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International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 615906, 9 pages
A Distributed Pseudonym Management Scheme in VANETs
1School of Computer and Information, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
2The Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Mine IoT and Mine Safety Supervisory Control, Hefei 230088, China
Received 22 December 2012; Accepted 3 April 2013
Academic Editor: Xu Yongjun
Copyright © 2013 Xiaoling Zhu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Security and privacy have been important issues in VANETs. Anonymity is an effective way to achieve privacy protection, and it sometimes requires to be disclosed for determining traffic liability. In most pseudonym schemes, an authority is aware of a vehicle's secret, and its compromise will result in the leakage of a large amount of privacy information. So, we propose a distributed traceable pseudonym management scheme in VANETs. In the scheme, a blind signature method is adopted to achieve strict separation of issuance and tracking. The distributed tracking protocol is proposed to enhance the robustness for tracking, which is based on the improved scheme for shared generation of RSA keys. An efficient pseudonymous authentication mechanism is proposed to reduce the communication overhead. Compared with other related proposals, our scheme is unforgeability, especially against authority forge attacks, and has better robustness. Moreover, the performance analysis shows that it is efficient in VANETs.
1. Introduction
Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications improve vehicle's perception from the surrounding environment. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) will be used widely in collision avoidance, road-hazard notification, and coordinated driving systems [1]. Nonetheless, there are many security threats in VANETs [2–4]. For example, an attacker might tamper with messages to evade accident liability or forge information to meet specific needs. The attacker also might eavesdrop on broadcast messages, analyze data, and track a vehicle. So, security and privacy have been important issues in VANETs.
A number of studies have been made on the issues of security and privacy preservation. Raya and Hubaux [5, 6] pointed out that anonymity is conditional for liability purposes and that authority can disclose the pseudonym. In [5, 6], a security protocol was introduced. Although this protocol can effectively meet the conditional privacy requirement, it is far from efficient and can hardly become a scalable and reliable approach, because the authority has to keep all the anonymous certificates for each vehicle. Lin et al. [7] proposed a security and privacy preserving protocol. With group signature, security, privacy, and traceability can be achieved without inducing the overhead of managing a huge number of stored certificates at the authorities' sides. Calandriello et al. [8, 9] proposed on-the-fly pseudonym generation and self-certification, which alleviates the overhead of managing certificates. Group signature method is adopted to ensure that legitimate nodes can generate their pseudonyms anonymously. Lu et al. [10] presented a conditional privacy preservation protocol, which improves efficiency in terms of the minimized anonymous keys storage at each vehicle. Performance evaluation shows that the protocol can achieve much better efficiency than Raya and Hubaux's [5, 6] and Lin et al.'s [7] when vehicles are revoked. Zhang et al. [11] proposed a scalable robust authentication protocol. In [11], some roadside units (RSUs) serve as the issuer of vehicles' private key, and a signcryption method is employed to distribute the keys securely. Hao et al. [12] proposed a distributed key management framework, which has advantages in the revocation of malicious vehicles and system maintenance. An efficient cooperative message authentication protocol is developed to reduce the computation and communication overhead in the group signature.
The above reported schemes [7–12] are based on group signature. In Boneh et al.'s group signature scheme [13], each user's private key is generated by the private-key issuer, which is a hidden security threat. In [7–9], each vehicle's group private key is computed by a member manager. In [10], a trusted authority is required; the authority generates valid private keys for on-board unit and RSU. In [11], RSU generates and sends the group private key to the vehicle. In [12], some measures are adopted to prevent RSU from misbehaving, but authorities cannot decide which is the malicious, RSU or the vehicle or both, when they find a mismatch. Therefore, these schemes [7–12] suffered from private key revealing attacks, in which the private-key issuer knows each user's private key.
Schaub et al. [14] adopted blind signature technology to achieve the separation of issuing and tracking. But the disadvantages of the scheme are that -token () is produced by a vehicle alone; thus, the vehicle might forge other vehicle's -token. Moreover, if CA is not credible, it can generate -token by itself and sign it. CA can obtain the pseudonym certificate from a pseudonym provider and impersonate any vehicle.
To solve the above problems, this paper presents a distributed pseudonym management scheme in secure VANETs. The main contributions of the scheme are as follows. (1) Pseudonym is coproduced by the issuer and the vehicle. Either party attempting to deceive can be detected. It can resist authority forge attacks. (2) An efficient pseudonym authentication mechanism is proposed by finding the optimal number of messages with the pseudonym certificate, which not only reduces the communication overhead but also ensures the message authentication probability . (3) Distributed pseudonym tracking based on secret sharing method is presented. The initialization of the tracking protocol does not require a trusted center, thus avoiding any single point of failure. It offers better robustness.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The pseudonym management model is given in Section 2. The pseudonym issuance protocol, the pseudonymous authentication protocol, and the distributed tracking protocol are presented in Sections 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Section 6 analyzes and compares the security and the performance of our scheme with other related schemes. Finally, the conclusion of this paper is given in Section 7.
2. Pseudonym Management Model
There are three types of entities: (1) a vehicle (). Its identity is , corresponding to a long-term public key and a long-term private key . Its pseudonym is IDPV, corresponding to a short-term public key and a short-term private key . The vehicle contains a sensing input module, a wireless communication module, a central processing module, and a hardware security module (HSM) [15]. The HSM generates public and private keys, stores private keys, and provides digital signature service. (2) An authority: it is divided into certificate authority (CA), pseudonym certificate authority (PCA), and tracking authority (TA). PCA issues pseudonym certificates, but it does not know the pseudonym. Only TA knows the relation between the pseudonym and the identity. CA issues , and contains and . PCA issues CertPV, and CertPV contains IDPV and . PCA's public and private keys are denoted as and , respectively. TA's public and private keys are denoted as and , respectively. There are some PCAs in the model, and may apply for a pseudonym to the neighboring PCA. Only a few suspicious vehicles need to be disclosed, so TAs are rare. But if only one authority acts as TA, abuse can occur. Based on the secret sharing method, we extend one authority to authorities forming . () may be a law enforcement agency, a judge, or a privacy protection agency. 's identity is . Assume that the vehicle is preloaded with the public keys of CA, PCA, and TAs during the vehicle's initialization. (3) Roadside unit (RSU): it communicates with vehicles and other devices on the internet.
The security and privacy requirements in the model are as follows.
Anonymity. For other entities (such as PCA, attackers) except TAs, it is computationally infeasible to disclose the identity from a pseudonym.
Traceability. If the members in TAs implement the protocol honestly, at least members can disclose collaboratively the identity from a pseudonym.
Unforgeability. For any entity, it is computationally infeasible to forge a false signature or impersonate another entity.
Robustness. If any authority compromises, the implementation of pseudonym issuance, pseudonymous authentication, and tracking are not affected.
The process of pseudonym management is shown in Figure 1. (1) The vehicle gets an identity certification from CA. (2) applies for pseudonym certificates. (3) PCA issues some pseudonym certificates to . (4) communicates with other vehicles and RSU with the pseudonym certificates. (5) Once other vehicles find suspicious vehicles, they submit a tracking request to TAs. (6) TAs disclose the identity from the pseudonym.
The model consists of three protocols: a pseudonym issuance protocol, a pseudonymous authentication protocol, and a distributed tracking protocol. TAs' public key is generated during the initialization stage and used in the pseudonym issuance protocol. Pseudonym certificates are generated in the issuance protocol and used in the pseudonymous authentication protocol. Once suspicious messages appear in pseudonymous authentication, the distributed tracking protocol is activated.
3. Pseudonym Issuance Protocol
Chaum [16] first proposed the concept of a blind signature, which allows users to get a message signature without leaking any contents. The pseudonym certificate issuance protocol adopts the blind signature method.(1) sends to PCA, where is the number of pseudonyms.(2) PCA verifies , if passed, and sends to , where is the expiration date. (3) extracts , decrypts it, and gets . Then verifies PCA's signature, if passed, picks two random integers and (), and generates the pseudonyms as follows: extends them to sends PCA the blind alternative commitments (), where SHA is a message digest function.(4) PCA randomly generates verification set , , and , and sends to .(5) shows to PCA.(6) PCA computes , and and checks . If passed, PCA sends the blind signatures of the remaining commitments to .(7) removes the blind factors and gets the pseudonym certificates as follows:
The prerequisite of implementing the protocol is that during the initialization stage, has got TAs' public key and PCA's public key . Before applying for a pseudonym, the short-time public and private keys of the vehicle have been already generated. (1) sends a request signed with to PCA to prove its identity . (2) PCA sends the signature secretly, not only to prove PCA's identity but also to coproduce 's pseudonym. Sending the signature secretly can prevent the signature from leaking. (3) produces pseudonyms and blinds them. In (4), (5), and (6) PCA opens commitments among commitments to verify. If passed, PCA signs blindly the remaining commitments. (7) removes the blind factors and gets the pseudonym certificates.
In Schaub et al.'s issuance protocol [14], CA signs -tokens for a vehicle. Pseudonym provider (PP) checks the validity of -tokens; if valid, PP issues a pseudonym certificate. Four rounds of interaction are required. If CA wants to cheat, it will not interact with a vehicle. And it will obtain a fake pseudonym certificate and impersonate a vehicle, so will PP.
In our issuance protocol, PCA issues directly a pseudonym certificate to a vehicle, and three rounds of interaction are required. A pseudonym is coproduced by and PCA. PCA cannot provide to forge a pseudonym of . cannot provide to forge the pseudonym of another vehicle . Even if eavesdrops on the communication between and PCA, cannot decrypt . So, it fails to forge the pseudonym. Furthermore, the cut-choose method is also adopted in our protocol, like in Schaub et al.'s protocol, and prevents content spoofing to a certain extent.
As a result, our issuance protocol maintains good property of vehicular privacy in the presence of an authority and provides security against authority forge attack. Moreover, the communication overhead is reduced from four rounds to three rounds.
4. Pseudonymous Authentication Protocol
A complete authentication message consists of six fields: messageID payload timestamp signature certificate TTL. "MessageID" is the message number during the same pseudonym period. "Payload" contains collision data, location, direction, speed, and so on. "Timestamp" is to prevent from replaying attacks. "Signature" is the signature of the first three fields. The next field is , where . "TTL" means how long the message is allowed to remain to prevent message flooding. If the key has 1024 bits, the signature has 1024 bits. As has 26 bytes [17], the pseudonym certificate length is B. Finally, the total message length is B, and the pseudonym certificate accounts for 77% of the total message length.
If each message carries a certificate of 796 bytes during the same pseudonym period, the communication overhead is high. If only the first message carries the certificate, the message length is reduced from 1031 bytes to 235 bytes. However, if the first message with the certificate does not arrive at the receiver, other received messages which do not contain the certificate cannot be verified.
Some researchers proposed a mechanism to reduce the communication overhead of secure messages by omitting the inclusion of certificates in messages. Concrete methods such as the periodic omission of certificates, neighbor-based certificate omission, and congestion-based certificate omission were proposed in [9], [18], and [19], respectively. In these schemes, the optimal parameter was obtained by means of simulation. In contrast to the earlier proposals, we found the optimal parameter by means of probability analysis.
Define that is the number of messages and is the number of messages with pseudonym certificate during one pseudonym period. If at least one message with certificate is accepted by the receiver, other arrived messages with the same pseudonym can be authenticated. Define the message authentication probability as , where is the packet reception rate. We used a packet reception rate model of broadcast channel in a good channel condition [9], where is the distance between the sender and the receiver.
Figure 2 shows the relationship among the message authentication probability , the intervehicle distance , and the number of messages with certificate . Assuming that is a constant, decreases with the increase of ; assuming that is a constant, increases with the increase of . From the figure, it can be further observed that if and , then . That means we take , which can meet the need of most vehicles for broadcast message authentication. Thus, is the optimal number of messages with the pseudonym certificate.
We define as the average message length, and Figure 3 shows the relationship between and under the condition of . The parameter decreases with the increase of . It means that during a pseudonym period the more the messages are, the less communication overhead is.
5. Distributed Tracking Protocol
