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GRAND RAPIDS — Every day, the pain and memories still come for Elaine Osborne.
She would have celebrated her 53rd wedding anniversary Feb. 3 — but for a fiery Jenison-area crash in September 2009 that took the life of her truck-driver husband, 69-year-old Robert Osborne.
"I cry every day. They say it gets better with time, but it hasn't so far," she said.
Her husband, whom she met at 15 and married a few years later, died after a car collided with his truck on I-196 in a construction zone. The truck went off an embankment and burst into flames.
Months later, prosecutors authorized a negligent homicide charge against the octogenarian car driver, Robert Gorter. He lost his wife, Edna, in the crash.
All agree it was an accident, an apparent moment of inattentiveness on the elderly driver's part, but the charge might have put him in jail for two years.
It's a punishment some prosecutors say does not fit, particularly for a man who lost a loved one in the same accident.
"It's always been one of the more problematic types of cases to try to charge," Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth said. "In most cases, these crashes are accidents. Whatever you were doing, your intent was never to severely injure or kill someone."
Now law enforcement officials are working under different guidelines.
The negligent homicide law changed Oct. 31, along with statutes that most criminal attorneys and prosecutors say are better for handling fatal and serious-injury crashes when a driver is at fault.
The changes offer a greater range of charges, depending on circumstances.
The new charge that most resembles negligent homicide is called "moving violation causing death" and carries up to one year in jail. The old law carried a potential two years.
Other charges are:
— Reckless driving causing death, a 15-year felony.
— Reckless driving causing serious injury, a five-year felony.
— Moving violation causing serious injury, a 93-day misdemeanor.
Prosecutors also have long-existing options that include involuntary manslaughter and felonious driving (two years).
Prosecutors generally like the new range, as do police.
"It gives a little more latitude to look into the circumstances of each crash rather than paint everything with a broad brush," said Grand Rapids police Sgt. Steve Labrecque.
Labrecque said a key change is adding the misdemeanor charge. In the past, if an accident caused serious injury, such as paralysis, police would have to write a ticket if they could not prove recklessness.
In egregious cases that do not involve drunken driving and may not sustain a charge of involuntary manslaughter, authorities may look at reckless driving causing death.
Among the first drivers charged under the new "reckless" law was Lauraetta Carey, 23. for chasing her boyfriend's car Oct. 31 at up to 100 mph along 28th Street in Wyoming, running red lights and eventually causing his death when he crashed into a house, according to police.
Forsyth said he likes the changes, especially since prosecutors sometimes felt forced into charging negligent homicide, in traffic-death cases.
Occasionally, he allowed police to issue a ticket.
"We would talk to the victim's family and the family of the driver to see if they agreed with that," Forsyth said.
The deal usually was to have the driver give up his license for a time, he said.
In the Osborne accident, prosecutors offered that to Robert Gorter, now 83, if he surrendered his license indefinitely. Gorter refused, Forsyth said, so the charge became negligent homicide.
"He lost his wife, so what are you going to do to punish him?" Forsyth asked.
Gorter last month pleaded no contest to attempted negligent homicide, a misdemeanor. He will not receive any jail time.
More recently, a Wyoming district judge dismissed a negligent homicide charge against garbage truck driver Dustin Mannel, 35, in the death of 71-year-old Lorraine Kay Baker, a wheelchair user who was struck while crossing the street when Mannel turned right after stopping at a red light.
The judge determined the September death was an accident and that negligence was not proven. Baker's family was upset.
Forsyth said although it fell under the old statues, the case might have been more appropriately charged under the new one.
In another high-profile case, 70-year-old emergency truck driver Richard Pierce is charged in Montcalm County with negligent homicide in the Oct. 4 deaths of Max Young and Shirley Narloch.
Pierce was driving with lights and sirens on when he allegedly ran a stop sign and his truck hit the car Young was driving.
His attorney, Matthew Smith, said Pierce was simply focused on getting to the other crash and never saw Young's car.
"He's a decent guy with a great driving record," Smith said. "He has saved a lot of people in his job."
Smith said Pierce had planned to retire as a volunteer for Montcalm Emergency Services last summer, but stayed on to meet staffing needs.
"If it wasn't for the fact he was a decent guy, he probably would be sitting on a Florida beach right now," Smith said.
Smith said he hopes Pierce can plead down to a lesser misdemeanor because negligent homicide carries a mandatory one-year license revocation.
He described negligent homicide as the "only thing where simple negligence can result in a charge with felony penalties."
For Osborne, who lost her husband in 2009, charging Gorter with negligent homicide was appropriate.
"No matter how old you are, you do something like this and you have to pay for it," she said.
E-mail John Tunison: email@example.com


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What would you do to make The Irish Times better? redux Hmmm…
Hugh Linehan
Your very interesting and provocative comments on the last post have caused a lot of soul-searching in here – thanks to everyone. As I said (comment 85 if you're so inclined) there's a few meaty subjects around improving the website, which I grouped into key subjects, one of which (navigation and architecture), I'll have a first stab at responding to here.
Just to say also that I enjoyed the pungent views on display. Although there was a certain amount of vitriol, it was all in pretty good humour, and there was plenty of positive stuff as well.
A couple of observations - it's not my job to defend/analyse particular parts of The Irish Times, but obviously like everyone there's bits I like and read more than other bits. The animosity towards the Saturday magazine expressed in comments is intriguing, though, and has caused some consternation, as the picture below shows.
I hope you're all very proud of yourselves…
It's not for me to disagree, but I wonder if this reflects different interests and priorities between, on the one hand, readers of Irish Times blogs, and on the other, readers of the print edition on Saturday (who do genuinely seem to enjoy the mag). Whatever, there's clearly a gender divide within the pro/con comments.
Anyway, that's for another day. As regards navigation and architecture, I hold up my hands. It's not good, it's behind the times, it sometimes seems to deliberately make it difficult for you to find what you're looking for.
Without going into the tortuous history, we currently populate the site via a number of systems – a newspaper publishing system, a content management system for the bulk of online content, a separate system for breaking news – which don't talk to each other very well and which militate against the sort of data-rich presentation which would allow us to group and present content in a proper way. It's … clunky.
This is a major challenge for us. If we're going to give you the best site possible, we need to develop our technology quite fast. We're working on it, and in the interim are building some workarounds to allow us to give you content in a better way.
Currently, the site's structure is very rooted in the newspaper's structure. Some people may like this replication of certain daily supplements and pages, but it makes very little sense online. For example, at the moment you could read a Donald Clarke film interview in any of the following sections within Life & Culture: Entertainment, Features, Magazine or Weekend. That's just plain silly, and we'll be introducing a new way of doing business in those areas within the next month. I make no apology for the fact that our focus is on improving presentation of the main site, and not necessarily the Today's Paper section. My job is to give people the best possible online experience of The Irish Times, not to make a faithful replica of the paper. Most of you can get that at your local newsagent for a very reasonable price. Likewise, you can get a digital representation of the physical paper online for a modest fee.
People have also asked why they can't search within particular sections, or bring up all articles/columns by a particular writer on one page. Good questions, and as we add data and categorisation tools to articles, we will be able to do more of that. Unfortunately, it won't happen overnight, so I ask for your patience.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
BATON ROUGE -- Legislation that would shift the expiring 3 percent state excise tax on vehicle rentals to local government was tweaked in a House committee Tuesday and given unanimous approval.
The vote by the Ways and Means Committee sends Senate Bill 351 by Sen. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans, to the House floor for more debate.
The bill would allow
When Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration decided not to seek renewal of the tax, which expires July 1,
The statewide tax generates about $5 million to $6 million a year.
Rep. Tom Willmott, R-Kenner, reworked the Jefferson Parish dedication of the tax. He kept one-third of the Jefferson tax for the City of
The amendment would split the two-thirds like this: one-third would go to the Westwego Performing Arts Center, one-sixth would go to the Gretna Cultural Center for the Arts; one-fourth would to the Jefferson Parish Arts Society for needs on the east and west banks; and one-fourth would go to operation and maintenance of cultural facilities in unincorporated areas of Jefferson.
The amendment did not touch the dedication for Orleans Parish, which would use the tax revenues for street improvements and beautification projects. It also leaves intact the dedication of the tax in Calcasieu Parish where one-sixth of the revenues would go to the municipalities of the parish and five-sixths would go to the operation and maintenance of the
Ed Anderson can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or 225.342.5810.


