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White House defends EPA in wake of attack by Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe
WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday rejected Sen. Jim Inhofe's charges that the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to crucify oil and gas companies and said an EPA official was "inaccurate" when he
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the rise of domestic oil and gas production in the last few years proves that the administration is not targeting exploration companies for violations of environmental laws.
Carney's comments came a day after Inhofe, R-Tulsa, released a video clip of EPA official Al Armendariz, who heads the agency's region that includes Oklahoma and Texas, speaking at a public meeting in Texas in 2010 about enforcing laws related to oil and gas exploration.
Making an example?
In the video, Armendariz describes an approach of making examples of a few companies, the way Romans did with crucifixions when they invaded a town.
Inhofe said the comments offered a rare glimpse into the Obama administration's agenda. Armendariz apologized Wednesday for the comments.
Inhofe said Thursday that Armendariz had apologized for his poor choice of words but not for "EPA's actions toward its apparent crucifixion victims."
Inhofe said in a statement, "Remember, not long after Administrator Armendariz made this stunning admission, EPA targeted natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming, making headline-grabbing allegations that American energy producers were causing water contamination; but in each case, their comments were contrived, and despite their determination, they were unable to find any definitive evidence to back up their alarmist claims."
Asked at a news briefing whether Armendariz should be fired, Carney said, "Well, I think he's apologized and he's — what he said is clearly not representative of either this president's belief in the way that we should approach these matters or in the way that he has approached these matters, either from this office here in the White House or at the EPA."
Inhofe sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Wednesday seeking detailed answers about the agency's actions in cases in Texas, Pennsylvania and Wyoming in which the agency initially announced investigations of water contamination related to natural gas exploration using hydraulic fracturing but later modified its findings or actions.


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I'm using ZCS 7.1.0, and having some problems setting the trusted MTA networks. I've tried setting the "MTA Trusted Networks" value in the admin console under both "General Settings" and under the server, specifically. I've also tried:
zmprov modifyServer zimbra.my.domain zimbraMtaMyNetworks '127.0.0.0/8 [...]'
'zmprov getServer' shows the right value being stored. However, 'postfix reload', 'postfix stop; postfix start' and '/etc/init.d/zimbra restart' all fail to make 'postconf mynetworks' show the right value, and I continue to get 'relay access denied' messages trying to send email to the server.
Any advice on getting the right value into the postfix configuration? I've searched the archives and the posts I've found are all pointing people at the wiki page, or telling people to use zmprov to update the value. I couldn't find anything about those solutions not actually working, which is what's happening to me.

subset: commoncrawl


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Property buying and selling is certainly an area that would require just mastering it. RE/MAX Gujarat is an international expert in real estate. We offer the best real estate deals. We understand various demography with enormous property demands and supplies. Leave your request online if to sell or buy the properties of your preference. Our team of real estate agents, brokers and franchisees is stongly committed to leverage a suitable property deal for you. Avail the safest and most reliable real estate service with us!
RE/MAX Gujarat
- About RE/MAX
- Why Join Remax Gujarat
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Kata Noi Beach Guide
Everything You Need to Know About Kata Noi
This cosy little bay is found at the end of a beachside cul-de-sac, just a few minutes' drive over the hill from Kata beach. There's not much to do in Kata Noi apart from admiring the wonderful scenery, which is precisely the point of coming here.
Relax, take a walk along the soft sands, snorkel or swim. It's long been a popular spot for surfers in the monsoon season of May to October, though swimming can be dangerous during this period. The popular Kata Viewpoint, offering a stunning vista across the three bays of Karon, Kata and Kata Noi, is only a five-minute drive along a winding road towards Nai Harn.


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The Dish
Tag: Café L'Europe
Mother's Day dining a bonanza for PB restaurants, nation's eateries
- 3:55 pm Thursday, May 9th, 2013 by M.M. Cloutier
Research has shown Mother's Day is the most popular holiday on which to dine out across the nation.
As if Palm Beach restaurants need to know that. Mother's Day dining is a bonanza for them so accordingly, every restaurant in town that's open this Sunday will feature special menu offerings and/or buffets (call your favorite restaurant for details).
Mother's Day brunch is a perennial favorite, with buffets a big draw thanks to oftentimes lavish spreads—especially at Palm Beach's resorts—with raw-bar fare, artisinal cheeses and charcuterie, salads, carving and omelet stations, signature dishes, and desserts galore.
This year's brunch buffets range from one at [More]
Once agan, red-carpet walk, lavish dinner and celeb-watching to spice up Cafe L'Europe's Oscar party
- 6:26 pm Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 by M.M. Cloutier
Time was when dinner was served to Hollywood celebs at the annual Academy Awards ceremony, but evidently a speck-of-spinach-in-one's-teeth panel decided live TV, speech-making and pasta-slurping starlets weren't a good mix.
Dinner is part of the Oscar festivities at Palm Beach's Café L'Europe this Sunday as the 85th annual Academy Awards ceremony unfolds in Hollywood. And as usual, the restaurant will begin the evening with guests arriving for a red-carpet walk leading to a life-sized Oscar statuette and Café L'Europe's front French doors.
Over the years, Café L'Europe's Oscar party, now in its 15th year, has become locally renowned among those who've attended it. These days, the restaurant shows [More]
'Twill be the night before Christmas and special menus entice in Palm Beach
- 5:15 pm Tuesday, December 18th, 2012 by M.M. Cloutier
Numerous Palm Beach restaurants garbed in their holiday decorations—Café L'Europe, for one, is, as usual, decked with ornamented trees, garlands and the pastry chef's annual gingerbread-house masterpiece—will be serving special menus on Christmas Day, but what about Christmas Eve?
For families and friends gathering at home on Christmas Day, the eve prior may be just the time to step out.
Among Christmas Eve offerings on the island:
The Chesterfield's Leopard Lounge and Restaurant (659-5800) is featuring a four-course menu ($49.94 adults; $16.95 children) on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Choice of entrees includes prime rib, roast duckling and pan-seared wild Atlantic salmon.
Christmas [More]
PB restaurants expanding hours of operation
- 8:21 pm Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 by M.M. Cloutier
The days are getting shorter and the hours are getting longer for Palm Beach restaurants.
The march has begun: Fine eateries are expanding their schedules of service to accommodate the fast-approaching "high season."
Earlier this month, Trevini (www.treviniristorante.com) added Sunday to its now-daily lunch/brunch roster; last week, Café L'Europe (www.cafeleurope.com) expanded its dinner service from Wednesday-Sunday to Tuesday-Sunday.
Now it's PB Catch's turn. It will open this Sunday for dinner (the raw bar and lounge opens at 4:30 p.m.) after not doing so since last season. So by the end of this week, PB Catch (www.pbcatch.com) will be open for dinner daily.
Tomorrow night: Eat, drink and croon your heart out at Cafe L'Europe
- 5:08 pm Thursday, October 18th, 2012 by M.M. Cloutier
Tomorrow night at Café L'Europe, diners, upon being seated at their respective tables, will be given not only a menu, but a songbook filled with 40-plus songs ranging from Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You" to The Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk," The Temptations' "My Girl" and The Beatles' "Hey Jude."
Patrons will eat, they will sing, they will clap and inevitably someone—or someones—will ham it up a bit and croon into a fork-microphone.
Back by popular demand are Café L'Europe's periodic singalongs with the retaurant's treasured resident pianist David Crohan—the late actress Patricia Neal once said of him, "David is a [More]


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Saturday, May 28, 2016
Call Northside 777
In 1948, Jimmy Stewart starred in Call Northside 777, shot on location at the notoriously rough Stateville Penitentiary. Stewart portrayed a reporter who discovered new clues in a case that could free an innocent man.
The making of Call Northside 777
Beginnings of the I and M Canal
Explorers, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet went up the Illinois and DesPlaines rivers and discovered the low divide that would be called the Chicago Portage. The remnants of this portage are located at the Chicago Portage National Historic Site, which is part of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, located on Harlem Avenue in Lyons.
Louis Jolliet saw the value of the portage as the site of a potential waterway connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. He explained that a canal could be made "by cutting through but half a league of prairie to pass from the foot of Lake Michigan" all the way to the Mississippi River.
Jolliet was anxious to develop the area based on such a canal. Marquette was interested in the area too, not because of the commercial possibilities but to convert the large number of Illinois Indians.
Source: I and M Canal (A Corridor in Time) by John M. Lamb
Joliet Limestone
Joliet limestone was seen around the world when Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois on February 10th, 2007. The structures built of Joliet limestone are identifiable precisely because they all weather to a rich, buttery yellow and have a permanence akin to the Egyptian and Aztec pyramids. Some other prominent buildings made of Joliet limestone include Joliet Prison, Chicago's Water Tower and Pumping Station and Joliet Township High School's Central Campus.
Joliet Hero
As a member of the US Army Air Forces during World Was II, Joliet native Sator "Sandy" Sanchez made a career of performing heroic deeds. Among numerous acts of bravery which made him one of the most highly decorated military men of the time, Sanchez jumped onto a runaway plane and stopped it before it hit a hangar filled with other planes and crewmen.
Volunteering to fly more than the required 25 missions garnered Sanchez a unique honor. A B-17 was dubbed the "Smilin' Sandy Sanchez" in honor of his unflagging dedication. This is the only known case of a bomber being named after an enlisted man.
Source: The Great Columns of Joliet, by Friends of Community Public Art
Joliet Area Historical Museum
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
Friends of Community Public Art
Downtown Joliet
Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce
Joliet Arsenal
Pilcher Park
Rialto Square Theatre
Rialto Square Theatre history
Chicagoland Speedway/Rt. 66 Speedway
Privacy Policy & Terms of Use


text: The C-4 explosives discovered in a cemetery in the East Village earlier this week are over 12 years old, police tests revealed Tuesday. The explosives, which police think were likely stolen from a military base, did not include a detonator and therefore could not have exploded. No suspect has been identified.