Based on the secret sharing scheme [20], TAs' private key is assigned to the authorities, and any one subset of at least of them can disclose the secret. Generally, there is a trusted center during the initialization stage of the secret sharing scheme. Once the center compromises, the privacy will be leaked. Boneh and Franklin [21] discussed the generation of RSA keys without a dealer, but the protocol required the help of a third party. Cocks [22] presented another protocol to generate shared RSA keys without the help of a third party. There exists a large number of modular exponentiation operations to generate the modulus, and thus the efficiency of the protocol is poor. Malkin et al. [23] extended two parties [21] to parties.
Instead of time-consuming modular exponentiation, we use modular multiplication to generate , where is the modulus of RSA. And furthermore, we extend the threshold schemeto a more general form , where is the number of members and is the threshold value. Based on the above ideas, the distributed tracking protocol is developed. It consists of distributed generation of modulus , distributed generation of private key and secret share, and collaborative tracking. The first two parts are completed collaboratively by all members during initialization, and the third part is implemented collaboratively by at least members during the tracking stage.
5.1. Distributed Generation of Modulus
Each member () picks random primes , and computes modulus without revealing , . Assuming that is an odd, the steps are as follows:(1) picks two random primes , and a random (prime ). computes and sends and to (, ).(2) computes and and sends to . (3) computes (), and broadcasts in TAs.(4) All members compute and get .(5) Any member in TAs picks an integer randomly and broadcasts in TAs.(6)TA1 computes and broadcasts ; all other members () compute and broadcast ; all members verify .(7) If the verification fails, all members execute steps (1)–(6) again. Otherwise, success is returned.
5.2. Distributed Generation of Private Key and Secret Share
is Euler function of , denoted as . If is the product of two primes, (1)TA1 computes , and another member () computes . Then, each member () broadcasts in TAs.(2) collects , and computes and . obtains its own private key (3) picks a random degree polynomial , satisfying . It computes and sends to () secretly. (4) collects , then computes the secret share
After implementing the protocol, each member obtains the private key and secret share . The operation of computing reveals low bits of . In order to protect from revealing more bits, we take a small .
5.3. Collaborative Tracking
(1)The vehicle reports the signed message with a certificate to a tracking authority such as TA1. TA1 checks whether the signed message and the certificate are valid. (2)If passed, TA1 extracts IDPV from CertPV and sends IDPV to other members. If members accept a tracking request, they constitute a tracking group. Assume that their identities are .(3)Participants () send to TA1, where .(4)TA1 tries all possible and (, ) and computes It extracts and further gets with . TA1 gets according to the actual meaning of the strings.
Then TA1 submits to PCA, and PCA puts it into the blacklist. PCA will reject the request of the vehicle in the blacklist for pseudonym certificates. So, the pseudonym tracking protocol combined with the pseudonym issuance protocol can realize the revocation of malicious vehicles.
In Lin et al.'s protocol [7], a centralized method for tracking is adopted. A trace manager (TM) computes a vehicle's private key from a signed message in order to disclose the vehicle's identity. Once TM is compromised, a large amount of privacy information is leaked.
In Schaub et al.'s protocol [14], the secret sharing method for tracking is adopted to prevent misuse and abuse of a system. The method is distributed, but it generally requires a trusted center to distribute secret share in the initialization phase. Therefore, the trusted center will be a secure bottleneck.
In our tracking protocol, all the processes in the secret sharing method adopt a fully distributed structure, such as generation of private key and secret share, generation of modulus and collaborative tracking. As a result, our tracking protocol avoids a single point of failure.
6. Analysis
6.1. Security Analysis
Proposition 1. Neither issuing authorities nor other vehicles can determine the relationship between a pseudonym and an identity in the protocol family, so the scheme achieves anonymity.
Proof. (1) During the issuance stage, PCA gets . picks randomly, so PCA cannot get and . Though PCA knows , it cannot establish the relationship between and .
(2) Other vehicles get the signed messages and extract . They do not know TAs' private key and thus cannot obtain 's identity .
Proposition 2. The authorities in TAs can disclose the identity from a pseudonym , so the scheme achieves traceability.
Proof. Let , , and then , indicating .
Since , this gives . Let ; then
Construct a degree polynomial , obviously satisfying and . According to the Lagrange interpolation formula , let , so Since , , , therefore .
Taking the formula (10) into the formula (9), we can obtain the following formula:
Consider the issuance protocol and obtain
Compute with and obtain 's identity .
Proposition 3. Regardless of the PCA, the vehicles and the outside attacker, forging the pseudonym certificate is as difficult as solving a large integer factorization problem.
Proof. A pseudonym is coproduced by and PCA, because is provided by and is provided by PCA. (1)PCA cannot provide to forge a pseudonym. (2) cannot provide to forge the pseudonym of . (3)An external attacker without 's and PCA's private keys cannot pass the authentication, because the issuance protocol is with two-way authentication. Therefore, the attacker neither obtains the blind signature nor personates PCA to sign the pseudonym certificate.
In short, forging an RSA signature or cracking an RSA cipher is as difficult as factorizing a large integer, so the scheme achieves unforgeability.
Proposition 4. The scheme is robust.
Proof. (1) The separation of pseudonym issuance authorities and tracking authorities, to some extent, reduces the risk.
(2) Some PCAs are deployed in the model. Once a PCA fails, other PCAs can still provide pseudonym issuance service.
(3) In the pseudonymous authentication protocol, the optimal number of messages with the pseudonym certificates is suggested. It ensures the message authentication probability . That means when a message arrives, a vehicle can verify the signature with high probability. Therefore, the protocol not only reduces the communication overhead but also ensures robustness.
(4) During the TAs initialization stage, the generation of modulus and the generation of the private key and the secret share are distributed fully. So, the scheme does not require a trusted center, and it avoids any single point of failure.
(5) During the TAs operation stage, as long as the number of compromised members is not more than , privacy cannot be leaked.
We further compared our scheme with similar works that are intended to ensure conditional privacy preserving communication [7, 14]. The results of comparisons of security features among our scheme, Lin et al.'s scheme [7], and Schaub et al.'s scheme[14] are shown in Table 1. All the three schemes provide anonymity, traceability, and authentication.
Lin et al.'s scheme is based on a group signature method, in which a member manager (MM) generates member private keys and sends them privately; MM knows all private keys, and it can forge a valid group signature on an arbitrary message. Schaub et al.'s scheme adopts a blind signature method to issue certificates, and thus CA or PP does not know the relationship of an identity and a pseudonym; unfortunately, CA or PP can forge a pseudonym certificate for itself. Therefore, Lin et al. and Schaub et al.'s schemes are not secure against authority forge attacks. In our scheme, a pseudonym is coproduced by a manager and a vehicle; neither PCA nor is capable of providing complete data to forge a pseudonym; our scheme is unforgeability, especially against authority forge attacks.
As mentioned in Section 5, the tracking methods for Lin et al., Schaub et al. and ours are centralized, distributed, and fully distributed, respectively. Our scheme has better robustness.
6.2. Performance Analysis
6.2.1. Computation Overhead
For convenience to evaluate the computation cost of the protocol, we ignored the computation cost of some operations such as a hash function and a multiplication operation, since they are quite light in terms of load. We focused on some time-consuming operations defined in the following notations. : The time of executing a bilinear map operation. : The time of executing a modular exponentiation operation in the cyclic group. : The time of executing RSA encryption or RSA verification. : The time of executing RSA decryption or RSA signature.
In order to provide the precise comparisons of computation cost, we use the experiment data in [24–26] to evaluate them. The experiment environment is operated on a standard PC, whose processor is Pentium IV with the maximum clock speed of 3 GHz. The pairing system is considered the Tate pairing system. The order of a nonsupersingular curve over a finite field is 160 bits, which is as difficult to break as 1024-bit RSA. In this experiment environment, it requires 4.5 ms to perform a bilinear map operation and 0.6 ms to perform a modular exponentiation operation [25, 26]. It requires 0.2 ms to perform RSA encryption/verification and 4 ms to perform RSA decryption/signature [24].
The results of comparisons of computation cost are shown in Table 2, where is the number of pseudonym certificates obtained at one time and is the number of tracking authorities. Some common parameters and secret keys are generated in the system initialization, and for convenience we did not evaluate the computation cost of the initialization in all the three schemes. In Schaub et al.'s scheme and ours, the average computation costs for issuance and tracking are considered.
Compared with Lin et al.'s scheme, ours and Schaub et al.'s scheme require less computation for signature and verification and more computation for issuance and track. Compared with Schaub et al.'s, our scheme requires less computation for issuance if and more computation for tracking.
6.2.2. Communication Overhead
In Table 3, is the number of signed messages and is the number of signed messages with pseudonym certificate during one pseudonym period in the authentication protocol; is the threshold value in the distributed tracking protocol. The communication cost of Lin et al.'s scheme is the lowest, but their scheme suffered from the private key revealing attacks, in which MM knows the private key of each member. Schaub et al.'s scheme and ours rely on the blind signature method and achieve vehicular privacy protection in the presence of the authority. Compared with Schaub et al.'s scheme, our scheme is efficient in terms of the communication overhead.
6.2.3. Storage Overhead
In Schaub et al.'s scheme and ours, the storage cost of the vehicle is high because some pseudonym certificates need to be stored; the storage cost of the manager for tracking is very little because an identity can be obtained directly from the pseudonym certificate. On the contrary, the storage cost of the manager in Lin et al.'s scheme is high because the record set needs to be stored.
7. Conclusions
In this paper, a secure and efficient pseudonym management scheme for vehicular ad hoc networks is proposed. The scheme not only maintains the property of conditional privacy preservation but also provides the advantages in security against authority forge attacks and better robustness. In the scheme, a pseudonym is coproduced by and PCA to avoid the deception of either party. A blind signature method is used to achieve the separation of issuance and tracking. Based on the improved share generation scheme of the RSA keys, the distributed tracking protocol is proposed to avoid a single point of failure. By searching for the optimal number of messages with a pseudonym certificate, the efficient pseudonym authentication mechanism is given to reduce communication overhead. By uniting the pseudonym issuance protocol and the tracking protocol, malicious vehicles are revoked easily. Moreover, compared with Schaub et al.'s scheme, the communication cost and computation cost in our scheme are lower. As a result, our proposed scheme is suitable for anonymous communication with tracking requirements in VANETs, since it provides security, robustness, and efficiency.
For future research, we will discuss interdependencies of various factors, establish systematic evaluation mechanism of the overall performance, and further enhance the performance.
The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 60873195), the National High Technology Research and Development Program ("863" Program) of China (no. 2011AA060406), and the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (no. 090412051). The authors are grateful for the anonymous referee for the careful checking and helpful comments that improved this paper.
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Dear Abby: My husband and I relocated to Florida a little over a year ago and were quickly welcomed into our new neighbors' social whirl. Two couples in the neighborhood are gay. While they are nice enough, my husband and I did not include them when it was our turn to host because we do not approve of their lifestyle choices. Since then, we have been excluded from neighborhood gatherings, and someone even suggested that we are bigots!
Abby, we moved here from a conservative community where people were pretty much the same. If people were "different," they apparently kept it to themselves. While I understand the phrase "when in Rome," I don't feel we should have to compromise our values just to win the approval of our neighbors. But really, who is the true bigot here? Would you like to weigh in? — Unhappy In Tampa
Dear Unhappy: I sure would. The first thing I'd like to say is that regardless of what you were told in your previous community, a person's sexual orientation isn't a "lifestyle choice." Gay people don't choose to be gay; they are born that way. They can't change being gay any more than you can change being heterosexual.
I find it interesting that you are unwilling to reciprocate the hospitality of people who welcomed you and opened their homes to you, and yet complain because you are receiving similar treatment.
From where I sit, you may have chosen the wrong place to live because it appears you would be happier in a less integrated neighborhood surrounded by people who think the way you do. But if you interact only with people like yourselves, you will have missed a chance for growth, which is what you have been offered here. Please don't blow it.
Dear Abby: If you are divorced from your wife, do her parents remain your in-laws? This is to settle a disagreement. — Sharon in Texas
Dear Sharon: Legally, no. But relationships are not always based on legality. Sometimes divorced couples remain extended family members, particularly if there are children involved.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby at www.dearabby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

