text:
Tropang Texters, E-Painters go for 2-0 Final 4 lead
There were no fireworks, only great efforts from Talk 'N Text and Rain or Shine in Day 1 of the PBA Philippine Cup Final Four series Wednesday.
With 1-0 leads, the Tropang Texters and the Elasto Painters today gun for a commanding advantage against Alaska and San Mig Coffee, respectively, as playoff action shifts to Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay for the rest of the Yuletide season.
The Painters take the floor first at 5:15 p.m. against the Mixers, who were outclassed in the second half of Game 1, as Yeng Guiao and his boys try to creep closer to a second straight Finals appearance.
Even with a masterful 91-83 conquest of the Mixers, Guiao refused to make any predictions.
"It's still way too early, this is just the first game," Guiao said. "But what I know is that the team that wins Game 1 has a 70 percent chance of winning the series. You need any advantage you can get in this kind of a situation."
Tim Cone of San Mig left the coliseum in a huff after the stinging loss.
"Rain or Shine got everything they wanted to get," Cone later said in a text message. "We just couldn't get them out of their comfort zone and we ended up playing a very sub-par game.
"But our guys will respond and put a better effort for Game 2," he continued. "The key right now is getting even in the series."
The last time Rain or Shine and San Mig figured in a best-of-seven playoff series was for last season's Governors' Cup, with the Painters taking a 2-0 lead and Guiao predicting victory even after losing Paul Lee after Game 2.
Talk 'N Text will also shoot for a repeat against the Aces at 7:30 p.m., with Norman Black and his "three-peat"-seeking Texters hoping to fire it up offensively.
"They did a tremendous job in slowing us down (offensively)," Black said after a 66-65 victory made possible by a Ryan Reyes triple off a broken play in the final 14.3 seconds. "We have to go back and see how we can counter their defense."
Alaska almost succeeded in shutting down the Texters only to go scoreless in the final 2:34 and allowing the decisive Reyes jumper.
"We can't feel sorry for ourselves," Alaska coach Luigi Trillo gamely said after the bitter defeat. "Nice thing we showed is that we can keep up with them."
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text:
Conecting volt meter to G/S
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Joined: Apr 2008
Location: Road Island
Oddometer: 5,905
I don't know the particulars of your bike, but IF you are picking up grounds and so forth inside the headlight, I would be tempted to run the "Hot" for the VM to the bulb feed itself (assuming that the headlight is "on" when the ignition is on!), other wise, as said above, find any positive that is turned on when the switch is on. You could do this right at the switch with a little ingenuity etc.
FWIW, your voltmeter, if you are picking up voltage in the headlight bulb and not at the battery, will help in showing a "relative" voltage... i.e. it may in fact be lower than the battery voltage because of wire resistance etc, but you can still use the information to good advantage... if the voltage is lower than what you normally see, there is something going on. In other words, don't take the vm reading to be absolute gospel until you have compared it to the battery voltage, then you will know what the difference is.... it could easily by several tenths of a volt, or more, different.
XS650 becomes a VT BackRoadRunner
Loving the 80ST
I love projects that take twice as much effort as should be needed. Should be an Airhead motto. (disston)
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Allan Havis
Allan Havis (born 1951) is a playwright with pronounced political themes and probes on colliding cultures. His works range from minimal-language texts to ambiguous, ironic narratives that delineate the genesis, paradoxes, and seduction of evil. Several of his dramas involve Jewish identity, cultural alienation, and universal problems of racism. His literary influences come, in part, from August Strindberg[1] and Harold Pinter.[2]
In addition to his plays, Havis wrote a novel for children, Albert the Astronomer (Harper & Row, 1979; ISBN 0-06-022242-5). He edited an anthology for University of Illinois Press, American Political Plays (2001; ISBN 0-252-07000-3).[1] Fifteen Havis plays are published in editions by Broadway Play Publishing Inc., Theatre Communications Group, Penguin/Mentor, and University of Illinois. His book Cult Films: Taboo and Transgression ( University Press of America, 2008; ISBN 0-7618-3967-4) covers ninety years of cinema. Southern Illinois University Press published his next edited anthology 2010, American Political Plays after 9/11.[2] His first opera libretto, Lilith (music by Anthony Davis), had its world premiere at the Conrad Prebys Music Center in UC San Diego on December 4, 2009. The chamber opera, based on his play, highlights Adam's first wife of supernatural proportion and partly staged in a modern era. His second opera with Anthony Davis, Lear on the 2nd Floor, had a showcase presentation at Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts in March 2012.
Havis has an MFA from Yale Drama School (1980), has headed for many years the MFA playwriting program at University of California, San Diego, and became Provost of Thurgood Marshall College, UC San Diego in 2006.[3] His wife, Julia Fulton, is an actor and college professor. They have two children.[4]
Dramatic works[edit]
- Arthur and Joe (2012) [5]
- Lear on the 2nd Floor (opera 2012)
- Arrow to the Heart (2010)
- Lilith (opera 2009)
- The Tutor (2008)
- Restless Spirits (2006)
- The Haunting of Jim Crow (2005)
- Three Nights in Prague (2004)
- Private Parties (2003)
- Nuevo California (with Bernardo Solano 2003)
- Misjudgment of Paris (2002)
- A Jew on Ethiopia Street (2001)
- The Gift (1999)
- Sainte Simone (1996)
- A Vow of Silence (1994)
- Ladies of Fisher Cove (1993)
- A Daring Bride (1990)
- Lilith (1990)
- Hospitality (1988)
- Haut Gout (1987)
- Morocco (1986)
- Mink Sonata (1985)
- Holy Wars (1984)
- Family Rites (1980)
- Interludes (1978)
- 2008 San Diego Patté Award for Outstanding New Play
- 2003 San Diego Theatre Critics Award
- McKnight Fellowship
- Kennedy Center Award for New Plays
- Guggenheim Fellowship[6]
- Rockefeller Fellowship
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
- California State Arts Fellowship
- New York State Arts Fellowship
- HBO's Playwrights USA Award
- Foundation of the Dramatist Guild/CBS Award
- ^ "American Political Plays", University of Illinois.
- ^ "American Political Plays after 9/11", Southern Illinois University Press.
- ^ "UCSD Theatre & Dance: Faculty > Allan Havis". UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
- ^ Jan Jennings and Dolores Davies (May 22, 2006). "Educator/Playwright Allan Havis Appointed Provost of Thurgood Marshall College at UCSD". University of California, San Diego. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
- ^ "Playwrights Process at Cygnet", Charlene and Brenda in the Blogosphere, October 1, 2013.
- ^ "Allan Havis - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Drama & Performance Art. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1987. Retrieved 13 February 2010.
External links[edit]
- UCSD Theatre
- Marshall College
- Kennedy Center
- Broadway Play Publications
- Broadway Play Publications II


text:
Bee Wilson wants free school meals for all
Many English schoolchildren have a nutritionally deficient diet
Many English schoolchildren have a nutritionally deficient diet
by Bee Wilson Published
Here comes September, brimming with the promise of shiny new pencil cases and grey trousers from Woolworths. But how few of the children now scuffing their new shoes on the way to school will be well fed when they get there. How few, indeed, will be fed by their school at all. Only 44 per cent of English children now eat school meals, compared to 68 per cent in 1979.
In January 2000 (the last date for which figures are available), a total of 1,039,789 children in England had a free school lunch. But this compares with approximately 3.76 million English children living in poverty (defined as households with half the average national income or less). Thus, far too few children are at present eligible for free school meals. Yet as many as half of those who are eligible do not actually eat them, thanks to the stigma that attaches to the privilege. Meanwhile, more and more research indicates that the diets of British children, especially in low-income households, are nutritionally deficient.
There is a single remedy to both these problems that is brilliant, obvious and very unlikely to happen: make school lunches a universal free entitlement. This is the radical proposal of a recent paper written by NS readers Margaret and Arthur Wynn (Nutrition and Health 2002, volume 16, pp 55-71).
Drawing on data produced by the National Diet and Nutrition Survey in 2000, the Wynns point out that alarming numbers of school-age children are failing to get adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals (measured against the RNI, or reference nutrient intakes). Fifty per cent of teenage girls are deficient in folate, a micronutrient essential for replication of cells and possibly a factor in reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, nervous system disorders and Alzheimer's disease. As many as 70 per cent of teenagers fail to get enough Vitamin A, which is crucial for the brain, arteries and the eyes. More than 90 per cent of teenagers are potassium-deficient. (What happens to all those bananas that the supermarkets sell?)
At the same time, chronic sickness is on the rise. Eight per cent of schoolchildren suffered chronic sickness in 1972, compared with 20 per cent in 1998, and there is a much higher concentration of sufferers among poor children. This has implications that go far beyond the school years. As the Wynns rightly note, "The chronic sickness of British children becomes the chronic sickness of adults." In the 1991 census, a million men and a million women were recorded as chronically sick, and therefore economically inactive. Bad childhood diets are a long-term drain on both the social security budget and the NHS. They also contribute to the poor health of young women, and thence to the UK's terrible record for low-birth-weight babies, currently on a par with Albania's.
Universal free school lunches would cost about £2bn a year, calculate the Wynns, or £3bn, allowing for a modest increase in quality and service. Sounds like a lot? Well, compare it with the annual total of £511bn that the government plans to be spending by 2005-6, much of it cash pumped into more testing and superfluous computers. By contrast, well-designed free school lunches would be a small investment with immediate but also truly far-reaching effects. At last, the middle classes would have an incentive to campaign to improve the food in schools, instead of insulating their own brood with complacent boxes of hummus sandwiches and cherry tomatoes, while letting the rest go hang.
"Free" anything sounds prodigal to some. But we already provide free food in prisons and hospitals, after all. There is every reason for doing the same for children - with the aim that fewer of them end up dining at the taxpayer's expense in those other institutions.


