text:
Houston Astros vs Philadelphia Phillies
Time: 1:05 pm
Osceola County Stadium – Kissimmee, FL
Weather: 73, Cloudy
TV: MLB Network (Delayed broadcast)
Follow Phillies Nation on Twitter
If you're reading this at 1:05 PM and you haven't adjusted your clocks, it is too late. Dom Brown finally gets a day off as Cole Hamels leads the Phils against the Houston Astros in Kissimmee in game 16 of 32. Most of the top-tier players are traveling with the team today and, minus Brown's day off and Jimmy Rollins in the WBC, this is likely a line-up you could see in May or June.
The other pitchers scheduled to throw today: Zach Miner, Tyler Cloyd, Justin De Fratus, Jeremy Horst, and Justin Friend.
1. Revere – CF
2. Frandsen – DH
3. Utley – 2B
4. Howard – 1B
5. Young – 3B
6. Nix – RF
7. Ruf – LF
8. Kratz– C
9. Galvis – C
Go Phillies!
33 Comments
No radio, didn't you just post this was on the radio?
Just watching an inning while the Phils were at bat – wow, 2 outs, 2 pitches.
I sure hope it doensn't mean anything.
No K's for Cole through 3 today. Must be working on pitches. I thought we might be looking for an actual season ready test this start, but with 2 starts left, maybe a little early.
Ouch, top of the third and Utley grounded out – 3 outs, 3 pitches –
well, since you mentioned it, I ran across a chart the other day of 3 pitch 3 out innings. It was fun to flip through it.
Risk of boring you as Laynce Nix goes DEEP…some of what I remember…
RandyWolf did it twice, Walter Johnson 4 times, Greg Maddux twice, Halladay once.
Moyer did it in that 2-0 shutout of the Braves at age 47.
Must be a neat feeling to do that.
Looks like the internet only shows hit/outs – not pitch count.
Nice inning for Cloyd with defensive help from Cesar Hernandez. Two assists, one a nice play to his left. Hernandez could go a ways toward deciding the Phils position on Chase. 5 year pro not even at Triple A to date, but still only 23 years old.
Ruf,hit on the elbow told the press he's okay while icing it.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
I'd have announced my retirement. That looked painful.
Not a great outing for Cosart today.
Good thing Cosart isn't a phillies prospect anymore, then.
He's still developing. I think he's 22, and barely has any experience above AA. He seems like he's got the stuff, just needs to be more consistent. I wish he was still here, but that's the price of trade. Pitvhed real well against the Phils earlier this spring, but not today.
Out of all the prospects the Phillies traded away for Halladay, Lee, and Pence, who has actually panned out..I see D'Arnaud is a top prospect for Mets this year, but having knee surgery as a catcher isn't a good sign..
There's plenty of time left for many of them. Jonathan Singleton is the 25th ranked prospect in baseball (from mlb.com), the #1 prospect of the Astros, and #1 of all first base prospects.
Maybe some of those prospects haven't been much, but the latest trade packages have been low minor leaguers with high upside and may still prove to be excellent ML players when they're called up. I believe a couple of the guys the Phils traded for Pence have yet to reach 21 years of age. Sometimes it takes more than a year or two to truly evaluate a trade, particularly when such young players are involved.
Also, many catchers besides D'Arnaud have had knee surgery, so I'm sure he's still a top prospect in the minds of most scouts.
Ok, so the jury is still out, and those trades for Halladay, Lee, and Pence shouldn't be considered bad deals just yet.
No, and you can include the Oswalt deal also. Anthibny Gose might still be a wish we still had him, but even just a good half season out of Roy, and it was very good, to this point was a plus deal.
By the way, while the Pence deal yielded good prospects, even if the deal looks bad down the road, Tommy Joseph was part of the return, and perhaps he winds up softening any pain that develops out of it. And you'd think Singleton will indeed provide pain even by his lonesome.
Absolutely Ken, Joseph could end up being the best player of the bunch, Singleton may get his shot this year after 50 game suspension.
I haven't heard many people criticize the Halladay and (original) Lee trades. The Oswalt and Pence trades are another story though. Eddie Wade did very well in those deals. The Phillies gave up a lot (probably too much) for two guys who were here for a short amount of time.
The net return for the package of Jarred Cosart, Jonathan Singleton, Domingo Santana and Josh Zeid stands at Tommy Joseph, Seth Rosin and one year of Pence.
I'd rather have Singleton & Santana in the Phillies' farm system than Joseph & Rosin.
Forgot about Santana, he had a strong season in Hi A last year.