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The Southern Arizona Chess Association (SACA) is one of the recipients of the prestigious Scholastic Service Award (Organization). The Southern Arizona Chess Association (SACA) has been an affiliate of the USCF since 1980. During the school year, SACA runs a scholastic league ...Read More
The U.S. Chess Trust helps support many chess programs & events ! Help us continue to offer these programs and resources by making your Online Donation today! Remember, making a donation is fast, easy and secure ! Just click on ...Read More
Steven Shutt Note from the Editor: Beatriz Marinello I have had the honor to know Steven Shutt since 1991. Since then, I have seen Steven performing different roles, such as an expert level player, chess coach, member of the Scholastic ...Read More
Michael Khodarkovsky About Michael Khodarkovsky An internationally ranked chess master, Michael Khodarkovsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on July 21, 1958, and now resides in New Jersey. Michael was a well known trainer of chess champions in the former Soviet ...Read More
By WIM Beatriz Marinello In the 1970s and 1980s, educators, psycologists and chess aficionados were wondering – At what age can a child be introduced to the game of chess? This question was especially interesting because of the theories developed ...Read More


text: For those of you interested in web development, the Chattanooga Drupal Users Group meetup is tonight. I am talking about responsive web design and mobile first development. http://www.meetup.com/Chattanooga-Drupal-Users-Group/ Be happy to see anyone interested. We start at 6.30. -- Lee Walker Principal Engineer 404-405-1194 l.s.walker (Skype) www.codejourneymen.com Code Journeymen LLC 100 Cherokee Blvd Suite #332, Chattanooga TN, 37405 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://chugalug.org/pipermail/chugalug/attachments/20130221/f16842dc/attachment.html>


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Arrest in abuse and endangerment case
A 27-year-old Kahului man was arrested on charges that he injured his girlfriend and endangered their child when he used a box to shatter a car window while the two were in the vehicle last week, police said.
Bail was set at $7,200 for Gerson Phillip. He was charged with abuse, second-degree endangering the welfare of a minor, second-degree assault and first-degree criminal property damage.
The incident occurred at 12:45 p.m. April 15 when Phillip's 31-year-old girlfriend confronted him at Kuihelani Highway and Puunene Avenue, said Lt. Derrick Lopez of the Criminal Investigation Division. He said Phillip picked up a small wooden box and used it to shatter the driver's side window, causing shards of glass to cut the woman's arm while she sat in the driver's seat.
The couple's 4-year-old daughter also was in the car, sitting nearby, Lopez said.
Phillip was arrested Monday morning and charged.
AKC dog shows on Maui over weekend
The only American Kennel Club-sanctioned dog shows on Maui, which will have top dogs from across the state, will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Kihei Elementary School playground.
The Valley Isle Kennel Club will host dog shows and obedience and rally trials. Judges from Canada and California will rate a wide variety of dog breeds, and "best in show" honors will be awarded both days.
Judging will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday.
Entries are closed, but the public is invited to view the event.
Used book sale an Earth Day celebration
The nonprofit Maui Friends of the Library is hosting a Used Book Sidewalk Sale to celebrate Earth Day. The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Whole Foods Market at the Maui Mall in Kahului.
Each child at the sale can take home a children's book for free.
There are a variety of donated fiction and nonfiction books for sale.
All of the proceeds will benefit Maui County public libraries.


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The War of the Mantuan Succession, which has been fought in northern Italy for the past three years, is ended by the Treaty of Cherasco. By the terms of this document, France and the Empire agree to remove their armies from Italy. Emperor Ferdinand II grants the duchy to its French claimant, Charles Duke of Nevers, while Savoy gains part of the Duchy of Montferrat. A parallel secret agreement with Victor Amadeus of Savoy arranges for France to obtain Pinerolo, and betrothes the Duke to Louis XIII's sister, Christine Marie, a strategy which enables France to gain a foothold in Italy. This Treaty represents a great diplomatic triumph for Louis XIII's chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu.
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text:
Dixie Youth All-Star baseball games seemed to be everywhere this weekend.
In Foley, AA (Coach-Pitch) and O-Zone district tournaments opened up while Minors sub-district events got under way at Spirit Park in Spanish Fort, Lott Park in Daphne, in Gulf Shores and at Zirlott Park in Bayou La Batre. Following are brief reports on some of the games at the different sites:
MINORS - SUB-DISTRICT SPANISH FORT -- At Spirit Park in Spanish Fort, Daphne American and Fairhope National remained the only two undefeated teams in the five-squad tournament after the first two evenings of action.
Daphne American knocked off Orange Beach 13-3 in five innings while Fairhope National upended Spanish Fort American 7-5 and defeated Orange Beach 12-2 in five innings. In one other game at the tournament, Spanish Fort American knocked off Foley 19-7.
The competition continues this evening as Daphne American takes on Foley at 6 p.m. and Orange Beach meets Spanish Fort American at 8 p.m.
In Daphne American's 13-3 victory over Orange Beach in five innings on Friday evening, Caleb Harlan (two innings); Miles Henderson (two innings) and Harrison Charlton (two innings) handled the pitching duties. Daphne American was led at the plate by Dawson Craven who had a three-run triple while Ryan McCall had a double and a triple.
"I feel good about our win," said Daphne American coach Todd Harlan. "We played well, we hit the ball but we did leave a lot of runners on the bases." Meanwhile, in Fairhope National's 7-5 win over host Spanish Fort American on Friday night, Trevor Wells (two innings); Cole Deeds (three innings) and Jake Glover (one inning) all shared time on the mound while Lane Domino scored twice in the contest and Deeds also scored twice.
"Spanish Fort American went up ahead of us early 3-0 with three runs in the second innings, then we scored three runs in the third inning to knot things back up at 3-3," said Fairhope National coach Chuck Starling. "We then pulled ahead. our guys never quit. Our guys stayed with it, we started hitting and we did what it took to win the ball game."
Fairhope National then beat Orange Beach 12-2 in four innings Saturday night to stay unbeaten as Wells (two innings) and Smith Hendricks (two innings) handled the pitching duties. At the plate, Fairhope National was led by Braxton Galloway who had an RBI single while Wells had a double, Brett Howell had a two-run single and Glover and Hendricks each had a RBI single.
Fairhope National scored four runs in the second inning and six in the third stanza to go up 10-0.
Orange Beach rallied to make it 10-2 with two runs in its half of the third but Fairhope National scored two runs in the fourth inning to end the contest by the 10-run rule, getting the last run across on a throwing error. In addition, in Spanish Fort American's 19-7 triumph over Foley, the host team picked up the win with a couple of big innings offensively, scoring 10 runs in the second stanza and nine in the third.
At the plate for Spanish Fort American, J.T. Fillingim had a double and a single, Bailey Knotts had a double and two RBI's while Matthew Lipham had a double and an RBI. For Foley, Owen Cole had a double and a single while Paul Shoenight had a triple.
DAPHNE -- In the Minors sub-district tournament at Lott Park in Daphne, Municipal National and Central Baldwin National remain the only two undefeated teams after the first two evenings of action. Central Baldwin National knocked off Elberta 5-3 on Friday night before defeating host Daphne National 14-8 Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, Municipal National trailed the host team 2-1 at the start of the fourth inning Friday night but scored 14 unanswered runs to eventually beat Daphne National 15-2 in four innings. Municipal National then upended Elberta 17-7 on Saturday evening.
That event will conclude this evening with Municipal National taking on Central Baldwin National at 6 p.m., followed by Elberta meeting Daphne National at 8. Both Municipal National and Central Baldwin National have already qualified for the district tournament, which will start July 5 in Citronelle.
The only thing left to determine this evening is the seeding for that event, which team will be the winner and which will be the runner-up at the sub-district event.
No scores were available at press time on Minors sub-district tournaments at Zirlott Park in Bayou La Batre.
In Minors action at Gulf Shores on Friday night, Fairhope American knocked off Central Baldwin American 7-4 while Spanish Fort National beat Gulf Shores 19-9, though no scores were available from Saturday night games at press time.
At the AA District 7 tournament in Foley, Spanish Fort American beat Daphne National 16-8 on Friday night and knocked off Fairhope National 16-11 on Saturday evening to stay unbeaten and alive in the winner's bracket tournament.
Action continues at the event this evening as Citronelle takes on Daphne American, Fairhope National meets Municipal National at 6 p.m. Also, Daphne National faces off against Municipal American and Spanish Fort American takes on undefeated Saraland American at 7:20 p.m.
Other scores at the event from action on Friday had Fairhope National defeating Elberta 23-1, Saraland American knocking off Citronelle 18-8, Municipal American beating Foley 21-6 and Fairhope American upending Daphne American 16-0.
Other scores at the event in Saturday action had Daphne National eliminating Elberta 15-14, Citronelle knocking Foley out of the tournament with a 21-0 triumph, Daphne American eliminating Saraland National from the event with a 9-8 win in eight innings and Saraland American remaining unbeaten in the tournament with a 16-6 win over Municipal American.
In addition, Fairhope American beat Municipal National 8-6.
In Spanish Fort American's 16-8 win over Daphne National on Friday evening, Brady Wiggins had two singles and a double, Jack Knight had three singles, Joe Paul Pennington added two singles and a double, Mason Boyd had two singles and a triple and Matthew Knotts had three singles.
In Spanish Fort American's 16-11 triumph over Fairhope National on Saturday night, Matthew Holston had two singles and a double, Brody Wiggins had two triples and a single and Knotts added three more singles.
"We've been playing well," said Spanish Fort American coach Vic Knight. "We hit the ball consistently in both of our games. We're playing solid defense too. I'm proud of the team. We have a great bunch of kids. We've gotten phenomenal support from both the park and the fans and that makes it fun."
The eventual winner of the AA District 7 tournament moves on to the state tournament at Enterprise on July 17.
In Foley at the O-Zone District 7 tournament, there was plenty of action Friday evening as Central Baldwin knocked off Daphne National 17-6, Chatom upended Fairhope National 7-3, Spanish Fort beat Foley 8-3 and Municipal National upended Daphne American 11-0.
In Saturday evening action, Saraland National knocked off Municipal American 9-8, Fairhope National beat Daphne National 3-2, Central Baldwin beat Chatom 11-6, Daphne American beat Foley 8-7 and Municipal National outlasted Spanish Fort 14-11.
Competition continues this evening as Municipal American takes on Chatom and Fairhope National meets Daphne American at 6 p.m.
In the undefeated winner's bracket, Central Baldwin takes on Saraland National at 8 p.m. Municipal National gets a bye in the winner's bracket until Tuesday evening, while Spanish Fort gets a bye in the loser's bracket until Tuesday night.
The eventual winner of the O-Zone district tournament moves on to the state tournament at Eufaula on July 17.