text:
While Apple's iPad has captured the public imagination, these three PC tablets will help with the heavy lifting.
Because of its small size and low price, the HP EliteBook 2740p is the tablet that I'd get for myself.
When it comes down to it, I really don't use a DVD drive all that often on the road. I really like its flush screen, its performance and, especially, its three-year warranty.
My only qualm is its disappointing battery life, but you can address that by using some aggressive power management settings and by packing a second battery.
The LifeBook T900 and Portege M780 are both fine systems, but they are much bigger and heavier.
If you absolutely have to have an optical drive, either of these two would be a great addition to your mobile fleet.
How we tested
I used each system for two to three weeks, evaluated them side by side and used both their keyboards and pens in a work environment.
I took each one with me on a short business trip, using it as my primary computer on the road.
After weighing and measuring each in tablet mode, I loaded the PassMark PerformanceTest 7.0 benchmark test suite, ran it three times and averaged the results. The software tests the major components of the system - including processor, hard drive, 2D and 3D graphics and memory - and compiles the results into a single score that represents each tablet's performance potential.
To see how precise and responsive the pens and digitisers are, I drew a simple map on the screen of each using the Paint program.
Then, I tried out several two-finger gestures and handwrote 10 web addresses into the input window and recorded how many worked.
I tested each machine's battery life by setting the system up on my Wi-Fi network, tuning in an internet radio station and adjusting the volume and screen brightness to three quarters.
With PassMark's Battery Monitor software running, I then unplugged the system and let it run down.
Finally, I rated the Wi-Fi range of each by walking away from the router with an Internet radio station playing.
I marked the distance at which the system lost its connection with the server and recorded that as the unit's Wi-Fi range.
See also: 50 Apple iPad competitors launching in 2010
- Laptop buying advice
- See all Laptop reviews


text:
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text:
Get your hands on a kaleidoscope penis, see the world from a different angle
If you've got a kaleidoscope on that Christmas shopping list for a niece or nephew this year, make sure you don't accidentally order this one. Or if you do, make sure you keep it for yourself. Introducing the penis kaleidoscope by Yinka Shonibare.


text:
The Beckhams haven't been photographed together for ages.
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23-04-2013, 12:10
Daisy Bennyboots
Forum Member
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: The sticks
Posts: 15,931
Originally Posted by
Azura's Star
From the Column of Truth
Hey Guys!!!
No doubt by now the entire world is on tenterhooks to hear confirmation of the truth about me and my good, good friend, international superstar and Daddy-who-loves-his-kids-nearly-as-much-as-me Mr Goldenballs.
As an International Ambassador, I'm quite used to being summoned at a moment's notice to top-level discussions, so when Mr Goldenballs asked for a meeting, I jumped into the Lambo and raced to the scene (not forgetting to take the kids to school first of course).
We met up in one of my very successful and spotlessly clean coffee shops.
I was hoping that Mrs Goldenballs would be there aswell - like me she has a very successful clothing brand, but apparently she had taken the children to the loo, although why they had to go all the way to Paris for a wee I will never know.
Over coffee, Mr Goldenballs and I discussed the important international events of the day. To be fair, he has played Wembley a few more times than I have, but as I told him, a handful of football medals are mere trifles compared to my DOTY trophies.
Anyway, as we were finishing our coffee, Mr Goldenballs reached across the table and grabbed my hand.
"So Peter," he squeaked, "Would you like to have a look in my famous lunchbox?"
Honestly, guys, I thought he meant he'd brought us some sandwiches and maybe a muffin or two to share.........
Hahaha - oh AS, just what I need this morning thank you
Originally Posted by
Can you imagine those two as a couple? The vanity overload!
I have tried to imagine...but it's like trying to think about how big space is - complete brain function overload
Well the Fail today have yet another walkabout featuring DB and Harper sans Victowwyah. They still can't afford a coat for the tot it seems.
Daisy Bennyboots
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text:
Barkley, Woods set records in rout
Robert Woods handed the football to Matt Barkley after he caught the Southern California quarterback's 100th touchdown pass - and Barkley promptly tried to throw it to an official.
''I had to say, 'No, that one is special!''' Woods said.
The All-American receiver really didn't need to worry. Woods and Barkley could have gone home from the Coliseum with a whole bunch of souvenirs after a record-setting day in their prolific partnership.
Barkley threw for 298 yards and six touchdowns while establishing USC's new career mark for TD passes, and Woods set a pair of school records himself in the 11th-ranked Trojans' 50-6 victory over Colorado on Saturday.
Barkley and Woods connected on scoring throws of 39, 29, 17 and 3 yards in the first 35 minutes for USC (6-1, 4-1 Pac-12), which finally showcased its offensive might against hapless Colorado (1-6, 1-3) after a season of mostly unintimidating performances. The two stars who stuck with the Trojans through heavy NCAA sanctions have been rewarded with lofty spots atop USC's record book, and they savored the moment.
''It's definitely an honor to have my name with guys like that,'' said Barkley, who surpassed Matt Leinart's USC and conference records for career TD passes. ''It's special to be able to celebrate it with Robert and the guys.''
Woods set a single-game school record for TD catches, and he passed Dwayne Jarrett on USC's career receptions list with his 217th career catch on his third scoring grab.
''I grew up watching all those receivers, ever since I understood what USC football was,'' Woods said. ''It's fun to follow in their footsteps, to be one of those great receivers.''
And though Barkley's Heisman Trophy candidacy has all but vanished during the Trojans' recent streak of grind-it-out games, he put up some awfully gaudy numbers against Colorado.
Barkley tied his own single-game USC mark for TD passes while going 19 for 20 to break Rick Neuheisel's conference record for completion percentage in a game with at least 20 passes. Barkley also hit Marqise Lee and Xavier Grimble for scores, and his only incompletion was a drop by Curtis McNeal.
Want more in-depth coverage of USC football? Check out insider information, forums and exclusive video on SCPlaybook.
Not a USC fan? Find your team at Scout.com.
Woods finished with eight catches for 132 yards, blowing past Jarrett's record midway through his junior year. Lee, who could probably threaten Woods' marks next year, had six catches for 103 yards.
''We just saw so many things happen today,'' said USC coach Lane Kiffin, who keeps an eye on statistical superlatives for his players. ''We've been playing for 124 years here. ... Just an unbelievable day.''
USC has won four straight since its only loss, at Stanford, and the Trojans' second home game in seven weeks turned into the preseason No. 1 team's most lopsided of the season. The Trojans took the lead 50 seconds in on Lee's 55-yard TD catch, and eventually carved up Colorado's defense for 313 yards and 33 points on just 27 plays in the first half.
''That's the kind of game we needed, the kind that's been expected from us all year,'' USC center Khaled Holmes said. ''That's what we've been trying to do all season.''
Jordan Webb passed for 210 yards for Colorado, which hasn't beaten a ranked team on the road in 19 tries over the past decade. The Buffaloes' defense has yielded 246 points in the past five games, and its veteran leaders are getting angry.
Safety Parker Orms criticized several unnamed teammates after the game, saying they aren't studying and preparing well enough.
''It's embarrassing, but we've just got to keep fighting, even if we're getting blown out,'' Orms said. ''Captains try to get on those guys (who don't prepare) all the time. ... We have to see who's willing to compete in this conference.''
USC safety Drew McAllister made an impressive leaping interception in the end zone to end Colorado's opening drive, and Woods easily shed two tacklers on a 39-yard romp down the sideline. After McAllister recovered a Colorado fumble, Barkley tied Leinart's mark on a short TD throw to Grimble just 41 seconds later.
The Buffaloes managed two field goals before Barkley hit a streaking Woods in stride for the 100th TD.
''We've got to see what's wrong and get it fixed,'' Colorado coach Jon Embree said. ''We're young, but we're going to have to grow up and compete. The one thing you can't say about this team is, 'They don't compete.'''
WHO SETS THE CURVE?Check out the FOXiest fans from schools across the country and tweet us your photo.
USC was prepared for Barkley and Woods moving into history: After Barkley set the mark, he was greeted with a standing ovation and a video tribute on the Coliseum scoreboard featuring congratulations from Leinart, Carson Palmer, former USC coach Pete Carroll and several Los Angeles sports luminaries, including Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.
Barkley didn't play in the fourth quarter, and backup Max Wittek threw another scoring pass to D.J. Morgan as USC set the school record for TD passes in a game.
Not everything was as perfect as the Trojans' passing game: USC committed five penalties and fumbled twice in the first half, and promising freshman defensive tackle Leonard Williams was ejected in the second quarter for throwing a punch at a Colorado player while they were on the ground.
USC led 33-6 at halftime, but Kiffin gathered his team on the sideline for a demonstrative tongue-lashing before the Trojans ran to the locker room.
USC lost starting left tackle Aundrey Walker to an undisclosed injury early in the third quarter, with the sophomore walking gingerly to a cart. Walker's teammates said he wasn't in the locker room after the game.
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text:
Running from pain—falling into love.
Letting Go of the Reins, Book 1
Weeks before Thanksgiving, Kally Jensen leaves her life in Michigan and her abusive fiancé behind. With her sister's money, a teddy bear and bruises she cannot hide, she tries to disappear. She almost does—permanently—when icy roads force her car into a ditch, leaving her stranded and injured on a cattle ranch in Hulett, Wyoming.
Fate answers ex-police officer Slade Carlson's unspoken… (more)
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd. (December 16, 2008)
Format: EPUB
Page count: 393 pages
File size: 765 KB
Protection: DRM free
Language: English


