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Billy Hollis
Annoying Orange and Hillary Clinton – separated at birth?
At least, that's what this New York Times Magazine cover made me think:
Here's the side-by-side:
(If you don't follow Internet humor trends, Annoying Orange is the star of some hit videos on YouTube. Just go there if you want to see them.)
A long time fan of the book reviews the "Ender's Game" movie
Movies made from books seem to have the odds stacked against them, especially science fiction books. My favorite author, Robert Heinlein, wrote two books that were made into movies after his death, and both sucked toxic waste: Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers.
There have been a few excellent movie adaptations, mostly in other genres. Hopscotch and Being There come to mind. In both cases, even the book author liked the result.
More recently, the last Harry Potter movie did quite a good job of adapting the book. I started reading that series to my then-young children when it came out. Most of the movie adaptations in the series were fair, but the last one was worthy of several repeated viewings. Many Tolkien fans swear by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They'll sit through twelve hour marathons to watch all three movies again.
I wish I could say Ender's Game is in the same league, but I can't.
I'm assuming most readers have read the book at some point, so I'm not worried about spoilers. For those of you who have not read the book, I suggest that you don't bother with this movie. It will probably feel like another generic "kid saves the universe" story, with special effects trying to carry a sketchy plot. If you plan to see it despite this advice, then you might want to stop reading now.
For those who have read the book, let me explain my mixed feelings about this movie.
If you already understand the story, this movie isn't awful. It's nowhere near as bad as the Heinlein adaptations I mentioned earlier. It has generally good casting and good special effects. If you are a really big fan of the book, as I am, it's worth a viewing. It really works to stay faithful to the book.
In fact, the movie's biggest problem is that it tries too hard to stay faithful to the book.
I cited Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 because it is an excellent example of adapting the story to the needs of a movie. There are many things that depart from the book. For example, in the book, Voldemort can't feel when a Horcrux is destroyed, and Harry can't just sense their presence. But the movie needed those shortcuts for dramatic effect, and they work very, very well in the film.
Ender's Game feels like a Cliff's Notes version of the book. Or perhaps a Cliff's Notes version with every other page missing.
Every major theme and turning point is included, but most of them are in matchstick drawings instead of fleshed out drama. For example, the battle room scenes are well done from a production standpoint. But there are not many of those scenes. The development of Ender's skills and leadership is compressed to a mishmash, with one battle against other teams mashing together several battles in the book, simply extracting key scenes from each one. The result feels disconnected and contrived.
When the script does depart from the book, it's done badly. They obviously wanted the character of Petra in that major battle room scene, so they contrived a sprained ankle by a team member and a dispensation from Graff to get her there. But just before that, it's explained that Ender's team is a bunch of misfits anyway. At that point, Petra doesn't have her own army, so why not just put her in Ender's and skip the contrivance? That's the kind of spackling over a problem that makes a movie adaptation smooth.
The final battle is fairly well done. The set for it was perfect, and the use of holographic technology and gestures was as good as any movie I've ever seen.
Then that was spoiled with a heavy handed resolution about the battle being real instead of a simulation. That entire part of the movie bends over backwards to slap people in the face with the supposed peaceful nature of the buggers, and how terribly awful it was to kill all of them. As the book made clear, they started the conflict and killed many millions of people. When the survival of one's species is on the line, giving the benefit of the doubt to an enemy who attacked first is mushy, politically correct sillyness.
Casting is reasonably good. They apparently wanted the gruff version of Harrison Ford here, so that's what they got the entire movie. They could have done lots worse for the role of Graff. Ben Kingsley was fine as Mazer Rackham.
Most of the kids are good enough to get by. The actress in the role of Petra turned in a good performance, but she looked too soft for my vision of Petra. Plus, she resembled the actress playing Valentine enough that I got confused at least once about which one Ender was talking to.
I have no idea if the kid playing Bean is any good, because they didn't give him enough of a part to find out. I realize the story had to focus on Ender, and Bean was pushed to the background to allow that. It still grated on me to see one of my favorite characters reduced to wallpaper.
Bottom line: this movie isn't awful, but it isn't great either. As I said, if you really liked the book, you'll probably want to see the movie at some point. You probably won't be shouting at the screen in rage the way I did at Starship Troopers. But unless you liked it better than I did, you won't be watching it twice.
"Is this road getting steeper? It feels steeper."
And while I have your attention, Bill Quick is doing one of his very infrequent fund-raisers. Give him a hand if you can. Besides being one of the strongest voices for liberty on the Interwebs, he also loves Dale's auto reviews.
The need for more direct action against the GOP establishment
I was reading Da Tech Guy's musings on why limited government types need to work within the GOP rather than try a third party approach to rid themselves of the GOP establishment. He quotes Rush Limbaugh on what Ronald Reagan managed to do the last time the GOP establishment found themselves threatened:
The real question, in my humble opinion, is that this effort and energy needs to be used, as Ronald Reagan did, to take over the Republican Party, to repopulate it and that's exactly what Reagan did, he took it away from the Rockefeller blue-blood country club types starting in 1976, took him 'til 1980 to do it.
Worked before, so it should work again, right? I'm skeptical.
First, what did Reagan really accomplish? A few things, sure. Don't get me wrong – he was the best we've seen in my lifetime, but given the competition, that doesn't mean much.
He got income taxes down from their preposterous progressive wet dream rates of 70%. He stood up to the Soviet Union, and possibly hastened the crumbling of that creaking empire by a few years. He made it respectable, after the raging waves of liberalism in the sixties and seventies, to say that government was more likely to be a problem than a solution for social problems.
And that's about it.
There was no "taking over the Republican Party" under Reagan. He got a few things done, but as soon as he was out the door, it was back to business as usual for the GOP.
Reagan was forced or induced by the GOP establishment to take on one of their blue bloods as his VP. Then, after Bush the Elder won what was supposedly a third helping of Reagan, he immediately broke his solemn promise on taxes, passed more social nonsense such as the ADA, and managed to fumble away the popularity and credibility built by Reagan to the point that he was defeated by a smarmy hick used car salesman from Arkansas.
The GOP then proceeded to nominate Bob Dole, Bush the Younger, John McCain, and Mitt Romney as their presidential candidates. GOP establishment stalwarts, every one of them. In some of those cases, the GOP establishment pulled out every trick in the book to drag their preferred choice over the finish line.
Yes, the GOP establishment learned something from the ascent of Reagan. They learned techniques to keep it from ever happening again.
The GOP establishment has made something perfectly clear: they would prefer to lose rather than let people like Reagan threaten their dominance of the party. Even when they get control, as Newt Gingrich managed in 1994, they revert to their ruling class habits and fumble the opportunity away without making any progress in limiting government. In fact, after a few years, and given a cooperative president, they proved they prefer bigger government to smaller. Under Bush, a classic GOP establishment blue blood, the establishment players in the Congress enthusiastically federalized education, passed a whole new social welfare program for seniors, and passed the biggest infringement of free speech seen in my lifetime (thankfully eventually overturned by the Supreme Court).
What motivation do limited government types have to vote for such weasels or give them support of any kind? Not much, and the elections of 2006 and 2008 proved it.
Even after seeing their limited government base re-energize the party and give them back control of the House in 2010, the GOP establishment still didn't get the message. They worked their butts off to get the "electable" Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee. Having again shown contempt for limited government types, the establishment GOP thus managed to lose against one of the weakest presidential candidates for re-election in history. No one besides Obama has *ever* won re-election with fewer votes than he got the first time, which ought to tell you just how weak he was. But the GOP managed to be even weaker, with a candidate who looked like an android programmed to only say nice things, and never ever raise any of those unpleasant ideas about limiting government. Oh, no, government was just going to be managed better. Just like it was under those managerial types named Bush.
So how do these establishment GOP types keep getting what they want? One big reason is that limited government advocates such as Limbaugh, Da Tech Guy, Charles Krauthammer, Allahpundit over at Hot Air, and about half the denizens of sites such as Free Republic pound the same drum every election. Their basic message is "Yep, we've been screwed by these guys more times than we can count, but we still have to support them because the Democrats are worse!TM"
OK, message taken – the Democrats are worse. But, as limited government types demonstrated in three of the last four elections, that's not enough reason to support the GOP establishment. Indeed, in the only exception that the GOP did well (2010), many of the limited government types only turned out because they were supporting someone other than an establishment candidate.
So we're really four for four in proving that limited government types are fed up on supporting the establishment GOP.
Why on Earth would they not be? What's the point of investing time, energy, and emotion in an effort to elect someone who will most likely end up being just as subverted by the GOP establishment as Bill Frist, Tom Coburn, Jeff Flake, and Mario Rubio have been?
And even on those occasions where a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul ends up winning and sticks to their guns, they can't get anything done. After obediently voting for establishment GOP types for leadership positions, they then spend more time fighting the very people they supported instead of fighting Democrats.
The limited government advocates I mentioned above all desperately want to believe that the answer is simply running better primary candidates to beat establishment Republicans, but then supporting the establishment guys who win the rigged game at least nine times out of ten. That's playing by their rules. I simply don't see how that can ever work.
Therefore I'm confident that simply "working within the GOP" isn't the answer. It's a fantasy to think that will get us a party in which the leaders will work for limited government. The establishment GOP has decades of experience defeating every such attempt, and they've got the entire nomination and campaign financing game rigged in their favor.
Plus, the establishment GOP is willfully blind to the biggest successes the Republicans have had in my lifetime: Reagan, and the turnovers of Congress in 1994 and 2010. All three were fueled by enthusiasm for limited government. If the establishment GOP were simply practical politicians, they would embrace the limited government strategies and philosophies that won those elections.
But by subverting every one of those successes, they proved that they're not just apathetic to limited government – they're actively opposed to it. As members of the political class, the only thing they like about their limited government base is the votes provided. They are willing to pretend to embrace limited government principles to get those votes, but that just makes them more dishonest than Democrats, who are at least honest about growing government without end.
I see no reason to give the establishment GOP any quarter whatsoever.
The reluctant backers of the GOP establishment then say, "A third party would be disastrous! The Democrats would dominate for a generation!" I think things are a lot more complex than that.