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Vital Signs - Products
Design, manufacture and installation of signs and banners
Vital Signs Cardiff is a dedicated sign-making business based in Cardiff, South Wales. We offer design, production and installation of all types of signs, banners and graphics to businesses in Cardiff, Newport, the Valleys, Vale and further afield. As a family run business, we combine the high


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Rated 5 out of 5 by 1 reviewer.
Rated 5 out of 5 by Lioness8 Wonderful! and no nuts What a wonderful alternative to peanut butter. Delicious on bananas or on a piece of toasted rye bread (let it cool slightly, this melts quick). February 2, 2014
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Wednesday, September 04, 2013
0 Comments | Copyright: IANS
Just two days before Rituparno Ghosh's last movie "Satyanweshi" hits the screens, Sujoy Ghosh, who stars in the lead role of detective Byomkesh Bakshi in the much-awaited project, is feeling the absence of the late filmmaker more than ever.
Rituparno, maker of acclaimed and award-winning Bengali films like "Bariwali", "Asukh", "Utsab", "Shubho Mahurat", "Chokher Bali", "Dosar", "Shob Charitro Kalponik" and "Abohoman", was suffering from pancreatitis. He died following a heart attack May 30.
However, he had completed the production of "Satyanweshi" just two days before his death. The post-production of the movie was completed by cinematographer Aveek Mukhopadhyay.
"One more day for 'Satyanweshi' to hit the cinema. Suddenly I am really missing Rituparno Ghosh. This was his show. He should be here," Sujoy posted on Twitter.
Sujoy is going all out to make the movie reach out to more people.
"Now to promote 'Satyanweshi'... all day I am going to hold a big board in the middle of the main road saying 'Releases 6th ... come one come all'," he added.
Produced by Shree Venkatesh Films, the detective thriller also features Bengali actors Anindya Chatterjee, Arpita Chatterjee, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay and Indraneil Sengupta in key roles.
Recently, several people in West Bengal, along with chief minister Mamata Banerjee, paid homage to Rituparno on his 50th birth anniversary Aug 31.
TV channels and radio stations aired special programmes, while wishes poured in on social networking sites, as film aficionados remembered the master storyteller who had brought back the educated middle and upper middle class people to the theatres to watch Bengali movies.
Rituparno Ghosh was honoured with a number of National Film Awards.
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[Thieves of the Night] Dark-Type Club ☻
View Single Post
April 4th, 2012 (2:34 PM). Edited April 4th, 2012 by Otherworld9).
Bard of Rage
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: honk
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Nature: Jolly
Posts: 1,950
Haven't been on much, but I see it was kept active...
so I thought the group died...
Originally Posted by
I wanted Sneasel, not Sandile. I'm so frustrated you gave me that derpy Sandile.
Alright alright, I will give you that Sneasel...sorry for the absence.
Originally Posted by
Username: Nemisis
What do you think of Dark-types: they are cool and they are my fav. type they are strong and always has advantages over some of the other types
Pokemon Partner: Absol and Umbreon
Type Rules: just play dark types and enjoy them ..
Ah, welcome. ~ Just note that I disappear a lot...as many members have experienced. Oo
Originally Posted by
I also should have a Houndoom, not an absol, next to my name please.
Alright. I will update more often...since I used to update daily...and I got carried away by real life I forgot about you guys. I'm back...although I don't know for how long anymore.
Originally Posted by
What do you think of Dark-Type Pokemon:
I think that they are badass and powerful.
Your partners: (Up to two)
Darkrai and Zoroark (Why isn't Zoroark on the list?)
What Types rule: Dark types!
Oh, hello there, welcome to the club. Hope you enjoy it here....and keep it active. :cer_smile:
Originally Posted by
Username: Takbir (Feel free to call me Tak)
What do you think of Dark-Type Pokemon: They have are designed the best and have the most interesting descriptions. Also Zoroark is such a troll with illusion.
Your partners: Zoroark timid nature and Spiritomb modest nature.
What Types rule:
Dark types pwn all.
As for the topic discussion:
• What is your favorite Dark-Type?:Zoroark
• When did you start liking your Favorite Dark Pokemon?:Ever since i saw the zoroark movie and its awesome illusion
• Favorite Dar-Type Move?:Night Daze
• Which is the most Underrated?: Drapion.
Anybody do battles in this club?
Welcome to the club Tak. As Houndoomed stated...he's one of them. Although I don't battle, feel free to ask around.
Do you really think Dark types should be immune to Psychic?
-It helps a lot in terms of battle, and I think that it suits them just fine. It helps even out battles where I could have lost if it wasn't for Dark-Type being immune to Psychic.
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This web page provides information on the activities of the Office, views of the IMF staff, and the relations between Rwanda and the IMF. Additional information can be found on Rwanda and IMF country page, including official IMF reports and Executive Board documents in English that deal with Rwanda.
At a Glance
- Rwanda joined the Fund in Joined: September 30, 1963
- Total Quotas: SDR 80.1 Million
- Loans outstanding: Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangements SDR 9.72 million
- Last Article IV Consultation: 2012 Article IV Consultation and Fifth Review under the Policy Support Instrument and Request for Modification of Assessment Criteria, (Country Report No. 13/77)
Office Activities
Fair Play—Equal Laws for Equal Working Opportunity for Women
iMFdirect Blog by Christine Lagarde
February 23, 2015
Pan-African Banks - Opportunities and Challenges for Cross-Border Oversight
IMF Policy Paper
February 4, 2015
Energy Subsidy Reform (ESRx): IMF ICD online course (10/1 - 10/22, 2014)
Call for registration in ICD open online courses. Registration deadline: October 1, 2014.
September 16, 2014
Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSAx): IMF ICD Online Course (10/22 - 11/26, 2014)
Call for registration in ICD open online courses. Registration deadline: October 22, 2014.
September 16, 2014
IMF and the East African Community Launch Collaboration Program to Assist East African Partner States Develop Government Finance Statistics
August 29, 2014
IMF's Work on Rwanda
Press Release: IMF Staff Completes Review Mission to Rwanda
April 5, 2016
Rwanda: Fourth Review Under the Policy Support Instrument-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Rwanda
January 28, 2016
Series: Country Report No. 16/24
Press Release: IMF Executive Board Completes Fourth PSI Review for Rwanda
January 15, 2016
Exiting From Fragility in sub-Saharan Africa : The Role of Fiscal Policies and Fiscal Institutions
December 22, 2015
Author/Editor: Corinne Deléchat ; Ejona Fuli ; Dafina Mulaj ; Gustavo Ramirez ; Rui Xu
Series: Working Paper No. 15/268
Press Release: IMF Staff Completes Review Mission to Rwanda
November 4, 2015
Regional Economic Outlook
After an extended period of strong economic growth, many sub-Saharan African countries have been hit by a multiple of shocks—the sharp decline in commodity prices, tighter financing conditions, and a severe drought in southern and eastern Africa. Growth fell in 2015 to its lowest level in some 15 years and is expected to slow further to 3 percent in 2016. The growth performance, however, differs across countries, with most oil importers faring reasonably well. The region's medium-term prospects remain favorable but many countries urgently need to reset their policies to reinvigorate growth and realize this potential. To this end, countries should adjust fiscal policies, and for those outside monetary unions, exchange rate flexibility, as part of a wider policy package, should also generally be part of the first line of defense. In the medium term, policies targeted at diversification and financial sector development could also strengthen resilience and boost growth.
Departmental Papers on Africa
The Departmental African Paper Series covers research on Sub-Saharan Africa conducted by International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff, particularly on issues of broad regional or cross-country interest. The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.
IMF Opens Africa Training Institute in Mauritius
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on June 26, 2014 opened the Africa Training Institute (ATI) in Ebene, Mauritius, adding an important regional center to a global network of centers helping to develop countries' policymaking capacity by transferring economic skills and best practices.


text: Too curious to focus on just one thing for long, staci b creates and expresses in ways that inspire, educate and entertain. A professional writer, playwright, entrepreneur and performer, the delight she experiences in her chosen professions is apparent to all she encounters. Explore the site to discover how staci might bring Light, Love and Laughter to your world.


text: I have been in the process of looking for a new home and have noticed that homes are not selling as quickly as they were just a few months ago. I have even seen some homes that I have interest in, drop as much as 50-70k in just over a month. You can feel that the housing market in So Cal is on a downward slide, if any of you are in the RE industry or just have an opinion,what is the consensus for a good time to buy..