text:
PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- As the budget debate heats up, Republicans are warning of socialism in the White House and claiming that Democrats are rushing back to their dangerous tonic of big government.
Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rush Limbaugh warned that "the future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster."
On CNN, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is worried that the administration is using the current economic conditions to "justify" a "massive expansion" in the government.
After the past eight years in American politics, it is impossible to reconcile current promises by conservatives for small government with the historical record of President Bush's administration. Most experts on the left and right can find one issue upon which to agree: The federal government expanded significantly after 2001 when George W. Bush was in the White House.
The growth did not just take place with national security spending but with domestic programs as well. Even as the administration fought to reduce the cost of certain programs by preventing cost-of-living increases in benefits, in many other areas of policy -- such as Medicare prescription drug benefits, federal education standards and agricultural subsidies -- the federal government expanded by leaps and bounds. And then there are the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Federal spending stood at about $1.9 trillion in 2000, when Democrat Bill Clinton ended his presidency. In his final year in office, Bush proposed to spend $3.1 trillion for fiscal year 2009. President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2010 is $3.6 trillion.
Nor can Republicans blame a Democratic Congress for being responsible for these trends. Much of the expansion took place between 2002 and 2006, when Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes was writing about "big government conservatism" back in 2003.
Two years later, the right-wing CATO Institute published a report noting that total government spending had grown by 33 percent in President Bush's first term, lamenting that "President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson."
The article goes on to detail just how hypocritical the GOP has been in the last 50 years, when it comes to it's constant accusation of big government by the Dems.
The fact is that both parties spend what they don't have. Both parties are interested in increasing their own power and influence. The GOP just does a better job of lying to it's supporters about it's policies.


text:
Other key financial products CHAPTER-7 Other financial needs • Need for health insurance • Need for insurance riders:A rider is a condition or a clause that is added to the base plan by paying extra premium, i.e. additional benefit = additional premium. • Need for pension plans Types of products, their features and benefits • Types of health plan Individual health insurance plan Family floater health insurance plan Group health insurance plan Daily hospitalisation cash benefit plan Individual health insurance plan As the name specifies this plan covers a single individual and caters for their health requirements. Family floater health insurance plan A family floater plan is different from an individual health plan. In this type of plan family members can be covered. An individual can cover themself, their spouse, children and parents. The insurance company may specify the number of people that can be covered. In this type of plan the insurance cover is shared among the family members covered in no fixed proportions. Group health insurance plan This health insurance plan provides cover to a group of people who are brought together for a common objective. For example, a group can be the employees of a company. Many employers provide health cover for their employees to protect them against medical emergencies and some extend the group health cover to the families of the employees. Daily hospitalisation cash benefit plan In this type of health plan the insurance company pays the insured a fixed amount on a daily basis in the event of hospitalisation. The daily amount is fixed at the time of taking out the policy and is paid for the number of days the insured is hospitalised, irrespective of the actual amount spent on treatment (subject to the T&C of the policy). The daily amount paid is fixed and may be more or less than the cost of actual treatment. The insurance company may pay an additional amount on a daily basis if the insured is admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). In the case of critical illness or surgery an additional lump sum amount may be paid subject to the T &C of the policy. The daily amount paid under this policy can be in addition to any other medical insurance policy that the insured may have. The policy has a limit on the total number of days in a year for which the daily hospitalisation cash benefit can be used. This is specified in the policy T& C. Features and benefits of health plans • 1. Pricing: the premium for a health insurance plan depends on the individual's age, fitness, habits and family medical history. If all other factors remain constant, premiums increase with the age of the policyholder. So it is always better to take out a health plan as early as possible as the premium paid at younger ages is not very significant but will increase as the policyholder gets older. 2. Cashless facility: some health plans offer a cashless facility. In these plans the person covered under the plan is given a photo identity card. The insured needs to inform their health insurance company at the time of their admission to a network hospital. This is the group of hospitals that have contracted with a health insurance company to provide healthcare services. On approval the insured does not pay the hospital deposit amount or the treatment expenses, rather the invoices are settled directly by the insurance company as per the terms and conditions specified in the policy. 3. Medical examinations: most health insurance companies require the proposer to undergo a medical examination before the policy can be issued and, depending on the age of the Proposer, a number of tests may be carried out. Based on the doctor's report, the health insurance company decides whether to accept the proposal and at what price. 4. Pre-existing illnesses: most health insurance policies cover pre-existing illnesses after a specified time period; commonly referred to as a 'waiting period'. Some insurance companies may exclude some pre-existing illnesses altogether and this information is specified in the policy terms and conditions; for example a pre-existing illness like diabetes may be covered after, say, three or four years. The terms and conditions relating to treatment of existing illnesses may vary from company to company. 5. No-claim bonus: if there is no claim in a year then, at the time of renewal, the insurance company may offer a no-claim bonus, i.e. the insurance company will give a discount in the premium due next year. 6. Permanent exclusions: health insurance plans have some permanent exclusions which are specified in the policy, e.g. misuse of drugs or not following medical advice. 7. Immediate care: treatment is available immediately and at a time convenient to the policyholder. There will be no waiting for a future appointment whilst the policyholder is suffering from a treatable medical condition. 8. No need for lump sums from savings or loans: the policyholder does not have to worry about how to manage when the need for medical payments arise because these will be paid by the insurance company as a result of the premiums already paid. Riders • Accidental death benefit (ADB) rider • Term rider This rider can be used to enhance the death cover amount in a policy at a nominal cost. If an individual wants a savings policy like an endowment policy or money-back policy and at the same time wants to increase the death cover without buying a separate term insurance policy, then they can opt for this rider. The insurance company specifies the products with which this rider can be taken and also specifies the list of exclusions under which the benefit of the rider will not be payable. ● Critical illness (CI) rider Critical illness (CI) rider Heart Kidney attack Cancer failure Aorta Major organ surgery transplant CI rider Multiple Stroke sclerosis Paraplegia Blindness Coma Riders • Waiver of premium (WOP) rider • Other riders offered by insurance companies Surgical care rider Hospital care rider Guaranteed insurability rider Features and benefits of riders • Additional cover: by adding riders the insured can purchase extra protection. • Nominal cost: riders come at a nominal cost compared to buying a new plan. IN insurance plan they can add a term rider and enhance the cover at a nominal cost. • Customisation: riders help in customisation of the health plan according to the preference of the customer. client have a number of options to choose from. Each plan can be taken with one or more riders. Five basic plans and seven riders, effectively provide 35 or more options. • Flexibility: many riders can be added or removed at the will of the policyholder, thus providing a high degree of flexibility. • Tax benefits: premium paid for riders qualifies for deduction from taxable income under relevant sections of the Income Tax Act. IRDA regulations for riders As per the IRDA regulations issued in April 2002 and amended in October 2002: • The premium on all riders relating to health or critical illnesses, in case of term or group insurance products shall not exceed 100% of the premium of the base policy; • The premium on all the other riders put together should not exceed 30% of the premium on the base policy; and • The benefits arising under each of the riders shall not exceed the sum insured under the base policy. By these regulations the IRDA has put a limit on the number of riders that can be offered with any policy. It is possible that these limits may be amended from time to time. Annuities An annuity is a series of regular payments from an annuity provider to an individual, referred to as the annuitant. ☻Immediate annuities ☻Deferred annuities In practice there are many variations available in annuity • Life annuity • Guaranteed period annuity • Joint life, last survivor annuity • Life annuity with return of purchase price • Increasing annuity Pension plans • Pension plans are savings and investment plans tied to the provision of pension benefits for individuals and their dependants. Once contributions are paid into a pension scheme they are locked in the scheme until retirement or earlier death. They cannot be withdrawn to pay debts or buy a new car for example. Pension plans may be provided by employers or by private individuals Features and benefits of pension plans Accumulation phase In a pension plan there are two phases: the accumulation/investment phase and the regular annuity phase. In the accumulation phase, during their working life the individual makes regular contributions or a lump sum contribution which is invested by the insurance company on the client's behalf. • Regular annuity phase: On retirement the individual can use the fund accumulated during the accumulation phase to buy an annuity plan from the same insurance company or from another insurance company. Apart from the accumulated fund the individual can also use the money received as part of retirement benefits such as provident fund money, gratuity, superannuation etc. or maturity money received from investments like a Public Provident Fund or from other investments to buy the annuity scheme. During the regular annuity phase the insurance company invests the lump sum amount on behalf of the individual and starts making regular/periodic annuity payments to the individual (annuitant). • Commutation Before receiving regular/periodic annuity payments the individual can make a lump sum withdrawal. This is known as commutation. Insurance companies normally permit the individual to make withdrawals of up to a third of the accumulated fund. The remaining two thirds must be used to buy the annuity payments for the individual. • Payment frequency:During the accumulation phase the individual can make contributions on a monthly/ quarterly/biannual/annual basis towards the retirement fund. An individual can also make a single lump sum investment towards the retirement fund. At the time of buying the annuity the individual can also choose to receive annuity payments monthly/quarterly/biannually/ annually. Most people choose the monthly annuity mode. • Insurance cover: Annuity plans or pension plans do not provide any insurance cover during the regular annuity phase, and on the death of the annuitant the payments stop unless there is a guaranteed period. Refer to section B5B for further information. Frequency of payment : An individual can pay the insurance company a lump sum amount or choose to make a series of payments during the accumulation phase. Tax implications: As per the prevailing tax laws, annual investments of up to a specified amount made in pension plans during the accumulation phase qualify for deduction from taxable income under the Income Tax Act. A third of the accumulated fund can be withdrawn as a tax- free lump sum. Regular annuity or pension received by the individual is taxable as per the tax slab and tax rate applicable to them. • Traditional/unit-linked: During the accumulation phase the individual can choose to invest in a traditional pension plan or a unit-linked pension plan, based on their risk appetite. A traditional pension plan invests most of the funds in Government securities, whereas in a unit-linked retirement plan the individual can choose to invest the funds in an equity fund, a debt fund, a balanced fund or any other fund from the available options. • Type of pay outs: During the regular annuity phase some annuities make fixed payments to the annuitant while some increase the annuity payments by a certain percentage or amount related to an inflation index. Tax and inflation implications for financial products • Health insurance plans: as per the prevailing tax laws, the premium paid up to a specified limit for health insurance plans qualifies for deduction from taxable income under the relevant section of the Income Tax Act. If the individual is a senior citizen (65 years or above) then the deduction allowed is higher than other individuals. An individual can pay the premium for themself, their spouse, children and parents and make use of the tax benefits applicable. • Riders: premium paid for insurance riders qualifies for deduction from taxable income under relevant sections of the Income Tax Act. • Pension plan: the premium paid for pension plans (up to specified limits) during the accumulation phase qualifies for deduction from taxable income under the Income Tax Act. During commutation the individual can withdraw a lump sum amount of up to a third of the accumulated funds tax free. The regular annuity received by an individual will be deemed as income and is taxable in the hands of the annuitant as per the tax slabs and tax rates applicable to them. Inflation implications for financial products • Inflation has an impact on the costs of healthcare which have risen sharply in the past few years meaning that the health insurance cover taken out today may not be adequate in a decade's time. However, some health insurance plans allow an increase in the health cover and an individual needs to review their health cover regularly, keeping in mind the effects of inflation. Some health plans and life insurance plans allow the insured to add the critical illness rider. This comes in very useful if the individual is diagnosed with some form of CI. Prioritising needs and applying financial products to needs • Health plan provide for the costs incurred in the event of the hospitalisation of the family income provider or any other family member. • Even though retirement is further from other financial goals,the individual should not give less priority to this gaol;they can star with a lower amount and increase contributions over a period of time. THANK YOU.
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It was a packed house Thursday night at the historic Tampa Theatre. And it wasn't for live music or a classic film. Attendees were there to see "Too Close To Home," a documentary produced by WEDU, Tampa Bay's public television station, about one of the darkest and most heinous crimes – human trafficking.
"The production of 'Too Close To Home,' continues a long tradition of WEDU programs that address important issues facing our community. These documentaries help educate, inform and enrich lives," said Susan Howarth, WEDU president and CEO. "We are proud to stand alongside law enforcement and community organizations in an effort to promote awareness."
The 30-minute documentary shed light on the fact that human trafficking takes place in communities across the nation, even Tampa Bay, which is ordinarily known as a tourist destination with world-renowned beaches. Special Agent Bill Williger represented U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). He was featured alongside a Florida legislator, local law enforcement partners, representatives from non-governmental organizations and survivors. Each documentary participant had one goal – bring awareness to human trafficking.
"I take human trafficking very seriously because it's a crime against people, not a victimless crime," said Williger. "Victims are forced to work against their will. Some are forced into a life of prostitution, while others are forced to work in grueling, inhumane conditions. Either way, these victims live a life of modern day slavery I wouldn't wish upon anyone."
And that's why Williger is so passionate about what he does. He not only puts traffickers behind bars, he also participates in outreach events to educate audiences from Junior League members to local strip club employees about human trafficking.
"The more people know about this crime, the better chance we have of putting an end to it," said Williger. "Victims are often hidden in plain sight, their movements and speech restricted, which makes it difficult for law enforcement to detect."
Williger and other advocates urge the public to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement. Your tip may save a life. The public can report suspected human trafficking to the HSI Tip Line at 1-866-DHS-2ICE or ICE.gov/tips.
"Too Close To Home" debuts on WEDU, Tampa Bay's public television station, Sept. 26 at 9 p.m.
Preview the documentary. Learn more about human trafficking.