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Maple Blue Butternut Squash
- 3 lbs. butternut squash
- 1 tbsp. unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp. brown sugar
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp. Kowalski's Four Pepper Blend Peppercorns, finely crushed
- 1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles, divided
- 1/4 cup Kowalski's 100% Pure Maple Syrup, divided
Cut 1" slit in squash; microwave to soften skin (about 4 min.). Cut ends off squash; remove skin. Cut in half; scoop out seeds. Cut squash into 1/2" cubes (about 4 cups). In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat; stir in brown sugar until dissolved (about 2 min.). Add squash cubes, salt and pepper; cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned on edges (10-12 min.). Divide squash among 4 individual ramekins; top with cheese and maple syrup. Preheat broiler; broil squash 6" from heat source until cheese is melted (about 2 min.). Serve immediately.
Good to Know: For a timesaver, purchase 1 ½ to 2 lbs. of cubed butternut squash sold in prepackaged containers in the Produce Department.


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Milwaukee police are investigating a double shooting, involving arson.
The incident occurred near Fifth street and Burleigh at about 11:15 p.m. Saturday night.
The victims, a man and a woman, both 19, were injured in the shooting.
Their injuries are believed to be non-life threatening.
Police say the motive in the incidents appear to be retaliation.
There are no suspects in custody.


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Berwick RNLI have issued a warning to children spotted swimming in the River Tweed during the recent warm weather.
Lifeboat personnel are concerned that many are unaware of the risks they are exposing theselves to due to the strong tidal currents.
Hazel Bettison of Berwick RNLI said: "We've had reports of children enjoying the nice spell of weather and swimming in the river.
"This is very dangerous. The river has strong tidal currents and there have been many cases of people getting into trouble over the years."
The warning comes as the RNLI reveals that 29 people accidentally lost their lives around the north of England coast last year – the highest number in four years.
The number of near-misses was even higher, with 52 lives being saved by the RNLI's lifeboat crews and lifeguards in the north.
The charity has launched a major drowning awareness campaign, Respect the Water, warning people to stay safe this summer.
Over the past four years, a total of 90 people have died around coasts of the north of England – an average of 23 each year.
The figures show a clear gender divide, with adult men accounting for two-thirds (66%) of northern coastal deaths over this time.
Michael Avril, the RNLI's community incident reduction manager, said: "With more people losing their lives at the coast each year than are killed in cycling accidents, we're trying to make people, particularly men, realise that they are at risk from drowning if they don't follow some basic but important safety advice.
"Of course we want people to go to the coast and enjoy it – we're lucky to have an exceptional coastline around the UK – but we want people to understand there are risks, and that they should not underestimate the power of the sea."
Swimming and general leisure use of the water accounted for 20 (22%) of the coastal deaths in the north since 2010. Slips and falls while walking and running accounted for 27 (30%) of fatalities. Alcohol consumption is also a contributing factor in around one-fifth (21%) of deaths.
Cold water shock is a significant danger. Other common factors are rip currents and fatigue. Panicking and trying to swim against strong currents is exhausting and can overwhelm even the strongest swimmers. The RNLI's advice is to not swim against the rip current but, instead, to call for help and swim parallel to shore until free from the rip and then make for safety.


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Building our membership: Let's make it a reality
Martin J. Manning, P.E.
APWA President
My favorite theme for this fiscal year is the expansion of APWA membership. Although our membership has grown to over 27,000 so far, we have a higher goal of six percent to meet. We still have a way to go to meet this goal and so, I am asking for your help.
As "custodians" of the quality of life in your community, your help in getting other public works professionals involved in APWA means a lot. After all, could our communities really function as they do now, if the works and services that we provide each day were not available? What would our lives be like without the roads, bridges, water and sewerage, energy and telecommunications that operate at the heart of every American and Canadian community? You know other "custodians" that are not taking advantage of what APWA has to offer them. They need to be involved.
APWA is committed to education and training to improve the leadership, management, and technical skills of our nations' public works leaders. As the New Year begins, there is no better time than right now for us to renew this commitment to ourselves and to our future members. The more traditional aspects of public service in the 1990s disappeared on 9/11 and now we need to recognize and respond to a whole series of new challenges. Now more than ever before, we need to help assure that all public works professionals have the opportunity to expand their skills and develop their abilities as quality of life "custodians" in this most unique time in our history.
Today, we are all faced with the uncertainty of the current economic climate in which budget reductions and the search for new tax revenues is becoming a norm among public jurisdictions. APWA is there for you as an advocate for critically needed infrastructure projects, programs and public works services. The machinery to support this effort is solidly in place and is being continuously reviewed and improved. The Government Affairs Committee, the InfoNOW Communities, and the Legislative Advocacy Task Force are all resources available for use. All we need now are the collective voices of our existing and our new members to make our message heard at all levels of government. We have the skills and expertise to provide information that is needed for intelligent policy making in Ottawa or Washington and in our state and provincial capitals.
Another strength of APWA is its organizational commitment to the exchange of knowledge. Active and new members can avail themselves of the expertise of the APWA Technical Committees to be shared in a number of public works fields. They can receive information via a variety of publications in a broad range of topics and they can also participate in workshops and Click, Listen and Learn sessions. All of these tools are available to provide effective and convenient knowledge exchange.
However, you know as well as I do that the process of exchanging knowledge begins at the local level. Every APWA chapter meeting that brings our members together is an example of that exchange. The networking that results is a powerful resource to our members in sharing knowledge and experience in dealing with public works issues. Add to these chapter networks the positive connections to the networking resources of all of the other chapters in the United States and Canada provided through the InfoNOW Communities and you have a powerful interactive system dedicated to the improvement of the field of public works. These are the kinds of exceptional resources that can be made available to every quality of community life custodian. With your help in seeking new members, we can make that a reality.
In seeking new members, we should all remember that while there are many fine associations and organizations that may address individual public works issues, the American Public Works Association is the only professional organization concerned with the range and breadth of all public works and public works services. As a professional organization, APWA is the best reflection of the public works industry in the United States and Canada.
Our new members will be found among public agencies at all levels and among our partners in the private sector—the consultants, the contractors, the manufacturers, the suppliers and the vendors, all of whom contribute so much to support our collective custodianship of our nations' quality of life.
Please join me in seeking all those future members that are a part of our collective custodianship to build our membership and to make this year a real standout for the American Public Works Association.


text:
On Feb 12, 1:29 am, "feiman"
> Does anyone know how to send UDP packet through HTTP proxy?
> thanks a lot
Your question doesn't make sense. Why don't you tell us what your
actual problem is rather than trying to get us to make your suggested
solution work.
It's like someone asked, "Does anyone know how to get a car to hold 50
tons of rock?". Odds are there's a way to solve whatever your problem
is, but getting a car to hold 50 tons of rock probably isn't it.