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The Playlist profiles 5 Cinematographers On Their Way To The A-List; A Single Man's Eduard Grau (because "virtually every frame of [the film] was heart-stoppingly gorgeous"); Bright Star's (pictured) Greig Fraser (also worth noting his work on the chilling New Zealand true-story drama Out Of The Blue); Fish Tank's Robbie Ryan; Sin Nombre's Adriano Goldman; and director Debra Granik's go-to Michael McDonough, who brought us the gritty Winter's Bone and Down To The Bone. ThePlaylist notes:
If the layman is struck by a film's imagery, the most common response is "That was well directed." But while a handful of directors have the technical knowledge necessary (Steven Soderbergh comes to mind), most filmmakers will admit that one of the most vital collaborative relationships on set is between them and their Director of Photography.
Our own sampling of Grau, Fraser and Goldman's work (from A Single Man, Bright Star and Sin Nombre) is after the jump:


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Joseph Young · Marketing Manager at Young Dental Lab
Any recommendations for an air purifier? Did any of you have a specific unit installed along with HVAC?
Already a member? Log In
A community around business strategies dedicated exclusively for members of the Dental Laboratory industry. Join free to connect with Joseph.
Marketing Manager of Young Dental Laboratory, Inc., CDL. B.A. in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Studies 2005 Graduate of NADL University Certified Straumann Etkon CADCAM Technologist Certified NobelProcera Dental Designer We are also a NobelProcera & 3Shape CAD/CAM Laboratory, FiberWeld V4 Laser welding capabilities, Full Service Laboratory with MDT and CDT credentialed owner since 1980. ACP and ITI Members, and Founding Member of the ICOO. Feel free to contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com


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Founded in 2004, Hexavest is an independent investment management firm located in Montreal, Canada. The firm provides discretionary investment management of IntMore
$5 mil. - $10 mil.in Revenue
20 - 50EmployeesContact people at this company
investment managementMore
FinanceInvestment BankingBrokerageMore
1250 Rene Levesque West Blvd suite 4200MontrealQuebecH3B 4W8Canadaview map
(514) 390-8484
ProPub_Iteration_NT.411[04] SEIDXWK-23


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HourlyHours to be determined
Intermediate LevelI am looking for a mix of experience and value
1. Translate a video interview from Italian into English.
1.a. In case you can translate into German from Italian, it's an advantage.
2. Professionally record the audio track in English.
2.b. In case you can also record it in German, it's an advantage.
1. We will consider different variants, so in case you can do translation only from Italian into GERMAN and recording in GERMAN, please apply as well.
2. Obviously the candidate must speak English (German) fluently and without accent. It doesn't matter American or British.
3. We need a MALE VOICE, sorry (the man is speaking in our video).
4. We will first review translation, when approved, you can proceed with the recording.
5. We only need the sound file, but note: the timing, all the pauses must be respected. We will do the final editing of the video ourselves.
THE LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buIf3VziMsE
Client Activity on this Job
Last Viewed: 1 year ago
Hired: 1
About the Client
Milano 08:04 AM
Jobs Posted
92% Hire Rate, 1 Open Job
Total Spent
68 Hires, 2 Active


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You are here
Climate Change Denial Supplementary Materials
Teachers often feel the need to use supplementary materials when covering climate change, particularly because the topic is often left unaddressed in state science standards, curricula, and textbooks. Unfortunately, climate change deniers have developed and are distributing supplementary materials (such as lesson plans and DVDs) that foster confusion about the occurrence, causes, and consequences of climate change.
Take action on Tennessee's Monkey Bill
When Tennessee's legislature debated a "Monkey Bill" in 2012, NCSE joined with concerned citizens to protect science classes. The bill's text singles out evolution and climate change, as if those topics were scientifically controversial, and it blocks school administrators from maintaining a consistent curriculum. It opens the door for creationist parents or students to disrupt classrooms, or for teachers who deny the basic science of climate change to present pseudoscience.
Help defend science education in Tennessee
An anti-evolution and climate change-denying bill (SB 893/HB 368) could come to a vote in the Tennessee legislature as early as Monday, March 19. The teachers, parents, and scientists of Tennessee need your help to stop it.
Climate change is good science
The first pillar of climate change denial — that climate change is bad science — attacks various aspects of the scientific consensus about climate change.
Leading Climate Change Expert Joins NCSE Board
Founder of Pacific Institute joins forces with NCSE
UPDATE: Dr. Gleick will not be joining the NCSE board. See Source of Heartland leak steps forward.
Why is NCSE Now Concerned with Climate Change?
NCSE has long focused upon defending and promoting the teaching of evolution and the nature of science. Why are we now adding climate change to this list?
Why Climate Change Isn't Taught: Problems and Solutions
Teaching about the science of climate change, both in formal and in informal education, is necessary in order for future citizens to be able to make scientifically informed decisions about the consequences of climate change. Yet climate is often absent from the public school science classroom. There are various reasons for its absence — and, correspondingly, there are different solutions.
Tips for writing a public letter
Even with the decreasing importance of print media, letters to the editor of your local newspaper are a good way to help to defend climate change education. Following are a few time-tested principles for writing effective letters to the editor.
Testifying before policymakers
A controversy over climate change education may involve a public hearing before policymakers — a meeting of a local sc


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Looking into the eyes of experience, dedication and commitment, a visit with Arthur Graulich of Sharon Springs, NY is an opportunity to learn about the fundamentals of successful farming and capture of glimpse of what can be accomplished when a farmer makes stepping up to the challenge an essential part of his long career.
Arthur's eyes shimmered and he sat up even a little straighter in his chair as he described the family's latest land purchase. "As our farm motto goes, leave it better than you found it. I love to purchase a farm and then take the steps to bring the land to its highest potential. Installing tile drainage and applying lime have been profitable management practices for us. I have had the privilege of buying seven different farms and working at it to make those improvements to the land. I really enjoy that part of farming." [Read more…]


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Joe Swanberg, the indie director arguably responsible for the DIY aesthetic known as "mumblecore" (though don't fully blame him, he didn't coin the term) is the most prolific filmmaker alive. OK, maybe not quite, but since 2005, the filmmaker has made about 14 feature-length films. That's not quite an average of two films per year between 2005-2013, but it's close (and it doesn't even include the shorts he's made). His debut, "Kissing on the Mouth" kicked off this movement when it was heralded as a hit at SXSW and since then he's become known for micro-budgeted indies like "Hannah Takes The Stairs" (which helped launch Greta Gerwig's career), "Nights & Weekends" and "Alexander The Last."
And like the Duplass Brothers, Ry Russo-Young and Lynn Shelton before him (other close-knit filmmakers loosely lumped together under the "mumblecore" umbrella), Swanberg has finally gone mainstream. Again, not quite, but while the Duplass Brothers have made two comedies for Fox Searchlight with actors like Jonah Hill and Jason Segel, Shelton has worked with Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, and Russo-Young has also made Hollywood inroads, while Swanberg had seemingly resisted. Or at least the filmmaker was content to keep churning out picture after picture.
But his latest, "Drinking Buddies," a comedy set within the world of craft beer (one of Swanberg's passion and hobbies), stars real quote unquote actors. Starring Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson, with Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick in supporting roles, it's quite the cast (there are also cameos by Jason Sudeikis, Ti West and Swanberg himself). And by all accounts from its debut this spring at SXSW 2013, Swanberg's turned a corner with his best film to date. Our review called the picture a "loose, low-key relationship comedy with potent chemistry between the film's leads."
Playlist contrib Kristin McCracken sat down with Swanberg to discuss his biggest-budget film to date, his stellar cast and how his filmmaking process has changed (or not changed) as he's moving on up. "Drinking Buddies" isn't set for a U.S. release yet, but it should only be a few short weeks before we find out who will be distributing it stateside. Check out the interview below.
Joe Swanberg says two key influences for "Drinking Buddies" are Paul Mazursky's "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" and "The Heartbreak Kid" by Elaine May.
Swanberg talks about his excellent cast and working with people who weren't close friends with him to begin with for the first time.
This is a reprint of our interview from the 2013 SXSW Film Festival. "Drinking Buddies" is now available on VOD and opens in limited release on August 23rd.


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I have a 95 prelude and the clutch started to go out about 2 months ago... I took it in and had a new clutch installed... within 15 minutes of teh new clutch being installed it started going out again... so i took it back and got yet another clutch and had that installed... it is still faulty... is this a problem with my car? Both are brand new clutches.
by blastedshadows in Independence, MO on February 04, 2009


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A family of four lost everything in a house fire Wednesday morning.
The fire happened at a home on Pearson Road, that's south of Kinston.
A neighbor says the home was fully engulfed in flames around 8:00 a.m.
A mother, her toddler and an infant were home at the time, and all managed to get out safely. Sadly though, the family cat died in the fire.
The neighbor tells us that firefighters said a space heater started the fire.


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I love Bubba Gump, mostly the atmosphere. The food is wonderful and even though it has a lot of fish on the menu there is still a good collection for the non fish eaters.
We can never go to universal without at least going into the NASCAR cafe, this has the usual burgers, steaks etc and is a great restaurant if you like NASCAR racing (especially since race rock has gone).
Hard rock is ok but I thing it's a little like planet Hollywood in the fact that you pay more for where you are eating, good atmosphere full of musical memorabilia.
Definitely recommend Buppa Gump!