First, waves of political change tend to happen in unpredictable, non-linear ways. We're headed for some radical change in the next couple of decades, as we face multiple "what cannot go forever will stop" problems. Plus, a majority of people consider politicians more untrustworthy than the guys offering Three Card Monte on the streets of New York. I think there are plenty of possibilities in that mix to trigger the downfall of a major party.
Second, a third party opens up possibilities that make it more likely to genuinely take back the GOP by kicking out enough establishment Republicans.
The GOP stalwarts would have you think that the only way a third party would work is trying to challenge both the Democrat and the Republican in a large number of races. That would indeed give Democrats a better chance in marginal districts, and help them achieve majorities in Congress. But that's not the only way to do it.
Many states allow candidates to run under the banner of more than one party. In such places, a candidate backed by a Tea Partyish third party could also run for the GOP nomination.
The message to Republicans would be "Look, I've already secured this limited government party's nomination, and so I'm running. I'd also like to be the Republican nominee, which would mean I have a really good chance to win. But if I'm not the GOP nominee, the conservative/libertarian vote will be split and the Democrat would probably win."
The GOP establishment would be furious, and as I noted above, they would probably prefer to lose to a Democrat rather than cave to such pressure. I'm not so sure, though, about the typical Republican primary voter. A lot of them are fed up with business-as-usual Republicans, and might be open to someone who shows serious limited government credentials by also running under a party specifically created to advance those principles.
A variation in other states would be to run for the GOP nomination, and make it clear from the beginning that losing that nomination to an establishment Republican will then result in a third party run. Sure, the establishment GOP and media would be shouting "sore loser!" till election day. But they had no problem with an establishment Republican (gentry GOP member Lisa Murkowski) who did exactly that, so why not ignore their hypocritical braying and do it anyway?
Would these kinds of strategies work? Probably in some cases, and not in others. But we can't solve the current dominance of establishment Republicans by playing by their rules. It's time to try more hardball strategies.
There is risk in that approach. There's also risk in the "stick by the GOP because Democrats are worse" route. The limited government energy generated in 2010 has already been reduced to cynicism in many Tea Party supporters, and much of that reduction is due to seeing their goals subverted by candidates they trusted who defected to the establishment GOP side. We've seen what happens when the base just gets sick of supporting the establishment Republicans and drops out of the process. We get demagogue Democrats.
I think it's time for direct confrontation with the GOP establishment. They've screwed us long enough. Any game theory expert would tell us it's time to return the favor.
Quick hits for Saturday morning
National Journal asks Do Women Make Better Senators Than Men? Given those doing the asking, I'm pretty sure that the question really means "better at responding to emotion-driven appeals from the left". And the answer is yes.
The DOJ urges city officials in Sanford, Florida to "seek justice for Trayvon Martin". Which means, as I said earlier in the week, assuming that he's innocent and Zimmerman is guilty, regardless of facts, evidence, or law. As expected, the DOJ is doing their part to accomplish the goals of white segregationists.
The National Transportation Safety Board apologizes that an intern caused a local TV station to use joke Asian names such as "Captain Sum Ting Wong" in an official news broadcast. You would think that with youth unemployment so high, they could get less ignorant interns. But I'm sure that, for the NTSB, political correctness trumps competency, so I'm not surprised.
Microsoft's Surface tablet is not exactly exceeding expectations. As in a 1.8% tablet market share for first quarter of 2013. The price of the low-end RT version was recently cut in response. The article says "Why did Microsoft's Surface fail so spectacularly? One reason might have been the unusual Windows 8 operating system." I'd agree, because the hardware isn't bad. I've used Windows 8 on and off for over a year now, and I still dislike its blocky, garish, appearance. That, and the generally untuitive interaction, could be fixed, but it would take design talent that Microsoft doesn't have.
This is probably one of the triggers for Microsoft's announced reorganization. By the way, if you pay attention to the Microsoft ecosystem and you don't know who Kevin Turner is, you should. The ex-Walmart exec is COO and would love to be Steve Ballmer's successor as CEO.
I joked to someone this week that, with the emphasis now on devices and away from software, Microsoft should change their name to Macrostuff.
Yessir, that Obama sure does know how to make the rest of the world like us again: "…the US is again being seen as an over-weaning superpower that brushes aside smaller nations."
Speaking of Obama's superhuman capabilities, you know Obamacare is in real trouble when the White House is holding special briefings for the likes of Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein. No doubt we will see the resulting talking points in our comment section by sometime next week.
Countdown T-minus 2 days until you can have Twinkies again. And until one of my favorite naughty jokes becomes viable again.
Today's GOP: Proud of going to the left of Obama with the Farm Bill
I told you a while back how I get email from politicians that I never asked for and from which I can't opt out because they don't give any mechanism for that. I got a real doozy yesterday.
It's from Marlin Stutzman, Congressman from Indiana, bragging about separating the Farm Bill out from a bunch of other Ag Department stuff:
Transparent government won an important victory today. Conservatives seized an opportunity to split the Farm Bill, a landmark reform that breaks the unholy alliance between food stamps and agriculture policy. For the first time since the 1970's taxpayers will have an honest look at how Washington spends their money on agriculture and food stamp policy.
At first I thought that sounded pretty good. Then I read what Heritage had to say about this "landmark reform" (found via Instapundit and Megan McArdle):
Supporters of this farm-only farm bill wasted the golden opportunity that separation could have provided: the ability to promote policies that benefit taxpayers, farmers, and consumers in a fiscally responsible way. With the passage of this bill, the House has gone even further to the left than the Senate bill. It would spend more money than Obama on the largest farm program, crop insurance [emphasis mine].
On top of all this, the process House Republicans used to get this 600-plus-page bill to the floor in a mere 10 hours essentially violates their own promise to conduct business in an open and transparent manner [emphasis mine]. They prohibited legislators from introducing amendments. And, they played a game of bait and switch by claiming this bill was the same text from the failed House farm bill of a few weeks ago.
In fact, they made this new bill even worse—by making sneaky changes to the bill text so that some of the costliest and most indefensible programs no longer expire after five years, but live on indefinitely. This means the sugar program that drives up food prices will be harder to change, because it doesn't automatically expire. It also means the new and radical shallow loss program that covers even minor losses for farmers will indefinitely be a part of the law.
Note the sleazy irony. Congressman Stutzman starts by bragging about transparency in a bill that was passed in a process that was about as transparent as toxic sludge.
This is today's GOP – paying off their corporate cronies and bragging about how transparently they did it.
Leftist collectivism fulfills the dreams of the segregationists
Over at Just One Minute, Tom takes a look at a couple of articles on the Zimmerman trial, and finds an astonishing admission from a black pastor.
If you've been paying attention to the trial, you know that it's almost over, and every observer with a shred of objectivity thinks Zimmerman will get a "not guilty" verdict.
Problem is, the local black community was convinced from the beginning that Zimmerman was guilty. The media led them right to that conclusion with misleading reporting. For at least one outlet, NBC, it went beyond misleading into outright fraud.
Naturally, those craven journalists will never take responsibility and set the record straight. They even continue to fan the flames with race-baiting articles like the one Tom cites from the New York Times, which included this quote:
Mr. Oliver, the Sanford pastor, said he remained optimistic. "You can feel a little sense that anger is re-emerging," he said.
You don't have to be a trained sociologist* to know what that means – possible civil violence, maybe on the scale of the Rodney King riots.
Why anger? Isn't an innocent man walking free a good thing? Ah, but we're back to the world of post-modern narrative. Truth doesn't matter, only narrative matters, and narrative doesn't have to have any relationship to truth. In the black community, the dominant narrative is that Zimmerman is guilty. As that race-baiting article put it:
Still, black pastors, sociologists and community leaders said in interviews that they feared that Mr. Martin's death would be a story of justice denied, an all-too common insult that to them places Trayvon Martin's name next to those of Rodney King, Amadou Diallo and other black men who were abused, beaten or killed by police officers.
That paragraph only makes any sort of logical sense if you assume from the outset that Trayvon is innocent and Zimmerman is guilty.
Out in the real world, where people are watching the trial, there is a dawning realization that the media got it wrong in the first place, and Zimmerman deserves acquittal. Some of us actually went beyond the fraudulent reporting of the major media and realized that months ago.
But the local black community, and others like it across the nation, sounds like it is not prepared to accept that message. They've been told for too long how they are victims and Trayvon is just another one.
Despicable race baiters such as the author of that New York Times article, and the sociologist quoted in it, carefully nurture that attitude. Local leaders pick up the tune, amplifying it. The local educational system, mostly dominated by left-leaning teachers unions, reinforces it while simultaneously ensuring that the locals are handicapped in trying to ever break out of that cultural matrix.
The end result is a community culturally isolated from its larger society. It's members reinforce each others prejudices, and nurture old grievances. They find themselves unsuited for life outside their local community, because they lack the education to fit in anywhere else. This becomes yet more evidence that the outside world has it in for them.
Thus is fulfilled the dreams of the southern white segregationists. Blacks are encouraged to stay in their own culturally isolated communities.** They are encouraged to believe they are somehow different and cannot mix with outside communities. Their poor education marks them as second class citizens.
Who would have thought that government dependence programs, corrupt Democratic city politicians, and a biased leftist media would accomplish what the white segregationists could not?
For me, it's one more reason to despise the American left. I hate what they have done to my fellow citizens. I despair when I realize that a typical inner-city resident has no reasonable hope of social mobility, and is stuck in a cycle of government dependence, generation after generation. I shake my head at the nonsense peddled to them by the left and by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama.
I hate that one of the more likely outcomes of the Zimmerman trial is that, like the Rodney King affair, black neighborhoods will end up getting torched and looted – by blacks.***
Hey, New York Times and all your "compassionate" leftist race-baiters – does this make you happy?
* Like the race-baiting one in the article, who complained that the non-credible, borderline illiterate star witness for the state was "mammyfied".
** As one of the effects, just look at how many wealthy suburbs of major American cities are lily-white.
*** I hope it doesn't happen, and my incurable optimism says maybe the evidence is so clear in this trial that it won't. But lately, my pessimistic side has a better track record than my optimistic side.
Obama probably didn't overtly order the IRS Tea Party targeting–and that makes it worse
Obama's shills have settled in on a long-term talking point concerning the IRS scandal. They say something along the lines of "Obama didn't tell the IRS to target anyone for political reasons. That's just crazy. And, since you can't pin anything on Obama, there's no scandal here."
There are two clear logical fallacies in this position.
First, it's a strawman argument. I don't know anyone anywhere on the political spectrum who is saying that Obama actually issued any directives to anyone to start the targeting. In one of my previous posts about it, I explicitly said
