Vergnano Italian Restaurant - Italian
Ballroom, Convention and meeting space (108 meeting rooms with more than 200,000 square feet of meeting space.), Convention/Exhibition Hall (CotaiExpo™ at The Venetian Macao offers more than 800,000 square feet.)
The Venetian Macao Resort-Hotel Hotel
- Venetian Macao Hotel (Casino located within the Hotel)
Contains 3000 Suites.
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The Harrington Community
The Harrington HealthCare system serves 150,000 residents in more than 15 towns in south central Massachusetts and northern Connecticut. Our community boasts old-fashioned Main Streets, vibrant businesses, first-rate schools, restaurants and antique galleries, pristine lakes and parks, among other amenities. Our suburban, small-town location is within easy reach of world-class museums, colleges and wineries, cities of Boston, Providence, Hartford, Worcester, and Springfield and the New England coast, including Cape Cod and the mountains of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
Useful links
Southbridge is located just north of the Connecticut border in the Quinebaug River Valley of south-central Massachusetts. The town is in close proximity to Routes 90, 20, 84 and 395 with convenient access to Hartford, Springfield, Providence, Boston, and Worcester. Comprised of about 21 square miles, Southbridge is an eclectic blend of hilly and flat, farmland and developed land, industry and downtown, and suburban, urban, and rural neighborhoods.
Sturbridge Area
Sturbridge is widely known for its great shops, fine dining, beautiful countryside and, of course, Old Sturbridge Village. Fact is, Sturbridge is at the center of eleven towns that are filled with unique places and experiences.
The Last Green Valley
It is the mission of The Last Green Valley, Inc., (TLGV) to preserve the significant natural and cultural resources of the region while encouraging compatible economic development.
Central Massachusetts South Chamber of Commerce
Central Mass South Chamber serves the towns of Southbridge, Sturbridge, Charlton, Brimfield, the Brookfields, Holland, Spencer, Wales and Northern Connecticut.
Webster-Dudley-Oxford Chamber of Commerce
The Webster, Dudley, Oxford Chamber of Commerce strives to cultivate an environment which is conducive to the establishment of new business, the retention of existing business, and the success of all business.
Hosts the Brimfield Antique Shows.
Dudley is a small college town located in the central part of Massachusetts. The town was incorporated in 1732 and encompasses 22 square miles. Dudley's humble beginnings were in agriculture and textiles.
Sturbridge is located in the center of the state, in close proximity to Routes I-90 and I-84. Sturbridge is a town of contrasts; home to Old Sturbridge Village, the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast where you can step back into the 1830s.
Thompson, CT
Thompson is a unique town located in the northeast corner of Connecticut bordering Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In Thompson you will find many different villages with a variety of housing. Also, you will find a unique rural character with a beautiful country setting.
Eighteen miles south of Worcester, Webster was founded in 1812, primarily an industrial center due to its abundant water supply. By far, the town's richest asset is the beautiful fresh water, spring fed Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg.
Woodstock, CT
Woodstock, Connecticut is considered part of the "Quiet Corner." The town is a rural, historic community with an agricultural background. Woodstock has more operating dairy farms than any other town in the state.
Great cities share common traits - undeniable energy and a vibrant culture that drives growth and epitomizes livability. A center of commerce, industry, and education, Worcester has redefined its identity and refashioned its urban form to accommodate the needs of a dynamic economy.


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Four Massachusetts Communities Are BioReady®
Abington, Middleborough, & West Boylston earn ratings from biotech industry
Hopkinton improves rating
December 18, 2012 (Cambridge, MA)—Four Massachusetts communities have new BioReady® ratings signifying their readiness to work with biotechnology companies interested in locating there.
Based on a survey of their zoning bylaws, building codes and other business and industry-related criteria, West Boylston received a Silver rating and Abington and Middleborough received Bronze ratings.
Additionally, Hopkinton, a former Bronze-rated community, has been upgraded to a Gold rating by amending their by-laws to allow biotechnology uses "by right" rather than by "special permit."
"We are pleased to welcome Abington, Middleborough, and West Boylston into the ranks of the other BioReady® communities and thrilled to see Hopkinton increase their BioReadiness®," said MassBio President & CEO Robert K. Coughlin. "These communities should be applauded for their commitment to biotech and their roles in facilitating innovation and sustaining Massachusetts' position as an industry leader."
"The Town of Abington is pleased to receive the bronze status from MassBio and looks forward to working cooperatively with the council in attracting new and emerging biotechnology businesses to the Route 18 Corridor in Abington, MA," said John D'Agostino, Abington's Town Manager.
"Middleborough is pleased to be recognized as a BioReady community. Strategically located on Interstate 495 at the intersections of Routes 44, 18 and 28, Middleborough is in the "middle" of the Boston-Providence-Cape Cod region, and enjoys commuter rail access to downtown Boston," said Ruth Geoffroy, Middleborough's Planning Director. "The Town has innovatively zoned for biotech and industrial uses with the necessary infrastructure to accommodate up to 4 million square feet of industrial/corporate park development and currently hosts a number of biotech manufacturing firms including Idex, Inc. and Brookfield Engineering."
"This upgrade to BioReady Gold status reflects the continuing efforts in Hopkinton to attract top businesses to our town" said Ben Palleiko, Chairman of the Hopkinton Board of Selectmen. "I want to thank MassBio and all of the town staff and boards for their hard work and commitment in making Hopkinton a premier environment for the biotechnology industry. The Town of Hopkinton is ready to work with all interested businesses."
MassBio and partner organizations across the state began the statewide BioReady® Communities Campaign in 2008 in order to provide background to municipal officials about the biotech industry and offer guidance on how to position municipalities as destinations for biotech laboratory and manufacturing facilities. To date, there are 72 BioReady® rated communities in the state.
