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Tolling in Colorado
Information on the I-25 Express Lanes, public-private partnerships and other innovative and efficient means of completing surface transportation infrastructure projects.
- I-25 HOV Express Lanes
- Express Lanes maximize the efficiency of HOV lanes by moving more people not more cars. Express Lanes allow those who drive alone (also known as "single occupant vehicles") to use the Express Lanes if they pay a toll or to travel as a carpooler for free, using a switchable transponder.
- High-Performance Transportation Enterprise (HPTE)
- The business purpose of the Transportation Enterprise is to pursue public-private partnerships and other innovative and efficient means of completing surface transportation infrastructure projects.
- Colorado Tolling Enterprise
- The Colorado Tolling Enterprise (CTE) is no longer in existence and has been replaced by the High Performance Transportation Enterprise. Documents and reports from the CTE can be found here.
- E-470 Public Highway Authority
- The E-470 Public Highway Authority ("Authority") consists of eight member jurisdictions: Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas counties and the cities of Aurora, Brighton, Commerce City, Thornton, Centennial, and the town of Parker. Affiliate, non-voting members are the cities of Arvada, Broomfield and Greeley, and Weld County. Ex-officio members are the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) and the Regional Transportation District (RTD). "Public Highway Authorities" are established by local jurisdictions under title 43 article 4 of state statutes.
- Northwest Parkway
- The Northwest Parkway is a 75-mile per hour toll road that seamlessly connects I-25 at E-470 in the north metro Denver area, with U.S. 36 and State Highway 128 in Broomfield. The Parkway is a 100% privately funded road. For more details on the Northwest Parkway, please visit their website.


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Photo CharitiesWe are a true believer in supporting charities, good causes, good people and the less fortunate. One of the most obvious and easiest ways to contribute is to give money. With the economy being the way that it is, that is quite difficult for most people to do. The next best thing is to give your time. This is something that most of us can do. We have found the following photography related charities, and hope that you will 1) take the time to read about them, 2) forward this on to your photographer friends and, 3) go sign up and get involved!
Flashes of Hope"Flashes of Hope is a nonprofit organization that changes the way children with cancer and other life threatening illnesses see themselves through the gift of photography and raises money for pediatric cancer research." Website: http://www.flashesofhope.org/
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"Introduces remembrance photography to parents suffering the loss of a baby with the free gift of professional portraiture. We believe these images serve as an important step in the family's healing process by honoring their child's legacy." Website: http://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/
Think Pink Photography
"Think Pink Photography is a charitable organization, comprised of a network of professional photographers, serving two main purposes – celebrating life and supporting the cause. We celebrate life through complimentary portrait sessions for breast cancer patients, and we support the cause by partnering with the Eric R. Beverly Family Foundation." Website: http://thinkpinkphotography.org/
Operation: Love Reunited
Pictures of Hope Foundation"The Pictures of Hope Foundation is a charitable organization comprised of professional photographers from all over the United States and Canada that provides complimentary, documentary-style photography services to families with a child in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)." Website: http://www.picturesofhopefoundation.org/
Celebrating Adoption"We are a group of photographers who want to share the joy of adoption by celebrating with newly adoptive parents." Website: http://www.celebratingadoption.org/
The American Child Photographers Charity Guild"A non-profit, volunteer based organization of child photographers across the nation who have networked together to provide families of desperately ill children complimentary portrait sessions." Website: http://www.acpcg.org/
In addition to presenting you with a little overview of the charities themselves, we asked a few photographers who are currently involved with one or more of the above charities to explain a little about why they volunteer their time and services.
"As photographers, we all know how hard it is to come by extra money. Making monetary donations is often difficult because our cost of doing business is tied to technology; every spare dollar we have goes to software, computers, or digital equipment enhancements. The reality: what we have the ability to offer goes well beyond the value of the money we have to spare. We have the ability to create images that capture the personality of a individual, capture a memory, or the images that convey a message -any of these can be used for the good of organizations that rely on donations.
My studio supports Flashes of Hope, and we have been shooting for this organization for five years. We donate our time and skill to give families struggling through the torment of childhood cancer what is all too often the last portrait they have of their child and their family. We do it because it feels good to share our abilities. We do it because we should.
I always suggest to photographers that they should think about some charitable cause that may have meaning to them and their personal lives: starvation, breast cancer, mental illness, childhood diseases, or any other topic that holds a deeper meaning for them. Chances are there is an organization out there that relies on donations to research, support, or reach out for their cause. They should reach out to that organization and become useful. If nothing else, at the end of the day - no matter how good or bad business has been - it is a way they can truly feel good about their self and their business."
- Patrick Williams, PWP Studio: http://pwpstudio.com/
" I eagerly await my opportunity to help someone with a gift that I have been given. I think it's important to not only embrace the gifts that you are given, but to give back with those same gifts. To give back to those who could really use a wonderful portrait of a chapter in their lives, to mark a break through, strength, love and all the other emotions that encompass that situation. To also give back to a community that will help build your company up and make it strong, I think it is the least we can do to say thank you to these wonderful and beautiful people.
One of the two photography charities that I have personally decided to devote my time to is Think Pink Photography, which offers photography sessions to those strong women who are going through and have overcome breast cancer, a cancer that has affected my family personally. I think that there would be nothing better then giving a woman who is struggling with this cancer a different viewpoint of her situation; a view that she is beautiful, strong and worth the fight. Every woman wants to feel and look beautiful no matter what, and I want to be able to capture that for these beautiful and strong women who are faced with breast cancer.
The second charity that I decided to work with is called Operation Love reunited, which is a charity for those soldiers out there that are fighting for our freedom everyday and their families. To take a portrait of a strong solider and his/her family that they are able to keep with them and take along with them where ever they may find themselves. To give them hope that they will once again be back home with their family, and to give the family the same strength and hope. These are the people who are fighting and giving their lives for our freedom, and this is my way of saying thank you."
- Jillian McGrath: http://www.jillianmcgrath.com
* UPDATE: There are more charities we have written about since this article and can all be found at Help Portrait and Hearts Apart.