subset: commoncrawl


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Police: More windows shot out todayStaff Report | January 24,2013Vyto Starinskas / Staff Photo
Police were investigating another report of a widow shot out on of a vehicle Thursday which occurred here on Meadow Street in Rutland. Scott Lafrancois said his driver's side window was shot out about 2:30 pm in daylight. City police were already investigating more that 50 windows shot out by a pellet gun early Wednesday morning.Rutland City Police are investigating reports that more vehicles had windows shot out this afternoon.
Police said around 2:30 p.m. they received a report from a homeowner on Meadow Street that a window in his vehicle had been shot out. Police said they also received a report of a vehicle's window being shot out on Campbell Road.
The latest vandalism reports come a day after windows in more than 50 cars as well as about a dozen homes and a half dozen businesses in the city were shattered by someone using a pellet gun during the early morning hours.
Anyone with information is asked to call city police at 773-1816.MORE IN This Just InIve written much lately about the need for better media literacy and the importance of vetting... Full StoryBELLOWS FALLS A homeless man from the Bellows Falls area was found Tuesday under the Arch... Full StoryRoad in Pawlet closed next week
PAWLET The Pawlet highway crew will work on Tadmer... Full Story
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As individuals life can dish out one struggle after another, seemingly to no end. Being married does not exempt you from any day to day stressors or struggle. In fact, some may say that it's even harder to work through some issues, probably because their always a direct issue for both in the marriage. What some spouses may actually endure is the manifestation of what the fall out is…sadness, depression, maybe anger.
This is where the spouse that is not taking the direct hit so to speak, needs to sympathetic. Sticking together is key here, not allowing for this stressor to cause any real marital damage is the goal. The same goes for those stressors that are direct hit for both of you…bills, rent or even you children.
Sticking together here is even more important due to the fact that, more than likely, not just one of you is feeling the sadness or anger but now you both are. Bad things can happen in a marriage if you are both ticking time bombs. Sure, stress can test a marriage when one spouse is feeling turmoil from an outside source.
But, the quacking issues that challenge you both can rock your marriage of its foundation. Stick together, that is vital. Just like the trainer in the boxer's corning, check in with each other, ask…how are you feeling?, where are your thoughts?. The success of your marriage depends on your spiritual strength not your brute strength, meaning, not everything is as simple as just getting over it.
A relationship is a commitment so one has to learn to communicate their feelings to the other, show respect, loyalty and encouragement through their relationship. Be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and strengths; absolutely don't be afraid to discuss them with your partner. When life is good, being married and keeping a relationship together can sometimes seem hard enough to do.
And it can especially feel impossible when you are combining two very different people with very opposite pasts. But, when life is added in, and the storms begin to swirl, it sometimes seems as though there is no way to stick together and survive the mess. Trust people though, when they say it is actually possible, and there are so many examples of couples out there with inspiring stories of restoration.
Most people in crisis need someone to be calm, safe and somewhat directive. Ask your spouse if they want a safe person to vent to, or if they want actual advice. Depending on the level of crisis, some people really do need suggestions about how to proceed, but I think it's important to ask permission to give advice before giving it.
Often people interpret advice giving as a message that they are weak or stupid and can't figure things out for themselves. Sticking together does not mean that you fire off "all the right answers" in an attempt to fix everything. It is ok to "not have the words" during any a crisis. It is ok to just be the calmer, more clear-headed spouse and being there to draw spiritual strength and reassurance from.
It is very important, you believe that if you can just remember the reasons you came together as a couple, and cling to that passion you had in the beginning to fight for them and for your marriage, you too can come out stronger and more in love than ever before. Instead of trying to guide or push one another, try simply leaning on each other. If you can strive through the pain, hopefully there will be a lesson and a beauty that you can then share with others in your life.
More marriage articles: http://www.examiner.com/marriage-in-wichita-falls/jack-lopez