Communities are ranked on a scale of bronze, silver, gold or platinum, and the system helps Massachusetts cities and towns market themselves to biotechnology companies looking to expand or relocate. As part of the campaign, the MassBio Economic Development Advisory Group (EDAG) developed criteria to both guide communities in their pursuit of biotech facility opportunities and rate them for BioReadiness® in order to provide each with a tangible marketing tool.
To view full ratings criteria, go to the MassBio's BioReady® Communities Web page at http://www.massbio.org/economic_development/bioready_communities


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- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to update abortion laws in New York by removing restrictions on late term abortions (past 24 weeks), which have previously been available only if a woman's life is at risk. His proposal also includes allowing licensed practitioners to perform abortions, and changing the regulation of abortion to the state's public health law rather than the penal codes. [New York Times]
- More uplifting news from politicians: Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced his campaign to end violence against women and is calling on 10,000 to rally at City Hall to end domestic violence. [Feministing]
- According to analysts and pollsters, how women feel about gun control could be a major factor in the 2014 midterm elections. According to Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle, women think less about guns as a Second Amendment right and more about safety. [The Columbus Dispatch] Keep reading »
Zergnet: Simply Irresistible
- Popular


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shoekery's LomoHome
Student aged 17. Currently, I have 4 film cameras; Holga 135BC, La Sardina Belle Starr, Recesky DIY TLR and Minolta SRT 201. I'm loving the adventures I had with my cameras. Through such adventures, I… am able to keep myself happy in life. Appreciate the little things I see through the viewfinder and be surprise at things that I didn't expect to be caught. show more show less


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Masuoka gave out a ready guffaw, but I wasn't even half-kidding. You see, I knew something he didn't: that MoCAD was unmanageable, and that no director would be able to take the reins of the institution because they have always been in someone else's tight grasp -- that of the president of the museum's board of trustees, Sue Cannon.
In a sense, this is appropriate, since Cannon played a laudable role in the establishment of MoCAD and, more than anyone else, is responsible for the margin of success it has had. And aside from being one of the founders, she's also been the museum's chief financial angel, kicking in $50,000 to $60,000 per year from her vast personal fortune -- not an inconsiderable amount of money for an institution with a budget that hovers around $400,000 this year.
But it's her position as a big donor that allows her to push her weight around, and she's consolidated her power through the museum's organizational by-laws, which she helped write and which put her officially in charge. That means that any director -- including Masuoka -- is actually an assistant director.
This isn't a new story. Even before MoCAD's first exhibit in 1997, its founders were leaving in droves. Cannon, it was said again and again, was a micro-manager, capricious and given to quick and disorienting changes in plan. At first this wasn't all that bad, especially since the museum was more of a fantasy than an actual facility. But that changed in 1998, when Kenworth Moffett was hired as the first permanent director and MoCAD set up shop in Sakura Square.
It would be kind to say that Moffett fell flat on his face. His first show, The New New Painting, just happened to be made up of artists whom he'd been promoting for years, and still promotes (Moffett organized a variation of the show at New York's Armory, a rental venue, last winter). After six months of part-time work -- and a $60,000 salary -- he left MoCAD, although it was hard to notice, since he'd never gone so far as to actually move to Denver.
Mark Sink, a well-known photographer, curator and arts advocate, took over as interim director. But while he revealed himself as an intelligent curator, he was also an inept administrator.
Masuoka had applied for the MoCAD gig in 1998, but lost out to Moffett and took a job as director of the Emmanuel Gallery, on the Auraria campus. Too bad MoCAD's directors didn't hire Masuoka in the first place. It would have been better for them and better for the Emmanuel. When Masuoka left the Auraria gallery, there was no one left there to argue a case for its future. Emmanuel lost its funding shortly thereafter and has been empty for months. (In the best possible scenario, the gallery will be re-funded by the fall, though student and faculty shows may be presented sooner.)
But if Masuoka left Emmanuel swaying in the breeze, he hit the ground running at MoCAD. To understand how far he has taken the museum in just nine months, we need only recall the appearance of the place last fall: Visitors were greeted by window walls of smudged glass through which the backs of desks and showcases could be glimpsed along with tangles of hanging electrical cords right at eye level. Believe it or not, this front window space was chosen for MoCAD's main offices, and there was no legitimate excuse for it. It wasn't to save money or to reuse some existing setup that just happened to be there. No, good money was spent on the electrical work needed to put the ugly offices right up front. This was done under the direction of board president Cannon.
All this, and we hadn't even gotten inside yet -- a task that wasn't easy since the front doors were inoperable electric ones that needed be pushed so hard that anyone who tried risked a back or shoulder injury. Instead of fixing or replacing the doors, however, Sink, who was still serving as interim director at the time, denied in print that they were even broken. Well, that solved the problem, didn't it?
Once inside, visitors were confronted by a gift shop that looked like a garage sale and an abandoned-looking rabbit warren of odd-shaped and awkward rooms. The problem was that the two-story facility had been a fish market before, and little had been done except to remove the refrigeration units. The place was dingy, even dirty. And although I never ventured into the restrooms, freelance curator Sean Hughes threatened to walk out on his widely hailed Western Vernacular show, which took place during the summer and fall of 1999, if someone didn't clean them before the opening.
Things changed immediately when Masuoka took over. He moved the office clutter upstairs with the rest of the offices and had the windows cleaned. The gift shop was relocated to a niche just inside the front doors, and the doors were replaced. Just opposite the entry, a reception area was built with a sleek information and ticket desk. Behind it is a donor display created by sculptor and furniture designer Russell Beardsley. Masuoka also added a good-looking coffee shop decorated with multi-colored "ant" chairs clustered around handsome little cafe tables made of expanded metal mesh. Finally, MoCAD had an interior to match its urbane-looking exterior of raw concrete and glass, which really gives off the attitude of a small big-city museum.