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|ISSN 1088-6826(online) ISSN 0002-9939(print)
A new characterization of Möbius transformations by use of Apollonius hexagons
Abstract | References | Similar Articles | Additional Information
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to give a new characterization of Möbius transformations from the standpoint of conformal mappings. To this end a new concept of Apollonius hexagons on the complex plane is used.
Retrieve articles in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society with MSC (1991): 39B40, 33A70
Retrieve articles in all journals with MSC (1991): 39B40, 33A70
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Offshore Yuan
No Way Back
The offshore yuan market has become the fast-track for making the Chinese currency truly global. However, the further it travels, the more the yuan's success depends on overdue reform at home
From the 1780s up until the eve of the Battle of Britain, long before it became London's new financial center, Canary Wharf was home to the UK's oldest Chinatown. The capital's current Chinatown is just five stops away by tube from the old financial center, the City of London. Even in the cosmopolitan heart of this metropolis, Chinese immigrant families continue to run restaurants, grocers and laundries. However, a slicker, more modern China presence is building up in those renovated Gilded Age buildings in the City, as well as in the gleaming skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, London's modern financial center.
Managers with HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, ANZ and Bank of China operate their yuan-denominated services in those antique boroughs, conducting trade settlements, fund-raising and corporate treasury management on behalf of clients ranging from European telecom giant Telco and automaker Jaguar Land Rover, to Bank of Brazil and leading European manufacturers of textiles, medical equipment, mining supplies and luxury consumer goods.
"We have already seen evidence in 2013 of a significant increase in renminbi [yuan] trade in London," noted Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in a February 22 press release.
Osborne was applauding an announcement by the Bank of England (BOE) about the proposed establishment of a currency swap line with the People's Bank of China (PBoC). Should such a system go online, these two central banks, representing the world's most diverse financial center and the world's fastest-growing economy respectively, will act as the lender of last resort in case of crisis in the London yuan market.
Hong Kong currently holds 80 percent of the world's offshore yuan assets and continues to be favored by the Chinese government for obvious political and practical reasons. China's central bank has already established similar swap deals with a number of other countries, meaning that despite the fanfare from Downing Street, the London deal is neither significant nor new.
However, the London deal, if signed, will be the first such arrangement between China and a G-7 country. In addition, London was the birthplace of the Eurodollar (the offshore dollar market) and remains the largest foreign exchange market for both dollars and euros, far exceeding those in the US and the Eurozone. As London strides towards the status of "Western hub" for the offshore yuan, meaning the sun will never set on the British currency empire, it also looks set to become the heart of a truly global currency trade network for the yuan.
As George Norris, First Secretary of Financial Policy with the British Embassy in Beijing, explained to NewsChina, the pending agreement is about "providing stability and confidence for the global offshore yuan market in which London is the largest outside the Greater China."
London has its competitors. Confidence and enthusiasm for offshore yuan markets also abounds in Singapore, Taipei, New York, Paris and Frankfurt. This list will grow longer as China's pink 100- yuan banknotes become an ever more familiar sight overseas.
All of this is good news for China's strategy for developing the internationalization of its currency on offshore markets. The Eurodollar market in the 1950s and 60s is often cited as a tried and tested model, giving China's economic planners confidence that this previously heavily restricted currency could potentially be floated internationally with minimal risk to the country's financial strength.
However, the Eurodollar market was built on a very different foundation, and served as a catalyst for policy changes within the US market in the 1970s and 80s, triggering the globalization of financial markets under Ronald Reagan. This example shows that the health of a currency's domestic market will ultimately make or break its international prowess.
A Dance of Dragons
Basically following this well-trodden path for building an international currency, starting by encouraging yuan-denominated regional trade settlements in 2009, relaxing controls on inward and outward yuan-denominated direct investment and portfolio investment, then finally moving towards establishing reserve currency caches in a handful of mostly relatively undeveloped foreign countries, China is moving forward as expected on the internationalization of the yuan.
International bankers and industries have responded very positively. There have been persistent runs on so-called "dim sum bonds," yuan-denominated bonds issued on markets outside the Chinese mainland. More than US$200 million in yuan deposits flooded into banks in Taipei, Taiwan on February 6, the first day of yuan-denominated trading. Deutsche Bank estimates this amount could reach billions by the end of the year. On February 25, US dollar-yuan futures began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, with similar fanfare.
Today, more than 10 percent of China's foreign trade is settled in yuan. According to financial data manager SWIFT, in January 2013, the yuan leapt forward to become the world's 13th largest payment currency (it was 35th in October 2010). In another report it stated that "more than 1,050 financial institutions in over 90 countries are already doing business in the Chinese currency." A survey released by The Banker magazine in July 2012 claimed that the world's banking sector "has already envisioned a world where [the yuan] is a fully convertible reserve currency of comparable status to the US dollar," adding that European sectors outside the banking sector or lacking business relationships with China are "aware of the future significance of the Chinese currency."
Research by the City of London has found that a number of companies have embraced the yuan to simplify their foreign exchange risk management by eliminating the US dollar exchanges.Well-established and emerging financial centers worldwide provide yuan-backed businesses with space to consolidate or build up their positions on the global financial markets.
George Norris with the British Embassy told our reporter that more yuan-based transactions in the UK would help the country create a friendly environment for Chinese investors and anyone who wants to do business with China, thus further cementing London's role as one of the world's leading centers of commerce. In a world where jitters in the US or Eurozone can threaten global financial stability, having an alternative international reserve currency seems increasingly attractive.
"It is logical to ask whether the yuan could provide an alternative," said Barry Eichengreen, professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs.
For China, the gradual internationalization of its currency was originally designed to help Chinese importers and exporters hedge against foreign exchange risks and facilitate trade with other Asian economies in the context of the global financial crisis. In 2012, particularly, the offshore yuan, along with more foreign capital, was allowed to invest in China's capital market mainly to help rescue a floundering yuan-denominated A-share market. The relaxation of yuan-denominated outbound direct investment regulations facilitated the overseas expansion of Chinese companies and banks. An international yuan would also give the world's second largest economy a bigger stake in the global economy, and thus further legitimize China's voice in international trade.
As the offshore yuan pool bloats, those in charge of it are speculating as to how best to make use of the Chinese currency. With interest rates very low worldwide, few are keen to put their yuan-denominated savings in the bank. Re-investment in the Chinese mainland is subject to strict quotas. As a result, many investors are believed to be hoarding yuan in anticipation of further appreciation, causing yuan deposits in Hong Kong to tail off from time to time since the end of 2011 when the yuan depreciation loomed. The somewhat cynical stockpiling of yuan is seen by some analysts as a threat to the currency's future stability.
Indeed, even international major currencies like the dollar and the pound sterling have been repeatedly attacked by speculators, triggering currency crises. This risk is much higher for the yuan, with the existing regulatory framework, according to Professor Sang Baichuan at the University of International Business and Economics, simply too rigid to cope with massive, often erratic, free capital inflow and outflow. China cannot afford a massive fluctuation in interest rates or inflation, a likely consequence of a sudden loosening of restrictions on the Chinese currency. Similarly, its banking sector, designed to serve the State rather than the market, could easily collapse if prematurely turned entirely over to market forces.
Old Roads, New Obstacles
Unlike the Chinese yuan, the Eurodollar never had to face a shortage of investment opportunities. While some circumstances in China today are comparable to European and American markets in the postwar period, specifically tight controls on cross-border capital flow and domestic interest rates prevailed both in Europe and the US at least till 1970s, the dollar was widely used to price and settle the trans-Atlantic trade and investment. Much more importantly, the dollar dominance was institutionalized by the Bretton Woods charter, the cornerstone of the postwar financial system which compelled other Western economies to peg their currencies to the dollar which was fixed at US$35 per ounce of gold. As a result, the dollar had already become the dominant world currency at the time when the Eurodollar market was launched by London's bankers. Neither of these favorable circumstances exists for the yuan.
Indeed, history seems to indicate that a major international currency cannot be made through offshore operations alone. The postwar US market, supported by a booming manufacturing economy and robust middle class was a melting pot of entrepreneurship funded by a strong capital market, while Europe was still rebuilding its economies. US dominance failed to collapse even when the Bretton Woods system was abandoned in 1971.
Even if China's leaders lifted strict capital controls today, yuan-denominated assets in the country could never match up to the appeal of 1950s US investments. International business communities, dominated by those from the US, were very eager to find ways, legally or illegally, to acquire US dollar assets in everything from stocks and bonds to factories. Even today, China's bond market is fragmented and inflexible. The eurozone, despite constituting a larger single economy than that of the US, has constantly struggled with a fragmented bond market, widely blamed for the failure of the euro to displace the US dollar as the world's default currency.
China's bond market is similar to Japan's, according to Barry Eichengreen, typically nurtured to maturity by domestic investors, leading to lukewarm international transactions. The Japanese yen has never quite made the transition to a truly global currency. The recent SWIFT report concluded that "full convertibility does not make a currency international."
The stock market, another popular choice for international capital market investors, is also the most active part of China's capital market, however, it is also highly volatile. Investing in the already overheated Chinese property market is slowly being seen as too risky for even the most hotheaded investor. In China's real industry, the main engine which propelled the US to global dominance and China's economic rise, the sheer number of restrictions on private investment, either foreign or domestic, prevents this vital market from coming close to realizing its potential.
Ma Jun, chief economist with Deutsche Bank Greater China, has repeatedly stated that if the yuan is only used in world trade, not for direct or portfolio investment, it will only realize a maximum ten percent of its international potential.
Uncertain Times
The solution to the manifold problems confronting the yuan, however, may also lie in the lessons of the Eurodollar. Rapid growth in the Eurodollar market made it impractical for the US to maintain effective capital controls. This mounting pressure finally forced the US to launch sweeping financial deregulation, setting off a trend which spread to the rest of the developed world and ultimately created the global financial market in which China now hopes to increase its dominance. This tortuous journey, in the view of Chinese analysts like Professor Sang, is very likely to be repeated by China. Reforms set in motion during China's campaign for WTO membership already set the country on this path.
Predictably, independent economists are calling for the immediate removal of restrictions on private investment in China's domestic financial market. So far, while even foreign banks have been granted limited access, there are more doors closed than open to private Chinese capital seeking to invest in China. A reform project aimed at allowing private investment in the credit market was launched in Wenzhou in 2012, but such baby steps have turned the investor optimism of a decade ago into deep disillusionment with the slow pace of reform.
Analysts also call for a similar wave of liberalization in the Chinese stock market, still crippled by a State apparatus which sees its opinion as more relevant than those of actual traders. The result of the blurring of government and marketplace is rampant insider trading and accounting fraud.
"A dynamic, fair market will in turn force regulators to improve their competence," said Professor Sang. "With both strong domestic markets and regulators it will be¡K much more likely for China to benefit, rather than suffer, from free capital flow."
Unfortunately, such demands have been made for decades and have gained unprecedented momentum in the past few years, but have largely fallen on deaf ears.
It seems that despite market consensus on the importance of economic growth, China is still held back by minority interests, those with exclusive privileges in market access. This reluctance to unleash the full extent of market forces in China is perhaps rooted in concerns that were China to truly open up to the globalized world, the country's powerful economic planners and the enterprises they favored might have to forfeit absolute control over their main trump card - a muzzled, if bullish, economy with their best interests at heart.
May 2013
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: [Tutorial]
Hack Tutorials: Scripting
View Single Post
July 20th, 2007 (1:54 AM). Edited July 20th, 2007 by <~F.M.P~>.
I got you whistling Blue Box!
Silver Tier
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HA HA! YES It finally works thanks foullump not only have you helped create my script u furthered my progress in my work and ironically i learned how to make movement scripts using the script you helped me make! Ur help is greatly appreciated...Now for my final question. How do you get the person to say what they have to say without moving back to there original spot while the scripts sdill in effect? Do i just increase the pause part by whatever i want?
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Prison Torture in Libya: 'Patients Who Had Been Electrically Shocked'
Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in the Libyan city of Misrata last week because prison officials repeatedly brought torture victims in for treatment -- only to return them to interrogation after they received medical care. SPIEGEL spoke with the group's general director, Christopher Stokes, about the situation in Libya.
SPIEGEL: Your organization has suspended operations in Misrata. Why?
SPIEGEL: How were the prisoners tortured?
Stokes: We have encountered bone fractures as a result of torture and we received patients who had been electrically shocked.
SPIEGEL: What have officials in Misrata said in response?
SPIEGEL: Is Libya on the way to becoming like it was under Moammar Gadhafi?
Stokes: No, it is not like that. The reason we know about the torture of detainees is the access we still have. The director of the detention center is very supportive, as is the National Transitional Council. The problem is those responsible for the interrogation centers. They do what they want.
Interview conducted by Christoph Reuter
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OPEN M-F 8-5 CST (Showroom Only - Sat 11-5, Sun 1-5)
capital left
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Crab-eating Monkey Skull
Macaca fascicularis
Crab-eating Monkey Skull - The crab-eating monkey is native to southeast Asia as well as Indonesia and the Philippine islands. As in most old-world primates, the crab-eating monkey has the same tooth count as humans. This species is omnivorous, eating a variety of plant parts and, as its name suggests, crustaceans and other small invertebrates. This monkey is commonly eaten by humans.
"B" quality specimens may exhibit missing teeth, repaired calvarium cut, slight cracks in bone, ect.
CLASS: Mammalia
ORDER: Primates
FAMILY: Cercopithecidae
Origin: Asia
Average Skull Length: 10 cm (3.9 in)
CITES paperwork is not available for this species. Therefore,export of this item out of the United States is not available.
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Sale Price: $70 million in June 2012
Buyer: Steve Wynn, worth $2.5 billion
Seller: Christopher Jeffries, founder of Millenium Partners
The casino magnate bought the 10,900-square foot duplex condo two months after it came to market. It has 14 rooms including a 900-square foot living room, a master suite with his-and-hers dressing rooms and a gym, a media room and a library.
Photo: Morgan Brennan/Realtor.com