subset: commoncrawl


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Animal rights activism: Petitions aren't science
I had originally planned on writing about a different topic today, but, as is so often the case in blogging, something came up that caught my attention, much as the errant thought of a squirrel distracts Dug the Dog. It's no big deal. My original topic is not time-sensitive, and I'll get to it next week (that is, unless something like this happens again). In any case, my tendency towards blogging ADHD notwithstanding, the "inspiration" for this post began on Friday morning, making it timely. Let me tell you what happened, and then I'll delve into the topic.
We all have our daily rituals, and I'm no different. When I wake up in the morning, I usually check my iPhone to see how many e-mails I've gotten overnight. If there's time before I have to leave for work, I'll frequently go through them all right then, answering ones I can answer quickly and filing for later responses those that I can't. If I don't have time (as in I overslept), I'll check them whenever I get an opportunity. Last Friday, I was rather surprised to see that the little badge on the Mail app showed well over three times the usual number of messages I get overnight, even accounting for e-mail notifications of comments on the blogs and the usual smattering of mailing list messages and the odd junk spam that got through the filters. So having that many messages in my unread mail queue caught my attention. Even when a new troll shows up in the comments of one of the blogs, I usually don't get that many notifications. I figured I'd better go and check to see what was going on right then, rather than waiting until later. What I found was something that I never would have guessed.
As odd as it seems to me now, I had apparently been targeted by a Change.org petition Animal Experimenters – JUSTIFY YOUR SCIENCE CLAIMS. (more…)
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By Jim GinleyPosted March 6, 2014
Wow – that was a great conference! All the pieces that go into an event like The Utility Management Conference – planning, venue, (lots of) attendees, speakers, moderators, monitors, weather, location, food and beverage, camaraderie, networking, knowledge, fun – showed up at once and meshed nicely into one of the most memorable UMCs in quite some time.
Thanks are in order for the many folks who contributed to a great event, including Renee Kayal and her UMC team from WEF (Jenn, Norman, the two Brittanys, and Jessica), the senior staff and officer types from both WEF and AWWA, the UMC Conference Planning Committee, our City of Savannah hosts, the Georgia Association of Water Professionals, and the dozens of folks who worked the rooms as moderators and monitors. The warmest thanks go out to the water professionals who came to Savannah to truly engage in the process of sharing and learning; they were encouraged early on by my co-chair, Tom Arn, to jump in and get their money's worth – I think they did just that and more!
The workshops were packed and people were talking about them all week long; YPs or young professionals got more exposed and better introduced and helped some of us old guys and gals feel better about the future; the opening general session was warm and full of laughter, along with some truly thought- provoking and mind- bending ideas for the future, and the sessions were completely full. Interaction in the three utility leader forums was even better than we could have hoped for – every one of them ran into the break and had people talking and learning until we kicked them out for the next session to get started; the receptions and lunches and dinners about town were lively and intimate in good measure, and the reunions and the introductions and the pledges to follow up were bountiful and in time, should prove to be productive. And at 10:30 on Friday morning, there were still dozens of people in the chairs during all three parallel sessions – listening, learning, asking, and sharing………it really was a special few days!
So, as the sun sets on "one of the best we've ever held," we hope you have UMC 2015 in Austin, TX dialed in and scheduled already for February 17-20. We certainly have a gold standard to go by, and for me, I can't wait to see everyone again just to see if we can't make it even a bit better. Take care till then!
UMC 2014 An Event to Remember By Jim GinleyPosted March 6, 2014 Wow – that was a great conference All the pieces that go into an event like The Utility Management Conference – planning, venue, (lots of) attendees, speakers,
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Posted by Jonathan Byus at 03/06/2014 10:38:12 AM |
Posted by:Jim Ginley
Jim Ginley is currently a Senior Consultant at Isle Inc., a boutique innovation consultancy that facilitates the market uptake of emerging and game-changing technology by water and wastewater agencies worldwide. Mr. Ginley has more than 26 years' experience in the municipal water sector, having worked for nearly 17 years on the staff of the American Water Works Association, as well as a regulatory compliance specialist and utility management consultant. At AWWA, Jim managed national programs in technical training and utility improvement, and as a consultant he conducted organizational assessments, developed strategic plans, and conducted benchmarking studies. He is a frequent presenter, workshop leader, and facilitator of special sessions and forums at the AWWA Annual Conference, WEFTEC, and the AWWA/WEF Utility Management Conference (UMC). He has also presented and facilitated a number of webinars, including topics such as effective utility management, workforce challenges and strategies, and utility leadership. Jim chairs the AWWA Strategic Management Practices Committee and is the Conference Co-Chair of the 2014 UMC.
Tom Arn
UMC Co-chair &
Principal Consultant,
SUNESIS Management Consulting


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The fruit of arroganceApril 02,2014Vermonts state Board of Education has voted to endorse the elimination of local town school boards in favor of consolidated, expanded districts. The boards resolution contends that the plan recently approved by the House Education Committee will modernize Vermonts educational governance system in order to provide all Vermont students with an equitable opportunity to prosper and thrive in all Vermont schools.
Welcome to the world of education platitudes that bear no resemblance to reality and that every day obstruct actually teaching Vermonts students in Vermonts actual schools. The theory of education-speak is that if you sprinkle your bad ideas with words like modernize, equitable, prosper, and thrive, no one will dare disagree with you, and everyone who only casually listens will think you must be right.
By that definition of modernize, Vladimir Putin is modernizing Ukraine. And Im sure Kim Jong Un would tell you he just wants his people to prosper and thrive.
Dont misunderstand. Im not equating our representatives in Montpelier with those tyrants. But Im tired of empty rhetoric masking decisions that every day impede efforts to improve our schools by the people who are actually in our schools. Im tired of leaders who mouth and swallow empty words.
Consolidated school districts, for example, in no way promote equity. If by equity, you mean how much money each school has available to spend, then make some reasonable changes in the way we fund schools. Increasing the distance of the governing body from the school it governs has nothing to do with equity. It will increase administrative costs, which even supporters of consolidation now concede. It will also allow even more of educations bandwagon snake oil miracles to be forced down the throats of local schools and communities that dont want them.
Consolidating districts will in no way optimize learning. It wont eliminate layers of bureaucracy, but will instead add layers of bureaucrats farther away from the schools theyre supposed to be governing. Consolidated schools are in no way better positioned to deliver 21st century skills. As for being innovative, innovation and improvement arent synonyms. Innovation, which means making things new, is good only when it also makes things better.
Eliminating local boards means eliminating the power of local citizens to govern the schools their children attend. If thats a step in the right direction, if that advances the ability of the public to govern its public schools, Id like someone to explain how. It will also lead to closing local schools without the consent of the communities that built them and filled them with children.
Further distancing the governance of our schools from the classrooms and corridors where education happens wont improve education. The embarrassingly unimpressive record of our state education bureaucracy in promoting and enforcing the long series of ill-conceived reforms they incessantly bill as education change, restructuring, and transformation, from portfolios to the current Common Core mandate, ought to be all the evidence anyone needs.
Supporters of the consolidation bill point to provisions that establish advisory committees that could offer their opinions to their towns representative on the expanded board. These advisory committees, however, would have no power to make any decisions.
Im familiar with how consulting and working with stakeholders plays out in education. Ive been on committees like that. Its a brilliant tactic. The people who have no power, in this case the citizens who used to elect their local school boards and whose schools were talking about, get to say what they think. Then the people who do have power, meaning the new, distant, expanded board members get to choose between two options. If they happen to agree with the advice, they can say they heeded the voice of the people. If they disagree, they get to ignore what they hear, proceed on the path they originally intended, but still say everyone was at the table and that their decision was based on the input of the people they ignored.
Its no surprise that the state board endorsed a proposal to consolidate the power to run our schools further away from the people whose schools they are. After all, thats precisely what the state Board of Education is. In fact, the actions of the unelected state board in this case, as in other past cases, are a perfect example of why distant boards, only marginally connected to the people they purport to represent, typically dont promote anybodys thriving or prospering, and why we need to oppose and reject any effort to rob local citizens and parents of the power to control the schools where their children spend their days.
If our representatives in Montpelier elect to usurp our authority over our own schools, we should remember that the next time its our turn to elect them.
The bill as written allows towns to decide to consolidate, unless they dont want to consolidate, in which case they will be forced to consolidate by a state design team. Has that duplicitous sham become Vermonts new standard of democracy and equity? Is that what now passes for government by consent of the governed?
Heres a proposal. Let each town vote to decide whether or not it wants to disband its local board and consolidate with another town or towns. In other words, let the power to decide be more than a hypocritical pretense.
If the Legislature and governor enact the bill as written and refuse to allow us to decide how we want to govern our schools, let every select board and school board vote to instruct their town treasurers to withhold the state portion of the revenue they collect. Then our representatives in Montpelier can decide which of us they want to arrest.
I realize thats a radical suggestion, and most likely illegal, but its no more radical and ought to be no more illegal than wresting control of our community schools from the communities and parents whose children attend them.
I am no radical. But defiance and outrage are the fruit of the governmental arrogance that appears to be coming our way.
Peter Berger teaches English at Weathersfield School. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.MORE IN CommentarySure, you can buy your uncle a necktie that he wont wear, or your niece an Amazon certificate... Full StoryA lot of serious long-term national issues simply werent addressed in the recent national election. Full StoryI have written on the anomaly of the separation of the private and public sectors in our society,... Full Story
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CLOSEOUT Port & Company® - Honeycomb Sling Pack. BG101
DISCONTINUEDHoneycomb texture adds interest to this budget-minded sling pack that includes an audio pocket with headphone exit port.
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FREE Deliverywithin Great Britain (excluding extended areas)
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The prints are mounted on panels of MDF (category E1) of varying dimensions. The print is applied to the panel using a sealing film in a hot press and then (brush) painted with a transparent gel which gives depth to the colors and protects the surface. Panels are guaranteed for interiors and are light proof. All MDF panels are made with copyrighted prints that House Additions regularly purchase from publishers in the following countries: Germany, France, Holland, Spain, USA, England and Italy. Most of the products are made-to-order, not all the catalogue is already in stock. All the production process is done in Italy by professional craftsmen. Any imperfection or difference in size is due to, and a guarantee of, hand craftsmanship.
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Amazing, Delicious, Quick and Easy recipe from KosherEye Foodie Friend Judy L, – one taste and you will love it!
1 32–ounce jar boneless pickled herring in wine sauce
1 12–ounce container parve (non-dairy) sour cream, such as Tofutti brand
Optional: 2 thinly sliced sweet onions*
Drain herring completely, reserve liquid and jar.
In a container with a lid, mix drained herring with 1 container Tofutti sour cream.
Place in refrigerator overnight. Place in a serving bowl – Enjoy chilled.
*Judy recommends placing the sliced onions in jar with reserved wine sauce liquid. Let marinate for a at least 24 hours to a few days. She has never tried serving the onions with the herring, but it sure sounds good to us.
Recipes: Appetizers, Fish, Dairy, KosherAdd a comment


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"Thank you for your great witness and ministry to Christ and His Church. I have enjoyed listening to Catholic Answers Live and your apologists for a number of years now. It has been very formative and inspirational in my journey towards becoming a well versed and devoted servant of Christ and His people on earth via His Church."
"That by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her Son, my Lord Jesus Christ."