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I can't believe there are so few reviews for this. It's the fastest drying cleaner that I've tried and it's very effective. I've been using it for three years now and have not had to replace any brushes. They all look great. On first use, I was worried it would be drying because it smells like mild alcohol. Not drying at all! It leaves my brushes (mostly MAC, synthetic and natural) clean and feeling perfectly conditioned. I need more than just a spray for my foundation brushes (Revlon Colorstay mostly) so I put a bit in a little bowl and swirl and wipe a couple of times. I see others say that it's oily, but I think you just need to make sure to wipe the brushes very well. After you swipe the brush on a paper towel to clean, use a clean part of the towel to reshape the brush instead of your fingers to help remove every last bit of cleaner. Compared to some other cleaners that completely strip the brush and leave them dry and frayed (namely, Japonesque, yuck!), I suppose some would see this as oily, but I disagree. I'm able to reform my brush so they dry perfectly. To me, that's one of the signs of a perfectly conditioned brush. They come out sparkly clean every time. I have sensitive skin and have tried brush cleaners that leave so much scent on the brush that my eyes water when I bring the brush close to my eye - not so with Brush Off! Yay! I've been ordering it from their website directly, but I see other reviews that say Ulta sells it, too.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
More reviews by JessicaAllison
I've been a professional makeup artist for 15 years, and thank goodness I learned about this at my very first cosmetics job. This product is meant to spot-clean and disinfect brushes instantly, so that the brush can be immediately used again. Though it contains alcohol, it is not drying to the brushes (I have brushes that I've used this on for over a decade that show no fraying, breakage or ungluing).
The only reason I'd ever look for another product is simply because this is not an easy to find product, nor is it particularly cheap. It is, however, the best I've ever used, and it's the only product that I've ever found that truly dries fast enough that you can use your brush right away.
Some have mentioned that it leaves an oily residue. While the product itself feels a bit oily on skin or a tissue, I've never noticed that it leaves a residue on my brushes, and, I'll reiterate, I will spray this on, take care to wipe it all off, and use my brush again right away- no drying time in between. If the brush still feels oily, it's because not all of the Brush Off has been removed, so keep wiping!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
My work place use this as brush cleanser. This works amazing as spot clean between makeovers. Removes all traces of makeup. But with liquid foundation imo it only remove 80% I feel like there's still something in there. Other than that and leaving your brushes a little oily after a while then it's amazing!!!
This brush cleaner is truly amazing, although at about $4 an ounce, it is quite pricey. The spray bottle is pretty standard, but the product itself is wonderful at cleaning brushes of any type. A few spritzes cause powders to bead up atop the bristles, easily wiped clean with a tissue. Brushes for non-powder makeup can be swirled a bit of the spray in a bowl. Brushes dry quickly after cleaning, and have no residue. I have used this product for 3 years now.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
I used this for awhile but after using MAC's brush cleaner I won't be purchasing this product again. While it did remove the surface makeup on my brushes, they felt kind of oily afterwards. It's quite expensive too. You get much more for the price with MAC's cleaner.
I went to Ulta and bought this with the $3.50 off coupon. $13.50 for a 4 fl. oz. bottle is a little much. I'm happy with the results though, with a few exceptions. I love that it comes in a spray bottle but it seems to spray more than you need for the little brushes. I also think it might just be rubbing alcohol. It smells exactly the same. I notice that the packaging doesn't give the ingredients.
Having said all that, I sprayed my makeup dish (the one I swirl my EDM in) and the gunk that came out on the tissue was unbelievable! I've only been using them (makeup and dish) for a week. I'm going to spray the dish every day after I put my makeup on.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you? Yes No
This stuff is awesome! We use this at Ulta and I love how it removes the makeup so much after I'm done with application on customers. I'm glad we carry them too, so I had to buy one...I think it's too small to be 9 bucks though...and the refill bottle is like 32 I believe when it's really not that big. But it's good for temporary cleanings in between when you don't have to wait for your brush to dry. Just spray on once or twice and swish back n forth on a tissue.
i LOVE this. soooooo much easier than soaking or shampooing brushes and waiting for them to dry. just spray onto the brush and wipe it off on a cloth or tissue. deff buying again!
Brush Off actually works to disinfect the brush, but not to actually clean the brush. If you use the Brush Off and then use a brush cleaner like MAC's you actually see that it doesn't remove ALL of the color. So if you don't have time to clean your brushes properly then Brush Off is okay, because it dries instantly (kinda oily thogh). But if you want to REALLY remove all the color well, use a different brush cleaner like the one from MAC.
This is an AWESOME product! It does the job of cleaning the brushes while still mainting the intergrity of the brush. I use this to change colors on my MAC brushes to clean my Jane Iredale flat head brush & it does a beautiful job of cleaning! I used to use Johnson & Johnson, but Brush off is so much more convenient & easy for me. Just spray a couple of times on the brush & swirl off the makeup on a tissue. Can't say enough good things about this product!


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Willi Schmid in Lichtensteig in Switzerland's Toggenburg is one of the country's most innovative cheese makers. But he's not alone…[originally published in FT Weekend]
Willi Schmid, artisan cheese maker, was one of eight children growing up on the family farm in the rolling, prealpine farmland of the Toggenburg in eastern Switzerland. Fascinated from an early age by the mysteries of milk's leap to immortality, he left school to go straight into the cheese business, working his way around the country learning to make some of the classic varieties – Tilsiter, Appenzeller, Emmentaler, Sbrinz – for which Switzerland is famous. After a few years' practical experience, Schmid decided to delve into the science of cheese making and went back to dairy school where he developed a passionate interest in microbiology – he refers to it affectionately as 'Chäferli-Wissenschaft' ('beetle science'.)