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Recent Comments
- 2 years ago Apple can stop this at any point. By registering your UDID your being added onto the developers account. If I add me friend...
- 2 years ago I have it on my iPhone 5 and although the betas are buggy they work fine.
- 2 years ago There's nothing incriminating about that because there is nothing criminal about having the beta.
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Archive for March, 2014
What is search jacking and how can it hurt your brand?
Mar 31st
Boy was I in for a surprise when I typed "content shock" into the search engine.
I was looking at the images that people used when they blogged about my recent post and something didn't seem quite right. There were pornographic images, links to spam sites and other things that elicit a gag reflex.
Welcome to the world of search jacking.
When a topic gets hot, the Internet Bad People quickly catch on and capitalize by finding ways to catch the wave with their own spammy offerings. It could have been worse — there were so many posts about the subject that it is pretty saturated with legitimate content but you can see how not protecting yourself as your business grows can provide vulnerabilities to your brand.
Lee Odden is my go-to guy on this stuff. He is the wunderkid of all things optimization and offered advice for creating a hedge of protection for a brand. Using my new book Social Media Explained as an example, he taught me how to try to prevent spammers from hijacking this brand. His basic strategy is to swarm the web with relevant content while placing brand stakes down on key platforms. His advice:
- It comes down to publicity and getting as many reputable sources mentioning, linking and sharing the book title. It's work.
- The objective would simply be to make it easy for people to find the book after they've heard of it and for your content to get front and center attention. Own every version of the product name you can think of.
- I would set up a WP blog and just answer one question relevant to your product each week. Maybe tap other social media types to answer a question from time to time. That would become quite a magnet.
- Continue to set up a reasonable number of outposts like you have with the book name (FB, Twitter, etc). Upload the book cover, artwork, diagrams, to image hosting sites, etc so people looking for visual resources about the book can find them.
- The main thing would be to get a quantity of quality reviews from respected sites that link back to the focus page on your site.
Lee mentioned that another resource to help with this would be Repped: 30 Days to a Better Online Reputation by Andy Beal.
But the problem is …
Lee is absolutely correct. Every smart brand should do this. No question. But my problem is, how is a small business supposed to keep something like this going? Here are key titles/phrases/concepts that are proprietary to me:
- The Tao of Twitter
- Born to Blog
- Return On Influence
- Social Media Explained
- Content Shock
- The Content Code
- Mark W. Schaefer
- {grow} blog
- Businesses Grow
To execute this well, I would have to maintain at least eight sites, blogs, Facebook/Twitter accounts, etc. and populate them all with some form of non-spammy, consistent content. I would have to work for reviews, links and images on other reputable sites.
One of the things I struggle with is that small business owners like me are really at a disadvantage when it comes to this stuff. Building a digital fortress around my brand is non-revenue producing and I don't have a staff available to be the virtual junkyard dogs keeping the Internet Bad People away.
I don't know of any easy way to hack around this do you? As Lee says, this is work. And frankly, I don't want to do that work : )
Any thoughts?
Illustration: Fortress Qaitbay, Alexandria, Egypt, courtesy Flickr CC and Ahmad Ali
Book links are affiliate links
Klout Founder says Lithium deal will propel new development
Mar 28th
Yesterday Lithium announced it had acquired Klout for nearly $200 mm in cash and stock, closing the door on the "start-up" chapter of Klout's six-year history.
Klout Founder Joe Fernandez spoke to me shortly after the public announcement and discussed his emotional journey in founding a company, fighting for funding and legitimacy, building an enterprise, and finally positioning his life's work for a new era of growth.
Whether you love Klout or hate the idea of social influence metrics, the story of Klout's unlikely start and ultimate financial victory is fascinating.
As a special bonus to {grow} readers, following the interview with Joe, you'll find a free excerpt from Return On Influence with the story of how a first-generation Cuban immigrant went from selling CDs in his college dorm room to becoming America's newest multi-millionaire.
This interview was conducted about four hours after the Lithium announcement was made official.
Schaefer: Are you exhausted right now?
Fernandez: Definitely. Exhausted and exhilarated. This was an intense process and an intense decision. But I also feel a tremendous amount of excitement about what is ahead. With the opportunity ahead of us, I am tired at the moment but totally re-invigorated and happy.
Schaefer: In all my years in business, I have never met a person more focused and passionate about making a company come to life than you. I have to imagine there are a lot of emotions going on for you today as your baby is adopted by another company.
Fernandez: Having something you have worked on for so long be valued by the outside world is certainly very rewarding for all of us who fought through this whole process.
I feel an intense amount of gratitude to the team, even the haters out there who helped turn Klout into a better company. And of course for our customers and our millions of supporters — we have become a world brand because they cared so much about the company.
I have mixed emotions after such an intense process. Really, my emotions have been swinging hour by hour.
Schaefer: You've had an incredible opportunity to personally nurture your business idea for six years. How is Klout different today than what you first envisioned? In other words, what is the most surprising aspect of the company you could not have foreseen when you started out?
Fernandez: I never, ever imagined the horizon of opportunity that was set before us,
When I started out, I thought my idea could help people make some sense of social media. I figured at some point we would have 10 people working for us and then maybe Twitter would acquire us.
But today we are a worldwide brand and now associated with a company about to be part of an IPO. We have come a long, long way.
The idea that we could be part of a system now with a real possibility of changing the way consumers and brands interact with each other on a massive scale is beyond anything I could have imagined just a few years ago.
Schaefer: The inherent value of Klout is its ability to provide a relative measure of a person's ability to move content. A blunt instrument, but obviously useful in some cases. You once stated a vision of a Klout that connected the dots on dozens of content platforms but that effort stalled. For example, any consideration of self-hosted blog content is absent from the Klout equation … that limits the scope and usefulness of the measure. With the new resources at your disposal will you get that back on track?
Fernandez: We have always had a desire for data dominance, to pull data from many, many sources — wherever these important conversations might be. We have not diverted from that long-term vision but we had to re-prioritize within the context of our path and the limited resources that we had. At some point you need to balance pure research with commercial interests.
The deal with Lithium is exciting because we now have the legroom to fulfill that vision and really build a holistic view of who a person is across a wider span of communities.
Schaefer: Do you have regrets along the way?
Fernandez: Oh yes of course. There are a million little things I could have done better. Like most entrepreneurs, I'm hardest on myself.
This was my first time really managing a business of any kind, at any level. I was struggling to learn everything. Literally everything. As a start-up you pretty much have to have your hand in everything and I didn't know everything! There were painful lessons every day. I learned fast but of course I could have been better in practically every area in some way.
Schaefer: When companies go through growing pains like that, a founder will often bring in a more experienced executive to lead the company through its growth phase. Did you ever wonder if you were the right leader for Klout as it began to grow?
For me, this has never been about me being a CEO to fill out a resume. This journey has been about only one thing — fulfilling the vision, whatever it takes. To be successful, you have to put your ego aside.
Throughout this process I had periods of self-reflection when I tried to determine if we had the right pieces in place to fulfill the vision, and questioned everything, including my role at the company.
I determined that yes, I was the best person to lead this company for one reason: I am the person on this earth with the most passion to fight through everything and make it work. I have the passion. I am am the right person.
But this was an on-going dialogue, an active decision re-visited through each stage of the company's growth. This was never about having five or six good years, it was about staying true to the vision and building a company that lasts.
Schaefer: Six years ago you were manually calculating Klout scores, sleeping on couches and begging for money from friends to keep your company afloat. As of today, you are a multi-millionaire. What is the first thing you are going to splurge on?
It's really funny to have some money now after all these years. Seriously, I don't even know what to do. I keep thinking that it might be fun to have jet skis. That is the only thing that has popped into my mind.
I'm hoping to take a break soon and travel with my wife. She really deserves it. So we will do some traveling.
I have money but I don't feel that different. I feel just as scrappy. I'm the same person.
BONUS CONTENT – Free excerpt from Return On Influence,
"The story of a start-up"
The idea for the first attempts at a social scoring algorithm can be traced to a bored, frustrated young man sitting for hours on end, playing on his computer, and exploring social media sites … because at that moment in his life, it was the only way he had to communicate with the outside world.
At the age of 17, Joe Fernandez, who was to become the founder of Klout, was suffering from intense head and stomach pains. He was diagnosed with a rare medical condition that could only be resolved by jaw surgery … and literally wiring his mouth shut.