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Find delicious ways to work the right amount of healthy fats into your daily diet. By: Keri Gans, MS, RD, CDN
Healthy Fat
Many people still think that eating fat will make them fat, and that is so far from the truth. Fat helps fill you up so you are less likely to overeat at a meal or too soon thereafter. As with most things though, more fat doesn't necessarily make it better for you. Too much fat can add up to too many calories, and the wrong kind of fats can be harmful for your health. Let us help you choose the right kind of fats and the appropriate portion sizes for a win-win situation.


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there only taking out curry >_< man we need atleast Q rich or Zach out 2 >_<
New York Knicks(8-19) vs Orlando Magic(18-11)
December 26th 7:00pm ET on MSG
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody. Welcome to MsgKnickz33 pregame show Im your host Jazzy Jeff and we gonna take a look at Wedenesday nights matchup in Orlando. Both teams have been struggling: The magic have lost 7 of their last 10 while the Knicks have lost 8 of their last 10. Both teams have loss 2 games in a row so we know at least the Magic will come ready to battle. You never know what to expect with the Knicks. What starting lineup will we see with Marbury returning and the chemistry problems of Z-Bo and Eddy?
Lets take a look at the projected starting Lineups:
Orlando Magic
pg-Jameer Nelson
sg-Keith Bogans
sf-Hedo Turkoglu
pf-Rashard Lewis
C-Dwight Howard
And Now, Your New York Knicks!!!!!!
At Point Guard, Jamal Crawford
At Shooting Guard, Fred Jones
At Small Forward, Quentin Richardson
At Power Forward, David Lee
At Center, Zach Randolph
Now lets take a look at MSGKnickz keys to victory:
- Slow Down Dwight: Keep a body between him and the rim, Dwight does not have much game outside of 8 feet from the hoop
- Defend the Perimeter: Orlando is a good 3 point shooting team, Knicks need to contest all shots!!!!
- Box Out!!! Knicks are a good rebounding team(12) but Orlando is an even better rebounding team(8).
- Play as a team: It doesnt matter who takes the most shots or scores the most points, Knicks need to share the ball and go with the hot hand.
Stat of the Night: When the Knicks allow their opponents to score 100 or more points, their record is only 2-14.
Now Lets take a look at our key matchup:
Zach Randolph/Eddy Curry vs Dwight Howard
Curry and Zach will be guarding/guarded by Dwight Howard most of the game. They need to make him work on defense and try to get him into foul trouble. To stop Dwight Howard, you cant let him get to the rim for those easy dunks. Theres one simple way to slow down Dwight and thats have a stronger guy like Curry keep his body between Dwight and the rim. Howard doesnt do anything past 8 feet and he does not posess incredible speed, he scores mainly off of dunks. He is a great player but he should not be scoring over 23 points per game.
Stephon Marbury is expected to play tomorrow but it is unlikely that he will start. The Knicks have been struggling so we'll see what happens when Marbury comes back and especially once he gets back into game shape.
Wednesday night the Knicks will have a tough battle with the Magic who have lost 2 games in a row and have been struggling. The Knicks need to come ready to play because the Magic might try to jump on them early. They can either move to 12 games under .500 with a loss or 10 games under with a win.
You can catch the game Wednesday night at 7:00pm ET on MSG. Im Jazzy Jeff and I thank everyone for joining me for my pregame show.
Merry Christmas
there only taking out curry >_< man we need atleast Q rich or Zach out 2 >_<
If you change to much, what are we gonna have off the bench, I think Curry should go to the bench he has to match up better with whats coming off Orlando's bench. If Curry can come in and score in spurts this might work, if he still plays bad he's gonna kill the momentum of the second team when we do our down by alot come back.
id like to see balkman instead of q-rich and chandler coming off the bench!!!!
Will we ever win a championship again? Id like to think so!
stephon is being a little girl now, i think he trying to prove something
I think Lee is starting at center tonight. As much as I like Lee, Howard will probably go off on him.
dam man whats the starting line up?
Z Bo aint starting... Another stupid move by Isiah Thomas.
Ok just saw Gus read off the starting line-up and though I would have rathered Balkman instead of Jeffries, I kind of like it. I can understand bringing Balkman off the bench tho for energy purposes. Q moves back to the 2, Jamal running the Point. THe only thing is, if Q is not hitting from the outside, Curry will continue to be abismal because the defense isn't going to defend Jeffries and Lee. Curry should get 25-30 minutes as should Zach, but no more than 10 minutes of play together... here it is at 7:07 and I say the Knicks will win this game. Yea yea I said it...AND WHAT


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On this day: February 26
Published On: Feb 25 2013 01:02:15 PM CST Updated On: Feb 26 2016 01:00:00 AM CST
The Grand Canyon becomes a national park, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album hits No. 1, a truck bomb explodes under the World Trade Center, and teenager Trayvon Martin is shot and killed, all on this day.
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|Title: : 1 of 1
Polyplanograph, 1980
Walter Miller AskinAmerican, 1929
Polyvinyl decals on tinted plexiglas in wood case, electric
23 x 21-3/4 x 12 in. (58.4 x 55.2 x 30.5 cm)
Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Horace and Vicki Solaini Baker
© Walter Askin
Not on view
Walter Askin's skill as a draftsman was already well developed by the time the Pasadena native went to the University of California, Berkeley for art school. His father was a draftsman with the city of Pasadena, and Walter and his brother, who would eventually become an architect, came of age in a household where putting pencil to paper was part of daily life. It is thus no surprise that drawing is fundamental to all of Askin's work, regardless of medium. His lithographs, of which he considers these two among his finest examples, his sculpture with drawn decals, and his paintings all include the whimsical line drawings and exquisitely modeled elements that define his work. The lightheartedness and humor present in Askin's oeuvre often belies a more serious tone, however. Invented worlds with human-like figures are inspired by both non-Western and Western art, and this deliberate incorporation of art history, absorbed over his decades as a professor of art, contextualizes his work alongside the canon. His content deals with issues as far-ranging as the dichotomous relationship between the sexes and the criticism of art itself.
View Provenance
|Title: : 1 of 1


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Randy Cothes, owner and operator of the Refugio restaurant, said the time had come to upgrade and redo the place.
"We're going to rebuild," Cothes said.
Cothes estimated the project would be finished in the first part of August "depending on weather."
He said storms could create issues with the projected times, but overall, the new restaurant will take three to four months.
Built in October 1999, the restaurant's main lacking was one stall in each of the rest rooms.
Cothes said that had been the main complaint, and during holidays, people could be seen standing in long lines.
"Instead of one, we will have three for women and two for men," Cothes said.
He said the seating inside would be about the same at 56 seats, but outside would be different.
Planned is a double drive-through, so two orders could be taken at a time.
Cothes said a break area for employees will be added, too.
Also inside, customers will place an order at the register and get a pickup point. The lobby will have the latest McDonald's decor.
Cothes said about 60 percent of his business was drive-through, so the increased capacity will serve those customers faster.
Also, when the restaurant reopens, 55 employees will be needed.
Current employees were give the opportunity to go to three other McDonald's: free-standing store in Beeville, McDonald's in Walmart and one in Three Rivers.
Cothes said he wasn't at liberty to say how much the project will cost, but he said it was expensive, including the lost revenue while rebuilding.
He said the rebuilding project had to be done.
"The 1999 store was strictly a small town lower volume type store. The rest room situation cost us more revenue than anything," he said.
But the old restaurant also had minimal storage area.
"It was good when it started 14 years ago. We had to do something," he added.
"It'll open back up pretty quick."