His first independent venture was in partnership with another cheese maker, which ended in disaster and left him vowing never to go near a cheese vat again. After a two-year stint on a building site in Zurich ('never made so much money for so little work', he remarks wryly – and somewhat surprisingly) he was finally tracked down by Rolf Beeler, celebrated affineur and champion of Swiss farmhouse cheeses, who urged him to think again. In 2006 he found suitable premises in Lichtensteig on the edge of the Toggenburg and set up on his own (photo of the Städtlichäsi dairy, right by Nikos Kapelis.)
Five years down the line, Schmid is making around 30 different raw milk cheeses – hard, semi-hard and soft, from cow's, goat's and sheep's milk, all sourced from local farms. 'Surely', I gaped when we met recently in his shoebox-sized cheese dairy, 'you can't have created them all since 2006?' 'Well in fact,' he said, giving me a shy, sideways smile, 'it only took me a month – I had all these ideas in my head, I just needed to try them out.' His plan was to start with small quantities and test the market. Once he saw how things were going, he would concentrate on the ones that sold and forget the rest. In the event his new creations all rolled off the shelves. Nowadays he's struggling to keep abreast of demand.
Beeler describes Schmid as 'probably the best cheese maker in the country'. But while Schmid is certainly leading the pack, he's not the only innovator. 'It's crazy the progress that's been made in the past few years', he acknowledges. The turning point for the Swiss cheese world came in the 1990s when cheese making, which had been under central government control for almost a century, was finally deregulated, releasing a burst of creativity amongst a new generation of cheese artisans. And breaking away from the classic, hard, cooked types that have made Switzerland's reputation, the innovators are making soft, bloomy-rind cheeses (in the Camembert mould) and stinky, washed-rind varieties (think Munster, but milder), along with goat's and sheep's milk cheeses. Even a few Swiss blues are making a cautious debut.
It's invidious to single out any of Schmid's cheeses; each one is distinctively delicious. When pressed to name his own favourite, the cheese Meister admits to a soft spot for Bergmatter a medium-sized semi-hard cheese which he describes as one 'für Liebhaber', for real enthusiasts – just as well, for production is tiny, limited to the winter months between November and April.
With its deep brown, wonky, wrinkly rind, Bergmatter looks every inch the cheese for real enthusiasts: no mechanised process could ever produce something so delightfully anarchical, so utterly unique. The gnarled rind conceals a smooth interior, buttery yellow with a rash of pea-sized holes. The smell takes you straight up into the hayloft, with gentle wafts of manure thrown in. In the mouth it's smooth, gently yielding, with layers of rich, long-lasting flavour.
Another favourite is Bergfichte. With just a whiff of its pinkish smeared rind and bracing spruce band and a taste of its silky flesh, you're instantly transported up into the Toggenburg hills dotted with tall Norway spruces, their branches bent low under the burden of freshly fallen snow. Slice away the peachy-orange upper crust and dig into the ivory flesh with a spoon. In texture and taste, it's a cross between Vacherin Mont d'Or and Reblochon, succulent and creamy with a real mountain flavour.
Most celebrated of all is Schmid's Jersey Blue, which walked away with the top prize in the 2010 World Jersey Cheese Awards. Made from rich, full-cream milk from a local Jersey herd, it's somewhat similar in size and shape to a slightly lumpy Christmas pudding, with a delicate, greyish, bloomy rind. The flesh is marbled with random streaks of blueish-green. It's dense, smooth and sweetly creamy on the tongue, with none of Roquefort's sharp saltiness of and all the raw-milk complexity that's somehow lacking in modern Stilton.
Look out for these new wave cheeses on the cheese trolleys of Switzerland's top restaurants and in specialist cheese stores and fine food shops throughout the country. In the UK, try KäseSwiss, who have a good range of Swiss farmhouse cheeses at their stall at Borough Market in London. In the US, thanks to importer Caroline Hostettler, they can be found at places like the French Laundry, Garry Danko's and Joel Robuchon Las Vegas, in countrywide branches of Dean & De Luca and Whole Foods, and at Artisanal and Murrays in New York.
- Willi Schmid, Lichtensteig (Jersey Blue, Bergmatter, Bergfichte + more)
- Josef Barmettler, 6370 Stans (Stanser Fladä, Stanser Röteli)
- Michel Beroud, 1659 Rougemont (Fleurette/Tomme de Vache au Lait Cru)
- Regula Zwicky, 2354 Goumois (Bleu de Brebis)
- Peter & Chatrina Mair, 7559 Tschlin (Biochafsmilchkäse Terna)
- Didier Germain, 2316 Les Ponts de Martel (Bleuchâtel)
- François Jaquet, 1666 Grandvillard (Le Vieux Chevrier)
Bet you didn't know that saffron is grown in Switzerland – albeit in minuscule quantities. Thanks to Josef-Marie and Marlis Chanton who have some saffron fields in Mund in the Valais, we were recently able to take part in the precious harvest.
High above Brig in Switzerland's southernmost canton of Valais is a tiny village named Mund. At first sight there's nothing remarkable about the place – a few houses with neatly tended vegetable patches, a handful of typical Valaisan wooden storage huts (Spycher), a primary school, an ancient and a modern church. But in the 1980s, Mund shot to stardom on account of its one product: saffron.
Records show that the precious spice has been cultivated here since the 14th century, but over the centuries production dwindled to almost nothing. By the mid-1950s, saffron cultivation seemed doomed to become a distant folk memory.