Even if Obama isn't directly involved (and he would have to be sand-poundingly stupid to have issued actual directives that resulted in this) his rhetoric towards these groups was a contributing factor, so he bears some responsibility.
Along the same lines, one of our commenters (jpm100) wrote this morning:
…these orders didn't necessarily have to come from the Whitehouse. The organization is corrupted by years democratic nepotism and recent leadership influenced by Team Obama and the tone of non-accountability set by the Whitehouse. Team Obama knew the kind of people they were appointing. These people knew what Team Obama wants. And they knew the worst consequence for them would be a job change to some Democrat Party position or some job with a Democrat benefactor. So they just did it.
The Whitehouse could be involved, but other than ensuring no serious consequences after the fact, it doesn't have to be.
These comments also point up the second logical fallacy. Big-government fanciers really don't want to face up to the possibility that the federal government is just as out of control as those on the right have been saying for years (or decades). They would very much like to pretend that there's no scandal here.
So they use a complete non sequitur. "Obama didn't give the directive" –> "There's no scandal."
This is stupid even by standards of leftist argument. Political targeting by the IRS is a serious and scandalous problem no matter how it started.
We know the political targeting is there. The attempted leftist misdirection that it wasn't politically motivated and that "progressive groups were targeted too" failed just as badly as the "doctored emails" Benghazi talking point.
Two senior IRS bureaucrats have now taken the 5th. The FBI is stonewalling an investigation that Congress ordered. It's possible, or even likely, that the targeting affected the outcome of the 2012 elections.
So we have a serious, serious scandal. I said in the earlier post that
The IRS scandal is bigger than Watergate, bigger than Benghazi, bigger than Fast and Furious, bigger than Iran-Contra, bigger than Monicagate – bigger than any other scandal for the federal government in my lifetime.
The reason I believe that is what the scandal says about the federal bureaucracy. The one agency that is supposed to be scrupulously non-partisan is revealed as having chosen sides in the partisan debate.
It doesn't matter if Obama ordered it.* All he had to to was put forth enough "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" rhetoric for the IRS bureaucracy to know they likely would not be punished by him for doing it.**
It would only take one other essential ingredient – an IRS bureaucracy sympathetic to the Obama administration and hostile to his political opponents. That's what the scandal shows us – that the supposedly non-partisan bureaucracy, the one we all have to deal with whether we like it or not, is now a de facto arm of political leftism.
We have additional evidence for this. We know that the IRS favors Obama in political contributions:
While IRS employees generally donated to Obama by a 4-to-1 ratio, the lawyers for that particular federal agency donated to Obama by an astounding 20-to-1 ratio, according to Robert Anderson, associate professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law.
Lawyers are relevant because they are the ones taking the lead in writing regulations, litigating cases, and making delicate legal judgment calls in borderline cases.
The result is a solvent that is eating away at our civil society. Once half the country no longer trusts the government bureaucracy to even carry out it's most basic functions in a non-partisan way, the seeds are sown for a terrible reckoning.
That's what makes it even worse that the targeting probably was not ordered by Obama. Assuming he didn't overtly order it, and the IRS bureaucrats came up with it on their own, means we are getting much closer to that reckoning that we thought.
* I'm not completely dismissing the possibility that someone in the White House did start the ball rolling. Probably not Obama, though – at most his role might have been some casual musing about how those Tea Party groups were getting pretty uppity, and someone should check into them. I'd be flabbergasted if any hard evidence turned up that he directly ordered the targeting.
** There is ample evidence that the Obama administration will cover for its allies reflexively. See the Black Panther voter intimidation case for an example.
IRS investigation still lags–I'm guessing they can't find anyone who wants the job
Via Instapundit, I see that an attorney representing Tea Party groups says:
"I have no reason to believe there is an investigation. It appears to me the Obama administration is only talking to itself," Mitchell stated in an e-mail.
The FBI announced the supposed investigation over six weeks ago. Three weeks later, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he didn't know who the lead investigator is or how many agents are assigned.
Unlike most of the misdirection and obfuscation in the IRS scandal, I think he was telling the truth, and I think the reason is simple: at that point, and maybe even up to now, there may not be a lead investigator.
The FBI clearly doesn't want to do this investigation. If the IRS targeting scandal is as bad as it appears so far, the investigation is going to be long and messy, and possibly end up sending some federal bureaucrats to jail. I doubt this outcome has much appeal to other federal bureaucrats.
I don't know much about how the FBI operates. I don't know how much influence investigators have over the work that is assigned to them. But if they have any influence at all, even informal influence, then it's quite possible that assignments to the investigative team are being passed around inside the FBI like a hot potato.
Put yourself inside the head of someone at the FBI being assigned to investigate the IRS. Here are some of the thoughts I imagine you could have:
- "If I find something really bad, the Obama administration isn't going to like it. Or me, for bringing it out. Will they torpedo me? Will I find myself being smeared?"
- "What if I find some real wrongdoing, and someone at the IRS decides to retaliate?"
- "Taking down the IRS could mean the FBI is next. We've had our own share of messes over the years."
- "No matter how this thing turns out, my career is probably going to take a hit."
Given the realities of the situation, if you worked at the FBI, would you want to be on the investigative team? And if you get stuck on it, are you more interested in getting to the bottom of the mess or mollifying the political class to minimize the impact on you personally?
The FBI has been cruising on a reputation of professionalism that I think vanished in fact long ago. From their incompetent labs to suppressing information to protect Obama, they are far more political and far less professional than they would like to pretend.
Given that problem, will the FBI be motivated and capable enough to get to the bottom of the scandal? I doubt it. Oh, we'll have a pro-forma investigation at some point. But I'm betting we'll find out a lot more through the lawsuits launched by Tea Party groups. We might find even more with a special prosecutor if the Democrats would allow one to be appointed, but in their own craven political interests, they probably won't.
Somewhere on the federal side, a scapegoat will eventually be found, possibly two or three. They will be fired, and the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party will work overtime selling the "Nothing more to see, time to move along" narrative.
They have to. The left-leaning political class recognizes the possible damage if they can't contain this scandal. It was bad enough when the media chose sides in the left-vs-right political battle. If those on the right also become convinced that the entire federal bureaucracy has similarly chosen sides, then they will likely conclude that our current political differences can't possibly be decided through normal political means. They will feel, rightly, that the system is rigged against them.
Which would mean that they come to the same conclusion many of us came to a while back.
Today's attempted narrative on the IRS scandal: A Republican in the IRS says "Nothing to see here"
Since the Clinton era, we've seen the left retreat from reality into a dependence on post-modern narrative. They don't even bother to hide it; they talk about narrative all the time, and they've reached the point where "the fact is" has become a public speaking tic for Democrats that really means "what I prefer you to believe is" or "the accepted leftist narrative is".*
Narrative isn't about reality; the post-modern leftists don't even think there is such a thing as objective reality. Narrative is about what you can get people to believe.
When the left is really having trouble finding a narrative that will stick, they like to use misdirection. For example, they will pull out a single aspect of an issue, even if the aspect was made up or planted just for the purpose, and try to push the meme that "because of this one thing, the rest doesn't matter".
We saw the attempt with Benghazi, and the supposedly "doctored" emails. One of our own leftist commenters pushed and pushed on the idea that, because the Republicans doctored emails, the whole Benghazi controversy was obviously ginned up by the Republicans to embarrass Obama, and therefore wasn't a "real scandal".
Again, reality doesn't matter. The Republicans didn't even get those emails. They got summaries. The summaries came from ABC News, and the Republicans presented what they received. But to a committed leftist and Obama apologist, so what? They're Republicans! Stop paying attention to stuff like dead ambassadors, bad decisions, and the earlier, failed misdirection about the video. Just dismiss the whole thing because (I claim) Republicans doctored emails.**
The latest attempt of that type in the IRS scandal is to put forth some schmoe in the Cincinnati office who says there's no evidence Obama is involved, and is (gasp!) a conservative Republican.
This is simple misdirection. First, the guy just describes himself as a conservative Republican. Doesn't mean he really is. We've seen plenty of cases in the past where these supposedly conservative or independent people involved in a situation turned out to be anything but.
Second, the person who put this out, the consistently idiotic Congressman Elijah Cummings, refused to release the full transcript. He released the parts that created the impression he wanted.
So there's plenty of full story still to come out. That, of course, didn't stop Joan Walsh at Salon from crowing "Elijah Cummings outplays Darrell Issa", as if this were some kind of tennis match instead of a deadly serious problem that threatens the very legitimacy of the federal government.
Even if he turns out to have voted straight ticket Republican back to the beginning of time, it doesn't change some of the basic facts:
- Groups were targeted because of political ideology
- People in Washington signed the letters demanding that were part of the targeting effort
- No one anywhere along the line, no matter what the philosophy, raised a flag about the targeting
This bespeaks a partisan, authoritarian culture in the IRS as an institution. As Dale is fond of pointing out, it's hard to see how that can possibly be fixed without changing the tax system in such a way that we eliminate the IRS.
That will not stop desperate Obama apologists from seizing on this narrative the way a starving coyote seizes a squirrel. They will state the "established fact" that a conservative Republican says Obama wasn't involved, and use that as an excuse to hand wave away everything else that anyone says about the IRS scandal. Here is Cummings himself:
"Based upon everything I've seen, the case is solved," he said. "If it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on."
This is ridiculous. The IRS scandal is bigger than Watergate, bigger than Benghazi, bigger than Fast and Furious, bigger than Iran-Contra, bigger than Monicagate – bigger than any other scandal for the federal government in my lifetime. Teapot Dome isn't close to this. Even if Obama isn't directly involved (and he would have to be sand-poundingly stupid to have issued actual directives that resulted in this) his rhetoric towards these groups was a contributing factor, so he bears some responsibility.
None of that is going to change because the leftists have found a new piece of misdirection. Which won't stop them from bleating about it for while to avoid any real argument, of course.
* Even some Republicans have picked up this tic. Just goes to show that if you lie down with Demos, you get up with tics….
** Have you noticed that the doctored email narrative excuse is mostly gone now? It didn't stick as a narrative, because it was obviously false-to-fact from the outset. That didn't stop leftists from pushing it as a narrative, of course, because they don't have a connection with reality. They just realized it didn't work after a while, and moved on to something else. I will be shocked the first time one of them says "Yeah, that was wrong. The Republicans didn't really doctor emails." The narrative may be out of the limelight, but the leftists still believe it because it feels so good to believe it.