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12.21.2009 / From the Creighton Athletic Office, The Voice of Billy Bluejay
The Jays were looking to get back on the right track on Sunday evening, after the forgettable results of the three games in Orlando over Thanksgiving weekend. With the difficulty Creighton had taking care of the basketball in Florida, the aggressive defensive pressure that Nebraska would bring to the table was a reason for much indigestion for Bluejay fans.
With the Huskers coming into the weekend with a 5-1 record and a road win at Southern Cal and the Jays sporting a 2-4 record, the feeling coming into the game was that this was one of the better opportunities for Nebraska to snap a six game regular season losing streak in Omaha that we had seen in some time.
The game was close, as is the prevailing trend in CU-NU matchups. It was a game of runs in the first half with the Jays running out to a 10 point lead at the midpoint of the first half. The Huskers then followed by forcing a six minute Bluejay field goal drought to regain the lead at 22-21. However, the Jays tightened things up and Antoine Young's layup at the horn took us into halftime with a 32-27 lead. While the Jays were up, the 15 first-half turnovers were a serious point of concern.
In the second half, however, the story was all Kenny Lawson. The Jays were able to get Nebraska's two main post players, Brandon Ubel and Brian Diaz, into foul trouble early. After Ubel and Diaz picked up their third fouls in the second frame, they had a very difficult time staying with Lawson and the Jays exploited this matchup time and time again. Lawson finished the night with a career high 25 points and his first double-double of his career with 10 rebounds. As a whole, the team also made strong progress on the two problem areas coming into the game: rebounds and turnovers. While the Jays had those 15 first half turnovers, the Huskers were only able to force three in the final 20 minutes. Also, even though the Huskers had a size advantage overall, the Jays maintained a lead on the boards throughout, and finished the game at a 31-25 margin.
With the early struggles against Dayton and in Florida, the Jays have little margin for error in the rest of their non-conference schedule and it won't get any easier this Saturday with at date at George Mason. The Patriots have had a similar start to the season as the Jays: Coming off the weekend, GM is 4-4 on the year with losses against Villanova and Georgia Tech in Puerto Rico as well as road losses at Tulane and George Washington.
In both games in Puerto Rico, the Patriots had opportunities to close the deal against Big East and ACC competition and fell short down the stretch. Prior to the Creighton game, however, Jays will certainly have interest in the Dayton-George Mason game in Virginia on Tuesday night.
A player to keep watch on Saturday will be junior guard Cam Long. Long is the leading scorer for George Mason, averaging 12 points a game and racking up 11 steals in eight contests. Long also went off on the Jays in the Bracket Buster game last season, puttin up 23 points, 6 boards and 3 assists in Omaha. The Patriots are also being outrebounded by a 4.2 margin a game, so we'll certainly look to see if Lawson and Runnels and the rest of the front court can keep up their improvements on the glass.
With this game being just the second true road game for the Jays, we should get a great opportunity to see if the team can build on the successes gained on Sunday night.
How do you think the Jays are doing so far? Do you have any early predications for the winner of the Missouri Valley? Join in.


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Staybridge Suites West Des Moines
Staybridge Suites West Des Moines Invites Guests to Rest Comfortably
Ideally situated near I-80, Des Moines International Airport (DMI) and the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care, Staybridge Suites West Des Moines is an all-suite, upscale, extended stay hotel within close proximity to everything Des Moines has to offer.
Long-term guests of our pet friendly Des Moines, Iowa hotel can enjoy all the comforts of home with easy access to shopping at Jordan Creek Town Center and live performances at the Des Moines Art Center. Special events at the Science Center of Iowa and Living History Farms are also less than ten miles away.
Business travelers appreciate our extended stay West Des Moines accommodations near Hy-Line International, Wells Fargo and Briggs Corporation. In order to best meet the needs of our professional guests, over 950 sq. ft. of meeting space, a 24-hour business center and free, high-speed internet access are provided on-site.
During your stay, you can enjoy resting in one of our spacious suites with full-service kitchens, exercising in our well-equipped fitness center or relaxing in our indoor, swimming pool. You can start your day by visiting our complimentary breakfast buffet, and end your day by joining us for our community-oriented Social Reception Mon-Wed. As you plan your next trip, check out our exceptional Des Moines, Iowa hotel rates and make your reservations with us today.Thank you.
Quick Info
- Check In: 3:00 PM
- Check Out: 12:00 PM
- Minimum Check-In Age: 21
- Late Check Out Available
- Parking: Free
- Print Fact sheet
- Chat Online
Hotel Highlights
- On-site Guest Self-Laundry Facilities
- Housekeeping Full Service
- Complimentary Breakfast Buffet
- Standard Wireless Internet service is free for all members
- On-Site Fitness Center Available
Guest Reviews
Overall Experience
No hesitation of staying again
April 18, 2016
The hotel is clean and comfortable. The hotel staff is mid-western friendly. And don't bypass the Social. The first times I stayed at a Staybridge I just felt unsure about the Social--like since I wasn't staying long term I couldn't attend. NOT THE CASE and the food, while simple, is quite tasty! And of course, I chose Staybridge for their reasonable attitudes and price for pets. I really have only positive things to say.
Great place with so many amenities
April 10, 2016
Great room, great staff support and I will be back many times!
Best in Town.
April 05, 2016
Excellent property. Thank you Holiday inn. I will stay again
Clean hotel
April 04, 2016
We were not there very long. But the experience was overall a good stay. Very clean and spacious hotel. Comfortable beds. Pool was a nice size and maintained very well.


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One of the most impressive aspects of Game of Thrones is the sheer magnitude of the production itself. Aside from the inherent challenge of translating thousands of pages of source material from the novels to the screen (seriously, thousands), filming it is quite the undertaking as well (the "Long Story Short" video released by HBO in March, embedded above, gives you a good idea of what it takes).
With only three episodes left to air of season four, producers are already hard at work on season five and are reportedly doing some more jet-setting to scout additional filming locations. Entertainment Weekly said on Wednesday that the show is now scouting locations in Spain, specifically in the Andalusia region located in the south of the Iberian peninsula.
Major filming locations for the show through the first four seasons include Northern Ireland, where it does most of its studio filming at Titanic Studios in Belfast, plus Iceland and Croatia in addition to some special effects work in Hollywood (namely the direwolves and Brienne's bear pit scene). Dubrovnik, Croatia serves as the setting for King's Landing and multiple new locations were added in that country for season four.
That leaves us with the burning question: what part of the Game of Thrones universe would Spain become? Though there's a possibility it could serve as another location in Essos, a better guess would be that it will become Dorne, the southernmost region of the Seven Kingdoms.
A Storm of Swords, the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, gives us some insight into the landscape of Dorne, which is largely a hot desert region, but also has mountains and a coastline. Dorne's capital is Sunspear, a hot desert-region stronghold where prominent members of the ruling Martell family reside. As the books continue to unfold, we travel down to Sunspear and are introduced to more of the Martell clan, who are described as having dark eyes and olive skin.
George R.R. Martin said way back in 2000 that while his settings don't typically translate directly to a real-life equivalent, he does sometimes mix and match. In the case of Dorne, Martin's influences include the green valleys of Wales, which are mimicked in the area north of the Dornish mountains, as well as "a hot, dry country more like Spain or Palestine" below them.
"I suppose the closest real life equivilent [sic] to that would be the Moorish influence in parts of Spain," he wrote, according to Westeros.org. "So you could say Dorne is Wales mixed with Spain and Palestine with some entirely imaginary influences mixed in. Or you could just say it's Dorne...."
The addition of Spain would bring the grand total of countries used for 'Thrones' filming to eight. It would certainly make sense for Dorne since viewers haven't seen any of it yet, aside from the arrival of Dornish characters Prince Oberyn (played by the fantastic Pedro Pascal) and Ellaria Sand in King's Landing. Production on season five is expected to begin this summer.