There were 58 qualifying position players in the High A California League. Santana was the only one of the 58 wasn't 20 yet, and yet he was the 7th best hitter (by wRC+).
He still strikes out a lot (28.2%. or 183 per 650), so it remains to be seen if that catches up with him in AA.
While the jury is still out on the players the Phils gave up in those deals – to me, the Pence deal was by far the worst – the jury is not out on how much they gave up at the time relative to what other teams may have given up for similar players. When you compare the package that the Phils gave up for Pence to the package that the Braves gave up for Bourn, who arguably was a better player than Pence, it is clear (based on how those players were rated at the time) that the Phils gave up more. This is important because, had they given up a comparable package for Pence that the Braves gave up for Bourn, they might have held onto some prospects who could have enabled them to trade for Justin Upton or they might be in position to trade for Chase Headley.
Results-based analysis is only part of the equation. Analysis of the deal at the time is also important and it was obvious on August 1, 2011 that they overpaid for Pence.
While Bourn and Pence are somewhat comparable players, they don't play the same position and don't have identical skillsets. I don't defend the Pence deal, because it was a clear overpay, but at the time the front office thought they needed more of a power bat, preferably a righthanded bat, and had no real use (at the time) for Bourn. In other words, trade value can't be totaly based on what other teams may have given up, because other teams have different needs. If a team wants a power bat, they might have to pay more to get it. If the trade partner has no use for a speedy outfielder, they may let him go for less.
One other factor in comparisons should be contract length. In the case of Bourn, Atlanta got one season, then lost him as a free agent, netting only a compensatory draft pick in return. The Phils got Pence with two years of control, and when he didn't work out were able to flip him for a highly regarded prospect playing a premium position.
As I said, the Pence deal was a clear overpay, but it has little to do with what the Braves were able to do with Bourn. A better comparison, based more on types of skills, might be Pence and Beltran, although once again, service time enters in.
Two other factors I think are many times missed in trade comparisons: players' ages and potential. In the cases of Pence, Bourn, and Beltran, none of these are even close. Beltran was considered to be near the finish line, career-wise (although, strangely, he actually got better the following year with the Cards), Bourn is likely starting on the downslope, and Pence, at the time, was actually entering his so-called prime. These may all be projections, as Beltran's unexpected performance showed, but they are factors any GM will use in evaluating what to give up for which player. Sometimes they get it wrong; sometimes the numbers do lie. A GM doesn't have the all-seeing prognosticating power of a fan looking back, and he can't make up hypotheticals oconcerning who he might have gotten had he not done that initial deal. (Well, I suppose he could, if he wants ulcers!)
"Bourn is likely starting on the downslope, and Pence, at the time, was actually entering his so-called prime."
Bourn is 3.5 months older than Pence.
hk, the age inaccuracy doesn't invalidate the rest of his comments. He makes a particularly good point about how much a power bat is worth compared to a defense/speed player. It may not be the correct way or fair way to look at things, but like it or not, it's the way many of these FO's have operated over the years, almost always overvaluing power. Just look at this years FA signings of Hamilton and Bourn. Was there that much difference to their value? No, but Hamilton gets more than double and an extra year.
I am neither defending the team or placing blame for the Pence deal, just pointing out that IMO- comparing to the Bourn deal is not the way I look at it.
That said, I'm in full agreement that it would have been nice to keep some of those pieces for a Chase Headley deal.
Hamilton has been so much better than Pence that his contract as compared to Bourn's has no place in a comparison of July 2011 Pence vs. July 2011 Bourn. BTW, I agree that some front offices have stressed power over speed and defense in the past; however, that doesn't mean it is (or was) the right thing to do.
I know that WAR is not the be-all and end-all statistic, but it is worth noting that Pence plus Schierholtz, who came over in the Pence deal, provided the Phils with 3.9 WAR in 749 PA's (0.0052 WAR per PA) while Bourn provided the Braves with 7.6 WAR in 952 PA's (0.0080 WAR per PA). In summary:
1. The Phils gave up much better prospects for Pence than ATL did for Bourn.
2. The Phils got worse production (as measured by WAR) from Pence + Schierholtz than ATL did from Bourn.
3. The Phils paid Pence + Schierholtz ~$7.6M while ATL paid Bourn ~$8.345M.
4. Going forward, the Phils have Tommy Joseph to show for originally acquiring Pence while ATL has a sandwich pick to show for originally acquiring Bourn.
Most people don't break down age to months and days. I'm sorry if I kept it to years.
That said, speed guys are generally considered to age faster (They always say the legs are the first things to go). I may not agree with that, but it's one reason why even at the time of the trade, most fans thought Pence was a bit younger, and one of the reasons why many people on this very site thought signing Bourn as a free agent would be a bad move by the Phils.