It took the construction, in 1979, of an incongruous, unsightly road snaking up to the village from Brig in the valley below to breathe new life into the saffron story. The inhabitants of Mund were signally unconvinced by the supposed benefits that would come from a new road, which was deemed too big, too ugly and altogether surplus to people's needs. Worse still, it transpired that a swathe of the best saffron fields – which hardly anyone was aware of at the time, and apparently cared less about – would be intersected in no less than three places by the hairpin bends of the offending highway.
A militant band of Mund-dwellers and local enthusiasts swung into action with a plan to resurrect the village's ancient tradition of saffron-growing. A Safranzunft or saffron-grower's guild was born. Potatoes were pulled up, goats and sheep were removed to adjoining pastures and the steep, sandy hillsides were planted with countless bulbs of Crocus sativus. Their efforts made no difference to the construction of the road, which went ahead anyway. But it turned out to be the unlikely catalyst that led to the renaissance of the now famous saffron of Mund.
Before the road was ever mooted, saffron production is thought to have stood at around 20 grams. By 1982 this had rocketed to 400 grams. Nowadays there's talk of a total harvest of somewhere between 2 and 4 kilos, though discretion here (as in other aspects of Swiss life) is the order of the day.
Four kilos is not a whole lot of saffron. Worldwide around 300 tonnes are produced with Iran leading the field, swiftly followed by Spain – together these two produce about 80% of the global saffron harvest. But these precious few kilos of saffron from the Swiss Alps have been enough to launch the village of Mund in popular perception. And the saffron cultivators increase in number every year.
Some are Mund residents whose day jobs are down in the valley. Others, like Josef-Marie and Marlis Chanton, wine-growers in Visp, are enthusiasts who've been in on the saffron story from the start and are delighted to see this ancient tradition revived. I joined them the last weekend of October to help pick some of the precious blooms. We parked the car on the side of the contentious road, let ourselves in through a gate and scrambled up a steep path. Soon, in the scruffy, sandy soil of the almost vertical hillside, interplanted with rye ('to help prevent soil erosion', explained Marlis), we began to spot the beautiful pale mauve blooms streaked with deeper purple.
There's a painfully short window for the harvest, explained Marlis, typically from around mid-October till the end of the month. We stooped to pinch out the blooms one by one and laid them reverently in our basket – thirty flowers from one small field, twenty-seven from another. For one gram of dried saffron (the little sachets of dried saffron typically weigh one-tenth of a gram) you need about 150 blooms.
The stigmas – almost always 3, sometimes 4 and very rarely 5 – hang out between the petals like little tongues, deep rusty red in colour and wholly devoid – at least at this stage – of any aroma. The fabulous perfume of saffron develops only when the stigmas are laid out to dry, a process that was carried out traditionally in Mund on top of the tiled wood-burning stove in the front room. Just imagine the smell!
Before we left, Marlis pressed a tiny envelope of the precious stigmas into my husband's hands, dried from last year's harvest. 'Make it into a tea', suggested Marlis, 'it's wonderful for the digestive system'. Tea? You have to be joking. I haven't told him yet, but I have other plans for my husband's stigmas – a succulent risotto maybe, or a fragrant, seafood-infested paella or even a lightly sweetened loaf, richly golden with the precious spice.
Every year in Switzerland there's a big tradition of Brunch on the Farm on August 1, Swiss National Day. One of our favourites is held annually in Beatenberg (left) on the von Allmen farm. We're not the only ones who love it – annually some 500 people book in and turn up for the feast. Herr von Allmen offers his beautifully spruced up barn and tons of trestle tables and benches; the brunch is organised and provided by members of the village Trachtverein, the association that keeps alive the tradition of typical Swiss costume and traditional dances.
The drill is as follows: you buy your ticket in advance, then hand it over and make for the long serving tables in the huge barn, set out among the (pristine) grass-cutting machines and within sight of the (also pristine) milking parlour. Then you move along the line to compose your brunch. There's ham, sausages, eggs (over 200 are cracked open each year), the obligatory Rösti (more than 100 kilos of spuds are boiled, peeled, grated and freshly fried), hunks of fragrant alp cheese made from milk from the cows that graze the alpine pastures above the village each summer, and little dumpy Mutschlis (pictured left).
This being Switzerland, almost everything is home-grown or home-made – no self-respecting Beatenberg brunch provider would be seen dead sloping off to the local Migros for provisions. To go with the beautifully braided Züpfe (braided milk bread) and stout loaves of Burebrot (farmers' bread), there's sweet butter and bilberry and apricot jam. Herbal teas are offered, sweetened with honey from local hives. Even the Birchermuesli is home-made.
Outside the barn under an awning the local Ländlermusik quartet strikes up, and familiar strains of piano accordeons and double bass ring out.
Two little girls dressed up in typical costume with assorted hats put on an impromptu dance in the straw, spreading their skirts and bowing solemnly to one another.
Old boys sit out on the grass in the clear alpine sunlight, dressed in their Sunday best, smoking their pipes and setting the world to rights.
There's nothing like a real August 1 Brunch to get the full flavour of Switzerland –
don't miss it!


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Hi all!
I'm on the committee that is organizing a local event for the National Parkinson Foundation called Moving Day Atlanta which raises awareness about Parkinson's disease and helps generate funds for the local Atlanta chapter of the foundation.
Over 1 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with Parkinson's - and my grandfather is one of them - so this is a cause near and dear to my heart.
The event will take place at Centennial Olympic Park and will be a fun-filled, family-friendly event for all ages and abilities. In addition to the 5K walk, there will be a variety of movement activities yoga, dance, Pilates, Tai Chi, stretching and much more and celebrate the importance of movement in our lives. There will also be a kid's zone with fun activities for children.