"I put the surgery off for years," Fernandez said. "I waited, hoping technology might get better and there would be like a lotion I could put on or something! But, in 2007, the pain was getting worse and I ended up having the surgery. I thought I could just power through it, but it was pretty hard. In fact it was much harder than I ever imagined. My jaw was wired shut for two months so to communicate, I either had to write stuff down or go on Twitter or Facebook because nobody could understand my mumbling.
"So I had this stir-crazy, drug-induced period of time in my 350-square-foot apartment in New York City. I was thinking about these social media tools I'm using to communicate, which at this point, I am pretty much totally relying on for my life! And that intense experience really changed the way I thought about these tools. I began to notice that the people who trusted me the most would instantly follow what I was saying. I could tell them my opinion and it would have some sort of impact on them.
"The other point that was interesting was that all this data was out there — the fact that Twitter and Facebook had an API and all of these other services had an API was pretty cool to me."
Locked up in his apartment for seemingly endless hours, Fernandez began to plot his ideas on an Excel spreadsheet … every social network he could find, every possible activity on those platforms that might signal influence. He saw patterns in the cells. Connections. And the connections turned into equations.
An idea for a new company, a new way of marketing, was forming in his head, but the concept was really the culmination of a lifetime of entrepreneurial experimentation and failure.
The young entrepreneur
Fernandez grew up in a family that appreciated the value of taking a gamble. His grandfather was a hotel and casino manager in Havana who moved his family to Las Vegas when the Communist Revolution shut down the gambling business in his country. Joe's father continued the family tradition, managing casino properties in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, and Atlantic City. Young Joe observed his father skillfully courting and befriending big spenders as a marketing manager for Caesar's Palace, a lesson in networking that would be crucial to his development as an entrepreneur who had to call in a lot of favors to help his business survive.
As a teen, Fernandez envisioned a career in the casino business but also had an entrepreneurial bug from an early age. "Even in high school I had a lock on the used video game market," he said. "And in college I marketed music CDs through the players on the football team."
Fernandez attended the University of Miami (FL) but couldn't settle on a career choice. "I changed my major like 20 times," he said. "I finished with an emphasis on economics, finance and computer science, but I never actually graduated. You needed 126 credits and I left with 140 in four years, but it was all over the place because I was always working on some side business and making pretty good money at it, too."
Fernandez had an opportunity to study English and political science at Oxford University for a year before landing his first job in 2000 with a technology consulting firm in Los Angeles. Little did he know that he was on the brink of a serious and extended personal collapse.
Within a few months of beginning his first real job, the white-hot Internet boom turned to bust and Fernandez was among the thousands of eager computer coders and tech consultants looking for work again.
After 10 months, he could not find meaningful work of any kind and took a run at a childhood dream by using his meager savings to start a skateboard company … which failed in short order. His money was running out, he was on the verge of being evicted from his apartment, and his career prospects were bleak. To make ends meet he took an entry-level technical support position. He hated the job, but his life was about to change for good.
Founding his first company
In 2002, Fernandez met a retired psychologist who had an idea to streamline the way that public schools kept up with newly-regulated reporting requirements for students. Fernandez, with the help of a few friends, started a company to build a computer program that would help school districts manage this paperwork-heavy process. As soon as the start-up had its product ready, it landed its first customer – the gigantic San Francisco Unified School District. With that bright start, they could not have foreseen that this would be their last customer, too.
"After that first sale, I really had visions of being a millionaire in a few months," he said. "But we could never sell another system. We couldn't figure out how to deal with the bureaucracy and politics of the school systems. We pushed and pushed for 18 months, boot-strapped it, and used every penny we had, but it became apparent that we weren't going anywhere with this idea."
In the end, the company salvaged its work by licensing the technology to other school system vendors who tracked lunch programs, special education efforts, and other student activities – a system that is still in place and generating revenue across 5,000 U.S. school districts.
Now 25, Fernandez was out of work once more, but had several new weapons in his personal arsenal. He had learned what it was like to bootstrap a new business, lead a team of business partners, deal with the highs and lows of entrepreneurial life, and build a marketable product based on massive amounts of data. And with the school project licensing deal, he finally had a little financial breathing room for his next venture.
With nothing left for him in California, Fernandez decided to follow a lifetime dream and move to New York City. He was soon using his natural networking skills to become part of the city's vibrant tech start-up scene.
"By late 2006, I had a couple of ideas," Fernandez said. "One would have been like a Foursquare/mobile kind of thing. I had another idea around restaurant reviews. I actually went to India, hired a team of developers, and tried building a few ideas on the side, but nothing really stuck."
The Birth of Klout
"Then in 2007, I had the jaw surgery. And my thinking about a new business model started to change a lot.
"I had so much time on my hands in my apartment, and as I experimented with these social media ideas, I started hacking something together that would be the first algorithm for influence. This idea for Klout just stuck with me. That was always the name … Klout. It was more about the idea of quantifying influence than the technology, and I couldn't shake it.
"When I got un-wired, I did some consulting but I was always working on this idea. I guess it became an obsession. I just couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities and realized that this was something I had to do. So in August of 2008, I quit everything I was doing and went all-in on Klout."
His first priority was to find a technical team to activate his idea but he couldn't afford anybody in New York and he couldn't convince any of his friends to quit their job and bootstrap, so he turned to a group of developers in Singapore who had authored some of the software used by the real estate venture.
"They had actually reported to me in another venture and I knew them really well, so I decided to hire those guys to help me with the first version of Klout," he said. "The time difference made it really hard to get anything done so I went to Singapore for several months and crashed at the developer's house and worked in their office whenever I could to help build the first platform for Klout."
In less than six months, the software was ready to go and the first version of Klout was launched on Christmas Eve, 2008.
"It was pretty funny at the time," Fernandez said, "because, if anyone registered I had to manually calculate their score myself! So it was definitely a mess … but people were interested. The moment we launched, I tweeted my score. This caught the attention of some of my friends in New York and it started to catch on among a small but rabid group of fans. To them, Klout was like ego crack.
"Just one week after I launched I was asked to present the idea at an important tech meet-up in New York City. I mean it was kind of ridiculous to have this opportunity right out of the box. What was I going to say? That I had developed an algorithm that's going to decide how important everybody in the world is? How could I possibly say that? I've not achieved anything that would allow me to make a claim like that. There's nothing on my resume that says I'm the one that should be allowed to make that decision.
"So here is what I told the crowd about market influence: Everybody who creates content has influence and with Klout I want to understand who they influence and what they're influential about. It's not about the A-list any more. It's about every person. And that resonated with the people in the audience. Klout was very crude back then – just one page really — but I think they could see the vision that was behind it."
In early 2009, Fernandez returned to Singapore to supervise the next evolution of the product. Accompanying him was his friend Binh Tran, a cofounder on the education software startup, who quit his job to join the Klout venture full-time. Tran became the Chief Technical Officer for Klout and continues to shepherd its development.
Klout on the Ropes
Between sleeping on the floor with his friends in Singapore and bootstrapping the new business from his tiny apartment, Fernandez was able to finance the first 18 months of the venture out of his own pocket. But he would soon need investors if Klout was going to avoid a death spiral. He needed to call on all of his formidable networking skills just to give the company a chance to survive month-to-month.
"It was touch and go for a long time. I couldn't have made it through this period without a lot of help," he said. "The guys in Singapore and the company hosting us trusted me enough that they let us ride on our bills for a really long time. They would threaten to shut us off and I would come up with $10,000 or $20,000 and we'd be cool again. If we would have had to pay them the full amount every month … well, it wouldn't have happened. I had to use all of the social and political capital I had and I spent every penny of the money I had made from both of my previous companies and still, we were barely getting by. So I needed to meet people who could help. I decided that I needed to go to South by Southwest."
South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual tech event in Austin, TX, is considered the World Series of Start-Ups. Tens of thousands of innovators and investors descend on the city each March hoping to be the next big thing – or to discover it. During a stint in Singapore, Fernandez applied for a spot on the one of the highly sought-after Accelerator Programs, where a panel of judges helps find the coolest new start-up or web-based application. The Klout idea was accepted into the showcase. Fernandez was going to have his chance.