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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - View original article
Dan Patrick | |
Born | Daniel Patrick Pugh May 15, 1956 Mason, Ohio, U.S. |
Occupation | Sportscaster |
Years active | 1979–present |
Website | |
danpatrick.com SI.com/danpatrick |
Dan Patrick | |
Born | Daniel Patrick Pugh May 15, 1956 Mason, Ohio, U.S. |
Occupation | Sportscaster |
Years active | 1979–present |
Website | |
danpatrick.com SI.com/danpatrick |
Daniel Patrick Pugh (born May 15, 1956), professionally known as Dan Patrick, is an American Sports Emmy-winning sportscaster, radio personality, and actor from Mason, Ohio. He currently hosts The Dan Patrick Show which is broadcast on radio on Premiere Radio Networks, and on television on NBC Sports Network as well as The Audience Network for DIRECTV subscribers, co-hosts NBC's Football Night in America, and serves as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He previously worked at ESPN for 18 years, where he often anchored the weeknight and Sunday 11 PM edition of SportsCenter.
Patrick was raised in Mason, Ohio, one of six children of John ("Jack") and Patricia Pugh. He was a basketball player in high school at William Mason High School, where he scored a single-game personal best of 36 points and earned AP Class AA All-Ohio third-team honors. He graduated in 1974.[1][2]
He attended Eastern Kentucky University on a basketball scholarship for two years before transferring to the University of Dayton, where he majored in broadcast journalism. Patrick is also an alumnus of the Eta Hexaton Chapter of the Phi Sigma Kappa Fraternity at Dayton.[3] His father Jack worked in the computer science department at UD until he died of cancer in 1981 when Dan was 25.[4]
Before working with ESPN, Patrick was known by his real name, Dan Pugh, as an on-air personality with the album rock-formatted WVUD and then, WTUE in Dayton, Ohio (1979–1983). Patrick was then a sports reporter for CNN (1983–89), where his assignments included the World Series, NBA Finals and Winter Olympics. From 1989–1995, Patrick did a daily sports segment for Bob and Brian, a syndicated Wisconsin-area morning show, and in the early 1990s, he did sports updates for the Columbus, Ohio, Rock Station WLVQ and appeared on the morning show "Wags and Elliot."[5]
Patrick was an anchor on ESPN's SportsCenter (1989–2006). He also hosted The Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio from September 13, 1999, to August 17, 2007.
In the mid-1990s, Dan and Keith Olbermann were among ESPN's most recognizable faces. Olbermann used the catch phrase "Welcome to the Big Show" when Patrick worked with him on SportsCenter. After getting reprimanded by their superiors, they began saying "This is SportsCenter" sarcastically, accidentally spawning the show's new catch phrase as well as the name of their long-running promotional campaign. When Olbermann left, Patrick said, "This isn't the Big Show anymore."[6] Patrick stated on his radio program that the ABC sitcom Sports Night was a semi-fictional account of the Olbermann/Patrick anchored SportsCenter, with Casey McCall (Peter Krause) representing Patrick.
Starting on March 19, 2006, until the final game of the NBA Finals, he became the host of ABC's then-titled NBA Nation, a pregame show for the network's NBA telecasts.
In 1994, when calling the highlights for a game in which Marv Albert described Sam Cassell as being "on fire," Dan Patrick said he was "el fuego", which he thought was Spanish for "on fire." A few months later, he received a letter from a Spanish teacher in Pennsylvania suggesting that he say that athletes are "en fuego" (on fire) rather than "el fuego" (the fire). Since then, Patrick has used "en fuego" on certain occasions when a player is said to be "on fire." Patrick started using the "en fuego" phrase because he believed the standard "on fire" phrase had become clichéd.
On July 9, 2007, Patrick on his radio show announced his departure from ESPN/ABC effective August 16, 2007, stating, "I am leaving ESPN August 17 to go out on my own and be a free agent...I think I was starting to take it (ESPN) for granted," Patrick said. He said ESPN tried to talk him out of it. If there were any animosity, he says, "I wouldn't be sticking around until August."
Patrick remained off air from ESPN Radio until August 15 for his three farewell shows.[7] He was originally reported to be returning for a final week, but returned on Wednesday of that week.
ESPN's statement released to the media said that Patrick would be released from his contract August 31, 2007, exactly one year early from his deal that was to run until August 31, 2008. The statement also said this would be the final comment on Patrick's departure from ESPN. "ESPN contractually bans all employees from making specific announcements of their futures on their airwaves, but out of respect to Dan and all he's done for ESPN we allowed him an opportunity to end the speculation".
Reaction from media sources hit the internet by storm. Many webpages, blogs, and news media outlets speculated on the reasons for Patrick's departure and his possible future. On July 10, 2007's The Dan Patrick Show, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick himself put some of the rumors and comments to rest.
Patrick confirmed that he was asked by the producers of The Price is Right to audition for the vacant host position, but he declined. The job eventually went to Drew Carey. Patrick admitted that he was hurt when good friend, Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly (who would move to ESPN) wrote that, "Patrick was making one of the top 5 biggest career mistakes in entertainment history," ranking right under Shelley Long's leaving Cheers and Katie Couric's leaving NBC's Today show for the CBS Evening News.
Keith Olbermann stated that it was only a matter of time before a website erroneously reported that Patrick was fired from ESPN, which was what happened in some reports when Olbermann left ESPN. Patrick again stated he was leaving on good terms with ESPN and that he could return to ESPN if he would so choose. Patrick said that he wanted to be on both television and radio again, although some newspapers reported that he only wanted to do radio.
On his new show, Patrick often relates anecdotes of his ESPN career, in both positive and negative lights. He often refers to his former employer as "The Mother Ship" (and less frequently, "ESPeon"), and expresses disappointment with their practice of preventing their talent from appearing as guests on his show, and frustration when an ESPN employee has agreed to come on the show only to later cancel.
Patrick is also often critical of current ESPN shows and personalities (such as SportsNation, SportsCenter, First Take and Colin Cowherd) for stealing content from his show.
August 17, 2007, was Dan Patrick's last day on ESPN Radio. He named his final three shows the "Farewell for Now" tour. The last 20 minutes of his show were filled with thank-yous and looks back. Guests included Bob Costas, Bobby Knight, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ken Griffey, Jr. and other sports stars. Will Ferrell also made a heavily promoted appearance in character as Ron Burgundy.
Patrick signed a syndication deal with Chicago-based Content Factory, which soon launched his new version of The Dan Patrick Show on October 1, 2007. It was distributed nationally by Premiere Radio Networks. The show aired live on most stations from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern, although some opt to delay the show into the evening. The show ran delayed on Sirius XM Sports Nation on Sirius Radio channel 122 and XM Radio channel 143. It was also available as a live stream and in podcast form via Patrick's website.
In January 2009, Dan Patrick's show replaced Out of Bounds with Craig Shemon and James Washington on Premiere Radio's Fox Sports Radio network. This brought an additional 60 affiliates to Patrick's portfolio, and brought the total affiliate count to over 200. It also allows XM Radio listeners to hear the show live on the Fox Sports simulcast on channel 142, in addition to the delayed broadcast on channel 143. Sirius doesn't carry Fox Sports Radio.
In August 2009, The Dan Patrick Show started being broadcast on The 101 Network, following a show of DIY Network in which a toy-filled "man cave" studio was built in Milford, Connecticut. The radio-only show had been produced in the attic of Patrick's home. The Dan Patrick Show features "The Dannettes", who assist Dan with the show.
Sports Illustrated also announced in October 2007 that Patrick would become the magazine's senior writer. He would also contribute blogs to SI.com's "Fan Nation" and host the magazine's Sportsman of the Year show. SI collaborates with Content Factory to produce Patrick's web site, and helps stream his radio show. Patrick said he will produce non-television content exclusively for Sports Illustrated. The Dan Patrick Show began simulcasting on Root Sports in October, 2010, and on NBC Sports Network in November 2012.
On July 7, 2008, it was announced that Patrick would join NBC Sports as a co-host of the third season of Football Night in America with former SportsCenter co-anchor Keith Olbermann every Sunday night beginning in September during the NFL season.[8] Patrick and Olbermann host a series of highlights on the show and a segment called "The Little Big Show" with the day's top NFL plays.
"The Little Big Show" refers back to Patrick and Olbermann's time at ESPN where they referred to the 11pm SportsCenter they hosted as "The Big Show." This name both annoyed the other hosts, who felt insulted, and management, who preferred them to call the show by the actual name. Frustrations mounted so high that management told them to just say, "This is SportsCenter." This phrase ironically became ESPN's major tagline for SportsCenter.[9]
Patrick served as the Super Bowl XLIII trophy presenter after the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Arizona Cardinals, and again at Super Bowl XLVI after the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots. Patrick also contributed to the network's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics as a reporter for women's downhill skiing and snowboarding. He also hosted NBC's 2010 & 2011 Stanley Cup Finals coverage. In 2012, NBC named Patrick daytime co-host with Al Michaels for the London Olympics.[10]
The Dan Patrick Show began simulcasting on NBC Sports Network in November 2012.
Patrick met his wife Susan (White) when he worked at CNN and she was a producer of CNN's Inside Politics. They have three daughters and one son.[11]
He received the University of Dayton Distinguished Alumni Award in 1997[12] and he was inducted into the Mason High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000.[13]
Patrick has made cameo appearances in many movies and TV shows, thanks in large part to his longtime friendship with actor Adam Sandler.[14] Patrick also appeared in a Huddle House commercial.
Dan Patrick has appeared twice in music videos:
This article uses bare URLs for citations. (May 2012) |