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The 30th annual Hospice and Community Care Labor Day Auction is happening Monday at the Lampeter fairgrounds in Lancaster County.
Video: Watch Anne Shannon's report here
Everything from artwork, to crafts, to home goods will be up for bid. There will also be plenty of food, including donuts and the famous breakfast log.
The items are all donated. Bidders will fill the Lampeter fairgrounds all day at several different auction venues. The money raised goes to offset the cost of hospice and community care.
The auction will run to about 5 p.m. Monday.


text:
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Malay Bible Controversy Needs Cool Heads to Defuse Ethno-Religious Tensions
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had defended his ministry's stamping of 5,100 Malay-language Bibles in Port Klang with its official seal, saying it was standard protocol and not done to "deface" the Alkitab.
"As for the serial numbers on the Bibles, the reason why it was done to the specific Bibles is because they are subject to the particular seizure in Klang," he added.
Hishammuddin's Cabinet colleague Nazri Aziz had also said the 5,100 copies in Port Klang remain illegal due to a prohibition in Selangor Islamic laws.
However, the de facto law minister had told The Malaysian Insider that the 30,000 Alkitab in Kuching could be released immediately as there was no enactment in Sarawak against the use of the term "Allah" in non-Muslim publications.
The Sarawak importer, James Redas, said that local Bumiputera Christians are highly upset at what they see as a desecration of their holy book and will make their feelings felt at the ballot box.
Perak Mufti Harussani Zakaria has warned the release of the previously impounded 35,100 Malay-language bibles could lead to Malay anger and fearsome consequences.
The Malay Bible controversy should be carefully managed by all parties. Malaysia is already a polarized country. Division between ethnic and religious communities is quite pronounced. We must be prepared to address this issue with a sense and sensibility.
There are two major issues here:
1) Ego. Malaysia's diverse ethno-religious communities should learn to accept and respect the existence of all religions in the country. We should compete for exclusivity of any religion. All religions profess good spiritual and moral values to their followers.
We should address the issue of ego. Harussani sounds egoistic when he claimed that the release of Malay-language bibles could lead to Malay anger and fearsome consequences. Why should and why would the Malay react in such hostility? Personalities such as Harussani should be refrained from making a false representation for the Malay. Let our Malay Muslim brothers and sisters speak for themselves.
I am confident that most Malay Muslims are confident of their Islamic faith. Islam is a major religion in the world. Muslims would not leave the religion just because they can get access to Malay-language bibles. I was a student of Islamic history and had read the Quran but instead of converting to Islam I had gained valuable knowledge about Islam and its virtues.
We should get rid of EGO if we want to achieve a real solution.
2) Second is the issue of confidence. I believe that a lack of communication and mutual understanding had led us to this controversy. Silly as it may sound there is no need for the government to react so negatively towards the Malay-language bibles. I believe the PM is a sensible and moderate leader. But it is not easy for any moderate leader to lead effectively in such a political environment. We should refrain from using the Bibles as a political pawn in the next Sarawak state elections. Unfortunately, the issue is expected to take a centre stage in Sarawak, risking further rifts amongst the Christian and Muslim communities.
The government, religious bodies, council of churches and eminent individuals must come together to put a stop to incessant and unnecessary politicization of the religious book. There are many things which can be politicized but not this BOOK not the BIBLE.
Malaysia must focus on bigger issues.
4 comments:
The Home Minister released the bibles in Sarawak because the Minister knew the state election is just around the corner. In order to please the voters there he had them released. While there is no coming election in the mainland the bibles held in Klang are therefore not realsised.
It does't take the brain of a mouse to know his deceit. I think enough is enough of this deceitful Umno get ready to vote Umno out of the coming GE !
Malaysia has been ruled by 1 party since independence-even longer than Ghadaffi [ 42 years] .Be that it may our multiracial concept has been eroded by a government ploicy of religious intolerance contrary to the constitution and segregation.It is purposeful that the government keeps the races apart -for UMNO's own gain. Its time for real change we need to vote with a conscience. malaysian non-Malays must never vote for MIC or MCA or any componennt party of BN
Bible in English is one of IFC demands..it establishment meant to destroy Islam..look up wat is IFC
How can the printing the Bible in the national language, which is 'Malay', be seen as deliberate wounding of the religious sentiments of other persons? I find their excuse so lame and their mind to be narrow. If that is the case, is Pembela telling non-Malays that they should not be conversing in Malay? Is this what 1Malaysia is all about?
Yusri, I puke seeing your illogical statements and you should be charged under the Sedition Act for stirring up racial sentiments. With so many social, economical issues that is plaguing some society, you waste your time trying to be a hero for a bunch of narrow-minded idiots. It all boils down to whether if Malaysia is a secular or Islamic state. Constitutionally, Malaysia is a secular state with freedom of religion enshrined in the supreme law of the country. But since the days of TDM (Mahathir Mohamad the current senile mamak kutty), it is becoming more and more otherwise. Which is why the so-called little idiotic nothing better to do Napoleans as well as groups like Pembela and Perkasa can make such demands.


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Greg Neri, author of Yummy and Ghetto Cowboy, will be visiting the Champaign County Juvenile Detention Center on October 4th as part of the Youth Literature Festival. The Youth Literature Festival also has an open community day, with events and readings by a variety of authors. Here is a flier for the community event
We're very excited about Greg Neri's visit!