"This was a huge deal – an amazing opportunity. We needed this exposure because at that point we had just launched the company and literally had no money– I was begging and borrowing to keep Klout alive.
"I knew that once I got in front of that huge South by Southwest crowd with lots of investors and told them what we were doing, that we would have funding the next day and everything will be perfect from there. So we show up … and we're given the 8 a.m. slot on the very last day. Not a popular time! The whole time I was there, all I did was stay in my hotel room to do coding and practice my two-minute presentation. That's all the time I had to save the company — two minutes! So I had all of this build-up and when I arrived, there were four people in the audience. The microphone wasn't working. And the judges – Guy Kawasaki, Don Dodge, and Nova Spivack – are like … yeah, this is a dumb idea … NEXT. This was going to be our coming out party and … total crickets.
"We were out of money. This is early 2009 and the economy was terrifying. We built our platform initially on Twitter and at that point people are still trying to decide if Twitter is a joke. I'm beginning to wonder — can I really do this?
"As a last-ditch effort, I e-mailed the judges from the South by Southwest session to thank them for their time and their feedback and told them that I hoped we could talk some more sometime soon. Nova Spivack replied to me and said he thought our concept was interesting and offered to buy me coffee if I was ever in San Francisco. I replied back that I was going to be there the next week, even though I had no specific plans to be there. We met and I told him what I was thinking about Klout and what I was working on and he thought it was really cool. He said he wanted to invest … and wrote me a check that day. Our first angel investor! He also introduced me to an attorney to incorporate the company and also had me meet with a second investor. So we had our financing. We could keep going, and slowly begin to grow."
The breakthrough
Money troubles continued to plague the young company despite the welcome infusion of cash. Ten months after the meeting with Spivack, he had no further interest from investors. "We were running on fumes the whole year," Fernandez said.
"I pitched over 100 angel investors and some would say, 'that's a dumb idea, Twitter's going to disappear.' Others would say, 'this is a good idea, you should focus on the data side.' So, I would revise my pitch for the next investor and focus on the data side and then they would say, 'no, you should focus on the advertising piece,' so then my pitch would change for the next presentation.
"I finally decided I needed to focus on my own vision for Klout and I eventually attracted 37 angel investors, which is a lot — I don't know of any start-up that has that many. But we didn't attract any of the big names or these big-shots that other tech companies have as investors. We sort of have this group of random, organic, long-term investors — and we raised $1.5 million. That is what really got us going. We were able to hire a few people and move into an office in San Francisco."
The entrepreneur's networking instincts were keen, even when it came to the location of the new company offices at 795 Folsom Street – the site of Twitter's headquarters.
"With our business model," he said, "it was important to be best friends with the Twitter guys." His theory was that by hanging around with executives at one of the hottest tech companies around, some of the magic could rub off. "I wanted to see who was visiting the Twitter office so I could pounce on them and meet them. And then I would invite them to swing by and visit us next door at Klout."
With an increasing number of fans in high places, the company easily raised another $1.5 million in May of 2010 and seemed to be riding the wave of social media popularity.
"Social media and Twitter blew up and the economy started to get better," he said. "Everyone, it seemed, began to realize that what we were doing might be important and we started to get a lot of attention from the institutional VCs. In December of 2010 we closed on $8.5 million from Kleiner Perkins. Basically they are the Stanford or Harvard of venture capitalists. So to go from no interest in us at all to having the best VC in the world in less than a year was pretty exciting."
The popularity of the Klout system attracted attention from more than venture capitalists, however. Celebrities wanted in on the act as they vied for their own form of social proof and an elite status among the Twitterati.
"We get quite a few e-mails and calls from companies and celebrities trying to raise their score," Fernandez said. "We even got a call from the manager for Britney Spears. That was one of the first moments when it hit me as to where this might be going … the attention we were getting. I received an e-mail from her manager saying he was flying to San Francisco and wanted to meet me. It was a couple of people, him, a lawyer … they came by the office, we went out to lunch … and they really pressed me to know how to raise her Klout score. 'Why is Britney's Klout score lower than Lady Gaga's and Ashton Kutcher's?' This meeting just blew me away. Here was this world-wide celebrity who was aware of her Klout score and wanted to understand it and know how to change it."
"The timing is right for Klout," Fernandez claimed. "The importance of social networking broadly for individuals and companies has reached a tipping point and we are in what I like to think of as an 'attention economy.' With Facebook, people started using their real names and as you start to use your own name online, your personal brand starts to matter. You can build your own influence like never before. All those things started happening around the same time Klout began its social credit score."
In late 2010 the company piloted a monetization program called "Perks," which allowed client companies to offer free gifts, discounts, upgrades and other benefits to influencers by topic. The initiative was incredibly successful, straining the start-up's resources. Klout quadrupled its workforce in 12 months to keep up with demand.
Additional revenue began coming in from the nearly 3,000 API partners including Salesforce.com, The Huffington Post, and Hootsuite. Software programs using the Klout scores as part of their own product offerings make more than 2 billion "calls" to the Klout API every month.
5 reasons to be wildly excited about content marketing
Mar 27th
The other day I was a guest on Dr. Jon Buscall's very fine podcast and we chatted about the marketing challenge of fighting through information density on the web. It was a fun and intense discussion but then he interjected a comment that caused me to twitch:
"I hope our listeners aren't frightened off by this discussion!"
It made me pause. Could that be true?
I have written and talked a lot lately about wrestling with the challenges of attention and content overload (aka "Content Shock"). Has this discussion frightened people off?
There is no question that the tsunami of content in the face of an increasingly limited attention span should be the number one concern, the number one discussion, and the number one source of innovation in our field right now. You just can't pretend this is business as usual. Our job is hard and it will be getting harder.
But I ended that post (and each discussion) by emphasizing that content marketing is not over and expressing optimism about the opportunities ahead. And yet, reactions from some fellow bloggers have been along the lines of "Schaefer said we are doomed!"
So I have a need to present some balance here.
This natural evolution of a marketing channel by no means defines the opportunity ahead of us. In fact, content marketing is driving some incredibly important trends. Here are five reasons I am wildly excited by the future of content marketing:
1) Focus on human engagement
The smartest marketers realize that simply dumping content on the market doesn't optimize the opportunities for a business. For content to be powerful, it has to MOVE. People need to share it, spread it, and engage with it.
Now let's step back and think about the behaviors that goal will drive in a company. What do you have to achieve to not only create content but move it?
- The content has to be valuable enough to be shared.
- The company has to consistently, actively, and ambitiously find and nurture an engaged audience who is willing to share that content.
- The organization must continually measure and fine-tune this process so that it delivers increasing business value.
When I compare this to how we pushed marketing materials around 20 years ago, I think this is absolutely focusing attention on the right customer-centered activities!
2) The wide open opportunities
If you are working for a top brand locking horns in a very competitive national market like mobile phones, fast food, or automotive you are probably thinking, "Dude, content shock occurred for us years ago!"
But the fact is, for the majority of businesses, content marketing is still a wide open space.
With the increasingly personal and local nature of search results, you don't need vast resources and millions of dollars to make an impact with your content if you are a small or regional business. The key to success is to find an un-saturated niche and dominate it. Right now, almost every niche is un-saturated so find your spot and go for it!
3) The possibilities for content creators
In the history of the world, there has been almost no opportunity to make a decent living as an artist (what we now call content creators!) unless you had a rich patron or you somehow were elevated to an elite cultural status.
There has never been a greater opportunity to monetize your writing, your design skills, your love of video and editing than right now. And we're just at the beginning.
The Internet's appetite for quality content is insatiable.
4) Open source marketing
Here is another content marketing trend that is just so exciting to me … if we do this right, we are really establishing a channel for "open source marketing."
Only a small fraction of the stories about our businesses come from our own company. People love you and they are blogging about it, tweeting about and Instagramming about it (yes, that is a real verb now!). Most of the stories are OUT THERE, not on our website. How do we capture those amazing stories, amplify them and celebrate them?
It's truly open-source marketing. Every person who loves your product, university, non-profit, hospital or cause can move and promote your message. Find them. Help them.
I'm convinced that the most exciting opportunity for content marketing rests with THEIR stories, not OUR stories.
5) Setting the stage for an amazing future
In the hurricane of our daily jobs, it is easy to be pre-occupied with today and the here and now. It's hard work, it's a grind, and there is a lot of pressure to compete.