subset: commoncrawl


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At 407 miles long, the Connecticut River is the longest river in the New England States. It begins in New Hampshire's Fourth Connecticut Lake and flows southward to Long Island Sound. The Connecticut river is the Eastern border of Vermont, but it's owned by New Hampshire.
The Connecticut River in Vermont is the descendant of Glacial Lake Hitchcock, which began to drain and break up into the Connecticut Lakes starting about 10,000 years ago. However, for a long time the Connecticut river was polluted. Now, it's considered a Class B river, which means that people can fish and swim Read the rest of this entry »


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text:
The Effect of Playing Surface on Injury Rate
- Jason L. Dragoo,
- Hillary J. Braun
- … show all 2 hide
Rent the article at a discount
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Get AccessAbstract
Synthetic playing surfaces are widely used for field and court sports. Artificial turf surfaces are commonly used as an alternative to natural grass, while outdoor surfaces like clay and acrylic are also prevalent. The effect of these synthetic surfaces on injury rates has not been clearly established. The available literature is largely limited to football and soccer data and the majority of studies are short-term. Confounding variables such as climate, player position and footwear, as well as varying definitions of injury, also make it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the general effect of artificial playing surfaces on injury rates. Many peer-reviewed studies cite a higher overall rate of injury on first- and second-generation artificial turf surfaces compared with natural grass. Despite differences in injury type, the rate of injury on third-generation and natural grass surfaces appears to be comparable. It also appears that clay is significantly safer than either grass or hard court tennis surfaces, but this is a conclusion drawn with limited data. Further research investigating overall injury trends as well as sport-specific data is needed to draw more definitive conclusions regarding the effect of artificial playing surfaces on injury rates.
- Andresen BL, Hoffman MD, Barton LW. High school football injuries: field conditions and other factors. Wis Med J 1989 Oct; 88 (10): 28–31
- Orchard J, Seward H, McGivern J, et al. Rainfall, evaporation and the risk of non-contact anterior cruciate ligamentinjury in the Australian Football League. Med J Aust 1999 Apr 5; 170 (7): 304–6
- Orchard J. The AFL penetrometer study: work in progress. J Sci Med Sport 2001 Jun; 4 (2): 220–32 CrossRef
- Chivers IH, Aldous DE, Orchard JW. The relationship of Australian Football grass surfaces to anterior cruciateligament injury. Int Turfgrass Soc Res J 2005; 10: 327–32
- Orchard JW, Chivers I, Aldous D, et al. Rye grass is associated with fewer non-contact anterior cruciate ligamentinjuries than bermuda grass. Br J Sports Med 2005 Oct; 39 (10): 704–9 CrossRef
- Bowers Jr KD, Martin RB. Turf-toe: a shoe-surface related football injury. Med Sci Sports 1976; 8 (2): 81–3
- Clanton TO, Butler JE, Eggert A. Injuries to the metatarsophalangeal joints in athletes. Foot Ankle 1986 Dec; 7 (3): 162–76
- Coker TP, Arnold JA, Weber DL. Traumatic lesions of the metatarsophalangeal joint of the great toe in athletes. Am J Sports Med 1978 Nov-Dec; 6 (6): 326–34 CrossRef
- Rodeo SA, O'Brien S, Warren RF, et al. Turf-toe: an analysis of metatarsophalangeal joint sprains in professionalfootball players. Am J Sports Med 1990 May-Jun; 18 (3): 280–5 CrossRef
- Larson RL, Osternig LR. Traumatic bursitis and artificial turf. J Sports Med 1974 Jul-Aug; 2 (4): 183–8 CrossRef
- Adkison JW, Requa RK, Garrick JG. Injury rates in high school football: a comparison of synthetic surfaces andgrass fields. Clin Orthop Relat Res 1974 Mar-Apr; (99): 131–6 CrossRef
- Alles WF, Powell JW, Buckley W, et al. The national athletic injury/illness reporting system 3-year findings of highschool and college football injuries. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 1979; 1 (2): 103–8
- Bowers Jr KD, Martin RB. Impact absorption, new and old Astro Turf at West Virginia University. Med Sci Sports 1974; 6 (3): 217–21
- Bramwell ST, Requa RK, Garrick JG. High school football injuries: a pilot comparison of playing surfaces. Med Sci Sports 1972; 4 (3): 166–9
- Keene JS, Narechania RG, Sachtjen KM, et al. Tartan Turf on trial: a comparison of intercollegiate football injuriesoccurring on natural grass and Tartan Turf. Am J Sports Med 1980 Jan-Feb; 8 (1): 43–7 CrossRef
- Stevenson M, Anderson B. The effects of playing surfaces on injuries in college intramural touch football. J Nat Intramural-Recreational Sports Assoc 1981; 5: 59–64
- Powell JW. Incidence of injury associated with playing surfaces in the National Football League 1980-1985. Athl Train 1987; 22 (3): 202–6
- Powell JW, Schootman M. A multivariate risk analysis of selected playing surfaces in the National Football League,1980 to 1989: an epidemiologic study of knee injuries. Am J Sports Med 1992 Nov-Dec; 20 (6): 686–94 CrossRef
- Powell JW, Schootman M. A multivariate risk analysis of natural grass and Astroturf playing surfaces in theNational Football League 1980-1989. Int Turfgrass Soc Res J 1993; 7 (23): 201–11
- Hagel BE, Fick GH, Meeuwisse WH. Injury risk in men's Canada West University football. Am J Epidemiol 2003 May 1; 157 (9): 825–33 CrossRef
- Gorse K, Mickey CA, Bierhals A. Conditioning injuries associated with artificial turf in two preseason footballtraining programs. J Athl Train 1997 Oct; 32 (4): 304–8
- Guskiewicz KM, Weaver NL, Padua DA, et al. Epidemiology of concussion in collegiate and high school footballplayers. Am J Sports Med 2000 Sep-Oct; 28 (5): 643–50
- Scranton Jr PE, Whitesel JP, Powell JW, et al. A review of selected noncontact anterior cruciate ligament injuriesin the National Football League. Foot Ankle Int 1997 Dec; 18 (12): 772–6
- Orchard JW, Powell JW. Risk of knee and ankle sprains under various weather conditions in American football. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2003 Jul; 35 (7): 1118–23 CrossRef
- Fuller CW, Dick RW, Corlette J, et al. Comparison of the incidence, nature and cause of injuries sustained on grassand new generation artificial turf by male and femalefootball players. Part 1: match injuries. Br J Sports Med 2007 Aug; 41 Suppl. 1: i20–6 CrossRef
- Fuller CW, Dick RW, Corlette J, et al. Comparison of the incidence, nature and cause of injuries sustained on grassand new generation artificial turf by male and femalefootball players. Part 2: training injuries. Br J Sports Med 2007 Aug; 41 Suppl. 1: i27–32 CrossRef
- Meyers MC, Barnhill BS. Incidence, causes, and severity of high school football injuries on Field Turf versus naturalgrass: a 5-year prospective study. Am J Sports Med 2004 Oct-Nov; 32 (7): 1626–38 CrossRef
- Ekstrand J, Timpka T, Hagglund M. Risk of injury in elite football played on artificial turf versus natural grass: aprospective two-cohort study. Br J Sports Med 2006 Dec; 40 (12): 975–80 CrossRef
- Steffen K, Andersen TE, Bahr R. Risk of injury on artificial turf and natural grass in young female football players. Br J Sports Med 2007 Aug; 41 Suppl.1: i33–7 CrossRef
- Cross R. Grand Slam injuries 1978–2005. Med Sci Tennis 2006; 11 (1) [online]. Available from URL: http://www.stms.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=521&Itemid=350 [Accessed 2010 Aug 11]
- Miller S. Modern tennis rackets, balls, and surfaces. Br J Sports Med 2006 May; 40 (5): 401–5 CrossRef
- Kulund DN, McCue III FC, Rockwell DA, et al. Tennis injuries: prevention and treatment. Am J Sports Med 1979; 7 (4): 249–53 CrossRef
- Bastholt P. Professional tennis (ATP tour) and number of medical treatments in relation to type of surface. Med Sci Tennis 2000; 5 (2) [online]. Available from URL: http://www.stms.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=881&Itemid=263 [Accessed 2009 Apr 19]
- Olsen OE, Myklebust G, Engebretsen L, et al. Relationship between floor type and risk of ACL injury in team handball. Scand J Med Sci Sports 2003 Oct; 13 (5): 299–304 CrossRef
- Pasanen K, Parkkari J, Rossi L, et al. Artificial playing surface increases the injury risk in pivoting indoor sports: aprospective one-season follow-up study in Finnish femalefloorball. Br J Sports Med 2008 Mar; 42 (3): 194–7 CrossRef
- Ramirez M, Schaffer KB, Shen H, et al. Injuries to high school football athletes in California. Am J Sports Med 2006 Jul; 34 (7): 1147–58 CrossRef
- Nicholas JA, Rosenthal PP, Gleim GW. A historical perspective of injuries in professional football: twenty-sixyears of game-related events. JAMA 1988 Aug 19; 260 (7): 939–44 CrossRef
- Dick R, Putukian M, Agel J, et al. Descriptive epidemiology of collegiate women's soccer injuries: National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System, 1988-1989through 2002-2003. J Athl Train 42 (2): 278–85
- Agel J, Evans TA, Dick R, et al. Descriptive epidemiology of collegiate men's soccer injuries: National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System, 1988–1989 through 2002–2003. J Athl Train 2007 Apr-Jun; 42 (2): 270–7
- Arnason A, Gudmundsson A, Dahl HA, et al. Soccer injuries in Iceland. Scand J Med Sci Sports 1996 Feb; 6 (1): 40–5 CrossRef
- Bylak J, Hutchinson MR. Common sports injuries in young tennis players. Sports Med 1998 Aug; 26 (2): 119–32 CrossRef
- Dick R, Hertel J, Agel J, et al. Descriptive epidemiology of collegiate men's basketball injuries: National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System, 1988-1989 through 2003-2004. J Athl Train 2007 Apr-Jun; 42 (2): 194–201
- Agel J, Olson DE, Dick R, et al. Descriptive epidemiology of collegiate women's basketball injuries: National Collegiate Athletic Association Injury Surveillance System, 1988-1989 through 2003-2004. J Athl Train 2007 Apr-Jun; 42 (2): 202–10
- Title
- The Effect of Playing Surface on Injury Rate
- Journal
Sports Medicine
Volume 40, Issue 11 , pp 981-990
- Cover Date
- 2010-11-01
- 10.2165/11535910-000000000-00000
- Print ISSN
- 0112-1642
- Online ISSN
- 1179-2035
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing
- Additional Links
- Topics
- Industry Sectors
- Authors
- Jason L. Dragoo (1)
- Hillary J. Braun (1)
- Author Affiliations
- 1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA


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I know this site is vipermovies mainly vipermovies about balancing, but I thought id have, however, as I like the site. Yesterday afternoon I was in bed with my laptop Saturday, while the woman was doing the ironing when I try to see if I could use my webcam on my laptop, as determined on the PC only. I told the woman who thought it would be good to see if it works and saw through iron than I thought it was a bit rude and I could pretend I was a voyeur of a little fun. Whislt she was ironing, fully dressed, I decided to go in a chat room to see if anyone wanted a bit of fun to watch. I had some clients so they sent a link to a page with my camera was not using msn as the type of ouldnt or would be suspect and would not come vipermovies out quickly from one application instead of a website. I published the vipermovies site for a couple of guys who wanted to see the amount of voyeurism and found the idea that the woman was not a conscious decision. I managed to get the woman to show some cleavage, as I said,I wanted to see what was on. The men could see this, but not the Web Cam without zoom. eight forty-five, and I knew she wanted to see the Big Brother, which could be 33, but still watches, shit, lol. I knew she hadnt had a shower but for what he said he better hurry. You undresed and undressed in the eyes of the camera, but was blocked by the council was on the road. While in the shower, vipermovies I pulled the plate so it is with television, but to stand between him and me and are in all their glory. vipermovies Now she is always takes forever in the vipermovies shower and collapsed at the last minute. This time I made too late and ran, as it began, but even with a towel around her and dried yet. However, in view of the camera followed FUL be dry and full glimps of her naked body here with a shot in the back bent cracks. After drying, put the suit pressed and continue watching, but he said it seemsd be fun if she was naked, I could see, like I was becoming. She is very aware of your body very rarely done this, too, before me, but I promised a massage and went out of his robe. For about an hour or men who saw her standing there naked to the plate. I managed to say they are moving from time to time, I could not see, so that totally naked from the front and back for a long time, but little was known that people were seeing. I love voyeur and flashes, etc, but do not know if I get back, I could do, no matter what look suspiciously, maybe I have to hide the camera is not so white on it and see if I can, to show the world again. no is a fascinating story that I know, but if anyone has similar stories or share videos like or have an idea that they like to see if I could do, please share. Thanks


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Home → Special Education → Support & Supervision → Integrated Monitoring Activities → Special Purpose Private School Monitoring → Letter of Notification
Letter of Notification
The following was the letter that was sent to Maine Special Purpose Private School directors notifying them of the inclusion of their program in the 2013-14 monitoring cohort.
Dear Program Director:
The Maine DOE is required under federal law to monitor special education programs and services for students with disabilities as described under Section 616 of the 2004 Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The purpose of this letter is to inform you that your Special Purpose Private School (SPPS) will be reviewed as part of the General Supervision System for the 2013-14 school year (FY14). As part of the process, you are requested to participate in a teleconference training on Oct. 16, 2013 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.. The teleconference will include information pertaining to the materials to be submitted to the Maine DOE, as well as information regarding on-site visits which will be conducted by Maine DOE staff. If you are unable to participate, please designate a back-up person and contact us as soon as possible. Please contact Sheryl Banden at firstname.lastname@example.com to register and obtain teleconference connection information by Oct. 11, 2013.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact me at 207-624-6671 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Jonathan Braff, Esq.
Coordinator for Special Purpose Private Schools


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Since there are probably only a few warm days left this season, I thought I'd take my family out for a picnic in the park to enjoy the sun while we eat. I usually bring sandwiches and fruit, along something simple like potato salad/macaroni salad, or even deviled eggs on occasion. I'd like to try something a little different for a change since I feel like that's what we do every time. Any good food or recipe suggestions? Thanks! :)
I know this is late, but maybe it will still help? Sometimes I will take barbecue chicken, corn on the cob and a side bread like an Italian bread or cheesy bread. I pack everything in foil instead of Tupperware because it seems to keep it hotter longer. Even so, these things are good cold too, so the temperature doesn't become too much of a concern!
Leafy salads are also a good option, if you can get little containers with everyone's favourite dressing and keep them separate. I did that once, with Parmesan crusted chicken as a topping : ) Chilled mini pizzas might be a good option, too!
about 4 years ago -
Since it's picnic season again, there's nothing like some classic fried chicken! Actually, now that I think of it, there's a great book by Susan Branch...
Well, you'll have to trust me on that, because I couldn't locate it on my bookshelf. But I did find Susan branch online, and I highly recommend her recipes, and I do recall that one of her books (From the Heart of the Home, I believe) had some wonderful picnic recipes in it.
She's online now, so I'm going to read a bit more there: http://www.susanbranch.com/
over 3 years ago -
Husband and I like pressed sandwiches. I guess you could make them in a Panini press if you have one, or just refrigerate wrapped in foil under bricks or a heavy pot if you have greens or herbs that you don't want to heat up. Sometimes the kids will just even have peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches and fruit...
over 3 years ago -
This roasted red pepper wrap is an old favorite of ours (I think I even remember seeing someone here mention something similar): You could just as easily do these in pita pockets, but I really like to use lavash that's on the thicker side so it can absorb some of the wonderful juices. Anyway, I clean and roast 3-4 red peppers, and then slice into strips and let them marinate with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a dash of sugar and salt and pepper to taste. When you're ready to do the sandwiches--and I would do them until maybe half an hour before you're leaving for your picnic--just spread the mixture over two/thirds of your lavash along with some freshly torn basil and oregano, and then dot with nice little bits of fresh mozzarella. Another sprinkle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, roll them up nice and tight and you're good to go. They're amazing once the juices start coming together with the bread... And that amount will make two really good-sized sandwiches, so if you're taking a few other dishes, you could easily feed four on that.
over 3 years ago


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The identity of Blizzard's unannounced MMO project may have just been revealed. Anonymous gaming news bloodhound superannuation recently uncovered a trio of trademarks from the MMO juggernaut, reserving the name "Cataclysm" for use in the fields of computer games, online games and paper-based products. We assume that last one doesn't mean Blizzard's dealing in Cataclysm-branded stationary.
Our acronym-infused sister site WoW.com reminded us of a very important point -- not all Blizzard trademarks turn into actual games (isn't that right, StarCraft: Ghost?). However, they also noticed that the domain name wowcataclysm.com recently expired and is now held by GoDaddy -- who handles all of Blizzard's domains. It looks like Big Blizz is up to something -- but we might have to wait till BlizzCon to find out what that something is.
[Via WoW.com]
Featured Stories
Off the Grid: The Witcher Adventure Game and Star Wars Imperial Assault
Posted on Feb 3rd 2015 2:15PM