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You can predict how rabbits run by looking at their skulls (using this one weird trick!)
March 17, 2015
I have a new paper out today in PeerJ: "Ecological correlates to cranial morphology in leporids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha)", with coauthors Brian Kraatz, Emma Sherratt, and Nick Bumacod. Get it free here.
I know, I know, I have fallen from grace. First Aquilops, now rabbits. And, and…skulls! I know what you're thinking: that maybe I'm not just experimenting with the non-vertebrae of non-sauropods anymore – maybe I have an actual problem. But I don't. I can quit anytime! You'll see.
Actually rabbits are the freakiest of all mammals and their skulls are wicked cool. They have double incisors, with the second set right behind the first, hence the name Duplicidentata for rabbits and their close relatives. They have weird fenestrations in their maxillae (pretty much all taxa) and parietal and occipital bones (some more than others) – I'll come back to that in a bit. And, as we discuss in our new paper, you can tell something about how a rabbit runs by looking at its skull. I thought it would be fun to relate how we figured that out, and why.
A long time ago in a graduate seminar far, far away…
1950: DuBrul, Laskin, and Moss
I met Brian Kraatz at Berkeley, where he and I were part of the cohort of students that came into the Integrative Biology Department in the fall of 2001 (faithful readers may remember Brian from his work tracking oliphaunts from, gosh, three years ago already). We took a lot of classes together, including a seminar by Marvalee Wake on evolutionary morphology. I'm pretty sure that seminar was the first time I'd actually read DuBrul and Laskin (1961), "Preadaptive potentialities of the mammalian skull: an experiment in growth and form", or as I think of it, "How to turn a rat skull into a pika skull for fun and profit."
Pikas (Ochotonidae) are the sister group to rabbits (Leporidae) and together these groups make up crown Lagomorpha. If you're not familiar with pikas, Brian describes them as starting with bunny rabbits and then making them even cuter and cuddlier. Seriously, go do an image search for 'pika' and try not to die of cute overload.
Pikas are interesting because in many ways their skulls are intermediate between those of rodents, especially rats, and rabbits. This is maybe not surprising since rodents are the sister group to lagomorphs and are united with them in the clade Glires. E. Lloyd DuBrul was all over this rat-pika-rabbit thing back in the mid-twentieth century. Here's an illustration from DuBrul (1950: plate 2; labels added by me):
So DuBrul knew from pikas and in particular he had the idea that you could maybe just tweak a rat skull – say, by knocking out the basicranial sutures in a baby rat to limit the growth of the skull base – and produce a gently domed skull like that of a pika. That's what DuBrul and Laskin (1961) is all about. They did that experiment and here are their results (DuBrul and Laskin (1961: plate 3). Normal rat skull on the right, and dotted in the bottom diagram; experimental "pika-morph" rat skull on the left, and solidly outlined below.
What's going on here morphogenetically is that the facial skeleton is getting tilted down and away from the back end of the skull. DuBrul was hip to that, too – here's a relevant image from his 1950 paper (plate 4; labels added by me):
The common reference point against which these skulls are registered is the cranial base (the floor of the braincase just forward of the foramen magnum). Again, the pika is a pretty good intermediate between the rat and a 'normal' rabbit, and the dang-near-dog-sized Flemish Giant rabbit takes the lagomorph face-tilting thing to its extreme. ('Flemish Giant rabbit' is another entertaining image search that I will leave you as homework.)
Turns out there's another way you can get rat skulls with different geometries: you can cut off their legs and make them walk on two feet. In an experiment that you might have trouble getting past an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee today, Moss (1961) lopped off the forefeet or hindfeet in two experimental batches of rats, to see what effect this would have on their skulls. I'll let Moss speak for himself on this one (Moss, 1961: pp. 301-303, emphasis in the original):
Circumnatal amputation of the forelimbs has successfully produced what are in essence "bipedal rats," i.e., rats whose habitual mode of kinetic and static posture is permanently altered. […] The animals never became bipedal in the exact sense; that is, they never walked erect on two limbs at all times. […] Nevertheless, bipedal posture and motion were more frequently observed than in controls. […]
Animals whose hind limbs were removed represented another picture. They most certainly did not walk about on their intact forelimbs. Neither did they seem able to use their hind limb stumps as satisfactory substitutes. Their gait was not uniform and seemed to consist in a series of short pushes or hops. The most noticeable thing about them was, among other things, apparent accentuation of their cervical vertebral curvature. The sum of these changes was an upward rotation of the skull.
He wasn't kidding: when the two groups of bipedal rats grew up, their facial skeletons were tilted relative to the control group, but in different directions (Moss, 1961: fig 3; 'fore' and 'hind' refer to which limbs the animals had left to locomote with):
Brian and I read Moss back at Berkeley, too. In fact, we were minor Moss junkies. If you're interested in how living forms come into being, you owe it to yourself to read Moss (1968), "A theoretical analysis of the functional matrix".
The upshot of all of this is that although neither Brian nor I had done anything with our deep (and, okay, deeply weird) knowledge of how to experimentally jack up rat skulls by the time we graduated from Berkeley, we were also primed to be thinking about how skulls attain their shapes – especially the skulls of rodents and rabbits.
2009: American Museum of Natural History
I went to the AMNH in February, 2009, to visit Brian, who was on a postdoc there at the time, and to spend one day looking at sauropods with Mike, who was over from England for a conference. What Brian and I planned to work on was the fenestration of rabbit skulls, because I'm always interested in the strategic loss of bone from skeletal structures. We spent probably half a day talking about that, and I filled a whole page in my notebook with related noodlings:
But as the sketch on the right shows, it didn't take us long to figure out that there was something even more interesting to do with rabbit skulls. Brian had a whole shedload of rabbit skulls from different taxa sitting on his desk, and we noticed pretty quickly that one of the primary ways they varied was in the tilt of the facial skeleton relative to the back of the skull. Here's the very next page of my notes from that trip:
The skull up top belongs to Caprolagus, the Hispid hare, which I tend to think of as the "bulldozer hare". Seriously, it looks like a tank. It doesn't bound or even hop, it scrambles. Here, stare into the abyss:
That rabbit will cut you, man. And just look at how flat its skull is. Even in life Caprolagus looks more rodent-y than rabbit-y. Or, more precisely, more Ochotona-y.
At the the other extreme are taxa like Bunolagus and Pronolagus, which really push the "I'm going to cute you to death by dint of my incredible bunnosity" thing:
As Brian and I started going through skulls of as many extant rabbits as we could, we noticed that the flatter-skulled taxa, with less pronounced facial tilt, tended to be the stolid, foursquare scramblers like Caprolagus, whereas the speed demons tended to have more strongly tilted skulls. It also seemed like the latter group were achieving that pronounced facial tilt by changing the geometry of the occipital region of the skull. Look back up at the red quadrilaterals I drew on the Caprolagus and Bunolagus skulls in my notebook – those mark the basioccipital ventrally and the dorsal exposure of the supraoccipital. Perhaps unsurprisingly, supraoccipital length is not the whole story; it turns out that some face-tilters get that way by having longer or more strongly arched parietals, BUT it remains true that if you find a rabbit skull with a long dorsal exposure of the supraoccipital, it will also have pronounced facial tilt.
ANYWAY, by my last night in New York, Brian and I decided that the best way to attack this would be to go down to the basement and stay up most of the night drinking beer and measuring rabbit skulls. We then tried to correlate the various measurements and angles with information on the locomotor and burrowing habits of each species. That was a big job, and after a couple of years with little forward progress (to be fair, Brian was moving across the country and taking his first tenure-track job in this interval, and I was helping birth a sauropod) we brought in Brian's graduate student, Nick Bumacod, to do most of it. Later on the three of us were forced to acknowledge that we knew enough statistics to get ourselves into trouble but not enough to get back out. Brian had taken a geometric morphometrics course for which Emma Sherratt was a TA, and he started bugging her for help with the stats. Emma has been involved in writing new software packages for R, and we realized that the paper would be a lot stronger if we just brought her on as an author and gave her free rein with the data. Along the way Brian and Nick were giving presentations on the project everywhere from the local Western Area Vert Paleo meeting to the World Lagomorph Conference in Vienna. I got my name on four abstracts along the way, which I think is record abstract-to-paper ratio for me (especially considering that 90% of my effort on the paper was invested in a single evening in 2009 over a couple of six-packs).
But enough navel-gazing, what did we find?
2015: Rabbit skulls reveal their mode of locomotion
Our results, which you can read for free, support the hunch that Brian and I had back in 2009: slow-moving rabbits that locomote by scrambling or scampering instead of hopping tend to have less facial tilt, and faster-moving saltatorial (hopping) and cursorial (leaping and bounding) rabbits have more facial tilt. Interestingly, facial tilt does not distinguish the saltators from the cursors. So the break here is between scrambling and any kind of hopping or leaping, but not between hoppers and leapers.
Why would that be so? We don't know for sure yet, but our top hypothesis is that if you're moving fast, it pays to see the ground in front of you more clearly, and getting your nose down out of the way probably helps with that. This is pretty similar to the hypothesis that tyrannosaurs have pinched nasals for better binocular vision (Stevens, 2006). Rabbits are prey animals and probably can't afford to point their eyes forward, and they may need wide nasal airways as air intakes while they're sprinting. Tilting the nose down may be the next best thing.
Some circumstantial support for this comes from the Caviidae, the family of South American rodents that includes guinea pigs, cavies, maras, and capybaras. Here's another plate from DuBrul (1950: plate 6) contrasting the flatter skull of the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus, top) with the decidedly arched skull of the mara or Patagonian hare (Dolichotis magellanica, bottom). Compare the mara skull to the sectioned rabbit skull in the other DuBrul plate, above – there aren't a lot of obvious characters to separate the two (beyond the lack of double incisors in the mara).
Despite being commonly referred to as 'hares' and looking a lot like short-eared rabbits, maras are rodents that evolved their rabbit-like form independently. The acquisition of pronounced facial tilt in two separate lineages of small fast-moving herbivorous mammals is further evidence for the influence of locomotor mode on skull form. Irritatingly, I think we neglected to mention the guinea pig : mara :: pika : rabbit correspondence in the paper. Oh well, it wasn't our novel observation, and we did cite DuBrul (1950).
We found lots of other interesting things, too. The PCA plots we produced from our data separate the living rabbits in unexpected ways. The length of the diastema (the toothless portion of the upper jaw) and the diameter of the auditory bulla seem to be particularly important. Diastema length isn't too hard to figure out – most of the face-tilters have long diastemas, and the flat-heads tend to have short ones. We have no idea what bulla diameter means yet. I mean, obviously something to do with hearing, but we don't have any ecological variables in our analysis to address that because we didn't see it coming. So there's a chunk of new science waiting to be done there.
Speaking of new science, or at least a relatively new thing in science, we published the full peer-review history alongside the paper, just as Mike and I did back in 2013 and as Mike did with his stand-alone paper last December. More than 80% of PeerJ authors elect to publish the peer review histories for their papers. I can't wait until it's 100%. PeerJ reviews are citeable – each one gets a DOI and instructions on how to cite it – and I'm tired of having my effort as a peer reviewer used once and then thrown away forever.
If you've been reading this whole post with gritted teeth, wondering why we were using linear measurements instead of geometric morphometrics, chillax. Brian and Emma are on that. They've been CT scanning the skulls of as many extant rabbits as possible and plotting landmarks for 3D morphometrics – if you were at SVP last fall, you may have seen their talk (Kraatz and Sherratt, 2014). So stay tuned for what will soon be a new ongoing series, Rabbit Skulls: The Next Generation.
I probably won't be on that voyage. I've had fun getting acquainted with a completely different part of the tree of life, but there are an awful lot of shards of excellence – busted-up sauropod vertebrae, that is – crying out for my attention, and I need to stop neglecting them. I'm done with rabbit skulls, I promise. I'm going clean. (Wish me luck!)
- DuBrul, E. L. (1950). Posture, locomotion and the skull in Lagomorpha. American Journal of Anatomy, 87(2), 277-313.
- DuBrul, E. L., & Laskin, D. M. (1961). Preadaptive potentialities of the mammalian skull: an experiment in growth and form. American Journal of Anatomy, 109(2), 117-132.
- Kraatz, B., and Sherratt, E. (2014). Evolution, ecology, and modularity of the lagomorph skull. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 35(3, Supplement), 162A.
- Kraatz, B.P., Sherratt, E., Bumacod, N., and Wedel, M.J. 2015. Ecological correlates to cranial morphology in leporids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha). PeerJ, 3:e844. https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.844
- Moss, M. L. (1961). Rotation of the otic capsule in bipedal rats. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 19(3), 301-307.
- Moss, M. L. (1968). A theoretical analysis of the functional matrix. Acta Biotheoretica, 18(1), 195-202.
- Stevens, K. A. (2006). Binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26(2), 321-330.
My neck-cartilage angle paper is out!
December 23, 2014
Arriving as an early Christmas present, and coming in just a week before the end of what would otherwise have been a barren 2014, my paper Quantifying the effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs is out! You can read it on PeerJ (or download the PDF).
Yes, that posture is ludicrous — but the best data we currently have says that something like this would have been neutral for Diplodocus once cartilage is taken into account. (Remember of course that animals do not hold their necks in neutral posture.)
The great news here is that PeerJ moved quickly. In fact here's how the time breaks down since I submitted the manuscript (and made it available as a preprint) on 4 November:
28 days from submission to first decision
3 days to revise and resubmit
3 days to accept
15 days to publication
TOTAL 49 days
Which of course is how it ought to be! Great work here from handling editor Chris Noto and all three reviewers: Matt Bonnan, Heinrich Mallison and Eric Snively. They all elected not to be anonymous, and all gave really useful feedback — as you can see for yourself in the published peer-review history. When editors and reviewers do a job this good, they deserve credit, and it's great that PeerJ's (optional) open review lets the world see what they contributed. Note that you can cite, or link to, individual reviews. The reviews themselves are now first-class objects, as they should be.
At the time of writing, my paper is top of the PeerJ home-page — presumably just because it's the most recent published paper, but it's a nice feeling anyway!
A little further down the front-page there's some great stuff about limb function in ratites — a whole slew of papers.
Well, I'm off to relax over Christmas. Have a good one, y'all!
The freakily consistent colour palette of Wedel and Taylor (2013) on caudal pneumaticity
November 20, 2014
Back in 2013, when we were in the last stages of preparing our paper Caudal pneumaticity and pneumatic hiatuses in the sauropod dinosaurs Giraffatitan and Apatosaurus (Wedel and Taylor 2013b), I noticed that, purely by chance, all ten of the illustrations shared much the same limited colour palette: pale brows and blues (and of course black and white). I've always found this strangely appealing. Here's a composite:
I'm really happy with this coincidence. In fact I think I might get it printed up as a poster for my office.
(Thought: if I did, would anyone else be interested in buying it?)
Update (a couple of hours later)
At Matt's suggestion, I switched the order of figures 7 and 8 (the last two on the third row) to get the following version of the image. It breaks the canonical order of the figures, but it's visually more pleasing.
Now we should write an updated version of the paper that reverses the order in which we refer to figures 7 and 8 :-)
- Wedel, Mathew J., and Michael P. Taylor. 2013. Caudal pneumaticity and pneumatic hiatuses in the sauropod dinosaurs Giraffatitan and Apatosaurus. PLOS ONE 8(10):e78213. 14 pages. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078213
Sauropods' neutral neck postures were really weird
November 5, 2014
Last night, I submitted a paper for publication — for the first time since April 2013. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like. But, because we're living in the Shiny Digital Future, you don't have to wait till it's been through review and formal publication to read it. I submitted to PeerJ, and at the same time, made it available as a preprint (Taylor 2014).
It's called "Quantifying the effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs", and frankly the results are weird. Here's a taste:
A year back, as I was composing a blog-post about our neck-cartilage paper in PLOS ONE (Taylor and Wedel 2013c), I found myself writing down the rather trivial formula for the additional angle of extension at an intervertebral joint once the cartilage is taken into account. In that post, I finished with the promise "I guess that will have to go in a followup now". Amazingly it's taken me a year to get that one-pager written and submitted. (Although in the usual way of things, the manuscript ended up being 13 pages long.)
To summarise the main point of the paper: when you insert cartilage of thickness t between two vertebrae whose zygapophyses articulate at height h above the centra, the more anterior vertebra is forced upwards by t/h radians. Our best guess for how much cartilage is between the adjacent vertebrae in an Apatosaurus neck is about 10% of centrum length: the image above shows the effect of inserting that much cartilage at each joint.
And yes, it's weird. But it's where the data leads me, so I think it would be dishonest not to publish it.
I'll be interested to see what the reviewers make of this. You are all of course welcome to leave comments on the preprint itself; but because this is going through conventional peer-review straight away (unlike our Barosaurus preprint), there's no need to offer the kind of detailed and comprehensive comment that several people did with the previous one. Of course feel free if you wish, but I'm not depending on it.
Gilmore Charles W. 1936. Osteology of Apatosaurus, with special reference to specimens in the Carnegie Museum. Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum 11:175–300 and plates XXI–XXXIV.
Stevens, Kent A., and J. Michael Parrish. 1999. Neck posture and feeding habits of two Jurassic sauropod dinosaurs. Science 284(5415):798–800. doi:10.1126/science.284.5415.798
Taylor, Michael P. 2014. Quantifying the effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e588v1 doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.588v1
Taylor, Michael P., and Mathew J. Wedel. 2013c. The effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture and range of motion in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs. PLOS ONE 8(10):e78214. 17 pages. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078214
How should I cite my old/new diversity preprint?
July 29, 2014
Recently, I published an old manuscript of mine as a PeerJ Preprint.
I wrote this paper in 2003-4, and it was rejected without review when I submitted it back then. (For, I think, specious reasons, but that's a whole nother discussion. Forget I mentioned it.)
I haven't touched the manuscript since then (except to single-space it for submission as a preprint). It's ten years old. That's a problem because it's an analysis of a database of dinosaur diversity, and as everyone knows, the rate of recognising new dinosaurs has gone through the roof. That's the reason I never made any attempt to update and resubmit it: dinosaur diversity is a fast-moving target, and each time through the submit-reject cycle takes long enough for the data to be outdated.
So much for the history. Now the question: how should I cite this paper? Specifically, what date should I give it? If I cite it as from 2004, it will give the misleading impression that the paper has been available for ten years; but if I cite it as from 2014, it will imply that it's been worked on at some point in the last ten years. Both approaches seem misleading to me.
At the moment, I am citing it as "Taylor (2014 for 2004)", which seems to more or less capture what's meant, but I don't know whether it's an established convention. Is there an established convention?
Releated: where in mv publications list should it appear? At present I am sorting it under 2014, since that's when it came out; but should it be under 2004, when it was written? I guess publication date is the one to go far — after all, it's not unusual even now for papers to spend a year or more in press, and it's the later (publication) date that's cited.
Help me out. How should this be done?
- Taylor, Michael P. 2014 (written in 2004). A survey of dinosaur diversity by clade, age, place of discovery and year of description. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e434v1. doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.434v1
New (but very old) preprint: A survey of dinosaur diversity by clade, age, place of discovery and year of description
July 11, 2014
Today, available for the first time, you can read my 2004 paper A survey of dinosaur diversity by clade, age, place of discovery and year of description. It's freely available (CC By 4.0) as a PeerJ Preprint. It's one of those papers that does exactly what it says on the tin — you should be able to find some interesting patterns in the diversity of your own favourite dinosaur group.
"But Mike", you say, "you wrote this thing ten years ago?"
Yes. It's actually the first scientific paper I ever wrote (bar some scraps of computer science) beginning in 2003. It's so old that all the illustrations are grey-scale. I submitted it to Acta Palaeontologica Polonica way back on on 24 October 2004 (three double-spaced hard-copies in the post!) , but it was rejected without review. I was subsequently able to publish a greatly truncated version (Taylor 2006) in the proceedings of the 2006 Symposium on Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems, but that was only one tenth the length of the full manuscript — much potentially valuable information was lost.
My finally posting this comes (as so many things seem to) from a conversation with Matt. Off work sick, he'd been amusing himself by re-reading old SV-POW! posts (yes, we do this). He was struck by my exhortation in Tutorial 14: "do not ever give a conference talk without immediately transcribing your slides into a manuscript". He bemoaned how bad he's been at following that advice, and I had to admit I've done no better, listing a sequence of old my SVPCA talks that have still never been published as papers.
The oldest of these was my 2004 presentation on dinosaur diversity. Commenting on this, I wrote in email: "OK, I got the MTE four-pager out of this, but the talk was distilled from a 40ish-page manuscript that was never published and never will be." Quick as a flash, Matt replied:
If I had written this and sent it to you, you'd tell me to put it online and blog about how I went from idea to long paper to talk to short paper, to illuminate the process of science.
And of course he was right — hence this preprint.
I will never update this manuscript, as it's based on a now wildly outdated database and I have too much else happening. (For one thing, I really ought to get around to finishing up the paper based on my 2005 SVPCA talk!) So in a sense it's odd to call it a "pre-print" — it's not pre anything.
Despite the data being well out of date, this manuscript still contains much that is (I think) of interest, and my sense is that the ratios of taxon counts, if not the absolute numbers, are still pretty accurate.
I don't expect ever to submit a version of this to a journal, so this can be considered the final and definitive version.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2006. Dinosaur diversity analysed by clade, age, place and year of description. pp. 134-138 in Paul M. Barrett and Susan E. Evans (eds.), Ninth international symposium on Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems and biota, Manchester, UK. Cambridge Publications. Natural History Museum, London, UK. 187 pp.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2014 (written in 2004). A survey of dinosaur diversity by clade, age, place of discovery and year of description. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e434v1. doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.434v1
I think it's fair to say that this "bifurcation heat-map", from Wedel and Taylor (2013a: figure 9), has been one of the best-received illustrations that we've prepared:
(See comments from Jaime and from Mark Robinson.)
Back when the paper came out, Matt rashly said "Stand by for a post by Mike explaining how it came it be" — a post which has not materialised. Until now!
This illustration was (apart from some minor tweaking) produced by a program that I wrote for that purpose, snappily named "vcd2svg". That name is because it converts a vertebral column description (VCD) into a scalable vector graphics (SVG) file, which you can look at with a web-browser or load into an image editor for further processing.
The vertebral column description is in a format designed for this purpose, and I think it's fairly intuitive. Here, for example, is the fragment describing the first three lines of the figure above:
Taxon: Apatosaurus louisae
Specimen: CM 3018
Data: —–YVVVVVVVVV|VVVuuunnn-
Taxon: Apatosaurus parvus
Specimen: UWGM 155556/CM 563
Data: –nnn-VVV—V-V|VVVu——
Taxon: Apatosaurus ajax
Specimen: NMST-PV 20375
Data: –n–VVVVVVVVVV|VVVVYunnnn
Basically, you draw little ASCII pictures of the vertebral column. Other directives in the file explain how to draw the various glyphs represented by (in this case) "Y", "V", "u", and "n".
It's pretty flexible. We used the same program to generate the right-hand side (though not the phylogenetic tree) of Wedel and Taylor (2013b: figure 2):
The reason I mention this is because I released the software today under the GNU General Public Licence v3.0, which is kind of like CC By-SA. It's free for anyone to download, use, modify and redistribute either verbatim or in modified form, subject only to attribution and the requirement that the same licence be used for modified versions.
vcd2svg is written in Perl, and implemented in part by the SVG::VCD module, which is included in the package. It's available as a CPAN module and on GitHub. There's documentation of the command-line vcd2svg program, and of the VCD file format. Also included in the distribution are two documented examples: the bifurcation heat-map and the caudal pneumaticity diagram.
Folks, please use it! And feel free to contribute, too: as the change-log notes, there's work still to be done, and I'll be happy to take pull requests from those of you who are programmers. And whether you're a programmer or not, if you find a bug, or want a new feature, feel free to file an issue.
A final thought: in academia, you don't really get credit for writing software. So to convert the work that went into this release into some kind of coin, I'll probably have to write a short paper describing it, and let that stand as a proxy for the actual program. Hopefully people will cite that paper when they generate a figure using the software, the way we all reflexively cite Swofford every time we use PAUP*.
Update (12 April 2014)
On Vertebrat's suggestion, I have renamed the program VertFigure.
- Swofford, D. L. 2002. PAUP*: phylogenetic analysis using parsimony (* and other methods). Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA.
- Wedel, M.J., and Taylor, M.P. 2013. Neural spine bifurcation in sauropod dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation: ontogenetic and phylogenetic implications. Palarch's Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology 10(1): 1-34. ISSN 1567-2158.
- Wedel, Mathew J., and Michael P. Taylor. 2013. Caudal pneumaticity and pneumatic hiatuses in the sauropod dinosaurs Giraffatitan and Apatosaurus.PLOS ONE 8(10):e78213. 14 pages. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078213 [PDF]