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Exercise VIII: Rollouts (high groove)
Sets: 2 Reps: 15 Rest: 45 Seconds
Lie on your left side with your left leg straight and your right hip and knee bent 90 degrees, suspended over the floor. You can place your left palm on the floor for support [1]. Keeping your left hip bone in contact with the floor, rotate your hips to your left and extend your right hip so that you're reaching with the right knee, trying to touch it to the floor without losing contact between your left hip bone and the floor [2]. Reverse the motion to return to the starting position. That's one rep. Complete 15 reps, and then switch sides and repeat.


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For more than 30 years, the political dialogue in our country was shaped by Ronald Reagan's famous claim that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Too many bought into – or failed to adequately push back against – the paradigm that less government is always better than more government, or as President Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, "smart government." As a result, the past generation has seen rollbacks in protections for ordinary people and a dangerously high level of income disparity.
The 2012 elections saw the rise of another paradigm. Across the nation, millions of Americans who saw the impact of "government is the problem" policies voted for a different agenda: one where the people utilize the tools available uniquely through government to address major problems that cannot effectively be addressed otherwise. President Obama spoke clearly of his vision of a robust government that plays a positive role in people's lives, and Americans elected him to make that agenda happen.
But even in electoral defeat, the far right retains the power to undermine progressive laws and thwart the agenda that Americans elected President Obama to pursue. One measure of that power is the outsized influence far-right ideologues have on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This appeals court has a unique influence over the shape of our nation's laws, determining the meaning and even the constitutionality of federal legislation and regulation across a broad spectrum of issues: national security, campaign finance, voting rights, workers' rights, consumer rights, environment and energy policy, telecommunications, and more. Now dominated by right wing ideologues who are deeply hostile to government power – who think that "government is the problem" – the D.C. Circuit as currently constituted stands as a major obstacle to progressive advances.
The D.C. Circuit's Unique Influence
While the Supreme Court attracts the lion's share of attention from the press and the public, it hears only a tiny fraction of the appeals filed each year. The nine Justices, who generally get to pick which appeals they will consider, heard only 79 cases during the 2011-2012 term. Only a tiny number of those cases were appealed from the D.C. Circuit. In contrast, the D.C. Circuit cannot simply choose not to hear an appeal. In the year that ended in September 2012, nearly 1,200 appeals were filed before the court.
This means that when the D.C. Circuit makes a ruling, it is almost guaranteed to have the last word.
And because of the D.C. Circuit's jurisdiction it has the last word on a wide range of federal laws, including congressional enactments and regulations adopted by federal agencies and departments. By virtue of the types of cases it hears, the court has a unique ability to put its stamp on an enormous array of the nation's laws in a way that other circuits simply do not.
Congress requires the D.C. Circuit to be the immediate and exclusive court to consider appeals of a breathtaking array of agency regulations and decisions. Moreover, even when parties appealing agency decisions have a choice of venues, they often choose to have their cases heard by the D.C. Circuit, sometimes due to its expertise in complex administrative matters and sometimes to take advantage of the court's ideological imbalance. For the same reason, the D.C. Circuit is also a prime choice for those challenging congressionally passed statutes or presidential actions.
Much of the machinery of United States administrative law (the rules adopted by federal agencies that affect so many aspects of our society) runs through the D.C. Circuit. According to a September 2012 report by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, 43 percent of the appeals filed at the D.C. Circuit in the past year were related to administrative actions. For circuit courts overall, that number is only 15 percent.
Every facet of our lives is affected by some aspect of federal law. Clean air rules, gun safety measures, telecom regulations, investor protection rules, securities fraud laws, labor law, banking regulations, food safety requirements, credit card regulations and election laws can be appealed to a federal court, and that court is often the D.C. Circuit.
While many Americans haven't heard of the D.C. Circuit, we've all lived with the results of its rulings. For instance, anyone who was swamped in campaign commercials paid for by super PACs last year can thank the D.C. Circuit. In the 2010 SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission case, the D.C. Circuit ruled that since, under Citizens United, independent expenditures do not cause real or perceived corruption, an individual's giving contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures also cannot create real or perceived corruption and so cannot be limited. The result was the creation of "super PACs," which gave the super wealthy, including moguls like Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess, an outsized influence on the 2012 elections.
For those who seek to block a progressive, smart-government agenda, the D.C. Circuit is an important vehicle.
The Right Knows How Important the D.C. Circuit Is
When George W. Bush was president, he made a concerted effort to stack the nation's circuit courts
with far-right ideologues – and no court got more attention from him than the D.C. Circuit. Over significant progressive opposition, Bush succeeded in placing Janice Rogers Brown, Brett Kavanaugh, and Thomas Griffith on the D.C. Circuit. All three remain on the court, and continue to steer the court's agenda far to the right.
Bush also had his eye on a particular movement conservative for the Supreme Court, and he recognized that the best way to set him up for the high court would be to first get him onto the nation's second most important court. John Roberts was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in 2003. Two years later, Bush chose him to become our Chief Justice.
By the time President Obama took office, the eleven-member D.C. Circuit had six Republican-nominated judges, three Bill Clinton nominees, and two vacancies. Since then, two of the Republican nominees have taken senior status, leaving four vacancies on the court.
The semi-retirement of these two Reagan nominees has opened up new seats on the court, but it hasn't reduced the court's rightward ideological tilt. Senior judges cannot participate in en banc appeals of panel decisions, but they can serve on three-judge panels. And with one-third of the court's active judgeships vacant, they are often called to do so. This means that the court remains heavily dominated by George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan's judges. Including senior judges, the court holds nine Republican-nominated judges and only four Democratic-nominated judges.
Mission Accomplished:
Consequences of the Right's Takeover of the D.C. Circuit
Unfortunately, the far right has gotten exactly what they wanted from their efforts to stack the D.C. Circuit. As George W. Bush and his movement conservative supporters planned, the D.C. Circuit can now be counted on to make sweeping rulings that favor the powerful at the expense of workers and consumers, and limit the role government can play to address national problems. A sampling of those decisions are discussed below.
Workers' Rights
In January, the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling on presidential recess appointments – Noel Canning v. NLRB – that not only reversed one ruling of the National Labor Relations Board, it undermined every action the Board has taken for over a year and threatened to prevent it from functioning at all going forward.
President Obama had been driven to make key appointments to the NLRB in January 2012, when the Senate was in recess but having pro forma sessions every three days to make it look like they were still in session. (A pro forma session is held to keep the form but not the substance of being in session: During vacation, one senator who lives near Washington enters the chamber, declares it in session, then closes it after a couple of minutes without any substantive activity.) In early 2011, the president had nominated two people to fill vacancies at the NRLB. But Senate Republicans prevented the Senate from holding yes-or-no confirmation votes on those nominees, which meant that beginning in January of 2012, the NLRB would no longer have a quorum and would no longer be able to function and protect the rights of millions of working people. Although Senate Republicans could not pass legislation closing the NLRB's doors, they sought to accomplish essentially the same results through another route, by refusing to confirm new members of the Board.
In early 2013, the D.C. Circuit issued a sweeping ruling declaring the president's recess appointments unconstitutional. This meant that a decision the Board had made against the Noel Canning company was made unlawfully without a quorum – and so was every other decision since early January 2012. Instead of deciding the case on the narrow grounds of whether or not the Senate was actually in recess during these pro forma sessions, the court came to the astounding conclusion that recess appointments going back to the nineteenth century had been invalid.
Judge David Sentelle and two other Republican-nominated judges decided that the only recess that counts for the Recess Appointments Clause is the one that occurs once a year between two sessions of Congress. So even if Congress leaves town and is unavailable, say, for the entire summer, it isn't really in recess. The fact that hundreds of recess appointments have been made during "intra-session recesses" for most of the nation's history without any constitutional controversy seemed not to matter. Two of the three judges went even further to decide a constitutional issue not needed to resolve the case, ruling that the president can only make a recess appointment for a vacancy that was created during the same recess in which he is making the appointment.
This was a breathtaking attack on the ability of government to protect the rights of working people and an unprecedented gift to Senate Republicans, who, if the ruling stands, can now wield the filibuster to keep NLRB vacancies open indefinitely and keep it from functioning at all – or at least until a Republican president is the one making nominations. Yet working people are not the only ones harmed by this decision. In fact, Noel Canning's reasoning gives Republican senators the green light to decimate any federal agency through attrition of its leadership, knowing that their right-wing counterparts on the D.C. Circuit have severely limited the president's corrective power to make recess appointments in the face of persistent and overwhelming obstruction.
The Noel Canning decision has been widely condemned as "a remarkable exercise of judicial overreach and arrogance" (Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute), "a judicial atrocity" (Jeffrey Toobin), "insanely hubristic" (Timothy Noah), and "an extraordinary display of judicial activism [and] a strained reading of the law" (Jeffrey Rosen). Those are the kinds of criticisms reserved for opinions like Bush v. Gore or Citizens United, which are now joined by a new member in the pantheon of notorious court decisions.
Environmental Protection
Last summer, two Bush-nominated judges on the D.C. Circuit issued a much-criticized ruling in EME Homer City Generation, striking down important new EPA rules on air pollution that crosses state lines. In 2011, the EPA issued new regulations to limit the levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emitted by coal-fired power plants and crossing state lines. Based on the administrative record and its expertise on environmental health, the agency concluded that the new rules would prevent 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 heart attacks, and 400,000 cases of asthma. As if that weren't important enough, the rules would also save $280 billion a year in healthcare costs.
Utility companies appealed the regulations to a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit. The companies' arguments were accepted by Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas Griffith, two George W. Bush judges who outvoted the dissenting Clinton nominee, Judge Judith Rogers. Judge Rogers eviscerated the majority opinion:
To vacate the Transport Rule, the court disregards limits Congress placed on its jurisdiction, the plain text of the Clean Air Act ... and this court's settled precedent interpreting the same statutory provisions at issue today. Any one of these obstacles should have given the court pause; none did.
Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein harshly criticized the decision in an op-ed titled "The Judicial Jihad Against the Regulatory State," calling the ruling:
... 60 pages of legal sophistry, procedural hair-splitting and scientific conjecture.
You find a judge without a shred of technical training formulating his own policy solution to an incredibly complex problem and substituting it for the solution proposed by experienced experts.
You find an appeals court judge so dismissive of the most fundamental rules of judicial restraint that he dares to throw out regulations on the basis of concerns never raised during the rule-making process or in the initial court appeal.
In other words, you find the D.C. Circuit working exactly as intended by the Bush administration.
Protecting Main Street From Wall Street Abuse
After the stock market collapse and Great Recession of 2008-2009, more and more Americans began to recognize the parallel world in which the 1% on Wall Street live – a world in which the needs of shareholders and consumers are too often ignored. For instance, when a corporation's shareholders elect board members, their proxy material often contains the names only of the candidates put forward by the corporation's management. The Securities and Exchange Commission attempted to remedy this problem with a proposal to expand board accountability by requiring companies to also include qualifying shareholders' nominees and information about them in proxy material.
The Dodd-Frank reform law authorized the SEC to expand proxy access "under such terms and conditions as the Commission believes are in the interests of shareholders and for the protections of shareholders." That is exactly what the SEC did by a partisan 3-2 vote in September of 2010, based on a voluminous record and an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis.
But in 2011, a unanimous three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit struck down the SEC's rule, claiming that the SEC had not engaged in an adequate cost-benefit analysis. Judge David Sentelle wrote the opinion in Business Roundtable v. SEC, joined by Judge Janice Rogers Brown and Judge Douglas Ginsburg (a Reagan nominee). Essentially, the judges usurped the role of SEC commissioners, taking it upon themselves to weigh the evidence in the ruling and make their own judgments.
Normally, courts reviewing agency action defer to an agency's expertise when making policy decisions. This should especially be the case in an area as complex and filled with policy-based judgments as securities law. But in this case, the judges took it upon themselves to sift through the record, examine complex economic arguments, and make independent determinations as to which assertions in the record were reliable and which weren't. If this were the standard in every case, an agency would be hard pressed to defend its policy decisions from judges with different political ideologies.
As described in the Harvard Law Review:
In Business Roundtable, the D.C. Circuit waded into a political fight under the guise of dispassionate scientific oversight to vacate a proxy access rule produced after years of open, contentious debate. While statutes require the SEC to consider the consequences of its regulations, courts should recognize the limitations of economics and of their own expertise by acknowledging thorough, competent analyses. Perpetuating Business Roundtable's exacting review could impose a judicial blockade on complex financial rulemaking, which would impede regulators' ability to police the marketplace in accordance with congressional intent.
Courts hardly outperform the SEC at evaluating the imperfect science of economics. Judges can struggle with expert testimony in their own decisions, and traditional training leaves most jurists ill-prepared to engage with sophisticated econometrics. And the validity of economic analysis is cloudier than that of many other scientific methods because economic models rely on complex, interrelated assumptions. Even practiced analysts struggle to isolate the impact of factors like proxy access, and good-faith differences abound.
Another key blow to our ability to use government to protect ourselves from the abuses of the financial industry came in the Noel Canning case discussed above. At the same time that he made recess appointments to the NLRB, President Obama also made a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of a powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But under the Dodd-Frank reform law which created the Bureau, it was not fully empowered to do many of its most important tasks without a director. So Senate Republicans filibustered Cordray, openly acknowledging that their objection was not to Cordray but to the strong Board whose creation they had failed to torpedo.
As with the NLRB, Senate Republicans were preventing a vital government agency from functioning by preventing the Senate from holding a confirmation vote. Although the Noel Canning case involved only the NLRB, its logic would apply to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well, meaning that some of the most important work the Bureau has done over the past year would be considered unconstitutional. Even worse, because the vacancy is now an existing one, the D.C. Circuit's decision would prevent the president from ever using a recess appointment to fill it – allowing Republicans to keep the position empty and the Board ineffective
for perpetuity.
Consumer Health and Safety
A notorious ruling against consumer health and safety came last summer when the D.C. Circuit struck down FDA rules requiring graphic warning images on cigarette packages. Congress had directed the FDA to adopt these regulations in 2009. In addition to text warnings, cigarette packages would also have pictures depicting the factual, negative health consequences of smoking cigarettes. In other words, consumers would see the results of using this particular product in the manner intended by the manufacturer.
The majority opinion was written by one of George W. Bush's most strongly ideological nominees, Janice Rogers Brown, who argued that requiring a factual health warning on a demonstrably dangerous product violates the First Amendment rights of cigarette manufacturers. She concluded that many of the images "do not convey any warning information at all." Among the images she criticized were an image of a baby enveloped in smoke with the explanatory text, "Tobacco smoke can harm your children" and an image of a woman crying with the explanatory text, "Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers." Brown decided that these images "do not offer any information about the health effects of smoking" and "cannot rationally be viewed as pure attempts to convey information to consumers."
The dissenting judge in the case, Clinton nominee Judith Rogers, pointed out that these images clearly convey the factual message that cigarette smoking harms both smokers and their family members. And while there was a substantial record in the FDA's administrative rulemaking to support that conclusion, the far-right judges replaced it with their own. The dissent also pointed out that these images did not just come out of the blue, but were instead disclosures designed to counter generations of misleading commercial speech by the tobacco companies.
Judge Rogers also pointed out that the far-right majority turned the rationale for protecting commercial speech on its head. The Supreme Court has noted that commercial speech has First Amendment protection principally because of the value to consumers of the information such speech provides. The FDA's regulations required cigarette makers to provide valuable information to consumers, stating and showing the factually accurate health consequences of their product. Precisely because imagery is so effective, the industry that relied on its own imagery to peddle the idea that smoking is healthy and glamorous fought against the regulations. They lost in Congress, and they lost at the FDA, but the D.C. Circuit was there to limit the government's ability to protect consumers and their families.
Echoes of Mitt Romney's "47%"
In a bizarre concurrence to the otherwise unexceptional case of Hein Hettinga v. USA last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown laid out her opposition to the principle of a robust federal government with a vital constitutional role to play in improving our lives.
The decision, on its surface, had to do with milk. For many decades, Congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate the milk market has been settled law, and the D.C. Circuit recognized
that precedent.
But Judge Brown decided to use this innocuous case as an opportunity to affirm her allegiance to the long-discredited ideology of the Lochner era, a period in the early part of the last century when a far-right Supreme Court routinely struck down laws needed to protect Americans' lives and well-being. This was an era when unbridled capitalism was devastating the lives of ordinary Americans and the people sought to use their elected government to tackle that era's substantial problems.
Echoing the strains of the Supreme Court's discredited cases during this era, Brown said about the milk market regulation case:
The [case] reveals an ugly truth: America's cowboy capitalism was long ago disarmed by a democratic process increasingly dominated by powerful groups with economic interests antithetical to competitors and consumers. And the courts, from which the victims of
burdensome regulation sought protection, have been negotiating the terms of surrender since the 1930s.
First the Supreme Court allowed state and local jurisdictions to regulate property, pursuant to their police powers, in the public interest, and to adopt whatever economic policy may reasonably be deemed to promote public welfare. Then the Court relegated economic liberty to a lower echelon of constitutional protection than personal or political liberty, according restrictions on property rights only minimal review. Finally, the Court abdicated its constitutional duty to protect economic rights completely, acknowledging that the only recourse for aggrieved property owners lies in the "democratic process."
Civil society, once it grows addicted to redistribution, changes its character and comes to require the state to feed its habit. The difficulty of assessing net benefits and burdens makes the idea of public choice oxymoronic. Rational basis review means property is at the mercy of the pillagers. The constitutional guarantee of liberty deserves more respect - a lot more. [internal quotations and citations removed]
Americans recognize that the Constitution empowers them to use government as a force for good. But those efforts are endangered by judges who see the people as "pillagers" or, to use a word familiar from the 2012 campaign, as "takers." While the American people decisively rejected Mitt Romney and again gave the presidency to Barack Obama, until balance is restored to the D.C. Circuit it will remain in the grip of judges set on opposing Obama's agenda.
What's Next?
As noted above, there are now four vacancies on the eleven-member D.C. Circuit. In 2011 and again in 2013, Senate Republicans – determined to keep Obama from restoring the court's balance – filibustered the indisputably qualified nominee Caitlin Halligan. Republicans who said the Constitution prohibited filibusters of George W. Bush's judicial nominees nevertheless filibustered Halligan. Republicans who condemned opposing Bush's judicial nominees because of arguments they had once made as lawyers representing their clients filibustered Halligan because of legal arguments she had once made on behalf of her clients.
President Obama has also renominated Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan to the D.C. Circuit. The president first put forward Srinivasan's nomination last year, but the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican has so far denied him a hearing. We expect that hearing will soon be scheduled and that the nomination will move speedily through the committee.
Moving forward, the White House needs to nominate high quality candidates from diverse professional backgrounds for the remaining vacancies. In all cases, the Senate must be allowed to hold timely confirmation votes on these nominees once they are vetted by the Judiciary Committee. Balance must be restored to the nation's second most important court, so it will again issue decisions reflecting the wisdom of judges who understand the impact of the law and the Constitution on everyday Americans.