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A book that creates enormous divisions not only of opinion and judgment but also of experience is not necessarily a tremendously complex book, harboring chthonic rivers of underground meaning and moment. More likely, it is a work that draws on deeply disjointed cultural categories which will have variable resonance for varied readers: one element will rise to dominate the reader's experience, but its lack of common or ordinary connection to the other elements of the novel means that they will not necessarily rise with it, and will be either ignored or quickly forgotten.
Reading reviews of The Kindly Ones during and after my reading of the novel was a deeply estranging experience for me. Perhaps it is naïve of me, but I try very hard not to assume bad faith on the part of any reviewer—I assume that, absent a direct claim not to have read the entire book, they have at least given every page a decent glance. It was astounding to me, however, to find that even an ordinarily good reader can come away from this book with the unshakable belief that its "readers walk away remembering mostly the masturbation fantasies." I am not trying to accuse anyone of not having read the book; I believe that Garth Risk Hallberg and the others who have foregrounded either the sex or the brutality which Littell depicts were being completely honest—this is what they "walked away" with. (I have other problems with GRH's review—he seems to have been expecting The Holocaust, by Richard Yates, and is generally aggravated to come into contact with a voice that belongs to something less than a potential student at the Iowa Writing Workshop.)
But these sicknesses are not what I walked away with, though I do not believe I was predisposed to ignore them nor immured against them by prior reading. The discourse of "transgressive fiction" is one I am perhaps half-familiar with: I've tried it, but I generally can't stand it. I have been repelled a number of times by Kathy Acker, I can't really read Bataille, I find reading Genet unpleasant and Burroughs repugnant—I didn't even like Portnoy's Complaint for G-d's sake! I am a perfect square when it comes to literature. Yet I did not find the various sexual fantasies and interludes overbearing in this novel, and the scenes of intense violence are usually so brief that by the time your lungs have received the breath from your gasp, your eyes have moved past the sharpest words. My experience of reading the novel was not, I would say, determined by the inclusion of these supposedly transgressive elements, and I believe that I will mostly remember these only because so much fuss has been made about them. So Aue uses a tree to fuck himself—have you really read nothing more surprising than that?
I mostly tend to wonder what the outrage is about: I refuse to believe that no one remembers the scene in Portnoy's Complaint that Aue's infamous self-violation-via-sausage act is so obviously cribbing from, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned that there is a scene of coprophagy in another beast of a WWII novel, Gravity's Rainbow (I'm not misremembering that, am I?). Littell's "transgressions" haven't really broken new ground simply in terms of what they depict, and I would even argue that the context of these depictions—the Holocaust—has been for some time a less than pure space in literature. (Doesn't Nathan Zuckerman have a sexual fantasy about Anne Frank in The Ghost Writer?) And as for violence, as non-transgressive a work as Spielberg's Schindler's List seems to me to be far more dependent on the threat and pervasiveness of violence than Littell's novel; that movie relies immensely more on the suspenseful presentiments of violence than does The Kindly Ones. Every new frame in that film seems to promise wholesale murder; I turned relatively few pages in The Kindly Ones expecting to read a Holocaust-related death. War and war-related deaths do saturate the book, but no one considers that transgression, do they?
Reading Daniel Mendelsohn's review in the NYRB, I found that someone else at least noticed what I took to be the dominant mode of the novel: the meticulous mundane.
Indeed, the large success of the book, the way in which Littell draws us into Aue's mental world, has much to do with a striking technique he employs throughout, which is to integrate, with more and more insistence as the novel progresses, scenes of high horror (or scenes in which characters coolly discuss horrific acts or plans) with quotidian, even tedious stretches, conversations about petty military intrigues and official squabbling and so forth that go on and on, thereby weaving together the dreadful and the mundane in an unsettlingly persuasive way—the tedious somehow normalizing the dreadful, and the dreadful seeming to infect the tedious. (There is a remarkable and entirely characteristic passage, fairly early on, in which the topic of conversation among a group of officers yo-yos between extermination policy and the quality of the roast duck with apples and mashed potatoes that they're eating. "'Yes, excellent,' Oberländer approved. 'Is this a specialty of the region?'")I think this is right in impulse but wrong in diction. "Juxtaposition" has become almost overuseful for describing just about any act of combination, opposition, integration, amalgamation, or comparison. Mendelsohn starts talking about Littell's "integration" of brutality or references to brutality with petty talk and pettier intrigues, and goes on to use an even better word, "infect," and provides an excellent example of this technique in action. But then he backs off to the more generic "juxtaposition" which can mean as little as "placing things next to one another," leaving the dynamics and character of the relationship limp and unspecified. He tries to explain its nature after that, but the critical term "integration" has dropped out, and we are left imagining that violence and tedium simply sit beside one another like jars on a shelf, and that all Littell wants from his readers is to get used to (or numb to) the arrangement. I have more to say about what Littell does want to do with this "infection," but that will come in the second post.
At first these juxtapositions horrify, and you may resent what feels like a striving for shocking effects; but then you get used to them—the sheer length and banality of the "everyday" stretches (of which there are far too many: some readers will give up) numbs you after a while. But this is, of course, the point: Littell has written a Holocaust novel that renders evil just as banal as we have been told it is—which is to say, not "banal" in the sense of boring or ordinary, but banalisé : rendered quotidian, everyday, normal.
Mendelsohn ultimately does get back to the novel's sexual vulgarities, though he tries to account for them not as an exercise in authorial indulgence, but as part of a questionable decision to create a mythical substructure for the novel's historical narrative. Mendelsohn says this doesn't work. "Littell's insistence on developing the fantastical, the grotesque, and the motif of extreme sexual excess that grow out of his Orestes theme is clearly the result of a choice; and he himself has carefully planted clues about the meaning, and the justification, of that choice, one that has little to do with the Holocaust per se, or with novelizing history, and everything to do with something very French and very literary." Mendelsohn at this moment isn't very different from the Francophobia of Michiko Kakutani's review—"Look, you went all French and ruined it!"
He then proceeds down a reading of Blanchot which I'm not going to question: I've read the essay, and I don't think his interpretation is terrible, just kind of beside the point. I don't think that what attracted Littell to this particular Blanchot essay was its emphasis on transgression and freedom—there is a serious disconnect between what Blanchot refers to as Orestes's "innocence inside evil" and the character of Max Aue. Regardless, Mendelsohn wants to believe Littell found his particular image of his Orestes in Blanchot's interpretation of Sartre's appropriation—this seems far too constrained, too thirdhand for an author to draw the whole of his "large intellectual aim," it seems to me. Rather, I found the following quote to be particularly relevant:
If at certain moments one perceives a dissonance between the work and the myth inside which it resounds, this rupture, which was in any case probably desired by the writer, does not stem from an absence of initial unity, of some superficial imposition of new themes on the legendary story, but on the contrary from the extraordinary coincidence that allowed a completely new way of thinking to align with ancient truth with only a minimum of changes; thus the contradictions and differences of expression are made more obvious. (60 in the Mandell translation)Could this not describe The Kindly Ones itself better?
Mendelsohn is trying to read The Kindly Ones as if it is Ulysses and The Oresteia its Odyssey, as if we are supposed to be constantly monitoring the text for departures from its mythical foundation, as if we could find occult "clues" to recreate The Oresteia within The Kindly Ones. The nature of justice, the unfortunately human desire for domesticating the ghosts of the past—these are the truths locked in The Oresteia which Littell believes are coincidental to the truths about the Third Reich and about the conditions for genocide and mass death more generally. But they are not Aue's truths. In fact, there is a great deal in Blanchot's essay that I feel attaches much better to Aue than to Littell, but more on that later.
Mendelsohn is more right than he knows when he says "the overlaying of the Oresteia parallel, with its high intellectual allure and literary allusiveness [is] just the kind of thing that Max himself would appreciate." I absolutely loathe the type of criticism that treats every narrator as Nabokovian-level unreliable until proven otherwise, but we have to remember that the text we hold is Aue's creation, and, while he is nearly actuarial in his accounting for (most of) his actions as an SS officer, he was and remains absolutely bewildered by the possibility that he killed his mother and stepfather. I would never go so far as to say that we are to believe Aue invents elements (the spookily artificial Clemens and Weser, for instance) to create an Oresteian parallel to solace his guilty conscience, but I think we should see his hand in some of what gets told and how.
At any rate, Mendelsohn's argument grows incoherent: he thinks the depictions of sex and violence exist "not to somehow defend Aue because he is outside of morality, but to show us, horribly, what a life outside of morality looks, feels, sounds, and smells like"—if Aue is still "inside" morality, how does showing his life at its most graphic illustrate what a life outside of morality looks like? Doesn't it rather show how far a life still inside morality can be stretched from what we consider the norm or the average? And then Mendelsohn argues that what Littell really wants to do is "complet[e] Sartre's unfinished task, 'pushing the abjection far enough,' struggling to show 'impiety against real piety'—the 'piety,' in this case, being our own conventional pruderies and expectations of what a novel about Nazis might look like." When Mendelsohn does not repeat "real" as the adjective for "piety," he has lost the whole argument: Blanchot's point is that the gods of Les Mouches are not godly enough: surely, Mendelsohn can't be suggesting that our "pruderies" are an improvement, that our "expectations" constitute "real piety." There must be some other way of accounting for the presence of these ugly elements in the novel; ravishing our petit-bourgeois expectations and pruderies would not take nearly 1,000 pages, nor would it be well-served by forests of pages devoted to the minutiae of Nazi bureaucracy.
The Nation had the shocking intuition that having a historian read the book might be a good idea, and not just any historian, but Samuel Moyn, a professor at Columbia who has published a book titled A Holocaust Controversy, and whose "research interests are in modern European intellectual history, with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, historical and critical theory, and sometimes Jewish studies" (his Wikipedia page). So, in other words, a guy who should be able to call bullshit on Littell pretty effectively, if that is indeed the case.
Moyn suggests that it isn't the case, but that like Aue's complaint about Eichmann's violin playing, "he didn't make any mistakes, but didn't seem to understand that that wasn't enough." In this case, though, Moyn is faulting Littell not for a lack of imagination but a profusion of it; he argues that Littell's accuracy doesn't counterbalance the extreme idiosyncrasy of the narrator's persona:
The details are assured throughout, and--despite the irritation of some European historians--Littell is rather impressively up to date; at times the novel reads like a fictional précis of the most recent scholarly research on the Third Reich. To take just one example, Aue's scattered reflections on the Soviet invasion as a colonial project, and how it might compare with its American, British and French precedents, comport with my colleague Mark Mazower's masterful Hitler's Empire, published last year.I think that Moyn is actually downplaying the importance of the historical facts for the effect of the narrative, but perhaps his familiarity with the facts has dulled the feeling of slight surprise and piqued interest that I had in reading the sections, for example, about Germany's colonial aspirations for the Ostministerium. Littell's inclusion of up-to-date scholarly interpretations of the relevant history, I feel, greatly enriches the novel and deepens its relevance, particularly on the question of colonialism and its relation to violence. (Speaking of which, I'd like to point out that Moyn too finds the shock reactions to the novel's violence overstated: "Actually, almost no violence is depicted in the novel, at least outside Aue's family"—I wouldn't go that far, but I'm relieved to see someone else didn't think they had the script to Hostel 4 in their hands.)
But in the end, no matter how absorbing, Littell's thousand pages are hardly an easy or obvious substitute for historical scholarship or narrative history. The chronicle Aue presents is told from his idiosyncratic and self-interested point of view; more important, it is entangled with his wholly fictional--and perhaps even more gripping--personal story. There is too much else going on for "real" history to be the main event.
I don't find Moyn's conclusion that Littell's book is valuable insofar as it re-energizes the "mystery of [the] connection" between the personal and the political to be compelling or necessary. Aue's frequent invocations of the concept of "total war" bring that point home loud and clear, but not in such a way that this theme could become the moral pearl we are meant to extract from the scaly jaws of the narrative.
Moyn also insists upon an interpretation that Aue "stands for Nazism as a whole. Indeed, at several critical points, Aue tries to link his family story with the larger saga of his nation." This claim splits along an interesting line: Aue does try to shape his family narrative into a parallel for Germany's history, but he also is challenged on a number of occasions with not being sufficiently German—his mother is French (Alsatian, he protests). Indeed, his mixed heritage provides him with unique perspectives and abilities; it is his mother's heritage that allows him to hide after the war, passing as a Frenchman. And I do not believe it is for nothing that Littell insists on sending Aue back to Paris to reacquaint himself with Maurras and other members of the right-wing press. Aue is no perfect Adrian Leverkuhn or Oskar Matzerath, an exact metaphor for the Faustian bargain and horrifying deformation of National Socialism. If Aue is a symbol or a figure for some abstract category, it is either buried deeper or spread over more than Mitteleuropa. He is less a German than a European, and I do not imagine Littell wants us to stop there. Moyn's eagerness to contain Aue in German history writes off the many ways The Kindly Ones makes clear that the "World" in World War II was not just a victor's boast.
Moyn is, however, one of the only reviewers to point out what was to me a fairly crucial fact for the reading of The Kindly Ones, a point that is foregrounded with almost exclusive attention in the author biography on the book's dust jacket: prior to beginning a career as a writer, Littell spent seven years working for the NGO Action Against Hunger (or Action Contre la Faim), working in (according to his Wikipedia page), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya, the Congo, Sierra Leone, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Moscow.
I do not understand how one can simply neglect to talk about this aspect of Littell's personal history—is it not the most basic background and most likely impulse for the writing of a novel about mass murder, a great deal of which was the result or the corollary of starvation? To ignore or pass over the novel's overwhelming prevalence of malnutrition, hunger, and starvation in favor of some relatively isolated scenes of (nonetheless intense) violence is to miss an enormous part of the novel's substance, meaning, intention, and effect. I cannot imagine that Littell did not fail to note that the first word of his group's name—Action, in French or English—is the very term used by the SS to designate the project of extermination. To miss the reason this single word could be used for such horrifyingly different ends is to have missed the novel, whole and entire.