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SportsFanPlayground.com Marks Down Xbox 360 Games Up to 50% Off
The Sports Fan Playground announced on Friday that the store has cut prices on various Xbox 360 games, accessories and consoles up to 50% off of the retail price.
New York, NY (PRWEB) March 08, 2013
A variety of Xbox 360 accessories are available for as low as 1 cent at The Sports Fan Playground for a limited time. The store has a variety of Xbox 360 games marked down up to 50% off of the retail price, including Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Halo 4, Assassin's Creed III, NBA 2K13, and Borderlands 2, among others.
The Xbox 360 accessories available for 1 cent include a variety of items including universal controllers, cables, adapters, skins, covers for the controllers and battery chargers for the system.
The Sports Fan Playground has a variety of Xbox 360 products marked down through the month of March, including the Xbox Live subscription cards. The cards are available in 1-month, 3-month and 12-month versions, with the 12-month version currently available for $32.96.
The Xbox Live card allows gamers to play games in real-time against each other, as well as using features including Skype, Netflix, Xfinity, Hulu Plus, UFC, HBOGo, ESPN, Nickelodeon and other top entertainment applications.
The store has recently released a variety of new games available for the Xbox 360 including MLB 2K13, Tomb Raider, and Gears of War. The store has popular Xbox 360 games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Halo 4 available between 40-50% off of the retail price for a limited time.
Along with the Xbox 360 games and accessories, the website has a variety of Xbox 360 console bundles available at up to 37% off. The console bundles available include variations that include the console, games, the Xbox Kinect sensor, and complementary memberships for Xbox Live and Epix.
For more information, please visit SportsFanPlayground.com.
On Social Media:
Facebook – Facebook.com/sportsfanplayground
Twitter – @SportsFanPlay
Pinterest – Pinterest.com/FanPlayground
About SportsFanPlayground.com:
The Sports Fan Playground is a leading provider of top sporting goods and accessories from the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, WWE, UFC, Barclays Premier League, and other top organizations around the world. The website recently added a special Nike store section, as well as classic sports memorabilia, jerseys, hats, and sporting goods equipment from major professional and college sports leagues. The store recently expanded its inventory to carry the top sporting goods and equipment for all sports including MMA, baseball, hockey, football, cheerleading, golf, soccer, lacrosse, rugby, bowling, camping, hiking, snowboarding, skiing, boxing, boating, cycling and many more.
Along with the SportsFanPlayground.com website, the store also recently launched the new Development-shop.com website, which specializes in the sale of IT solutions for small business and enterprise companies, as well as consumers. Items available include modems, routers, switches, adapters, cables, computer cases, speakers, cooling fans, office products, furniture, laptop computers, desktop PCs, memory, memory cards, and more from companies such as Cisco, HP, Lenovo, Apple and others.
For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebXbox360/DevelopmentShop/prweb10510755.htm