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Home List of Titles Evaluation of microhardness and elastic modulus of thermally sprayed nanostructured zirconia coatings
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/41728
- Title
- Evaluation of microhardness and elastic modulus of thermally sprayed nanostructured zirconia coatings
- Author(s)
- Lima, Rogerio S.; Kucuk, Ahmet; Berndt, C. C.
- Abstract
- Results concerning microhardness and roughness (Ra) of plasma sprayed coatings fabricated from nanostructured partially stabilized zirconia (PSZ) feedstock are presented. Nanostructured zirconia particles were plasma sprayed (Ar/H2) at three power levels, with two argon flow rates at two spray distances. The results indicate that the microhardness, elastic modulus and roughness of the nanostructured zirconia coatings exhibit the following trends: the smoother the roughness, the higher the microhardness and elastic modulus. It was found that roughness is an indicator of the coating state that reflects the intrinsic microstructure of the coatings. It was ascertained that a surface profilometer could be used to determine the level of microhardness and elastic modulus as a non-destructive and in situ test by simple comparison with standard samples.
- Publication type
- Journal article
- Source
- Surface and Coatings Technology, Vol. 135, no. 2-3 (Jan 2001), pp. 166-172
- Publication year
- 2001
- Keyword(s)
- Ceramic coatings; Elastic moduli; In situ coal combustion; Microhardness; Nanostructured materials; Nondestructive examination; Plasma spraying; Surface roughness; Thermal barrier coatings; Thermal spraying; Zirconia
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- 0257-8972
- Publisher URL
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
- Peer reviewed


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Leahy eyes dairy reforms in farm bill talks
WASHINGTON House and Senate negotiators met for the first time Wednesday in an effort to draft compromise legislation that would reauthorize many farm subsidy programs through 2018, as Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., emphasized the need for proposed reforms to dairy programs in the so-called farm bill.
While the House and Senate have passed separate versions of the farm bill in recent months, both bills would eliminate the current Milk Income Loss Contract program, which compensates dairy farmers when milk prices fall below a certain level. The MILC program would be replaced by a new plan that makes payment to farmers when the national margin between milk prices and feed costs falls below $4 per hundredweight of milk.
But the Senate-passed version of the farm bill also contains a provision the Dairy Market Stabilization Program not included in the House bill. The Dairy Market Stabilization Program would provide incentives to farmers to reduce milk production when the margins between feed cost and milk prices are low. The aim is to raise milk prices, thereby reducing the overall cost of the federal dairy program and increasing profits for farmers.
Leahy, a former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said this proposed new dairy program would mean an increase in stable markets for dairy farmers and protection for farmers and consumers from extreme price fluctuations.
There will be realistic prices on milk, and without it I think we will have a real problem and eventually consumers will pay a lot more, Leahy said in a telephone interview shortly before the House-Senate conference committee on the farm bill, of which he is a member, convened.
The last multi-year farm bill was enacted in 2008, and expired last year. A nine-month extension of the 2008 legislation ran out on Sept. 30.
If Congress fails to act between now and Jan 1 either to extend the 2008 farm bill or to enact a new one the provisions of a farm bill passed more than 60 years ago, in 1949, would kick in. Known as permanent law, the 1949 provisions could result in a doubling of current milk prices.
The fact is that we should have (gotten) the farm bill done a year ago and the Senate has, Leahy said. If they dont vote for (a farm bill) or the House blocks one, they are going to see the taxpayers spending an awful a lot more money than they are spending today.
Chris Galen, spokesman of the National Milk Producers Federation, said his group prefers the version of the farm bill passed by the Senate last summer. He said current dairy programs do not reflect changes in the cost of feeding cows, and only cover the first 3 million pounds of milk produced.
We dont support an extension of the status-quo, but I think some farm groups would be OK with it, he added.
Assuming so-called sequestration, the across-the-board automatic spending cuts intended to reduce the federal deficit, does not kick in again in the coming months, the Senate-passed version of the farm bill is estimated to cut spending by $24 billion over the next decade, compared to $50 billion in the House-passed bill.
A major point of contention in House-Senate negotiations will be the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. About 48 million lower-income Americans benefit from that program.
The Republican-controlled House has passed legislation to reduce the program by nearly $40 billion over the next decade, while the Senate farm bill would cut it by about $4 billion during the same period.
Kang Liu is a representative of the Boston University Journalism ProgramMORE IN Vermont NewsMONTPELIER Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. Full StoryVermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell plans to join the U.S. Full StoryAs Rutland prepares to welcome Syrian refugees to its community, some are continuing to voice... Full Story
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Before being diagnosed with leukemia, 11-year-old Breanna Bercegeay was a budding cheerleader, who also loves to sing. So what could be better than a football player, who volunteers and also plays the piano?
Click here to watch University of Memphis quarterback Jacob Karam and Breanna Bercegeay's rendition of "Price tag".


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I was there too, trying to believe in this team and in this coach. "But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd."
D'Antoni won't be fired this season. So all the fire D'Antoni chants now are pointless. It still comes down to the end result of this whole season before a verdict is appropriate. Eventually though, I will just stop watching this team. I can't take the heartache much longer.