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Steve Sage – Rock, Rhythm and Blues
Date: 07/13/2014 Time: 2:00 PM - (Click the poster to view full screen) iCal RSS
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Steve is best known for creating and sustaining the 'Rock, Rhythm & Blues' program at Diablo Valley College, a program that has helped groom many professional players over the past 20 years. Steve has degrees from Musicians Institute (GIT) 1983, and Cal State East Bay (Theory/Composition) 1993. He has taught at Diablo Valley College, the Musicians Institute (GIT), Skyline College, the Guitar Institute of London, Guitar Activity Center and San Francisco State University.
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University Games
I Have
Click here for larger image.
First grade teach, Pamela Myers, invented the I Have card game more than 20 years ago as a fun, engaging way to teach reading to her students at The San Francisco School. It's fast moving fun! I have a frog! Who has an elephant? If you have the right cards and the right speed - you win! I Have is fun for kids to play with friends and for parents to play with their children!
For 2 - 4 players, ages 3 and up.
Contents Include: 1 Game Board, 48 Animal Cards, 4 Moving Tokens, Spinner and Instructions.


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This just in: Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) is a serious option for income investors. Apple stock pays a 3% dividend yield right now thanks to a combination of flagging share prices and a modest policy boost in April's quarterly check.
If Apple were a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI ) , how would its stock stack up against its fellow income-generators? Let's find out.
Apple would boast an above-average yield among the current 30 Dow stocks, but not by a large margin. The average Dow dividend yields 2.7%. That's just below the median yield of 2.85% offered by oil giant ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM ) . The iPhone maker would rank in 12th place among a hypothetical 31-member Dow.
How about ranking the Dow by dividend increases? Apple boosted its dividend by 15% with just more than a year of payout history under it's belt, which would be the eighth-most generous raise of the past year. The average one-year boost sits exactly at 15% but is heavily skewed by Cisco Systems' more than doubling of its payout policy. Remove the top and bottom boosts, as they do when counting style points in Olympic events, and the adjusted average would be just 12.9%.
So far, so good. If Apple can keep its yield north of 2.7% while raising payouts at least 13% per year, the stock will be a better dividend play than your average Dow ticker. But can Apple afford to do all that?
The average Dow member funnels roughly 48% of its free cash flow into dividend payouts. Several of them pump nearly their entire cash flows right back into shareholders' pockets. This is particularly popular in mature industries where all the easy growth was had decades ago.
Exxon is a bit of an anomaly, as the company manages to stick close to the Dow average here, dishing out 45.7% of its free cash, while the broader oil industry tends to jump around at the whim of changing petroleum prices. Fellow oil-producer Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) isn't so lucky, spending 86% of its free cash on dividend checks. The roles were the same a year earlier, though the magnitudes were different: Chevron invested 41.8% of its 2011 cash flow in dividends, while Exxon's ratio was an even lower 37%.
Apple plays in a completely different league here. Cupertino pulled in $50.9 billion in operating cash over the last four quarters and spent just $8.3 billion on capital improvements. Only 5.8% of the resulting $42.6 billion in free cash flow was directed to the brand-new dividend policy.
For some added context, fellow tech stock Cisco put 14.6% of its trailing free cash flow into dividends. If you're looking for stocks with plenty of headroom to increase their dividends, Silicon Valley would be a good place to start.
So there you have it. Assuming Apple's business doesn't fall to pieces in the next few years, the company's rich cash flows will buy Cupertino a place near every income investor's cash-loving heart. The yield is already rich, dividend increases started out on the right track, and Apple has headroom like Peter Dinklage driving an Escalade.
If you're looking for some long-term investing ideas, you're invited to check out The Motley Fool's brand-new special report, "The 3 Dow Stocks Dividend Investors Need." It's absolutely free, so simply click here now and get your copy today.


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I've heard _overcoming gravity_ by Steven Low is the best book for upper body gymnastic type strength work. Haven't read it myself though
Hi all,
Just purchased a set of adjustable gymnastic rings and wanted to say that they are a great bit of portable kit, I have been using them to do the basic program of "your are your own gym" and the instability of the rings adds to the exercises.
I have them set up out the back door and they are easy to adjust to throw in a few chin ups on the way out or a quick 10min work outs of chin ups followed by supported hangs and dips and then done into upright rows, let me ins and down low for a plank type hold and flys.
Other bonus is the kids luv them as well and they are out there hanging about and trying to do chin ups etc.
Anyone else using rings? any one recommend a good book or site with basic work-outs I slowly building back up my strength with hangs and leg raises and would luv to work up to the iron cross...
Cheers FBF
"Times fun when you are having Flies" Kermit the frog
I've heard _overcoming gravity_ by Steven Low is the best book for upper body gymnastic type strength work. Haven't read it myself though
Rings are great...best way to do dips as well much harder than on a bar.
Eating primal is not a diet, it is a way of life.
Don't forget to play!
I've a set of rings and they are loads of fun. A 100 page workout book was included with the rings so I mainly use that when looking for ideas.
love rings.. I do three times a week.
check out gymnasticbodies.com
This thread got me looking into Ring Workouts. Looks like a great way to do bodyweight LHT. Does anyone do Ring Workouts? How is it for you?
I got a pair of these off Amazon recently - but I need to find a good place to use them - I had an incident on my door-pullup station, so I'm a bit wary of using them on that, even though I did just update that to a better Iron Gym!
I have done muscle ups, ring pushups and dips and they are great - just need to find a way to do them more often!!
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Haven't read it myself though