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Learn more about TaylorMade RocketBladez Tour Iron Set RH 3-PW KBS Steel Stiff (NEW):
Manufacturer: TaylorMade
Mfg Part#: N1382709
Sku: 249308853
See more in Sets
|Only RocketBladez Tour are powered by the Speed Pocket, the little thing that promoted radically increased speed and distance. These irons are the true blend of the feel the pros demand and the explosive distance the amateurs crave. The Speed Pocket. If you don't have it, then you don't have it. The Distance Iron is now on Tour. Maximum speed and flight enhancement technology in the 3- through 7-iron: The Speed Pocket promotes consistently high ball speed and distance. Consistent distance with every iron made possible by careful management of the Speed Pocket, improved inverted Cone shape and high MOI. 11grams of weight is strategically redistributed to lower and center the CG location, promoting a higher launch angle, higher peak trajectory and a steep, soft-landing, quick-stopping descent angle. Fantastic feel promoted by a specially formulated polyurethane developed by 3M that fills the Speed Pocket and quiets vibration. Milled face-texture and grooves promote consistently high spin. The First Tour Iron with Serious Technology. RocketBladez Tour Set represents the first innovation in tour irons that significantly effects the quality of the ball flight to promote a dramatic improvement in iron play. The Speed Pocket works in conjunction with an improved Inverted Cone design to promote more ball speed, higher flight and significantly less speed loss on mis-hits low on the face.