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Construction Industry Licensing Board
Florida Homeowners' Construction Recovery Fund Receives Additional Funding
Pursuant to House Bill 57 (2013), the Department of Business and Professional Regulation will be permitted to transfer additional funds in the to Florida Homeowners' Construction Recovery Fund (Recovery Fund) to pay outstanding recovery claims during the 2013-2014 fiscal year. Based on the additional funding, Governor Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature have approved an $8 million dollar annual appropriation for payment of Recovery Fund claims.
Due to the previous economic downturn in the construction industry, the Recovery Fund received insufficient funds to pay all Florida Homeowners' Construction Recovery Fund claims in the same years that they were received. The Department is diligently working to resolve the resulting backlog of recovery fund claims and will make payments as funds become available. The Recovery Fund has a total of 589 completed claims awaiting review by the Construction Industry Licensing Board (CILB) with a total approximate value of $13,153,267.45. DBPR anticipates that the additional appropriation will permit 364 outstanding claims to be presented to the CILB for approval and payment.
The Department will continue to process claims until the claims are complete and ready for review by the CILB. The Department will then present claims to the Board, in the order they are completed, as funds become available. The Department will notify claimants by mail when the claims are complete and when they are ready for Board review. For more information, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions or contact the Department's Customer Contact Center at 850.487.1395.
APPLICATIONS AND LICENSURE: Streamlined Applications Released
In an effort to assist applicants through the licensure process and to reduce the number of deficient applications, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Construction Industry Licensing Board conducted a complete review and revision of construction applications. The new application forms provide clearer instructions, reduce paperwork and provide clear criteria to establish financial stability/responsibility and work experience.
The Construction Industry Licensing Board will begin accepting the Department's new streamlined applications beginning April 13th, 2012.There will be a ninety (90) day transition period during which the Department will continue to accept submission of the old applications; this period will end on July 16, 2012.
If you would like more information on the new bonding form or the required credit score, please visit the Department's financial responsibility and stability website by clicking the following link: Contractor Financial Responsibility and Stability.
Cash for Clunkers Program for Air-conditioning Units
The State of Florida has initiated the Florida ENERGY STAR® Residential HVAC Rebate Program, which is designed to encourage existing homeowners to replace their old heating and cooling system with a properly-sized energy efficient system and to ensure that their heating and cooling duct system has minimal leakage. On Tuesday November 16, 2010, the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 15A approving funding for all qualified applications for the Florida Energy Star Residential HVAC Rebate program subject to certain conditions. Specific details regarding the Florida ENERGY STAR® Residential HVAC Rebate Program are available at www.rebates.com/floridahvac.
Please remember that the installation of any air-conditioning unit must be performed by a state-licensed mechanical or air-conditioning contractor. Information regarding license requirements is available at www.MyFloridaLicense.com by clicking on "Doing Business with Us" and then clicking on "Construction Industry." If you have reason to believe that someone is performing unlicensed contracting, we encourage you to contact the department at 1.866.532.1440, or you can download a complaint form by visiting the department's "For Consumers" page.
For more information about the elimination of the qualified business license, view the Qualified Business License Elimination (HB 425) FAQ on our website.
Renewal of Qualified Business Licenses (Certificates of Authority)
House Bill 425 eliminates the qualified business license effective October 1, 2009, however licensees must still renew their qualified business licenses by August 31, 2009. Elimination of the qualified business license means that the department will no longer be issuing a separate license to your construction companies after the effective date of October 1, 2009. However, construction companies must still retain licensed qualifying agents, and the name of the company will still appear on the qualifying agent's license. House Bill 425 still provides for a fee to process applications to qualify a business and their renewals. As such, you will still need to renew your qualified business licenses by August 31, 2009.
Important Information on Chinese Drywall Complaints & Remediation
New Continuing Education Requirements for Certified and Registered Contractors
Laws and Rules Continuing Education
House Bill 7163 (2007 Legislative Session) revised the continuing education requirements for certified and registered contractors licensed by the Florida Construction Industry Licensing Board. All certified and registered contractors must now complete one hour of laws and rules-related continuing education as part of the 14 hours that is currently required during each licensure cycle.
Wind Mitigation Methodologies Continuing Education
Senate Bill 1864 further revised the continuing education requirements for certain contractors licensed by the Florida Construction Industry Licensing Board. Based on this statutory change, the Board filed a notice of proposed rule development which would affect Rule 61G4-18.001, Florida Administrative Code. The proposed rule language is currently set for adoption and will become effective on November 15, 2007.
The new rule requires all general, building, residential, roofing, specialty structure and glass and glazing contractors to complete one hour of continuing education related to wind mitigation methodologies as part of the 14 hours that is currently required. Wind mitigation methodology courses are defined as those topics listed in Section 553.844(2)(b)1.-5., Florida Statutes.
Enforcement of these new one hour requirements will begin with the expiration of certified licenses on August 31, 2008, and the expiration of registered licenses on August 31, 2009. Those licensees not in compliance with all continuing education requirements by the expiration date of their licenses may face non-renewal or disciplinary action.
Continuing Education Providers
Continuing education providers that desire to obtain approval to offer laws and rules-related courses must apply to the department. All new courses, and existing courses, must be evaluated by the Board and approved as laws and rules-related courses before credit will be offered. Applications for wind mitigation methodology continuing education courses will be accepted beginning on November 15, 2007. Application information for course providers is available on the Board's website, at www.MyFloridaLicense.com > Direct to Our Divisions > Professions and Professional Boards > Construction Industry.


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It's always great to be able to uplift success stories and inspiring accounts from women's organizing worldwide. That's why we wanted to showcase a report released last fall by the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). As part of their Building Feminist Movements and Organizations initiative, AWID brought together ten case studies illustrating the strategies of women's movements. The report is titled "Changing Their World", and the following are short examples and excerpts from their publication.
Mexico's National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Women is a network found in 14 states of Mexico and consists of Indigenous women's groups and statewide women's networks. The initial goal of the CNMI was to provide a broad, inclusive space in which the voices of Indigenous women could be heard but has broadened to include defending the demands of the national Indigenous movement as well as political participation.
"The dialogue carried on in various meetings and forums between feminists and Indigenous women's activists has led to many advances that includes broadening the comprehension of how to relate gender identity to other identities; dismantling the view of Indigenous women as a vulnerable group lacking the ability and power to bring about changes in their own condition; and recognizing the needs to create alliances with other social movements."
"The voice of the Indigenous women of Mexico resounds more intensely day by day and there's no doubt that these women have become a fundamental political anchor in re-founding the nation."
Those of the lowest castes in India, sometimes known as "untouchables," adopted the name "Dalit," meaning crack or split in Sanskrit, in the late sixties. The term Dalit refers to those who have been broken, ground down by those above them in a deliberate way. The Dalit Mahila Samiti (DMS) is an organization of over 1500 Dalit women located in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who are working to end this discrimination.
"The collective nature of the leadership of the DMS is a major strength as it is based on collective decision making and not on one or two charismatic leaders. The leadership also comes from a large geographical area, and draws on the extensive experience of many women."
"This movement of over 1500 women from a remote area in a very feudal, backward part of India has shown its power to challenge injustice and oppression, and enhance equality, justice and dignity for both Dalit women and men."
What differentiates GROOTS Kenya is that it sees itself as a movement and not as a network or NGO. GROOTS Kenya works within four main areas: community response to HIV/AIDS, community resources and livelihood, women and property, and women leadership and governance.
"GROOTS Kenya has been one of the lead organizations pushing for a change in Africa from traditional NGO organizing towards having grassroots women at the forefront of advocacy, with NGOs providing back support."
"…the politics of exclusion and inclusion generally, and due to geography specifically, continue to be a problem that causes major rifts in what could otherwise be a coherent women's movement in Kenya. For this reason, there are many ways in which the work that GROOTS Kenya is doing is laudable, in terms of its efforts at building a grassroots based movement that spans geographical and ethnic divides of Kenya."


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Are you looking for a stock?
Try one of these
Allow me to address one of the on-going issues with developing technology: personal privacy.
After recently acquiring a tablet (not an iPad or PlayBook, thanks for asking) I uncomfortably realized that it has GPS features. Hitting the map button revealed a pinpoint, which I recognized as my house. In fact, after refining the map, I found that my position was identifiable to within 12 feet. (Click -- off it goes.)
It's not that I'm fearful of being targeted by a drone bomb. But after reading a few books about the sophisticated algorithms used by Google in its quest to gather information, I feel the less co-founder Sergey Brin & Co. know about me, the better.
I was lucky to evade the Google cameras as they mapped the planet from up in the sky. The day they took the photograph of my little corner of the world, there was a cloud obscuring Stately Kane Manor.
But then, just a few days ago, a friend wrote to my G-Mail account describing an episode of road rage he had heard about. I replied and as he replied to my reply, his e-mail came to me carrying several sponsored links to services for people with anger management issues. Google's G-Mail program had apparently sifted through the very content of his e-mail, pulling out key words and matching them up with sponsored links to related areas.
That -- to me -- was a bit of a shock.
Sure, I'm not naïve enough to think there's any real security in my e-mail traffic. But I get a little twitchy at the thought of the mail carrier actually sifting through our personal thoughts, looking for specific words. And on top of that, using those words to trigger what amounts to spam!
My weakness is that I grew up in an era where you would never expect Canada Post carriers to open a letter from their mailbags.
I feel old.