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JD Enterprises F-8 Crusader /Stumax fan E-conversion
I meant for this thread to be a BUILD thread but it came out as a discussion thread.
This thread will be concerned with the JD Enterprises F-8 Crusader.
The JDE F-8 was built for the gas DF but this model was built by JDE for E-power and setup for the Stumax 110 fan , 1915-1Y Neu motor, CC 110HV controller and XPS 12s lipos. This is the link to the Stumax fan:
I haven't made up my mind on which servos I will use but I do know they will be JRs(suggestions welcome). The LG also is up in the air but I am leaning to using the Lardo electric Actuators if I can make them work with JDE struts...if not I will use Robart struts.
This plane will be built in a "concept" paint......in other words there was never a full sized F-8 which was painted like my F-8 will be done....sort of a "Black Ops" gunfighter look. Here is a drawing of pretty much what the plane will look like except for some red marking under the wing so my old eyes can see the plane in flight. I will be using vinyl marking which will be custom cut for my plane by Bad Brad Graphics: http://badbradgraphics.com/
Finally got here and just had a little hanger rash on the wings.....JDE packed the plane very well. I haven't weighted the plane dry yet but will do so soon. I was surprised the kit didn't come with a parts package but that is fine as I usually can those included parts and use my own. Looks like an easy build. I will need to convert the canopy from screws to the BVM latches so I can change out lipos easier.
I can't see anyway I can install intake ducting. The intake is very small and the nose gear would also be in the way. SO.......I will probably cut out the louvers in the top of the fuselage/wing for more air to the Stumax. I should build up an intake lip for the fan( wish Stu had one available for sale).
I haven't made up my mind if I should do the plane in a dull Black,Gray, silver or a shiney Black, Gray, silver......leaning toward a dull paint.
The plane should be light enough for the Stumax on 12s to haul butt. I am looking forward to the first flight.
No ducting? How did the GDF breath? Cheater holes?
Try and post some pics of the guts so people can try and get different ideas of the intake ducting issue. Looks like a big fuse. Man your flight times will go up a ton if you can find a way to squeez ducting in somehow.
I agree that there looks to be more than enough intake size on that plane, judging by the pic posted. It would need to snake up a bit to make some room for the nose gear, or you can do as JHH does on the A-7, and make a hump in the duct where the gear sits. Even if it's only 80-90% FSA it would be much better than no ducting and lots of cheater holes.
the F-8 Corsair
i have just been working with the corsair to see if it was a possible bird to do scale.
Could you post the weight of the components and some photos too.
JD has some interesting models.
Very cool project! I like the paint scheme too. Shame it didn't come with a parts kit. What are your plans for the canopy? Did they include molded clear panels?
No greg there an hour from me! lol My buddy has one of these from way back, FSA is not a prob. The prob is actually like an F-16 in that the opening does determine FSA or path but the grea former(not even the wheel was in the way) is what dictates what can pass back. For Stumax you wont have a prob though, if it was 120 then you would be fighting for FSA from 4 inches in the inlet and back. Love that Paint!!! Nice project.
Hi Madmax,
I just realize now that you started this already!
I will follow with interest since looks like this is a big model for the Stumax and also because my F-15 will have similar powerplant.
As others has stated before I think the FSA will not be a problem, the stumax works well at just 100% and it is a small fan after all.
I don't know if the full size F-8 had 90° rotating nose gear like the F-16, but this could be a solution to minimize the interference between the gear and the air duct if any!
Well from most planes like this the wheel is never the problem cause its well enough back, but usually the 3/4 inch or so tall gear block and a former in the same height range is right inside the intake opening. so its not just there size but there size so close to opening. The JHH A-7 was like this, the wheel itself was just not a prob, but the much lower yet far forward bulkhead was more in the way. But still not nearly as in the way as just about every F-16 I've seen or done. The gear itself was nowhere near a problem, but the former and front edge of retract is just mere inches inside lip in an area that cannot run uphill yet.
One can always use the BVM mechanical nose gear unit, that one is low profile and should make life easier getting it all to fit.
Since I have not begun any building yet I can't answer the question on if the front ducting will work. The opening is about 60mm x 104mm (this is approximately the measurement) because the nose cone takes some of the space. The big problem would be the nose wheel taking up space and making the intake less than a straight shot. If you look at the parts layout in my photo above you will see the cover which goes over the wing and top of the fuselage. This piece has louvers (as the real F-8 had)and these can be cut out to allow air to the fan....you can call the louvers cheater holes if you want but the full sized plane had the louvers. I have PMed Stu(as in Stumax) asking his advice on the fan install.
There is no former in the way between the front intake and the fan and the nosewheel is attached to a block setup in the bottom of the fuselage. If I can somehow find a nosegear setup which will not block the intake I will of course install one.
I am not new to E-power planes but am new to EDFs. That said I have no experience with FSA. Do you guys believe that the area of 104mm x 60mm would be enought for the Stumax fan?
One can always use the BVM mechanical nose gear unit
Thanks Blakseth on the advice concerning the BVM nose gear unit....I will check it out.
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NGCS Focus Group – 2nd September 2010 – 2.00 pm Ofcom
Agenda item (1) Introductions and review of minutes:
Justin Hornby
Cable&Wireless Worldwide - Chair
Markham Sivak
Geoff Brighton
Alex Littlemore
Simon Newton
4D Interactive
Sean Hartley
Rickard Granberg
Carphone Warehouse
Laurent Pariat
Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Peter Farmer
Colin Scott
Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Alistair Dixon
Jeff Loan
Kath Embleton
Sandra Reid
By telephone:
|Kulshal Sareen
Lesa Green
BT Agilemedia
Agenda (2): PhonepayPlus Code Update.
Alex Littlemore presented an update to the group in relation to PhonepayPlus progress with developments for their next code of practice. The slides used will be distributed with these minutes.
PhonepayPlus intends to publish Guidance Notes in conjunction with the code. The contents of these notes will be consulted upon. Publication of the consultation is expected in the Autumn.
The Code itself requires a few minor changes and then it will be submitted to the European Commission for their approval. It was requested that the version of the code published on the ECs website should be made available to industry by PhonepayPlus and Ofcom.
Alex confirmed that the timescale for the new Code will correspond with the introduction of the registration database and will be in the first part of 2011. A competitive tender for the registration database is being held with the chosen supplier expected to be in place during October. Anticipated annual cost for registration during the first year is expected to be in the region of 100 with costs adjusted in future years.
Andy Martin queried the thinking behind the award of refunds to consumers and said that this would involve the Service Providers refunding more money than they had received. Jeff Loan confirmed that the intention was for this sanction to be punitive and that Service Providers should refund the entire retail cost. It is only likely to be used in the most serious cases of consumer harm.
Alistair Dixon asked how the obligations between Level 1 and Level 2 providers were changing. Alex explained that there was no direct correlation between the current Service Provider / Information Provider designations and the new Level 1 / Level 2. The new Code is based upon guidance rather than strict rules, with a bias towards flexibility rather than stringent obligation. Alistair countered that this was likely to make regulation more awkward to implement.
Agenda (3): Update / progress report on the current 'live' NTS related consultations / investigations:
- NTS Retail Uplift
Ofcoms agent BDO, is still awaiting receipt of further information from BT. The consultation document is now likely to be published in October with responses by the New Year.
- 080 Termination Rate Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) Appeal
Geoff Brighton announced that Ofcom is to appeal the CAT decision to find BTs economic evidence admissible to the Court of Appeal. Submissions to the court needed to be made by 26th August. At the same time Ofcom is continuing to work towards the CAT deadline of 30th September to submit information for their case to the CAT.
- 0845 / 0870 Termination Rate Dispute
Geoff confirmed that any company wishing to appeal this decision to the CAT has until 11th October to do so.
Andy questioned whether the Ofcom determination in this case applied to the tiered rates introduced by other companies. Geoff indicated that this was not the case and that the determination did not apply to everyone, although it did contain strong pointers as to how Ofcom would deal with any future dispute. Ofcom will look at individual cases upon their merits and decide at that point whether or not to accept a dispute.
Peter Farmer indicated his belief that it would be presumptuous and premature for any operator to withdraw their tiered pricing at this stage. Operators should accrue for the charges as bad debt until the final 080 CAT decision is made.
Rickard Granberg asked BT whether they continued to invoice the mobile operators directly. Sean confirmed that was the case.
- NGCS Review
Markham Sivak began his update by saying that changes in personnel within the NGCS Review team meant that publication of the consultation document was now likely to be the end of October. Ofcom is still exploring the possibilities offered by unbundled tariff structures, tariff capping and information remedies. A first draft version of the document is now in existence.
Markham voiced a preference for the unbundled structure i.e. a two-part structure to charges: a service charge (termination rate) and an access charge (origination, retail and transit). Under this plan items such as Bad Debt would be for the OCP to cover in the profit margin of the access charge. Changes would be needed to transit charges where they are currently made in a non-intuitive direction.
Price points for each of the services will also be looked at and whether the current effective caps are at the right levels.
Ofcom view access charging as the key to competition. Their proposal is for a relatively simple structure e.g. a single charge presented at the point of sale - 1.50pm + access charge. The model itself is used in SMS and French PRS at the moment.
Kath Embleton challenged how this improved transparency for consumers as they would now have two prices to consider, whilst for industry it was little different to the current POLO and retail charges.
Markham believed the option provided the minimum level of intervention from Ofcom whilst allowing competition within the market. The main issue Ofcom saw was that it was an after market in that consumers couldnt identify the cost before making a purchase but rather only once the service had been bought. Any new Access charge would allow consumers to more clearly distinguish between the currently hidden charges on top of the service charge.
Pre-call announcements remained a real possibility for some services, although the requirement is likely to move from the originating to the terminating party. Announcements could be used in conjunction with an increase to the current maximum 1.50 tariff.
Ofcom intend s to carry out further working group tests of its proposals. The main issue to date has been fear of the cost of the services rather than the actual cost of the services themselves. Often this is an irrational fear as the costs do not reflect those fears.
The specific example of 0845 was raised. Markham voiced a preference for keeping the range as revenue sharing. Any pricing restrictions would apply to all operators although there could potentially be a fixed / mobile differentiation to cater for origination costs.
An alternative could be a fixed cap across all operators for each number range. However Ofcom foresees this resulting in a number of disputes as operators jockey for their share of the revenues. Price competition would still be possible even though a maximum tariff was set as seen in the DQ market where different services are offered at various price points. Ofcom will still consider price capping if competition within the market fails.
Alistair queried Ofcoms position in terms of a market review. Markham confirmed that there were no plans for Ofcom to conduct one, although it wasnt ruled out if the current plans didnt work. Ofcoms main concern is the consumer experience and in this context the removal of regulation was seen as being neither straightforward nor self-evident.
In response to Rickard, Markham indicated that there were no immediate plans to remove SMP Condition AAA11 from BT ahead of other changes. That was not to say that BT would not have other conditions in place to balance the market, but Ofcom is not intending to remove everything. Markham gave an open invitation to anyone wishing to have a longer discussion on SMP.
Colin Scott raised concerns regarding the need for the Service Charge to reflect differing levels of interconnection in the industry. This is needed to recognise the different levels of network interconnection and build investment across the industry. Conveyance he saw as being an origination cost requirement and that it was possible the changes could lead to higher consumer charges and become inflationary. Markham saw the changes to the EU framework as being significant in this respect and mentioned that a consultation on the changes was expected this month.
Agenda Item (4): Implementation by BT of the 4th January 2010 increase in VAT
Discussion was held on the forthcoming VAT changes and Ofcom announced that a decision had been made not to amend the Numbering Plan in order to allow BT to pass the increase through to consumers rather than impact inpayments to TCPs and Service Providers. Concern was raised by a number of Forum members over this decision and the inevitable disputes it would cause. Members were invited to write to Ofcom with their concerns.
AP SEP 01 - Operators concerned by VAT increase to write to Ofcom expressing issues.
Agenda Item (5): Revised Terms of Reference
Justin suggested a number of minor administrative changes to the current ToR. These were accepted and will be issued with the minutes.
AP SEP 02 - Revised ToR to be issued.
As part of this discussion the nature of the Forums membership was also discussed. It was decided that this should remain as being those Network Operators with an interconnection to BT.
Agenda Item (6): Review of remaining outstanding actions
There were no outstanding actions to review.
Agenda Item (7): AOB
- 1st October OCCN
Laurent Pariat asked when these changes were to be expected. Sean indicated that the changes would be made and backdated to the date of the OCCN, it was just a question of timing. It was suggested that the changes could be bundled with the VAT changes. The exact timing was complicated by the fact that many operators hadnt signed the PRS Bad Debt OCCN. Colin asked if it could be split into two OCCNs, one for PRS and one for everything else.
Sean agreed to look into this but said that internal advice had been that the OCCNs couldnt be split in this way.
AP SEP 03 - Sean to advise whether it is possible to split PRS OCCN from the other ranges in light of the PRS Bad Debt issue.
Date of Next Meeting: 14th October 2010
Summary of New and Outstanding Actions:
Operators concerned by VAT increase to write to Ofcom expressing issues.
Revised ToR to be issued.
Sean to advise whether it is possible to split PRS OCCN from the other ranges in light of the PRS Bad Debt issue.