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Botanique Condominium is established over the Bartley Road, in the area of the Upper Paya Lebar, that is consists of stacks of amenities which are essentially required for an exquisite lifestyle. This type of luxury Condo is a brilliant spot for your upcoming home, which looks as awesome as you expect. Such kind of condominium must be selected by either family or a single person who loves to stay in an elegant house. This condo includes 797 units it is said to be the prime site that has achieved the URA tender by the very famous company 'UOL'.
Schools nearby Botanique condo
Botanique at Bartley condo is formed with the latest trendy architecture that clubs a symmetrical way with the luxurious and operational way, which lets you get attached to the elegant and charming room, and you will never want to leave this delightful room at any cost. This place is an extremely peaceful that is much suited for children, as many educational institutions like Stamford American International School, Paya Lebar Methodist Girl's School, etc. are very close to your building.
Botanique Condo Facilities
Botanique Condo offers many amenities right to your doorsteps till the Bartley MRT. This condo is very convenient and comfy to your family which lets them drive in few minutes to anywhere within the city of Singapore.
This Botanique Condo at Bartley provides 24 hrs water supply, as well as lift facilities along with the security guards to safeguard parking facilities and instant power supply. The condo even includes the best features like fresh gardening and even some of the activities are held at this place for better relaxation. Such a beautiful condo will get ready within the year 2018, just 2 more years required for the project completion.


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Upcoming OGIS Training Session: Developing Dispute Resolution Skills
Do you find yourself flummoxed when faced with an angry FOIA requester? Do you regularly take "no" for an answer from your agency's program people? We can help! OGIS will present a training session designed to help FOIA professionals develop dispute resolution skills on Monday, December 9, 2013 at the Archives building on Constitution Ave […]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on November 14, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, FOIA Public Liaisons, OGIS events, Plain Language, Training.
Comments: none
Upcoming Requester Roundtable Discussion: Appeals
We at OGIS talk quite a bit about the importance of the FOIA administrative process, which includes the all-important appeal. But what is an appeal, exactly, and what should it include? What are some best practices for an agency's appeal process? How can the FOIA and the appeals offices better work together? We will discuss […]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on November 4, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, OGIS events, Ombudsman, Requester Roundtable.
Comments: none
FOIA Fever: It's Contagious
We've written about the positive difference that executive support for FOIA can make in federal agencies. We've made this point in our recommendations and, whenever we can, we encourage agencies to make FOIA a priority (and communicate this across the board). One effective way that agency heads can spread the word that FOIA matters is […]
Posted by Carrie McGuire on October 31, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Best practices, Ombudsman.
Comments: 1
Open For Business
The Federal government is back in business, and so are we! OGIS stands ready to assist FOIA requesters and Federal agencies with their FOIA disputes. We look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Carrie McGuire on October 17, 2013, under About FOIA, About OGIS, Ombudsman.
Comments: 2
Due to the Federal government shutdown, the Office of Government Information Services and the National Archives are closed. We are unable to post to the FOIA Ombudsman during this closure. All National Archives facilities are closed, with the exception of the Federal Records Centers and the Federal Register until the Federal government reopens. We hope to see you soon.
Posted by Carrie McGuire on October 1, 2013, under About OGIS, Ombudsman.
Comments: none


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Despite the fact that America leads the world in total prison population and the money that comes from building private prisons has increased the number of inmates, New Jersey is actually seeing a decline. According to a recent data released by the Justice Bureau, In New Jersey, corrections facilities held 23,225 prisoners at the end of 2012, a 2.6-percent decline from 23,834 inmates a year earlier.
So here are 3 reasons New Jersey's prison population is in decline:
1. Not as many crimes being committed.
2. A drop in prisoners at state-wide prisons. For example, the nation saw a 2.1-percent decline in the number of inmates held in state prisons.
3. Alternatives to incarceration and prison reform. For example, Republican Governor Chris Christie has broke party ranks to stop the incarcerating anyone with a drug problem. In fact, he's joined former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey to create
a program that helps inmates deal with a variety of issues including drug dependence and unemployment. Of course if the assembly bill to decriminalize marijuana in NJ passes in the Senate, Christie may decide to veto it to remain far-right for the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary. And like same-sex marriage he would be defying the will of the people since a whopping 61 percent of New Jerseyans approve decriminalization.