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#attr $var = EXPR
#attr directive creates class attributes in the generated Python
class. It should be used to assign simple Python literals such as numbers or
strings. In particular, the expression must not depend on searchList
values or
#set variables since those are not known at compile time.
#attr $title = "Rob Roy" #attr $author = "Sir Walter Scott" #attr $version = 123.4
This template or any child template can output the value thus:
$title, by $author, version $version
If you have a library of templates derived from etexts (http://www.gutenberg.org/), you can extract the titles and authors and put them in a database (assuming the templates have been compiled into .py template modules):


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Pay attention to levels and directions in your dreams. These will offer clues to your current status and the route your dream suggests for you.
Dear Carolyn,
Background: I gained a lot of weight while I lived a high stress life for more than 25 years. When I first retired and changed my life, I decided to go on a diet. I lost 20lbs pretty fast. But I have been stuck for over a year now. I want to lose about 20 more pounds. I use my Wii balance board every day. I even tried "Losing it with Jillian" exercise DVD's. I track everything – minutes of activity, food eaten, calories burned – the works. I feel like I'm doing everything right, but I just go up 2lbs and down 2lbs.
In my dream I am driving my car in the dark and it comes to light that the car is overheated. I am distressed by this and tell my passenger (don't know who it is), "Oh no! I've been driving it overheated for a long time."
Next I'm in the garage with Jillian Michaels! I'm standing on my Wii balance board and there is a tow rope attached. I'm up on some sort of platform. There is snow on the floor of the garage. We have devised some sort of game – the garage door will open and Jillian will tow me out on the board as though it were a ski.
But I'm not ready. First off, I'm facing the wall of the garage and the door is perpendicular to me on my right. And I'm on a raised platform. So when she begins to tow me I will drop off the platform, have to make a right turn and then be towed out. I tell her I'm not ready but the wheels are in motion.
What in the world does it mean?
Yoyo Dieter
Dear Yoyo,
Driving in the dark is a metaphor for going about your business while uninformed or unaware of something important. In your case, that something could be your 'overheated engine' during all those years of stressful living and working. In essence, you were 'in the dark' as to the damage you might be doing to yourself.
The raised platform in your dream most likely refers to the weight loss plateau where you say you are stuck, at a higher point than you want to be. Fitness guru Jillian Michaels is ready to tow you off, but it will require a radical turn from what you have been doing. You say you 'even tried' her exercise DVD's, which implies a short-lived or half-hearted effort. Current wisdom says dieting and tracking calories is half the equation. Exercise, represented by Jillian, is the other half of the tried-and-true formula.
Twice in your dream you say you are not ready to make the turn and be pulled off the plateau. Examine the truth of that statement Dear Dreamer. What will it take for you to commit to a complete and proven weight loss program?
Sweet Dreams to You!


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The UCLA Baseball team scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to earn a 6-3 come-from-behind win at No. 8 Washington on Saturday night.
Sophomore Jake Ehret (1-0) earned the win for the Bruins, striking out the only batter he faced in the eighth inning. Troy Rallings (5-1) suffered the loss for the Huskies, allowing two runs in the ninth without getting an out. Junior David Berg picked up his second save in as many nights and his 11th overall with a scoreless ninth inning.
Tyler Davis started the game for Washington, pitching eight innings and allowing one run on four hits while striking out three. Junior Grant Watson started the game for the Bruins, surrendering three runs (two earned) on seven hits in seven innings pitched. Watson struck out three and walked one as well.
Unlike last night, this time Washington would take the early lead with a run in the bottom of the second. With two outs, Branden Berry hit a double off the wall in left to put a man in scoring position for Chris Baker. On the first pitch, Baker hit a single up the middle to score Berry to give the Huskies a 1-0 lead. Washington then added a run an inning later, as with the bases loaded and one out Brian Wolfe hit a sacrifice fly to center to score Andrew Ely to make it 2-0, Huskies.
The Huskies continued to score after that, tacking on another run in the bottom of the fourth. With two outs and runners on the corners, Ely hit a grounder to second base that looked to be the end of the inning. Freshman Luke Persico fielded it cleanly, but his glove flip went wide of the bag at second and allowed Baker to score from third to give the Huskies a three-run lead.
Watson was able to settle in and hold the Huskies scoreless for the next two innings and was rewarded with a run from the Bruins in the top of the seventh. After sophomore Ty Moore doubled with one out, sophomore Justin Hazard stepped in with two outs and laced a single to center, scoring Moore and cutting Washington's lead down to two.
Then in the top of the ninth, the Bruins threatened again, getting the first two batters aboard via back-to-back singles by freshman Brett Stephens and sophomore Trent Chatterton. A four-pitch walk to Moore loaded the bases for junior Shane Zeile, who after a 10-pitch at-bat hit a sacrifice fly to right to bring home a run and cut the deficit to one. The next batter was Hazard, who ripped a single to left to bring home another run to tie the game up at 3-3. The Bruins would not stop there, as Persico came to bat and crushed a double to left-center, bringing home Moore and giving UCLA a 4-3 lead. An intentional walk to sophomore Christoph Bono loaded the bases and two batters later senior Aaron Weimer plated a pair with a single back up the middle to make it 6-3, Bruins.
Berg then entered in the bottom of the ninth and retired the Washington side in order to guarantee the Bruins their eighth consecutive series victory over the Huskies.
Hazard led the UCLA offense, going 3-4 with two RBI and a run scored. Moore followed that up with a 2-3 performance of his own that included two runs while Weimer went 1-4 with two RBI.
UCLA (25-29-1, 12-17 Pac-12) will play its final regular season game tomorrow afternoon, concluding its series with Washington (38-15-1, 20-9 Pac-12) at 3 p.m. at Husky Ballpark in Seattle, Wash. The game will again be nationally televised live by the Pac-12 Networks.
Game Notes: Grant Watson made his 47th career start tonight, tying him with Tim O'Neill (1976-78) for the fifth-most in school history…Watson also posted his 10th quality start (6 IP, 3 ER or less) of the season…UCLA's consecutive scoreless innings streak over Washington ended at 42.2 with the Huskies' run in the second inning...Ty Moore smacked his team-leading 13th and 14th doubles of the season tonight, matching a single-game career-high…Moore has also now reached base safely in 15 consecutive games, logging hits in 13 of those games…Justin Hazard recorded his second straight multi-hit game and has drove in two runs in three straight games…Max Schuh made his Pac-12 leading 36th relief appearances of the season tonight, tied for the seventh-most in a single-season in UCLA history…tonight's win marks the first time that UCLA has won all season when trailing after the eighth inning…the Bruins extended their winning streak over Washington to 19 games dating back to 2008.


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Despite a lethargic performance that ended with Cleveland State grabbing a 73-53 win over Illinois-Chicago on Thursday at the Wolstein Center, it gave the Vikings reason to be humble before hosting Saturday's battle for first place with Green Bay.
"On the stat sheet we did everything right," said Cleveland State coach Gary Waters. "But we went through the motions and we will have to play much better against a Green Bay team that knows how important that game will be," continued Waters, who saw his team win for the seventh straight time and sixth consecutive time in Horizon League play.
What Waters saw on the stat sheet was CSU shooting 50% from the field including 55% from behind the 3-point line and limiting the Flames to 35% from the field and holding a 37-32 edge on the boards against the top rebounding team in the league.
Getting the points for the Vikings necessary to pull away from a UIC team that fell to 0-11 in league play were Trey Lewis with 18, Bryn Forbes and Jon Harris with 15 each and Anton Grady with 12.
What was missing was scoring from current Horizon League player of the week Charlie Lee, who was limited to two points on 1-for-4 from the field. Lee who had games of 31 and 25 points in road wins over Oakland and Wright State respectively, didn't even take a shot until there were 13 minutes remaining in the second half.
"That's what we talked about after the game," said Waters. "We will need guys like Charlie and everybody else to play well if we are going to beat Green Bay."
The Phoenix took round one on Jan. 2 in Green Bay, 66-55 to open the league season. What was missing was Harris, who sat out that game with a concussion.
What concerned Waters after defeating UIC was his team let a 10-point lead slip to a 30-25 advantage at the half. He felt it was a chance for the Vikings to put the game away and they let the Flames stick around.
"I know this sounds funny, but they are really the best 0-11 team you will ever see," said Waters, who secured his 325th career win and is the Vikings' winningest coach with a 154-109 record in eight seasons at Cleveland State.
After a 3-pointer by Harris to end the first half, the Vikings turned to the trio of Forbes, Harris and Grady to deny the Flames their first conference win by combining for the first 25 Cleveland State points in the second half. That scoring burst included points on six consecutive trips down the floor highlighted by one of three 3-pointers on the night by Harris, who did all his damage after coming off the bench.
Those 25 points from the Viking threesome pushed Cleveland State out to a 52-36 lead as Forbes cashed in both of his 3-pointers.
As a team, Cleveland State, 18-9 overall and winners of 11-of-14, came into the game tied with Duke for the top 3-point shooting percentage in Division I at .420. The Vikings didn't hurt their cause, going 10-for-18 (.556) on the night.
Home for the first time after a 4-game road swing that found Cleveland State win all four and extend its winning streak to six with a win at Wright State, the Vikings stayed one game back of Green Bay, which spanked host Youngstown State, 71-40. That left the Phoenix at 10-2 while the Vikings sit at 9-3 with the win over UIC.
At stake in Cleveland State's game at 4 p.m. Saturday on SportsTime Ohio with Green Bay is the top spot in the Horizon League, which awards the regular season champ the honor hosting the league's championship tournament semi-finals on March 8.
The regular season champ and second place teams are awarded double byes before entering the tournament in semi-finals at the home floor of the regular season champ. The final, with an NCAA berth on the line, will be played March 11 on the home floor of the top remaining seed.