For anyone Atlanta-based, please consider being a part of my team and joining me for the walk - I encourage you to get your friends, family and coworkers involved too!
Additionally, I am trying to raise $1500 for the organization, so any and all donations are welcome and much appreciated! Collectively, the Atlanta chapter is trying to raise over $170,000 this year – so every bit helps!
Info about the organization:
The National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) continues to bring help and hope to the estimated one million people in the United States, four to six million worldwide, who are living with Parkinson's disease. NPF is the only organization with a singular focus on improving the quality of care in Parkinson's disease. NPF programs reach more than one million people a year through its network of 39 chapters, 43 Centers of Excellence and 900 support groups. Since 1982, NPF has funded more than $180 million in care, research and support services.
Thank you for helping me reach my fundraising goal to support the vital work of the National Parkinson Foundation.


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You'll see it from time to time — 'this guy is hot, you have to pick him up,' or 'this guy is hot, this team needs to move him up in the batting order.' Brandon Belt was terrible last week, now he should be the number two hitter. Jon Jay is hitting .444 over the past two weeks, maybe you even heard someone tout him specifically.
Except that, if you read The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, you know that a player's work over the past week or two has little predictive bearing when it comes to his next plate appearance. There's a recap of the study here if you need a refresher. It makes intuitive sense — if you've gathered information on a player for four minor league seasons, and then two-plus major league seasons, why would Jay's last two weeks stack up to that? We've learned all about sample size, and this is in the SSS wheelhouse.
There is a preponderance of evidence, some even more recent than Tango's work. Ben Lindbergh found just this year that despite Albert Pujols' contention that his home runs would come in bunches and he wasn't worried, and even despite the subsequent home runs that came in bunches for him, home runs do not, in fact, come in bunches. Sky Andrecheck looked at 30-game hitting streaks — and he found that a player's batting average was LOWER than expected during the streak. Derek Carty replicated the work found in the book for pitchers and hitters and found that, while cold streaks are slightly more reliable, you're not going to learn too much from a hot or cold streak.
Perhaps you want to give a little bit of credence to a cold streak. There's a tiny sliver of evidence that it can mean something, and it's probably because there are other things going on. How many cold streaks ended with a DL stint? How many cold streaks came during a divorce or similar personal problem? Players are human, and negative feedback seems to beget more negativity. But let's not become amateur psychiatrists here.
Let's just emphasize that there's little to be learned from a hot streak.
At most, you might be able to cobble together some trade value with a less-saber-savvy fantasy owner, or maybe a manager will be duped into giving a player a bigger role based on a streak. Considering the likelihood that the hot streak isn't real, those are not sturdy pegs upon which you should rest your hat.
Case closed? Not quite. It turns out that there is some evidence that there are more volatile seasons than others. A player might be more streaky in a certain season — and all things equal, we want our position players to be more consistent than streaky in real life, and especially in head-to-head leagues, where a bad week at the wrong time can sink the best juggernaut.
Bill Petti, writing for Beyond the Box Score, did a five-part series on hitter volatility last season. He started by showing rolling ten-day weighted on-base-percentage graphs. Check out Evan Longoria and Scott Rolen versus David Wright in 2011. David Wright, by the way, showed up on Seth Samuel's similar work on FanGraphs as a streaky player as well.
You can see that Evan Longoria was the clear own in head-to-head fantasy baseball last season. There were weeks where David Wright was nigh un-ownable.
The lessons from his reasearch are not completely clear for fantasy baseball, since year-to-year correlation is still beyond Petti's reach. His calculator can find you a streaky player this year, but won't tell you if the same guy is going to be streaky next year. And since this was designed for real-life baseball, it favors players that can take walks and stay productive while the hits weren't falling. Unless you're in an OBP league, that doesn't have a ton of use even in a head-to-head league, other than a few more runs and stolen bases, perhaps.
But there are some general takeaways that work in fantasy baseball. The equation uses strikeouts as an input, which points once more to the negative aspects of the whiff. Players that strike out don't put the ball in play enough to show good batting averages, and since their batted ball samples are smaller, they can end up at the extremes in that category as well. Then again, Adam Dunn's .245 BABIP and Carlos Pena's .252 BABIP also have a lot to do with their batted ball mixes, so let's just stick with the impact strikeouts have on batting average and volatility.
If you are considering two players with about-equal talent levels for your weekly lineup head-to-head league, you might want to use Petti's volatility calculator to find out which player is more streaky. Maybe you've got a choice between Josh Reddick and Corey Hart for your final outfielder slot — you'll find that, despite almost identical wOBAs, Reddick is a tiny bit less volatile. He hasn't had a month as bad as Hart this season, and he also hasn't hit .300 in a month like Hart, too.
But they're pretty similar. For a more stark difference, you'll have to go to something like Brandon Phillips vs Michael Cuddyer. They both have double-digit home runs, some stolen bases, and decent batting averages — and a .342 wOBA. Now you'll get a volatility score that's 20% higher for Cuddyer than Phillips. If you need a steady eddy, you'd take Phillips. If you're an underdog that would need everything to go right to win, you might pick Cuddyer. Actually, right now, with Cuddyer out with an oblique strain, the decision would be easy, but it's still too good of an example to pass up.
And there you have it. Hot streaks tell you nothing, cold streaks tell you barely anything, and a player's streakiness in general can help you split a few hairs down the stretch. The easiest answer is to just ignore that whole aspect and get the best players on your team, but who said anything about fantasy baseball being easy.