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Solera Networks Appoints High-Tech Industry Vet George Hoyem to Board of Directors
Solera Networks, a provider of innovative network forensics solutions, today announced industry veteran and Managing Director of Blueprint Ventures, George Hoyem, has joined the company's Board of Directors.
Hoyem's involvement speaks to the unique nature of and potential for Solera Networks' technology in the burgeoning market for new network forensics solutions designed to support both physical and virtual environments.
"I think of Solera Networks as having a 'TiVo(R)' for the network that is in fact the only way to know the unknown when it comes to network security," said Hoyem. "Since today's leading security tools only identify known threats, companies need the ability to capture a complete record of their network traffic. This makes it easier to quickly identify and minimize the effects of the next unknown threats when they hit. Solera Networks has carved out a unique place in network forensics with platform agnostic solutions that complement existing security tools in both physical and virtual environments. This value proposition will become increasingly powerful in today's troubling economy and threat environment as CIOs and National Security Agencies work to maximize and protect their current IT assets."
Solera Networks will leverage Hoyem's diverse technical expertise and longstanding history in starting, funding and shaping successful high-tech start-ups. To the Board of Directors, George brings over 20 years of entrepreneurial and operational experience in technology companies at various stages of growth; from Hewlett-Packard to Verifone, to numerous portfolio companies and his own start-up software company. At Blueprint Ventures, Hoyem focuses on corporate IP spinouts and start-ups delivering disruptive products to market.
"We're very excited to have George on the team," said Steve Shillingford, CEO of Solera Networks. "Not only is it a vote of confidence in Solera Networks' standout network forensics offerings but it's an excellent opportunity to leverage George's years of successful investment and hands on operational experience."
About Solera Networks
Solera Networks' DS Series is a line of high-performance network forensics appliances, including software-only virtual appliances, which capture, record and archive 100% of network traffic at speeds up to 10Gbps. The data is then accessible instantly via Solera Networks' search, alert and archive interfaces, or via any standards-based security, forensics, compliance, analytics or network management application. For more information on Solera Networks, visit http://www.soleranetworks.com.
TiVo is a registered trademark of TiVo Inc. and its subsidiaries worldwide.
Contacts Alan Hall 801.623.5196 firstname.lastname@example.com Robin Bectel 571.312.1448 firstname.lastname@example.com
SOURCE: Solera Networks


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HOME MLB San Diego Padres Gear San Diego Padres Kids San Diego Padres Kids Accessories San Diego Padres Kids Accessories Toys & Games (1 items) Product ID: 1102789
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When you're watching the Padres game at home, you need a buddy to cuddle next to while you do so! Make sure the next time San Diego is on the tube that you snuggle up with this Loungimal lounge pillow. This wonderful plush pillow features the likeness of your favorite mascot with an embroidered team name and logo. You'll be able to kick back and relax every time you're watching the Pads knowing that Loungimal has got your back!
- 100% Polyester body
- 100% Polyester filling
- 100% Rayon embroidery
- Carry handle on back
- Imported
- Measures approx. 33" x 18"
- Officially licensed MLB product
- Quality embroidery
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Manufacturer direct items are shipped directly from the manufacturer. These items are not available for international or expedited shipping.
Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite number, and/or designs. Some options may be limited by league rules.


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Bruins trail Panthers after two
|11.24.10 at 9:07 pm ET
Steve Reinprecht has the Panthers leading the Bruins, 1-0, thanks to an even strength goal. The Panthers outshot the B's. 14-8, in the period and now hold a 26-19 lead in the shots on goal category.
Zdeno Chara and Milan Lucic both saw time in the bin for the Bruins' with Lucic getting call for hooking with less than a minute remaining in the period. The Panthers will begin the third period with a one-minute man advantage.
Through two periods, Tyler Seguin, Michael Ryder, and Jordan Caron are the only Bruins forwards with two shots on goal.
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- Looking at Bruins Defensive Pairings Without Chara


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On DoD: Paul Francis, Government Accountability Office, and Kevin Kelly, CEO, LGS Innovations
On this edition of On DoD, we revisit a special series Federal News Radio aired last month on federal acquisition: The Missing Pieces of Procurement Reform.
Tags: GAO , On DoD , DoD , Kevin Kelly , LGS Innovations , Jared Serbu
After decades of DoD acquisition reform, Congress has yet to tackle cultural issues
Big programs at DoD continue to overspend their budgets and blow past their schedules because of unrealistic requirements and rosy cost projections. As part of our special report, The Missing Pieces of Procurement Reform, several acquisition experts pointed out that DoD acquisition is one of the most studied problems in the history of government.
Tags: DoD , GAO , Acquisition , David Berteau , Sean Stackley , Christine Fox , Jonathan Etherton , Missing Pieces of Procurement Reform , Jared Serbu
In Depth Show Blog - July 29, 2013
On the In Depth show blog, you can listen to our interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day, as well as links to other stories and resources we discuss.
Tags: In Depth , Francis Rose , Bryon Gordon , Peggy Focarino , Lorie Nelson , Michael Lewis
How DoD can correct over-reliance on war contractors
The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan is relying on the Government Accountability Office to offer actionable information about contracting in war zones.
Tags: GAO , Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afgh , contracting , Acquisition , In Depth


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Manufacturer: Big Horn
Model: King Series
Category: Roping Saddles
Purchase: Bought this saddle used for $400 in a tack shop, i was just looking for a comfortable and nice looking saddle for my trail riding weekends.
Likes: This saddle is absolutely gorgeous, it has a rawhide covered tree, a thick and soft fleece skirt lining, a deep, sloping, well shaped and really comfortable padded seat, and a beautifully detailed floral tooling This is a roper, but it's also a great comfortable trail saddle and it even has dees to attach saddlebags...
Dislikes: The skirts are uneven in thickness.
Quality: The leather is great and the saddle has a rawhide covered wood tree, the overall construction is massive and strong, the ground seat is very well shaped and very comfortable.
Summary: A great saddle, beautiful, durable and comfortable.
Rating: 5
Author: Jimmy
Date: 2007-01-12
Usefulness Rating: 2.625 out of 5.
8 reader(s) voted.
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Home > Archives
Friday March 16, 2012
CODY the six-month old mix-breed puppy loves nothing more than a cuddle and a hug.
He is also very friendly and alert and would make a good companion dog for a family with young children.
Canine welfare project Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better (MDDB) adoption coordinator Christine Lai said Cody would be one of the dogs up for adoption at Jaya One shopping complex, Section 13, Petaling Jaya this Sunday.
The event will be held from 10am to 6pm at Block NB1, which faces Station 1 and Old Town White Coffee.
"Cody is good with children especially little boys and we are hoping he will be adopted by a family with young children,'' said Lai, adding that Cody had been neutered and vaccinated.
Besides Cody, Lai said there would be about 20 dogs and puppies up for adoption at the adoption drive.
Lai said MDDB would also be seeking sponsorship for the veterinary care of a puppy suffering from spinal chord injury at the event.
"The puppy is believed to have been hit on the back but luckily the spinal column does not appear to be broken,'' said Lai.
She said the puppy named Lucky was currently being treated at a veterinary clinic and may have to be there for a few months until it could walk again.
Lai said those who would like to donate in kind to MDDB could also drop off the items at the event.
"We need dog and puppy food, cat and kitten food, pet shampoo, old newspapers and towels, bleach and soap,'' said Lai.
For details, call 019-3576477, 012-3739007 or visit firstname.lastname@example.com or www.facebook.com/MalaysianDogsDeserveBetter
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Two kid favorites -- marshmallows and popcorn -- make the perfect couple for a Valentine treat.
1. Place popped popcorn in a greased 13x9x2-inch baking pan and keep warm in a 300 degree F oven while making marshmallow mixture (remove unpopped kernels).
2. In a large saucepan melt margarine over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat. (Or, in a microwave-safe bowl, cook margarine and marshmallows on high for 1-1/2 to 2 minutes or until margarine is melted and marshmallows are softened, carefully stirring once. Stir until smooth. Stir in red food coloring. Stir in popped popcorn, half at a time. Cool until easy to handle (10 to 15 minutes).
3. Press mixture into greased individual heart-shaped pans. Cool. Remove from pans. Sprinkle with red colored sugar. Makes 9 hearts.
Nutrition facts per serving: 162 calories, 4 g total fat (1 g saturated fat),0 mg cholesterol, 57 mg sodium 31 g carbohydrate, 0 g fiber, 2 g protein. Daily Values: 4% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C,0% calcium, 5% iron.