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"The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Carlton Gebbia didn't go with the ladies to Puerto Rico for the trip, because she hasn't been getting along with Joyce Giraud. The two of them cannot seem to agree to disagree, but it sounds like Carlton was not thrilled to be watching this episode this week. According to a new Bravo report published on Feb. 26, "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Carlton Gebbia is now revealing that she thought the ladies handled the confrontation with Lisa in the wrong way.
"This was actually pretty hard to watch. I spoke to Lisa while she was away and my heart went out to her. I know if I had been there I would have taken issue with the way it was handled," Carlton reveals in her blog after watching the episode where the ladies confronted Lisa over how things were handled. "Just the way they went about it was wrong. It's one thing to have a problem with a friend, but you deal with that one-on-one without a group. It's not OK when there seems to be a line waiting to have a go at you."
Of course, Carlton hasn't really had an issue with Lisa, but she has had issues with some of the other ladies. One can imagine that she will say something during the reunion about this confrontation, even though she wasn't there. Of course, many of the women will probably tell her to stay out of it.
What do you think of the drama?


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It may be unexpected counsel coming from an agency's lead representative of the social media marketing practice, but the truth is, social media will not save your marketing program.
With my mind on spring training this week, here's an analogy: the pitcher is arguably one of the most important members of a baseball team, but pitching alone can't carry a team to the World Series. The same is true for social media. Marketing is a team sport, and social media is just one player.
Yes, I understand – and advocate daily – that social media can be a powerful communications tool and has enabled a sea change in how we communicate. But so did the printing press, the radio, the TV, the Internet. There will always be game changers. But that doesn't make any one of them the Holy Grail.
The reality is this: a winning marketing program is integrated; it includes the best combination of channels and tactics, and although social media may be the newest kid on the communications block, the basics of good marketing still apply.
Social media is not a strategy: Clients often ask, "What's our social strategy?" While I understand what they're asking, the preface to the response is that we don't consider social a strategy in and of itself. Social media are channels – channels which need their own best practices applied to them – but channels nonetheless. Our strategy is a marketing strategy. How and why we use social media (or other PR tactics) all play into meeting the overall strategic framework.
Social media should not be a silo: "If you build it, they will come" is a dangerous approach to embarking on a social media marketing effort. Consider the realities of Facebook: there are 800 million users, and Social Bakers indexes almost 1.5 million Facebook Pages. That is a tremendous amount of information being fed to and from an incredibly large, diverse audience.
Consider further that the vast majority of people who "Like" your Page don't come back to the Page to get your updates. They get them through their News Feeds, and only a percentage of the news you are posting is reaching those feeds. This isn't meant to discourage; social media marketing can have a positive impact on your marketing efforts. But you need to make your programs more holistic. Support online via offline with visual reminders and links to your social channels on signage and in advertising. Use email marketing to drive social participation. Just as you wouldn't put all of your eggs in the TV advertising basket, don't expect social media marketing to do it all.
Social media is not all about marketing. Last fall, Harvard Business Review published a great piece on social media being much more than marketing or technology. It's one of the reasons I tend to be adamant about using the term social media marketing – and not just social media. The uses for social media go beyond the marketing realm – it can, and is, changing the way we collaborate with internal teams, gather customer insights and R&D, and conduct customer service.
It's an exciting time to be in PR and marketing; and social media marketing is an exciting arena in which to work. But unfounded in more traditional best practices – identifying target audiences, determining your business and marketing goals, developing a holistic program in line with your strategic directives – it won't be your savior.
2 Responses to "Social Media is Not Your Savior"
Candace –
Thanks for your thought provoking post. While I agree with you that social media is not contained to only marketing (or pr, sales, customer care, or (fill in the blank), I respectfully, disagree and believe that it demands a strategy of its own .. not unlike pr or marketing or customer care or (fill in the blank).
Assuming that social media touches all aspects of an organization, IMPO it's critical to have an over arching direction that integrates with all BU/departments/employees who are impacted by its intrusion (I use intrusion not as a negative). Without that high level focus how can the brand promise or values be consistently represented internally and externally? How can we use social media to support business goals and objectives? How can we incorporate it into campaigns and use it as a digital conversation tool that becomes an asset unto itself?
Social media has evolved into more than just a channel, communication outreach or customer service vehicle. I would suggest that the "tools" of social media e.g. social networks, blogs, podcasts, blogger relations, etc. are the tactics under the umbrella of social media strategy.
Going back to your title — social media, for sure, is not the savior of a brand or enterprise. However, it has evolved to command the same respect as other marketing/communication disciplines to be consider a 'strategy."
Hi Toby:
Thanks so much for your thoughtful response. While I do still strongly believe that a social "strategy" is better placed within an overall marketing strategy – which would also encompass PR and advertising – I completely concur with you that social media marketing has evolved to command the same respect as other marketing disciplines. In fact, my view is that because it is such a valuable and credible part of marketing success, that's exactly why it doesn't belong in a solo and should be integrated into the larger marketing strategy.
As you so smartly put it, "how can the brand promise or values be consistently represented internally and externally" without that larger view?
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
- Rumors or Our Demise are Greatly Exaggerated – Atlanta PR Blog – PeRceptions – Cookerly Public Relations - [...] this over the past few weeks, so I won't go into much more on this. Check out our recent …


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Fermented Wheat, aka Sourdough
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
There is much theory out and about that wheat should not be consumed. If it contains essential B vitamins, it also contains serious toxins. Fermenting the wheat helps to dissipate these toxins, and leaves the proteins more accessable and digestible.
To make a sourdough Starter (sponge):
2 heaping cups organic whole-wheat flour
2 cups tepid water
1 package dry yeast
Later, another cup organic whole-wheat flour
In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup of the tepid water. Add remaining water, and whip in 2 cups of the flour until smooth. Cover with wrap and place in a warm place to ferment.
After a few days (sometime between overnight and a week or more) stir it well, and remove 1 cup of the starter. Place it in a clean jar. Cover it lightly and store in the fridge.
To the Remaining Starter, whip in another cup of flour. Ferment another couple of days.
Sophie's No-Knead Sourdough Skillet Bread
A course country bread best taken with soup or beverage
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup raisins
3/4 cup dried cranberries, or other fruit as blueberries, bananas, etc
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup oatmeal, if you like
Remaining Starter
1/4 cup olive oil
2 whipped eggs
1 teaspoon soda
1 tablespoon water
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease a deep 10" skillet, sprinkle with flour
3. Gather the dry ingredients together in a bowl, except for soda
4. To Remaining Starter, stir in oil and eggs. Stir in dry ingredients. *
5. Dissolve soda in water, and (just before baking) add to the batter. Stir it in gently
6. Pour batter into skillet and bake 45 minutes
7. Cool 10 minutes, invert over rack, and cool to room temperature before covering
*If desired, you can apply 300 whacks with a wooden spoon before adding the soda. In that case the bread will be less coarse, but it's not necessary.
1. French bread, baguettes and other breads, pancakes, desserts, and other baked goods may be made with sourdough
2. The longer the fermentation period, the longer the kneading process, the slower the baking period, the more beneficial the product will be
3. It's okay if the starter turns black in the fridge. As long as it has a clean sour aroma, and has not turned green, it's fine
4. With use, the commercial yeast is quickly diluted out of the starter, and your sourdough will improve with time. Sourdough starters are believed to have flourished 80 years and beyond.
Use sparingly. Not a diet food
Image from allposters.com
**Cut my pie into four pieces, I couldn't possibly eat eight. --Yogi Berra**
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P.S. Where'd you find that "extant" word?
1181 days ago
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I would think it could also go in coffee cans covered with foil and steamed in the crockpot. I'd love to try that fruited recipe like that!!
BTW, are you SURE about the "turning black" business? Don't think I could get anyone here to eat it after it turned black.
And you raise one other question. I've been working on being able to make sprouted wheat bread myself. Still don't have the mill to grind the sprouted wheat after I dehydrate it. But do you know if sprouting gets rid of those toxins? I know you don't leave them sprouting long or they go quickly past the malt sugar stage and that is not very tasty.
1181 days ago
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Hi NASFKAB,
:) I don't see why you can't make tortilla-like or pancake-like breads with the above skillet-bread recipe; just thin it a bit with water. Also you could insert a container of the batter into a covered water bath and steam it on the stovetop. The slow cooking would be a good thing. Good luck with your effort. Thanks for stopping by! Would you let me know how it turns out?
**Veni, vedi, visa. I came. I saw. I did a little shopping.**
1201 days ago
Comment edited on: 3/12/2013 1:54:26 PM
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interesting do not have an oven can it be cooked in the skillet like tortillas?
1201 days ago
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Thanks - this is interesting. Never heard that before about the fermenting/toxins. I will check into it more. Thanks for the recipes too. I love to bake bread.
1201 days ago
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The GOP House leadership used deception to sneak through a bill that did not have the votes to pass, bringing it up for a voice vote when opponents were not present.
This stands as a warning of how Speaker Boehner and his allies might push through amnesty for illegal aliens despite strong Republican opposition in the House.
The story from The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, in at the link below.