text:
Top Definition
The V-8 crowd. Usually inhabiting corners of autoparts stores, feed stores, hardware stores, ect, constantly talking shit on "import" style cars. Commonly refering to 4 cyl cars as slow. Oblivious to the fact that 4 bangers can have double the HP, tq, and gasmileage of any stock to moderatly modified mustang camaro, TA, ect with Mild modification. having twice the HP per cylender, power to weight ration. coining the title, for being known as stupid ignorant wankers.
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by Adam March 19, 2005
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Can you define these popular missing words?
Someone with a piss-fart 4 cylinder turbo charged car that drives around the roads at night time revving the tits off them, hoping somebody will notice them. Often involves driving 'round and 'round the same block or circuit numerous times hoping for someone to think they are cool.
This is usually due to lack of penis size and engine cubic inches.
This is usually due to lack of penis size and engine cubic inches.
There goes another wastegate wanker.
by GravelRash November 17, 2003


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WineAccess Travel Log
Read stories from the world's greatest wine trails.
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2006 Montes Purple Angel Carmenere Colchagua Valley
Producer: Montes
Style: Red Wine
Grape Type: Carmenere
Origin: Chile
Region: Chile
92 Points | Stephen Tanzer's IWC - March/April 2009
($71; includes 8% petit verdot) Glass-staining ruby. Pungent scents of red and dark berry preserves are complicated by musky herbs, cracked pepper and potpourri, with a suave undercurrent of oak spices. Sweet, pliant blackberry and candied cherry flavors are framed by velvety tannins and given a tangy edge by a bright minerality that builds on the finish. This will reward patience but is pretty delicious right now.
91 Points | Wine Spectator
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PAX Aus day one, Live from the show floor
Halfbrick studios
Halfbrick are a Brisbane-based dev, and are behind the hits Fruit Ninja (500 million downloads) and Jetpack Joyride (100 million downloads). They spoke of their development process, the importance of strong communication between development, marketing and gamers, and the benefits of supporting their games for long periods of time. The also announced their next game, "Colossatron", where you get to play as an alien mech monster on a rampage to destroy the Earth. It's still in development (8 months in now) but there was a playable demo at the show, and Live can report it's good fun.
Halfbrick also confirmed that no fruit is safe in their studio, but ninjas need not worry.
Xbox One
Microsoft have a sizeable presence at PAX Aus, with a presentation on each day talking up their Xbox One. Not surprisingly, Microsoft talked up the next-gen Kinect at their presentation, highlighting that it could potentially reflect your expressions in the character you're playing on-screen, and talking about things like measuring your heartbeat using Kinect then using that to vary the strength of the rumble in the game.
They also had live demos of Killer Instinct, Battlefield 4 and Ryse. Live's bro is a fighting game fan, and reports that Killer Instinct looked pretty good and was clearly skill-based, which will be good news for fighting game fans. The Battlefield 4 demo was the same level as E3, but was played differently, highlighting the more sandbox-like nature of the game. Sadly, Ryse still looked mediocre. Which is to say, visually it looked great, but the gameplay seemed slow and clunky, nothing like a Ninja Gaiden or God of War.
Pics from show floor
Aussie Indie Devs took advantage of the show to highlight their wares, and get in touch with the fans.
It wouldn't be a gaming show without one of the most-played games in existence today.
Steelseries looking slick.
There were, of course, booth babes. Less than in the past though, as gaming becomes more mainstream. World of Tanks was the only mob that had them in any numbers and they at least brought a tank as well.
The ever-popular 3DS was making its mark.
Sam Fisher drives (advertises?) in style.
And there'll be lots more!
There are two days of PAX Aus to go, and Live will be getting plenty of more info for us. Look for more info tomorrow, then a feature or two after the show's over and Live's had a chance to catch her breath.
Author: I_live_4_fun, Axe99


text:
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Growing up in Queens during the early 1980s, Adrien Brody had two eight-track tapes that he listened to over and over -- one of Tchaikovsky's music, the other Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
But it was the new musical idiom taking shape right there in his urban environment that ultimately commanded his attention.
"Hip-hop really did have such a profound effect on me at that age. It affected everything and I identified with it," said the actor during an interview earlier this week in Manhattan's Regency Hotel. "For a younger mind I think it's probably more hypnotic and you get into a zone with it. It cuts to the chase."
For Brody, it still does.
"I kind of outgrew at a certain point a lot of the message that was within the music, but the music itself I love and embrace and create, not only hip-hop tracks but music that's derived from that style of sequencing, with the repetitive aspects but on a more musical level," he said. "It's never left me."
In the new movie "Cadillac Records" hip-hop is nowhere to be heard, being several decades removed from the film's time period. But Brody portrays a man who stood at the cusp of another musical revolution.
Leonard Chess, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, was the co-founder of Chess Records, which in 1950s Chicago was instrumental in finding African American blues artists, particularly Muddy Waters (played by Jeffrey Wright), who could cross over to a America just starting to discover rock 'n' roll.
"In that time black men and women had fewer opportunities. Listen, an impoverished Jewish guy didn't have many opportunities either, to be fair. Essentially, the relationship between Muddy and Leonard is this coalition between two impoverished cultures. Both strived for success and appreciation and respect and created something beautiful in America," said Brody.
"He managed to step into the forefront of the recording industry and make blues mainstream music," said the actor of the man he portrays. "It wasn't, and that's pretty phenomenal."
Artists such as Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter were associated with Chess Records in the 1950s and '60s, but it's Chess's discovery of the singer Etta James that constitutes the film's high points. James is played by singer/actress Beyonce Knowles.
"This movie couldn't get made, especially at Sony, without Beyonce's involvement. It hedges the bet, I guess, right? She has a following and she's a talented singer," said Brody. But working with Beyonce, Brody found more than just a singer.
"You wouldn't know that she would bring such emotional depth and sincerity and vulnerability to her role, and that was what impressed me so much," he said.
"It was very evocative to sit there and watch her sing. It was not acting on my part to feel that emotional connection, and imagining discovering an artist like that. Waves of emotion flow over you, and that's a blessing."
There's in fact talk of Beyonce earning an Oscar nomination for her performance in "Cadillac Records," which would represent a meteoric rise for the singer's acting ambitions, but Brody knows all about being discovered early. He won an Oscar five years ago, although he disputes the perception that he was discovered overnight.
"Most of the members of my union live under the poverty line with their earnings from acting and I experienced that for many years. I did nothing but small, independent movies, I earned scale and lived very, very modestly in an effort to not be a slave to my possessions," said the actor.
"For the most part I try to do movies that I would want to see, but sometimes a role is so special that it overshadows any of that and perhaps is so challenging that it will attract me to a project that I wouldn't necessarily think I would go for."
That would include his Oscar-winning portrayal of a Holocaust survivor for director Roman Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, in "The Pianist."
"It's not a subject that I was actively seeking out. It's a very obviously painful journey to portray a man who goes through such hell and represent his life and also be sensitive to how deeply that has affected so many people's lives, including my director's," said Brody.
"So the challenge was great, but it was an opportunity to force myself to do some really hard work and work with a brilliant man who knew the material intimately. And it was the right decision."
Brody then followed that up with something completely different, starring in Peter Jackson's huge remake of "King Kong" in 2005.
"I would definitely have done 'King Kong' at any point in my career. It's not a result of getting a level of acclaim. It's obviously not a sellout movie because I love Peter Jackson, he's an incredibly talented man and it was a fascinating process. It was a sensitive, intelligent, leading-man role in the biggest movie Universal ever made, I don't know who wouldn't take that role," he said.
Although "King Kong" came with a big paycheck as well as a big profile, Brody claims to not be motivated by that aspect of show business, but rather "connecting on a deep level to someone who is other than myself."
Said the actor, "I do try to live within my means and not make choices because they're there. There's so many layers in every little thing that exists that if you allow yourself to be present it's such a full existence."


text:
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Tag Archives: beacon
Robert Whitman's 'Passport,' in Two States at Once – NYTimes.com
Nice article in the Times about Whitman's latest piece. I built and ran the video network that connected the two locations for the performance. Scenes from each location were transmitted and shown live in the other location. Robert Whitman's 'Passport,' … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Art(Ware), Streaming and Multi-Media, Video Tagged art, beacon, dia, montclair, performance, streaming, Video, whitman Leave a comment