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January 15, 2009, 7:30 AM
By Tom Junod
Dominic McGill
We don't, though. We don't stop watching. Reality programming was not invented in the Bush Years, but it kept proliferating until it became the most potent of the literal metaphors available to this nonmetaphorical age. We speak as one in the reality programming we make and watch; the message we broadcast to the world is unified and potent. And it's this: We Americans have a price. There is nothing and nobody we won't sell out, whether it's our principles or our children, as was the case with 2007's Kid Nation, in which parents left a group of kids to their own devices in the desert so television viewers could see which ones prevailed. Hell, what wasn't sold on the cheap during the last eight years? What line wasn't crossed? What company was too esteemed to be sold off, what governmental function too sacred to be privatized? The fact is, we don't know. We have no idea. We can't keep track. We don't know who owns us anymore or what the payback is supposed to be, any more than we know exactly how much we owe or how much of us exists on some distant server, as a result of agreements entered into with passwords long forgotten.
This might sound alarmist to the point of paranoia if we didn't see, every day, the confirmation that we are being done in by what we've ignored, what we've denied, or what we've forgotten that we agreed to the secret world of our own rather gleefully accrued liabilities. Answer, please: Is there any collapse that could possibly surprise us, after the collapses of the last eight years? After the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001, the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, the seismic swallowing of the tsunami in 2004, the drowning of New Orleans in 2005, the collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis in 2007, and the collapse of the economy in 2008? If we've learned anything during the Bush Years, it's that we're not safe, and nothing is sacred. But we've also learned that there's no such thing as paranoia that, if anything, we haven't been paranoid enough, as even the most terrible events turned out to be mere portents of more terrible events to come. We've learned, in other words, learned in our bones, that It Can Get Worse. But the question remains: Can we? Can we get worse? Have we hit bottom yet, as a people? I mean, look to the future: It's not simply that there is such a variety of apocalyptic scenarios looming on the horizon, from the economic to the environmental, from Peak Oil to Peak Water to Peak Food; it's that our Peak Lifestyle is implicated in just about all of them, and we know that our Peak Lifestyle is the one thing we're not going to give up without a fight.
And so give this to global warming: It's another test case. Because over the last eight years since our president rejected the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001 what we've done with global warming is what we've done with the war on terror and the war in Iraq and the authorization and outsourcing of torture and the creation of a security state and the creation of an insecurity state, in terms of the marketplace: We've lived with it. We've gotten really good at living with things during the Bush Years, at tolerating the intolerable. And while this may sound like another tip of the hat to the incredible resilience of the American people, it's not: Resilience, after all, is not what's required in crisis when the crisis is partly of your own making. Responsibility is. We have heard of the Tech Bubble of the Clinton Years, the Housing Bubble of George W. Bush. Well, the bubble that we're living in now still is the bubble that's all our own. It's the Moral Bubble, and it will not be pricked until we take responsibility not just for the forty-third president's actions but for our inaction for all the agreements we've made without awareness, for all the awareness we've come to without vigilance, for all the times we've touched the easy, insulating button of our assent.
There's this thing we do. It's a big thing, or it's supposed to be. We do it every four years, and this year it seemed as important as our schoolteachers told us it was. It was a test of our assent, which used to be our birthright as Americans the Whitmanesque "Yes" we shouted to the world and now seemed like the signature on some damning document we didn't read and don't even have access to. Ask people what the hell happened over the last eight years and the matter of assent of belief inevitably turns up somewhere in their answer: "We believed." Ask them what they believed in, however, and the question becomes much more difficult. Did they believe in George W. Bush? No, not really he just wasn't that kind of man, despite his public efforts to make himself into that kind of man. And so what he relied on, instead, was an apparatus of belief, which required only a passive consensus. We believed, after being told that we had to believe. We believed, after being told that if we didn't, we would die.
Now we were being asked to believe again, in a much more personal way not only in a man, but a man who might prove to the world that even after the Bush Years we are the exceptional people we say we are; who might be the hero we've been waiting for; who might help us transcend our history and ourselves. Of course, we've learned something about American exceptionalism in the past eight years that it's the ingredient for American equivalence and we've learned something about waiting for heroes as well. And yet what choice do we have? We're Americans. We can't vote against assent; we can't vote against assent because the guy we're assenting to once knew the guy who appeared in The New York Times on September 11, 2001, in an edition of the paper we knew enough then not to read, because there were more important things to do. The kernel is in the coda, and the coda is there, right in front of us. So we do it. We click the button; we agree to the terms and conditions of Barack Obama's service, hoping for a reprieve from the last eight years of fine print.
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Suzuki Forenza Tires
I put 17k on the factory Hankooks that came with my Forenza wagon, replaced with winter tires for about 9k. When I put the summer tires back on, I noticed that there was not a lot of tread left. Hope I can put another 17k on before winter, but I doubt it. Is 25k acceptable for cars these days? Do the factory hankooks come with a treadwear warranty?
chrisducati Posts: 394
arkville Posts: 4Just bought a used Forenza Wagon EX and the original tires at 20,000 miles were crapped out.They were all cupped and made a thumping sound. Probably never rotated since day one. Bought four new Cooper tires with a 50,000 mile warranty and road hazard protection. Have used Coopers for years and always get good wear. This will be my first time using low profile tires.
arkville Posts: 4I felt that the tire wear was probably most likely due to improper inflation and lack of rotation. The air in the tires was only 26 pps.
However I would be very interested in your theory. Could you elaborate on the suspension problems in these cars?
This is my first foriegn car and know little about it. Have found very little negative reports so far. Any further help greatly appreciated.
Thanks -
chuck1 Posts: 1,405"However I would be very interested in your theory. Could you elaborate on the suspension problems in these cars?"