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Coffee Talk - Does Being a Parent Make You a Better Racer?
Submitted by Amy Thompson on
Tuesday Coffee Talk allows all of us to engage in community related topics and share your 2 cents worth
Yesterday the Daily Camera ran a story on how local cyclocross star Kristin Weber balances family, work and racing and she does it very successfully too:
"After having my babies, I remember being like 'What am I going to do for myself?'" she said. "After giving and giving and giving, after years of being pregnant and you're so in demand in the years of being a new mother, it was a nice refocus for me. It's a much more manageable sport to get into."
As a small business owner, she works from a home office, so she can take off in the middle of the day for training. Her kids also like riding and ringing their cowbells at races, which helps, she added.
"I'm very grateful to represent the working moms," Kristin Weber said. "A lot of the women at the elite level have children, and it's inspiring."
Her husband, David, agrees, "Balancing a regular eight-to-five job, having kids and then racing is a completely different story," David Weber said. "And there's a lot of people who do it quite well in Boulder."
Interestingly, Kristin's story is not rare, we have plenty of other examples as well, some who stand on the highest podium like Nicole Duke, who has had her best racing successes after having kids. Another example is Kristin Armstrong, who retired from racing in 2009 and had her son in 2010. She ended her retirement in 2011 and went on to win a second Gold Medal at this summer's London Olympics.
This phenomenon is not limited to women. After his son was born in 2010, Tom Danielson took 9th place in the Tour de France in 2011 and this year after the birth of his daughter, Tom won a stage of the USPCC and clinched the overall "Most Agressive Rider" jersey. Other local examples are Pete Weber and Brandon Dwight, who remain at the top of cyclocross while being dads too.
So why do we see so many racers holding children while standing on the podium? Is it because being parents makes them more mature and disciplined, resulting is smarter and more efficient training and racing? Is it because they are now racing for something bigger than themselves? Or is it a simple correlation between the fact that endurance athletes often peak later, which happens to coincide at a time in their lives when they want to start families? What's your two cents, does being a parent make you a better racer?
News Item:
8 Comments
Does being a racer make you a worse parent?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Most of the parents I know race and train to get out of parental duties, realizing after they have kids how much a pain in the ace they are.
Points: 11
Good point
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Your post made me laugh, but it has a ring of truth to it. Let's face it, parenting can be very stressful. But stress is great fuel for training and racing and after you "work it all out" on the bike, you probably return home as a calmer and more focused parent.
Points: -1
There is a balance
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
After having 3 boys the bike racing gig began less of priority. Training and getting to races is about as predictable as a miracle and just needs to be flexible with family duties. After a quick training session or cross race my patience and thus parenting seems to go much smoother.
Points: -1
Submitted by steve f (not verified) on
Being a parent doesn't make you a better racer. That is wishful thinking. It isn't impossible to be a good parent and be a successful racer, but the two things will always be at odds with each other because both of them want as much time as you will give them and then some.
I race a lot, I do okay, I have two kids and a wife and a job. Balancing all of those is the most delicate dance I know of. It only takes a slight breeze to knock over my carefully constructed house of cards.
Bravo to anyone who strikes the balance. The rewards are worth the effort.
Points: 8
Being old(er) makes you a better cyclocross racer
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Some cyclocross racing skills (riding in the mud with bike wash/pits, for example) are best developed in a real race situation. The folks with many seasons under the belt are benefiting from the lessons learned from a larger # of races. Cross is not a hill climb where you line up and let the man with the best w/kg win. It is a complete skill set that goes beyond "motor size". I think for the pure road stuff, it is better to be single so you can go ride all day on the weekends.
Personally I like the idea that by spending 5-6 hrs a week exercising my kids get a better dad for the other hours we are together. Also, the odds of kicking it at 60 yrs old due to a lifetime of unhealthy behavior are much lower. So they get a happy dad who is going to have a long, energetic life.
Points: 22
Why have kids?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
I guess I grew up fortunate enough that my parents lived for their children and not for themselves. My parents were the ones going to my sporting events growing up and cheering me on, not the other way around. I can't imagine these kids are having fun spending their time standing around and ringing cow bells in their free time.
I can understand pro riders with kids who get paid and do this for a living, but these amatuer cyclits/parents who choose to race and train over spending time with their kids may want to re-think their priorities. Perhaps we should ask the kids what they think about it?
Points: 7
Submitted by Craig (not verified) on
Yes, once you have kids, you can no longer do anything for yourself. You must devote every waking minute that is not spent working to your children. They are the center of the universe and should know it. Nor could they take any inspiration from their parents participating in sport.
Points: -5
This is a deep comment... I
Submitted by Dave (not verified) on
This is a deep comment... I have children and they love to see Dad out there going at it. Curious as to what you mean?
When they are much older and get ready to take on organized individual and team sports, I'll be there to support them as they somewhat support me. Healthy activities promote healthy lifestyles. It's pretty simple.
"Perhaps we should ask the kids what they think about it?" If you are a parent asking that question, then you should likely rethink some things. If you are not a parent asking that question, then I'll dismiss it as... well... you just don't know what you meant by that statement.
See you at the races. Kids in tow!
Points: 4


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Conference program
The conference will offer a variety of keynote speakers, workshops, teaching circles and poster sessions. In addition to academic programming, there will field trips, networking receptions and a gala evening celebration.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
|9:00 am - 5:00 pm
|Arts of Engagement - Pre-conference workshop for emerging scholars
|9:00 am - 12:00 pm
|Engaged Practice Learning Exchange
|12:30 - 1:30 pm
|Community Based Research Canada Luncheon Meeting
|Registration desk open
(Note: The registration desk is located in the foyer of the Bob Wright building at the University of Victoria.)
Community Celebration - Keynote Speaker - Bob Rae
Note: For a detailed scheduled of the presentations during breakout sessions, please refer to the schedule page.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Conference opening & keynote presentation - Dr. Nancy Turner
|Breakouts - Session 1
|Breakouts - Session 2
|Box lunch and Poster Party
|Breakouts - Session 3
|Breakouts - Session 4
|Gala celebration at the Royal BC Museum (Guests welcome)
Thursday, May 22, 2014
|Elder's teaching
|Breakouts - Session 5
|Poster Party and Marketplace
Lunch (Plated)
|Breakouts - Session 6
|Conference closing
Engaged Practice Learning Exchange
May 20th, 2014 9:00 – 12:00
Cadboro Commons Building
University of Victoria
Do you programme or facilitate public engagement or other forms of community - university activity (research, teaching, learning, action projects) in a community or academic role ? That makes you an engaged practitioner! The Engaged Practice Learning Exchange is designed to offer a space, some input and ideas and an exciting international network within which to meet some of these questions.
Community Based Research Canada (CBRC) Luncheon Meeting
Tuesday, May 20th – 12:30 – 1:30 pm
Cadboro Commons, University of Victoria
No Cost - Registration required
Come and learn about CBRC's work and vision from CBRC Co-Chairs Joanna Ochocka from the Centre for Community Based Research in Ontario and Sylvie deGrosBois Directrice, Service aux collectivités at the Université du Québec à Montréal. This is an exciting opportunity to build a strong Canadian network that champions community-university engagement and community based research. Lunch is included.
The Witness Blanket, an art installation created by Kwagiulth artist and Master Carver Carey Newman (Ha-yalth-kingeme) and inspired by the traditional woven blanket as a symbol of protection and comfort, evokes the atrocities of Indian Residential Schools and a national journey toward reconciliation. The blanket is comprised of hundreds of objects and artifacts collected on gathering trips over the past year to residential school sites, churches, courthouses, government buildings, and traditional and cultural structures across our country.
The Witness Blanket is part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Commemoration Initiative. It will be displayed at the University of Victoria until June 8 and later this year will embark on a cross-country tour.


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New Orleans Saints tailback Mark Ingram was optimistic that his turf toe injury will heal sooner than later. His toe was only lightly wrapped Wednesday, and he didn't rule out the possibility that he could play Sunday against the Tennessee Titans.
"I'm feeling better. Better than I did yesterday," Ingram said. "It's an injury that can vary. For some people, it can linger for a while. For others, it can turn the corner fast. Hopefully these next few days, it feels better and I can be ready to go."
When asked if he will try to persuade the Saints to let him play or if he thinks they'll be extra cautious since backup Chris Ivory is available to replace him, Ingram said, "at the end of the day, whatever's best for the team."
"If I feel like I can bring my best to the table, I'm gonna go," Ingram said. "If I can't, I'll sit if that's what's best for the team. But I always wanna try to go."
As for Ivory, who has been a "healthy inactive" for the last two games, he admitted that it's "always hard when you want to be out there. But all I can do is sit back and wait til my number's called."