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Carol's accustomed to standing out. She was the first female mortgage broker in the state of Florida and is lauded by the National Register of Historic Places and Who's Who of America as one of a gritty group of women who trailblazed commerce in real estate and construction. For the last 40 years, she's built Broward homes from scratch, and unlike plenty of other builders who subcontract much of the work involved, Carol Steed and her daughter, Monica, take their homes from concept to 3-D finish.
"I like the challenge of seeing a vacant piece of property and creating something on top of it," she says. Her daughter, Monica, who began working on her first house when she was only five years old, easily jumps into the conversation. The two women often interrupt one another, and it's not because of a lack of social graces -- it's the way they communicate. They radio one another with job updates well into the twilight hours. Some members of their work crews even liken them to twins.
"Laying it out, digging the footer, laying the sod, the trees, the grass, everything ," says Monica. Carol finishes the thought for her. "You'd be surprised how many people can't take it from the beginning [to finish] because there's so much detail they get lost."
The Steeds usually have three or four houses going up at once, with more than 500 homes to their credit in Broward County. Although Monica describes the outfit as a small, family-owned business, they've done well enough over the years to keep running at a profit and to finance vacations, shopping trips to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and even yearly tickets to the Super Bowl, which Carol attends faithfully regardless of locale.
Like other contractors the mother-daughter team toils hard for its rewards. Virtually all builders haggle day and night with a barrage of industry workers that includes land surveyors, truss companies, engineers, and architects. Over the course of two months, they'll collect a fat packet of stamps, seals, and thick, smudgy blueprints, all of which are subject to review by cities' inspectors. In Broward County a house and its surrounding property must pass 23 inspections before it can be completed and sold.
Unlike other contractors the Steeds, on occasion, have endured an extra hassle: gender discrimination. Its various incarnations shadow both the way they are treated and their approach to building homes.
Back when Hollywood and Emerald Hills were mostly nettled fields of weeds and scrubs, Carol's then-fledgling company was approached by McDonald's to build one of the chain's early Broward sites. After a brief back-and-forth, Carol concluded that a female contractor garnered little respect from major corporations.
"It was all pretty male, building Texacos or Eckerds; it didn't matter how much experience you had. It was too hard for a woman to bust into that."
Since then, both Carol and Monica have also weathered sexual harassment in the forms of catcalling, persistent pickup lines, and even the occasional squeeze-beneath-the-breast-disguised-as-a-hug by Broward inspectors. "Yeah, they like to look at my boobs," says Monica. "This one inspector, after a while, I got real self-conscious about him checking me out."
When Monica failed to reciprocate interest, the Hollywood inspector began to nitpick about the width of steel she used and whether nails were hammered too far apart. Then he began to threaten her with fines. When she balked he began to rub her back. That's when Monica decided to complain to the city's chief building inspector, Greg O'Hara, who's known the Steeds for close to 13 years.
"I spoke to both parties and could not substantiate the allegation. I think it's a credit to Monica that she always tries to resolve issues within the proper channels," says the soft-spoken O'Hara. Although O'Hara couldn't corroborate Monica's claims, he did assign another inspector to the site.
Despite difficulties Carol insists that her gender is also a boon that, among other things, fuels her commitment to building the sturdiest of houses. The Steeds invest their own dollars into raising single-family homes, duplexes, and triplexes, but they'll occasionally create custom homes for landowners, like the 3200-square-foot dwelling tucked beside the Hollywood Bridge. Almost completed, the pink and white stucco house boasts a half-moon entranceway and sweeping glass doors opening toward the languid waters of the Intracoastal. Owner Marty Silverberg held zero prejudice when he first learned the Steeds were women.
"Monica was dressed like a worker, with the tools, the belt, the whole thing. That was really cool," says Silverberg. "You get things [from them] that you normally don't get. They don't do just dry wall, they do blue board and they plaster it. They're artists."


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This webinar presents Questa Formal Verification and explains how it is being used today, by both designers and verification engineers, to improve design quality and accelerate verification. Automatic checks enable designers to easily qualify code before check-in, without assertions or constraints.
Formal applications use assertion generation and formal verification to quickly and thoroughly verify specific design requirements or tool assumptions that would otherwise be tedious and time-consuming to address. Assertion-based verification enables verification of critical functionality such as control logic to ensure that failures cannot occur. Post-silicon debug using formal verification makes it possible to quickly discover the root cause of an observed failure and confirm that a proposed fix is correct.
The webinar will provide a detailed overview of these capabilities of Questa Formal Verification and the value they bring to functional verification.


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Outdoor Crescent Pillow
Act fast! Items with prices ending in $0.99 are final sale.
Use code PILLOWTALK to get 50% off any pillow insert with the purchase of a pillow cover.
No longer available
Citrus style. Inspired by mid-century patterns, this bright Outdoor Crescent Pillow Cover brings playful personality to deck seating. Plus, it's weather-resistant so it can handle rain, shine or spilled white wine.
12"w x 16"l.
100% polyester shell in Mandarin.
100% polyester fill.


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- Home
- Software Upgrades
- C30 Software Upgrades
Product Description
Introducing the RICA iSoftloader System!
Improve performance with the touch of a button!
It's really that easy – with the RICA iSoftloader System. For 1999 and up models.
How It Works:The RICA iSoftloader System allows you to switch between standard ECU software and RICA performance software with the touch of a button. You can also revert back to the standard software program in minutes, whenever you wish. RICA performance software is easily downloaded over the Internet. |
Step 1: Read ECU | Step 2: Modify Software | Step 3: Program ECU |
The first step is to tune your car is to read the original software from the ECU via the OBD2 diagnostics port. In many cases, RICA may already have an exact matching original version of software for your VIN, in which case reading the original software is not required. Once the original software is read from the ECU, it is uploaded to RICA for modification. | Once RICA receives the original software, it is modified by a qualified software engineer. A software file can take 15 - 45 minutes to prepare. Once complete, the modified software is made available for download to program the car. | The modified software is downloaded from RICA and programmed into the ECU, overwriting the original software in the ECU. After the programming is complete, the car should be test driven to ensure that it is performing correctly and that no DTCs (Diagnostic Trouble Codes) are present. |
The following chart identifies Volvo models compatible with the RICA iSoftloader System, and new crank horsepower and torque achieved with the RICA iSoftloader System:
Model | Power (bhp) Standard | Torque (lb/ft) Standard | Power (bhp) Upgrade | Torque (lb/ft) Upgrade |
*Note: Performance figures quoted above are for vehicles equipped with a performance cat-back exhaust system and using 93 octane fuel. |
Custom Tuning Options*
The RICA iSoftloader System is the only hand-held tuning system thats allows you to tune with custom written software for your car! We can tailor your software tune to take advantage of other performance hardware upgrades to achieve maximum performance for your car (such as a performance downpipe or exhaust, front mount intercooler, larger turbocharger, race fuel tune, etc.). Other software tune features include removal or torque limiters in 1st/2nd gears of automatic gearbox equipped cars, removal of speed/rev limiters, and high octane/race fuel specific tunes.
* Additional charges for these requests will apply. Please visit our Software Remaps page for more information.


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Kel-Tec CNC, Inc. Renews Sponsorship of Student of the Gun
COCOA, Fla. – Kel-Tec CNC, Inc., known for bringing innovative and unique firearms to the market, is pleased to announce they are renewing their sponsorship for the new season of Student of the Gun.
Student of the Gun is a weekly program hosted by veteran instructor and shooter Paul Markel that educates viewers about a variety of firearms and how to use them. Kel-Tec firearms will be featured on the program throughout the season as Markel demonstrates how to safely use the products and offers training tips and tricks.
All of the new episodes of Student of the Gun will be available for instant viewing by simply going to http://www.studentofthegun.com. "During the first two seasons we were constantly asked if our shows were available online. For SOTG 3.0 we will be putting each and every one of the 26 new episodes online for all to see," said Paul Markel, host and producer. "The feature episode for each week will be up for viewing each Monday evening."
For more information about the show, visit www.studentofthegun.com
To learn more about Kel-Tec CNC, visit www.keltecweapons.com. For any further questions or requests, please contact Monica Arnold, PR Director for Blue August at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Sep 12th, 2007, 03:30 AM
Sorry, I am just a little confused as to why Lindsay wasn't given a higher ranking when she came back. She hasn't missed that much time, it just seems like a poor decision by the WTA but it could be just me.
View Full Version : DAVENPORT, Special Ranking??


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Culture Connect Featured Event
On Saturday, March 31, bring your family and friends for a day of fun to raise money for Give Kids The World! Play Wii games on 6ft projector screens, face painting, Easter egg hunts, egg dyeing, potato sack races, board games, jump rope contests, hula-hoop contests, prizes, raffles, silent furniture auction, BINGO and more!! Food and other items available for purchase. Adults: $5, Kids: $2.50. All proceeds go to Give Kids The World. Learn more about the charity here: http://www.givekidstheworld.org To purchase tickets in advance and save, contact: Fatima Goodman - Human Resources (203) 358-8400. Group discounts available.
Give Kids The World is a non-profit organization that exists only to fulfill the wishes of all children with life-threatening illnesses and their families from around the world to experience a memorable, joyful, cost-free visit to the Central Florida attractions, and to enjoy the magic of Give Kids The World Village for as long as there is a need.


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(?)Community Member
- Posted: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:34:10 +0000
Welcome to the Rare Fish Report thread
Our Purpose: To gather data about Gaia's rare fish and present it to our fellow fishers with the hopes that the information found here will help them in the catching of their own rare fish.
UPDATE: This thread is very old. The data gathered here is only meant to show new fishers the information we have on rare fish. There are no new updates because there is nothing new to report. All the information that is known on rare fish is all that there is in existence. The original purpose of the thread was to gather information to determine if people's theories about rares were correct, and see what else we could find out. Those theories have either been proven true or false, and all information available to us has been discovered.
I wish there was more left to discover and find out, I really do, but there isn't. Unless an update is made to the game that involves rare, that's all there is to it. I'm sorry.
Most people have a general idea about rare fish, little bits of facts and things we've all heard and experienced while we're out fishing. Some of it came from guides, some of it came from theories we had thought up, some of it came from people that looked at the game code long ago.
Rare fish were... pretty rare. In the past, months could go by with only 1 or 2 reports. It seems like times have changed however, there are more and more reports popping up in threads around the forum and elsewhere, with lots of new information.
In this thread I had hoped to gather as much information as possible, from what bait was used, to how the fish moved. Everything we could find, to hopefully see what's changed, if anything, in this new version of Gaia Fishing, and establish possible ways in which people can hunt for rares more efficiently.
Everyone is welcome to post what rares they have caught, as well as discuss their theories and ideas regarding the rare fish.
Thread Rules and Guidelines
Please read these before posting. If you break one of these rules you will be banned from the thread, so just don't do it, ok? Thanks.
I thought this would be obvious, but ABSOLUTELY NO COPYING ANYTHING FOUND HERE. You may ask for permission to use the information, and post it in your own words. If you desire to post it exactly as I have it, please use the "quote" function. You must provide a link to this thread. Just saying my name is not good enough, there must be a link.
No spam. No bumps unless the thread is off the first page of the forum. Spam includes posts that are just smilies/emoticons, and posts that are not related to either rare fish, rare fish prices, or the fishing game in general. The only type of spam that is allowed is a bump to bring the thread back up to the first page of the forum. Please keep in mind that spam can be warned for. I will most likely delete spam in my thread, I will most likely delete posts that are not related to the topic and contribute in no way to the thread. I will most likely delete posts that are just random things when the thread is already on the first page of the forum.
No quoting ANY of the first 5 posts on the first page. If you have something to say, use the POST REPLY button, NOT the "QUOTE" button.
Be NICE to each other. Keep personal drama out.
When reporting a rare catch, please include screenshot proof. If you don't know how to get the screenshot, post and ask. If you don't know what to put in the form, please post and ask, someone will tell you 3nodding
Do NOT PM me your report, POST it HERE. Please and thank you. I'd rather you not PM me at all as my inbox is far too full with moderating related PMs and any regular PMs will quickly get lost and end up ignored among all the confusion.
[If sharing rare fish price information, please post it all in a single post, or make a post, mention that you will be editing it, and edit in all the information you found later.
I don't mind double posts, but don't over do it. Don't make a new post right after your last post if it's not absolutely necessary.
Don't sell your fish here. Caught a rare fish? Great, post it. Bought a rare fish? Great, please post the price. Sold a rare fish? Wonderful, please post the selling price. Want to chat about rare fish prices and the rare fish market or about your efforts and experiences as a rare fish seller or buyer? No problem. Want to sell a rare fish? Go to the Game Item Exchange, don't post here. Want to buy a rare fish? Go to the Game Item Exchange and look for sellers. Don't post here.
I reserve the right to add any more rules as I see fit.
Last Updated: March 15, 2012. Will no longer be updated any further, sorry!