I didn't sat there were suspension problems. However, the Forenza and Veronas don't have good track records generally.
Just have someone inspect the suspension to be on the safe side.
Happy Motoring! -
34rod Posts: 5My daughter recently got a new 2006 Forenza, and the tires (Handkooks 195 55r15) appear to lousy for wet weather driving. They break traction, spin or slide in rain and are not much better on dry roads. I am considering replacing them with another brand. They have less than 200 miles on them, but I don't want to take a chance on her having an accident because the tires have a poor grip. I have always liked BFG tires and use them on several cars including my street rods. Does any one have another recommendation for replacement?
Thanks. -
bwstyles Posts: 3I put some BFGoodrich g-Force Sports on my Forenza about 2 months ago. I couldn't be happier with these tires. First of all these tires stick like super glue in wet and they're bolted to the road when dry. I have yet to loose traction and I've taken some pretty sharp turns too fast trying to break them loose. It's almost impossible. On top of all that they wear great and they're pretty inexpensive($75-$85 per tire). I'll change them out for Semperit Sport Grip Snow tires for winter. They're made in the Netherlands so you know they do the job and they're only $50 a tire.
kctkbss Posts: 2I bought a 2006 Forenza May 1,2006. I do not like the tires either. I have out 12,800 miles on my car as of today (I travel alot with my kids in games). And my tires are completely worn out. My tires too from the start have slipped and do very lousy in wet weather. Thanks for the info on the BFG's. I will be getting new tires on my car in a week.
suzukiowner Posts: 3
hendrickson Posts: 2
minxy Posts: 1I bought a car less than a week ago within two days of owning it the back tire was looking a little low my husband denied it said things like I worry too much the next day it was undeniable even the lady next door was like you realize you got a flat tire right? So he took it to the dealership and they told him they couldn't do anything it had a nail in it we would need to buy a new tire when we bought the car they said it had brand new tiers isn't there some sort of warranty or something we can do?
tnel332 Posts: 23I am leary about these tires. My son bought a 05 Forenza and it really seems to be a decent car (and here comes the but) BUT I am afraid of the tires. I don't know why, maybe its the name. I've never heard of these before he bought the car. He is going to be driving it to college in Pa in a couple of weeks so I was going to change the tires for him. The shop I go to sells Cooper tires. Are they a good tire or should I stick with the Goodyear tires that I have on my other cars? Price is a factor here but so is safety.
OH by the way...the avitar is not our car. As a matter of fact, I don't know where it came from it just showed up when previewing the post. If it is not there when submitted, disregard.... -
cindh Posts: 1i have a 2008 suzuki forenza and would not own OR LEASE ANOTHER ONE -. bought brand new nice car FIRST FEW MILES BUT now im on my 5th YES 5th set of tires !!!!!!! the best i can get out of set is 10,000 miles at the MOST if im extremely LUCKY they are low profiles they tell me. but dont hit a pebble the rims are bent ALL 4 I GOT A NEW ONE GUESS WHAT? BENT AGAIN!!!FROM THE DEALERSHIP I HAVE HAD NOTHING BUT BAD LUCK W THIS CAR SPOKE W THE LOCAL TIRE STORE THEY SAY OH YES THEY ARE NOTORIOUS FOR THIS PROBLEM EVEN THE DRIVING SCHOOL IN MY TOWN GOT RID OF ALL OF THEIR FORENZAS SAME PROBLEMS SOOOOO ..I CALLED THE SUZUKI DEALERSHIP I BOUGHT IT FROM THEY ARE ZERO HELP TOO THEY AS MUCH AS TOLD MY FATHER AND I THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM EVEN GOT NAMES OF THESE SO CALLED GENTLEMEN CALLED HIGHER UP" OH, HES IN A MEETING" OR BETTER YET "AWAY FROM HIS DESK" im not asking for MUCH a car that is dependable and that i can get a oil change without being told you will need tires SOON. I CANT AFFORD THIS CAR -I HAVE A RELATIVELY NEW CAR AND CANT TRUST IT TO GO ANYWHERE FOR FEAR ILL GET ANOTHER FLAT TIRE (WHICH IT HAS NOW) DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD HAVE A BLOW OUT (35MPH )WITH MY 2 KIDS IN THE CAR ****STRANDED**** AND THE LAST FLAT WAS ON A HIGHWAY WITH MY KIDS AGAIN IN THE CAR ***STRANDED AGAIN*****THIS IS VERY SCARY ANY SUGGESTIONS?
This discussion has been closed.


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iOS 8 Beta 2 Released – How To Install iOS 8 Beta 2 Without Activation Errors
Today, over two weeks after having released the first beta iteration of iOS 8 to registered developers, Apple seeded iOS 8.0 beta 2.
In today's video on my secondary channel, I've highlighted how it's "technically" possible to install the second beta on a device that isn't enrolled in Apple's Developer program.
Things To Note When Installing iOS 8 Beta 2
- If your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch's UDID isn't registered, you won't be able to connect to iTunes once iOS 8 beta 2 is installed.
- Only registered iOS Developers can legally download iOS 8.0 beta IPSWs.
- Activation errors may occur after the latest beta is installed.
- You can only update to iOS 8 beta 2 from iOS 7.1.1, which causes complications for Jailbreakers and individuals running the first iOS 8 beta.
If you're confused by the above points and/or need clarification, refer to my in-depth video, which is embedded above.
Stay tuned for more on iOS 8 and don't forget to like us on Facebook!
June 17, 2014 at 11:05 pm
can i not even connect my iphone 5s to itunes via wifi ? after i have updated to ios 8 beta 2 ?
June 18, 2014 at 9:40 am
That is correct, you cannot, unfortunately – it will likely throw and activation error.