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Mario Cuomo: Wish We Could 'Package' Indian Strength and Intelligence
In a recently meeting with Ray Halbritter, Oneida Nation representative and CEO of Nation Enterprises, parent company of Indian Country Today Media Network, former New York Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo sent a complimentary message to Halbritter and the Nation in light of the 20th anniversary of the government-to-government gaming compact signed in 1993.
"I wish frankly Ray, that we could take the strength you have, the intelligence you have, the experience you have, and that your people have, package it some how and distribute it all over the United States and beyond," Cuomo said. "Because it's the magic word – collaboration. Come together, it's easier, works better."
During the clip, seen below, Cuomo also discussed what he has seen over the past 20 years around the world. He talks about political division, economic struggles and the more. Cuomo ended his comments with a bit of humor about what a governor actually is.
"A governor was a device attached to a machine to see that it does not operate at maximum efficiency," Cuomo stated, reciting an introduction by an "ardent Republican" at a speaking engagement.
The Nation held a kick off celebration on April 16 for Turning Stone Resort & Casino's 20-year anniversary.
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Big game in the Championsship tonight as Brighton host Leeds. This chant is reserved for Leeds to remind them about ... 23 hours ago
Dundalk need to win at Maccabi Tel Aviv tonight to qualify for the knockout stages of the Europa League. 1 day ago
Spurs need to avoid defeat at home to CSKA to qualify for the Europa League at their expense. 2 days ago


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Bears sign former UW-Whitewater QB Blanchard
Blanchard has been on Bears practice squad
Published On: Jan 13 2013 04:00:22 PM CST Updated On: Jan 13 2013 04:01:25 PM CST
The Chicago Bears have signed quarterback Matt Blanchard to a reserve/futures contract, according to a Chicago Tribune report.
Blanchard, an undrafted free agent out of Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater, has been on the Bears practice squad.
He could be a factor if backup quarterbacks Jason Campbell and Josh McCown aren't retained, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Blanchard grew up in suburban Lake Zurich, Ill., and contributed to three national champions in college.
He was 25-0 as a starter at UW-Whitewater, and as a senior, he threw for 2,852 yards, 23 touchdowns and four interceptions.
Copyright 2013 by Channel 3000. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Say "tiger shark" and most people would try get as far away as possible.
Not so with the scientists from the University of Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who search out the tigers to learn more.
One of these scientists Carl Meyer, has been tagging tiger sharks for decades.
Thanks to surgically implanted acoustic devices, scientists have collected years of valuable data about shark migration patterns.
And they're complex:
A tiger spotted in Oahu waters in the morning can be in Molokai in the afternoon.
Special receivers set up across the Hawaiian chain have also picked up signals of tagged great white sharks that come from as far away as California.
"What we have seen with the white sharks is they tend to be in relatively deep water. So unlike the tiger sharks which are routinely in shallow water, we almost never hear the white sharks in less than 100 feet," said shark expert Carl Meyer.
There are smartphone apps like Expedition Great White that trace the movement of great white sharks in real time.
Meyer says Hawaii scientists are considering something similar.
But they are also close to developing a "shark pill" to understand shark feeding behavior.
"We are aiming to develop this technology into a satellite base tag and we will be able to get into the shark's stomach. And then, we will be able to learn exactly when, and where sharks are feeding, which we know very little about at the moment," Meyer said.
Unfortunately, the shark migration studies can't shed too much light on the sudden spike in shark attacks around the main Hawaiian Islands.
"There is this apparent seasonal increase in fall that happens to coincide with the congregation of adult female sharks in the main Hawaiian Islands for the purpose of pupping. Now, we don't know whether those sharks are the ones that are biting people, so it may be a coincidence," Meyer said.


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Froccaros, Ambler, Schreiber Help Princeton Past Brown
from press release
|Ryan Ambler was one of several
Tigers to post five-point outings on Saturday in 15-8 win over
© Kevin P. Tucker
PRINCETON, N.J. — The first nine minutes were close and the last 13 minutes were a little frantic.
Ah, but the 38 minutes in between? They were nearly perfect for the Princeton men's lacrosse team.
Jeff Froccaro had four goals and an assist, Tom Schreiber and Ryan Ambler had five-point days and Jake Froccaro had his first career three-goal game as Princeton defeated Brown 15-8 in front of 2,113 at Sherrerd Field at Class of 1952 Stadium Saturday afternoon.
The win improved eighth-ranked Princeton to 6-2 overall and 2-1 in the Ivy League. No. 19 Brown is now 5-3, 1-1.
TURNING POINT OF THE GAME - Brown's Alex Jones scored his second goal of the game with 6:51 to go in the first quarter, making it 2-1 Bears. The turning point lasted 38:18, which is how long Princeton held Brown without a goal while running off nine unanswered, making it 11-2 Princeton early in the fourth quarter. Princeton outshot Brown 33-9 during the 9-0 run, and Justin Murphy won nine of the 13 face-offs in that stretch, which would last 38:18.
WHAT THE BOX SCORE DOESN'T TELL YOU - Princeton's 15 goals equal the most Princeton has ever scored in a game against Brown. The Tigers have now reached 15 four times against the Bears - in 1975, 1996, 2001 and 2013. Princeton has never scored more than 15.
PLAYER OF THE GAME - Jeff Froccaro had four goals, giving him 20 on the year. He also had an assist, to his brother Jake, in the fourth quarter for what would be the 100th point of his career, making him the 27th player in school history to reach 100 points. Froccaro now has 74 career goals and 28 career assists, for 102 career points.
HONORABLE MENTION PLAYERS OF THE GAME - Mark Strabo. The freshman defenseman basically was matched up one-on-one with Brown's Henry Blynn, who had a team-best 18 goals and 26 points coming into the game, including five goals against North Carolina Wednesday night. Strabo held Blynn without a goal until the fourth quarter, when Blynn had his only score of the day, which came after Strabo had come out of the game. Freshman goalie Matt O'Connor made 11 saves, many of which were from in close and most of which seemed to come at key moments when Brown was in position to change the game's momentum.
FOURTH QUARTER FIREWORKS - Princeton led 10-2 at the end of the third and 11-2 when Jake Froccaro scored off a pass from his brother Jeff 29 seconds into the fourth. When Brown finally scored to end the 38:18 drought, it scored in bunches, with two goals in 10 seconds and three in 31 seconds. Brown would twice get within five but could get no closer. The teams would combined for 12 goals and 11 more goals in the fourth quarter, and Brown would take 17 shots in the fourth quarter after taking 14 in the first three combined.
PLAYS OF THE GAME - Jack Strabo intecepted a Henry Blynn pass near the top of the box, raced it across midfield and found Tom Schreiber, who fed Mike MacDonald for a layup with 4:50 to play to make it 13-7 Tigers. Earlier, back in the first quarter, Will Rotatori dodged from behind and found Chris White up top, and White's rocket just beat the 30-second timer countdown to make it 3-2. Princeton would not trail again.
BONUS PLAY OF THE GAME - Tom Schreiber's first goal of the day tied the score at 2-2 in the first quarter, but it was actually a feed that missed everyone and simply bounced into the goal. Schreiber earned the rest of his points to finish with two goals and three assists, and he now has at least three points in every game this season.
UP NEXT - Princeton hosts Syracuse next Saturday in a game that will be played on Powers Field at Princeton Stadium. Face-off is at 5.
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Having a Moment: Party Makeup
- Next1 of 22Glo
- Previous Next2 of 22RD/Scott Kirkland/Retna Ltd.
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Intro_Loreal_Party Makeup CelebMakeup_nologo1 of 22Intro Having A Moment Celeb Party Makeup
Aqua Fresh2 of 22
A festive event calls for playful makeup. Take a cue from Diane Kruger and opt out of your trusty black liner in favor of a bright aqua shade. A thin line and a winged stroke will add extra flair. But twisted hair and a splashy neon dress are optional.
Gold Standard3 of 22
It wouldn't be "the holidays" without a little metallic action. Scarlett accents her newly chopped bob with scorching gold eyeliner. We think the look takes first place.
Eye Spy4 of 22
Late-night fetes warrant some drama, let's be honest. Here, SJP masters the sultry-eye look with creamy bronzed skin and windswept hair. We think the combo makes it modern rather than gothic.
Premiere Look5 of 22
Sometimes red carpet makeup does translate to the real world. Here, we love how Marion Cotillard wears both a strong lip and a strong eye. It's glamour to the max, and we like it.
Metal Head6 of 22
Kristen Stewart always nails the edgy beauty thing, which is a perfect look for a youthful gathering of friends. At a recent awards show, she paired her signature smoky eye (this time it was a matte gunmetal shade) with her hair color du jour, a chestnut ginger.
Match Point7 of 22
A big-time party can mean breaking out looks we normally wouldn't go near. That's why we support matching eyes and lips for some real old-fashioned glamour. But could Blake Lively really look bad in any trend?
Bold and the Beautiful8 of 22
Sometimes the outfit dictates the makeup, and we all know that the holidays are the time to get loud. Here Gwyneth complements an uber-bright dress with dewy skin, a subtle eye and glossy nude lips. Cheers.
Lash Out9 of 22
Nothing says glamour like major lashes. Kerry Washington rocks the trend with a subtle smoky eye, flushed cheeks and clear gloss. Perfect for a sophisticated dinner party.
Fire and Ice10 of 22
You can never go wrong with a striking red lip for an elegant cocktail party. Here Rachel Weisz teams a crimson mouth with strong, arched brows and radiant, glowing skin for a breathtakingly classic look.
Red Zone11 of 22
Dressy doesn't always have to mean that you pile on loads of makeup, as evidenced by Jessica Biel. We love the subtle use of a reddish-brown shadow on her upper lids and just a touch in the outer corners of her eyes.
Cat's Meow12 of 22
January Jones has definitely mastered an updated version of an old Hollywood cat's-eye. The winged effect created by the gray shadow even makes her amazing cheekbones look more angular and stunning.
Lip Lock13 of 22
Sometimes all it takes to feel dressed up is a red lip. Even if Anne Hathaway had no eye makeup on, she'd still look ready for the cameras ... and the afterparty.
Hey, Batter14 of 22
The Kardashians are known for many things, one of which is extraordinary lashes. Now there are almost certainly some fakes added in there, but wow, does Kim look flirty and fabulous.
Bubble Yum15 of 22
So maybe red's not your thing, but what about a poppy pink à la Katy Perry at the American Music Awards? Paired with a sultry eye, there's nothing teenybopper about them.
Neutral Gear16 of 22
Sticking with a neutral palette (and a touch of bronzer) creates a really polished effect. And we definitely prefer a polished Jessica Simpson.
In Your Eyes17 of 22
When you wear your hair pulled back in a super-sleek bun like Jessica Alba's, it's the perfect opportunity to go all out on your eyes. Follow her lead and mix some brown tones in with your standard gray/black smoky shadows.
Skin Is In18 of 22
It often gets forgotten in a sea of eyes and lips when you're talking party makeup, but gorgeous skin is really the key to any look. Halle Berry's is pure perfection. Even if yours isn't, a good primer and a tinted moisturizer go a long way.
Line Up19 of 22
We already saw a subtle, dewy Gwyneth earlier, but we loved this look so much we had to include her twice. Lining the inner rims of your lower lids is one of our favorite instant makeup tricks. It's one of our favorite go-to's when we're getting ready in a rush.
Silver Bells20 of 22
If, like Reese Witherspoon, you don't wear loads of makeup in your day-to-day life, a dash of shimmery silver in the inner corners of your eyes is an easy way to take things up just a notch during holiday party season.
Rosy Glow21 of 22
Katie Holmes very smartly played off the pink tones in her pretty printed dress when picking out her blush and lipstick. They complement each other perfectly without one overwhelming the other.
Yellow Fever22 of 22
Do not fear yellow-gold eye shadow, especially if you have golden-toned skin like Rihanna. We never would have thought to pair it with a green liner in the inner rim of the upper lids, but we must say it's pretty genius.