But I love to get people to look up now and then and picture what is going to be happening in the next five years. With wearable technology and augmented reality, we are on the brink of a marketing world without boundaries!
What will content marketing look like when the Internet surrounds us like the air that we breathe? How do we connect with our customers when there is a digital layer on top of the "real world," when every wall, window and table top becomes a canvas for our story?
My gosh. The possibilities are endless, inspiring, breath-taking!
See? Now you have me all wound up! Just thinking about the possibilities of content marketing get my juices flowing. Are you with me?
Photo of Benson the excited dog courtesy Flickr CC and Damon Garrett.
Copyblogger comments: The real economics behind the decision to pull the plug
Mar 26th
The well-known Copyblogger site sent a shockwave through the blogosphere when it announced it would no longer entertain comments on its blog. No more Copyblogger comments? Has the world gone mad?
While some may judge this to be a questionable move, I don't. Anybody can do anything they want on their blog if it makes good business sense. But here is my question: Why does it make good business sense? They really didn't say.
The talented Sonia Simone provided three reasons for the move in her post, but avoided this question. Her explanation:
1) The blog-related conversations are also taking place on other forums like LinkedIn and Google+. Why is it necessary to have a conversation on a blog, too?
2) If you have a comment, putting it on their site isn't the "right place." It should be on your site (and they are encouraging you to link back to the original article, of course).
3) 96% of the comments they receive are spam.
If you are an experienced blogger these explanations probably strike you as strange. Maybe even forced. They certainly don't tell the whole story.
Forcing the conversations into other spaces fragments the conversation and makes the reader take an extra step of finding it and commenting in another place. I can't get my head around any reason why leaving a comment on a blog is "the wrong place" for a comment. Certainly it diminishes the power of the conversation stream if it is in a dozen places.
And spam? Sure, we all get a lot of spam, but spam filters do an excellent job. I would say far less than 1% of true spam ever makes it onto the blog.
Copyblogger founder Brian Clark has an excellent business mind. This is a big decision for him and his company and I guarantee you the economic impact of this move was carefully debated beyond "this spam is really annoying." So, what is the ECONOMIC REASON for this decision?
I can imagine at least three big ones.
- First, by encouraging conversations outside the blog they are sending Google juice back to Copyblogger. The SEO value of a comment is negligible compared to a mention on Google+ or a backlink on a blog. In this very example, the fact that Copyblogger has earned a blog post from me and a backlink on {grow} (a site with very high "authority" in Google terms) earns them real economic gain.
- Increasing traffic through Google search benefits provides increased ad revenues or perhaps affiliate income through increased eyeballs and maybe inbound leads.
- Maintaining a comment section takes valuable resources. It is not uncommon for me to spend three times more effort addressing comments than writing the original post. Think of the client work or content creation I could focus on if I disallowed comments. Now multiply that times three or four for Copyblogger and you can see the real economic advantage of cutting out comments.
So, even though their explanation was shrouded in veils of altruism, Copyblogger undoubtedly made a level-headed business decision based on a thorough economic evaluation.
Or did they?
SEO will always matter to some extent. But here is what matters even more in the long-term: True emotional connection.
In our increasingly information-dense world, backlinks and Google mentions can only carry you so far. In the end, people buy from the real people they know and trust. Reader loyalty will trump everything in the end.
Creating a blog community is a historically-important opportunity to begin to know real people from all over the world who may eventually buy something from you. By disconnecting blog commentary from the content, Copyblogger is certainly risking community development for the sake of "traffic."
In the end, a powerful site like Copyblogger will probably succeed by turning their community into a broadcast channel. They are smart folks and I would not bet against them.
But for most of us, I think the value of blogging for business results from a community dialogue that leads to loyal, emotional connection.
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Welcome to {grow}You're in marketing for one reason: Grow. Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you're here. -Mark Schaefer
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text:
in the early 90's i worked for a couple of guys whom published a zine in san diego. it was racy, alternative and fun. they were certifiably insane. their first issue was supposed to come out and they didn't have anyone to type the articles in. i didn't type either. but, i did have a computer and they thought if we had a scanner and some O.C.R. (optical character recognition) software we could just scan these submissions into the computer and i could put them in narrow vertical columns so that advertisements would fit next to them. well needless to say that was a huge fiasco. the O.C.R. software of the day was tragically poor and it ended up that it was just easier to hunt and peck our articles in. turning lemonade out of lemons, after having bought a pricy scanner and hard drives to fit the rather large files on, i discovered that we could do our own halftones. halftones were expensive and are how grayscale images are created from photographs to be able to print on a printing press--little black dots that are variably sized and placed to give the illusion of grayscale. hence, this was the beginning of my desktop publishing era. at that time there were no books or schools to explain creating halftones from digital files. photoshop didn't have any numbers next to its name and i was in over my head--and didn't realize it.
before i knew it i was scanning all the photos, digitally retouching them, and laying them out in pagemaker along with the hand typed text. i needed more software, hard drives and please please get me a manual! we published a slick san diego based zine that became hugely popular in the alternative, coffee-house, night-club underground.
chef, who could sell ice to an Inuit, and chris, the money man, became even more crazy--if that were possible. we had our differences and they were frequent. chef was on a psychotropic drug cocktail of prozac and lithium. oh that roller coaster was steep. chris was trying to start his own cult of ravers and other lost souls.
needless to say, eventually, i left and started a design business. but the reason for my story is to explain that although chef had no perceivable redeeming qualities chris had one very large one. he had this ability to forgive and forget. i'm not talking like most people can. this was profound. he would say "let's forget it" over some huge personal or professional transgression and it would be gone--like it never existed. i didn't have that ability and saw it as such an attractive character trait that i strove to adopt it as my own. i still struggle at times, over fifteen years later. but, by the time i can say "let's forget it" i mean it and harbor no ill or begrudging feelings.
i feel so blessed these days with such a wonderful family and life that it is becoming easier to readily and quickly say "let's forget it"
so, let's forget it....
Sunday, January 08, 2006
let's forget it
Posted by karl o'melay at 4:37 AM
4 comments:
- Danielle said...
My husband has this quality as well. When he forgives, he forgives. That's it, it's over and he doesn't think twice. It is really wonderful that he doesn't feel a need to punish or get revenge.
- pablo said...
Is there a hidden message here, Karl, that I am not clever enuf to uncover?
- karl said...
early in our friendship, we had a misunderstanding. i am not offended and want the other party to realize it. i also saw this as an opportunity to tell an interesting story and give more insight to who i am.
- karl said...
the "we" is another person and myself
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New London - With the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School still fresh on his mind, City Council President Michael Passero wants a discussion about getting guns off the streets.
And Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio agrees.
Both city leaders are looking into possible gun buyback programs.
At Monday's City Council meeting, Passero raised the idea of a gun buyback program through the police department. The item was sent to the Public Safety Committee for further review.
"I'm not necessarily advocating for it,'' Passero said Monday before the meeting. "But I want to have a discussion about it. I want to get the issue out there, get the debate started and have a committee meeting with professionals who can answer our questions."
In 2007, the City Council looked into a similar program but the proposal died in committee, he said.
On Monday, Finizio said he wants to push for ways to get more firearms off the streets. But the city has no money to fund such a program, he said. City staff is looking at possible programs that could include handing out gift certificates or gift cards in lieu of cash.
"I've also instructed the police department to examine any federal or state grants that may be available,'' Finizio said.
The Office of Development and Planning could also be involved, he said, and could approach businesses and nonprofits to ask for donations of gift certificates of gift cards that could be exchanged for firearms.
"Wherever you are on the gun control debate, there's common ground, everyone seems to agree, you lessen the risk (violent crime with guns) if you can lower the number of guns in society and make sure those who have guns are law abiding. It reduces the risk for everyone in society," he said. "The debate shouldn't stop us from trying to reduce the number of guns on the street, and disrupt the trade and trafficking of illegal guns."
The city could also hold an amnesty program, in which illegal firearms are turned in with no questions asked, he said.
"There are many different ways to go about this,'' Finizio said. "We welcome the council's input."
For the program to be successful, Passero added, the entire community needs to get involved in the discussion.
"Maybe someone can step forward,'' he said. "We need community partners to put up the rewards."
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