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With the current trends in web design always changing, and the capabilities of the latest HTML and CSS techniques always growing stronger, it's great to keep on top of what's going on; either by spending a few hours browsing the web from time to time, or purposely coming to showcases such as this one to keep up to date with the web design industry.
This article showcases a wonderful collection of 27 sleek and modern showcases from all around the world (and web!). What's your favourite?
Whether interested in mcts and ccnp or a+ certification, using our up to date practice question you will pass real exam on first try.


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Help us redifine real-time gaming! Tweet Land is the 1st set of games that play with reality, turning world's tweets into real stuff. Read more
Help us redifine real-time gaming! Tweet Land is the 1st set of games that play with reality, turning world's tweets into real stuff.
About this project
∆ Give us a Like if you love indie games ∆
What would happen if what people share in their social networks turns real? And best of all, if you could play with that? Well, if you like the idea of the twittersphere becoming a virtual universe, this is for you.
Welcome to Tweet Land, the first set of videogames that plays with reality.
This project was born because we always thought that it would be really fun if what people comment in Twitter could turn real. You know, from the serious stuff twitters sometimes talk about, to the really nonsense tweets people make daily. So we decided to start working on this idea, and that's how Tweet Land was born. We have now advanced a lot and are really excited, but our resources are limited. So we need your help to make Tweet Land what everybody of us dream of.
In this universe you will be able to play several videogames. Tweet Land will be launched with two initial games. A racing game called Route 140 and an action game called Love City. Check out the video to watch the action gameplay. Hope you like them. Enjoy!
The game works really simple. Every time someone in the world tweets something, his or her tweets could affect the gameplay of Tweet Land by triggering certain action-keywords. It could be a "car accident" in your racing game, it could be your hate-gun gets reloaded in the action game, it could be anything.
We have created tons of situations that are triggered by their relative keywords that people might tweet. Some of them are:
- car accident
- meteor
- shooting star
- tsunami
- volcano eruption
- fireflies
- zombie
- beach
- love
- hate
- shotgun
- lightsaber
We have many many more, but we don't want to spoil your game. And we will create even more. Many will be based on trend topics, many on actual events, and many others will be odd stuff people tweet (you know that happens a lot!).
The sweet part comes from the fact that people around the world are always creating tweets for the game based on their real-life experiences; even if they are not playing; even if they don't know anything about Tweet Land. So the events and the gameplay are always changing within the web and its thousands of conversations.
Tweet Land is the first set of videogames that plays with reality, making it different every time you play and endlessly replayable. Its main features are:
We have plenty of Tweet Land done. But we have many more work to do and many things to pay for. We plan to launch Tweet Land before mid 2011, for iPhone and web browser with two initial games. One of the games is a racing game called Route 140 and the other is an action game called Love City. With your support we can:
- secure the ongoing development and multiplatform release
- pay the dedicated servers necessary to run the Twitter integration correctly
- buy software licenses
- and lock the Beta-phase so we can launch on date
As some of the rewards, we are giving to every pledge of $5 or more a pre-order of the game so you can download it when it is ready, and for every pledge of $15 or more we are giving Tweet Land beta-test access before the game is on public release so you can help us build it with your ideas. Check the other cool rewards on the top side-bar.
We are a group of friends from sunny Costa Rica that all of our lives have been really passionate about videogames and the web. For this reason every one of us has specialized since years ago into web/software development, graphic design, audio composition, e-marketing, social media and digital creativity. We already have worked in award-winning projects ('Romeria Virtual' won Silver Cannes Lion; 'Wackylands Boss' became an AppleStore Top Paid Game; etc.) in our daytime jobs, but we thought it was time to jump out and start working in our own fun stuff. To stop the talk, and start the doing.
Hope you share our vision, and either you help us with a pledge or by spreading the word (give us a Like or tweet about it), we will really appreciate your support.
Gracias! Pura vida.
You can subscribe to our newsletter or take a sneak peek of the ongoing development at tweetlandgame.com
And by the way, everytime someone shares the Kickstarter link in Twitter, a fancy event will happen in Tweet Land site :D
Y si sos de COSTA RICA, tambíen podés donar al proyecto mediante la cuenta corriente del Banco de Costa Rica 001-0289540-4 y la cuenta cliente para transferencias SINPE 15201001028954040 cédula 3102624038 WHY IDEAS LIMITADA
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
Pledge $1 or more
25 backers
Every dollar counts. The Tweet Land team will send to you a huge hug and a 'thank you email'. Also you will have this warm feeling that you helped build something awesome.
Pledge $5 or more
91 backers
The reward above + a pre-order of the iPhone version, so you can download Tweet Land (with Route140 or LoveCity -you choose-) for free when it´s ready.
Pledge $15 or more
45 backers
All the rewards above + beta-access so you can play-n-test Tweet Land before the public release and can help us build it collaboratively with your ideas.
Pledge $25 or more
115 backers
All the rewards above + you will be tagged as a Founding Father of Tweet Land, and you will be part of the game via the Backer´s Monument that will show all the backers names that help build this land. Yourself in a videogame! Yay! + Also you will get a digital download of the complete retro-inspired original soundtrack of Tweet Land. -
Pledge $75 or more
25 backers
All the rewards above + you will have a life-time free access to ALL the future games develop for Tweet Land, so you can download the new releases and play them anytime for the rest of your life. -
Pledge $200 or more
3 backers
All the rewards above (pre-order, beta access, Founding Father, soundtrack, life-time reward) + your own limited edition Tweet Land Art Box with: a pixelart poster of yourself in the game designed by our lead concept artist, two Tweet Land buttons so you can proudly wear them and an exclusive logo sticker signed by all the team. -
Pledge $700 or more
0 backers
All the rewards above + A black-tie dinner with the Tweet Land´s team (*if you live in Costa Rica) or a 30 minutes Skype call with the full team, so we can show you our HQ and the full Tweet Land project behind the scenes.
Pledge $1,000 or more
1 backer
'GOD OF TWEET': All the rewards above + you will be a Tweet Land´s God! This means you can create with us a unique customized Tweet Land event, so that it happens every time your chosen keyword is used. Awesome!!! *Restrictions apply
Funding period
- (30 days)


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Which isn't to say that transplanted Southerners didn't miss their birthplaces. The genre that was to become Chicago blues, although often raucous, was also often bitterly sad. Winters (especially in Chi-Town) could be brutal, loved ones were left behind, and the hustle and bustle of city life was far more crowded and complex than life on the Delta. "It wasn't peaches and cream, man," singer-pianist Eddie Boyd said of life in the toddlin' town. "But it was a lot better than down there where I was." All of this was reflected in the hard, insistent citified blues that grew up in the postwar era. This was typified in the harp sound of Little Walter, which incorporated roaring trains, traffic noise, and the phrasings of the now-omnipresent saxophone in contrast to the more laid-back Memphis R&B of Sonny Boy Williamson. And then of course there was the electric guitar, which put a new edge to Muddy Waters's always pungent Delta playing, and introduced the mega-influential talents of Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam.
Although no longer struggling with the same overt racism that was the norm way back when, some relatively new releases still deal with the bluesman and his role in the working world, approaching blues playing as just another way to make a living. From Son Seals's bass-propelled "Bad Axe": "Can't pick no more cotton/Can't shine no more shoes/Can't get no job at a car wash/Might as well sing the blues." Or the hard-shuffle title track to Luther Allison's Soul Fixin' Man: "I'm goin' back/Back to the shoe-shine stand/I'll be singin' the blues while I shine your shoes/I'm a soul fixin' man." Seals seems to be saying that these traditional work options for black men are no longer viable, while Allison is all too glad to trade finger poppin' for rag poppin', getting off the road and back to the family.
But the dream of one day quitting the day job and making it as a musician lives on. On their new disc, Bloodlines, Michael Hill's Blues Mob, a hard-rockin' South Bronx bar band, tells a similar story on the track "Bluesman at Heart." Instead of joining his buddies to ogle the ladies during his lunchbreak, the construction-working bluesman is at the music shop, "flirting with a candy-apple Strat that caught his eye." He may be straddling girders on the 52nd floor, but "behind his eyes/he's jamming with Albert Collins, Albert King, and Buddy Guy."
Comforting words for every working Joe with a dream and some talent.