text:
If do I wish to apologize reservidly for posting an insensitive joke. The last thing I want to do is offend those so and so's from the lovely town across the way. No really, it's a lovely place, the indoor Market is to die for
Edited by Maureen T-k, 21 January 2010 - 05:39 PM.


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Home List of Titles Quantum dynamics in phase space: from coherent states to the Gaussian representation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/50034
- Title
- Quantum dynamics in phase space: from coherent states to the Gaussian representation
- Author(s)
- Drummond, P. D.; Deuar, P.; Vaughan, Timothy G.; Corney, J. F.
- Abstract
- We give an outlook on the future of coherence theory and many-body quantum dynamics as experiments develop in the arena of ultra-cold atoms. Novel results on quantum heating of centre-of-mass temperature in evaporative cooling and simulation methods for long-range interactions are obtained, using positive-P phase-space techniques.
- Publication type
- Journal article
- Source
- Journal of Modern Optics, Vol. 54, no. 16-17 (2007), pp. 2499-2512
- Publication year
- 2007
- FOR Code(s)
- 0205 Optical Physics; 0206 Quantum Physics
- Keyword(s)
- Computer simulation; Cooling; Evaporation; Ground state; Heating; Phase space; Quantum heating; Quantum electronics
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- 0950-0340
- Publisher URL
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2007 Taylor & Francis.
- Peer reviewed


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Hi mama's!
I am in the process of relactating for my 4 month old son. I haven't breastfed him since he was 2 days old but we nursed wonderfully at the time. My milk supply recently dried out about 4 to 6 weeks ago.
I also have PPD (I self diagnosed, not on meds yet but was diagnosed by my OB at 4 weeks post, never took meds) and I'm concerned how having PPD and meds will effect my success.
Any advice and/or tips? Any mama's with success? Or maybe a mama or 2 in the same boat as me with the PPD?
Thanks for any advice/support you ladies can give me...
ETA: Sorry this was so brief, lol. I was tired last night when I wrote this. Currently I am pumping (With an Ameda Purely Yours as I didn't like the Medela Lactina) as often as possible, hand expressing and I just started herbs today. I am currently taking More Milk Plus and an 1 capsule of fenugreek and 1 of blessed thistle (in addition to the more milk plus, which already has these in it). I am expecting a delivery today of some 'flexisheilds' which are supposed to help in areola stimulation. I try to get DS to latch but he still only laughs at my breast. I also have breast shields and an SNS (though I'm getting a new SNS as I'm missing some parts to mine, lol) but I haven't tried to use them yet. With the PPD, I am very easily discouraged and get upset very easily so I haven't really attempted to physically breastfeed other than to offer him the breast a few times a day. Hmm... If I think of anything else to add, I'll update again.


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Staff proposed raising the tax rate from last year's rate of 55.06 cents per $100 valuation to 60.06 cents per $100 valuation for fiscal 2015. The effective tax rate would be 55.06 cents per $100 valuation.
The tax increase would generate approximately $422,544 in additional tax revenue. Funds would be used to support initiatives within the 2015 budget. The proposed budget includes initiatives to hire five new city employees — including three firefighters, one information technology technician, and one police dispatcher — and the purchase of several maintenance equipment items and vehicles.
The Council will need to host two public hearings before adopting the new tax rate. Those meetings will be held Aug. 14 and Aug. 19.
Mayor David Krebs implored residents to analyze the proposed budget, which can be downloaded from the city's website.
"If you come to one of these hearings, please go to the website and look at the budget," Krebs said. "This budget is safety and infrastructure work. That's basically what it is."
In other business, the Council approved the consignment of $10,000 in hot funds to the Portland Chamber of Commerce for the promotion of tourism and the hotel industry. The Texas tax code permits cities to delegate these services and provide hot funds to private organizations to carry out certain functions.
"The Chamber requested $10,000 to carry out that function," City Manager Randy Wright said. "They are a nonprofit organization, and uniquely positioned to do that kind of work."
The city will continue to use hot funds to maintain existing billboards and other advertising functions that promote Portland.
Wright said the Chamber's expenditures will be reported to city staff on a quarterly basis.
"The Chamber really promotes the city, and I know these funds will promote it a lot more," Krebs said. "I know our staff doesn't have the time to promote the city, but they will be able to do that."
Chamber Director Colette Walls said some uses for the funding will include extra staffing when the Chamber sponsors the annual Windfest festival, and a new program that will teach youngsters how to be entrepreneurs.