The two of them, Pence and Bourn, are not comparable players, in my opinion. If you believe they are, that's your opinion. I feel I've presented some valid arguments as to why they aren't (power hitter vs. contact and speed, length of team control, and others' perceptions, right or wrong, about age). You only picked on the age discrepancy (and Bourn IS older), which would indicate to me that that's your only defense of your position.
And as I clearly stated, I thought Pence cost too much. I don't need other teams' dealings to tell me that.
One last thing: although the Phils might have some extra trade chips if they'd kept those prospects, it's pure conjecture to think they might have scored Headley or Upton. Again, it depends on the other team's needs, and depends too on timing. Plus, there still might be a very good market for the Phil's catching depth, acquired partly with Pence.
If you kept it to years, you would have said Bourn is 0 years older than Pence.
On Bourn's and Pence's respective ages and on aging, they are practically the same age and I don't recall anyone expecting Bourn to slow down in his age 28 or age 29 season. I was among those who did not want Bourn for his age 30 season, but I also would not want Pence for his age 30 season, especially at the $13.8M price tag that San Francisco has him.
On team control, you are correct that Pence came with one more year of team control. He also came with a higher contract in 2011, which meant he would most likely get more than Bourn via arbitration (or via a pre-arbitration settlement) in 2012 and that Pence would command a very large contract in 2013. It turned out that way, too, as Pence and the Phils settled for $10.4M for 2012 while Bourn and the Braves settled for $6.845M for the same season. Team control is great, but only when the player is cheap. All other things being equal, I would have much preferred to acquire Bourn's contract than to acquire Pence's.
hk, We can use fWAR. Since 2007 Michael Bourn has complied 21.4, Josh Hamilton 25.0,
I ask again, is one player worth 2.5 times the other?
In your original comment you compared the packages given up for Bourn and Pence, and you correctly called the Pence package too large. George, while agreeing it was an overpay, as I just did, said the players had different skill sets and therefore different values to the purchasing organizations. I agreed saying that the comparison was similar to the 2012 FA contracts given to JH and MB, just for comparison. Pence by the way, has 21.1 fWAR in the same time period.
Now to your bullet points
"1. The Phils gave up much better prospects for Pence than ATL did for Bourn."
-Agreed, easily explained in this years FA class as a player with 3.6 higher WAR since 2007, got paid more than double and a longer term.
"2. The Phils got worse production (as measured by WAR) from Pence + Schierholtz than ATL did from Bourn."
– Not when you look at their entire body of work since 2007, a body of work is all a trading team has to look at. They can not predict future performance any better than my broker, Bill James, or the local weatherman.
"3. The Phils paid Pence + Schierholtz ~$7.6M while ATL paid Bourn ~$8.345M."
– This one is a head scratcher for me. Had they kept Scheirholtz, that expenditure might make more sense, I really can't explain why they just let him go.
"4. Going forward, the Phils have Tommy Joseph to show for originally acquiring Pence while ATL has a sandwich pick to show for originally acquiring Bourn."
– I'd take my chances with Tommy Joseph in a position that will shortly be of need over an unknown commodity any day.
I think a quick summary of all these trades (and others) could read like this:
Some work, some some don't. All front offices make both kinds.


text:
I thought I'd take some time to acquaint you with yet another facet of my favorite language: the network-related functions. In this article I touch upon several cool applications, including how to use PHP to send e-mail, verify e-mail addresses, call operating system functions from within a script, and finally conclude the article with an explanation of how to query a WHOIS database for domain information.
Perhaps the most commonly used network-oriented function of the PHP repertoire is the
mail() function. Quite simply, the
mail() function is used to send e-mail to some destination. Take a moment to review its syntax:
bool mail(str to, str subject, str message [, str addl_headers])
The first input parameter,
to, specifies the e-mail destination to which the e-mail is to be directed. The parameters
subject and
message specify the subject header and message body, respectively. Finally, the optional input parameter
addl_headers specifies any optional information that is to appear within the message header. Although this final parameter is not required, I think that you'll find it particularly useful. Before I delve into a few examples, I'll take a moment to introduce the perfunctory configuration procedures, which simply involve the possible modification of one or more directives found within the
php.ini file.
By default, PHP's mail function uses the mail transfer agent sendmail to execute the delivery of e-mail sent via the
mail() function. Therefore the
php.ini file calls for the directive
sendmail_path to be supplied with the path where sendmail can be found. Therefore, if sendmail can be found in the directory
/usr/bin, you could set the directive as follows:
sendmail_path = "/usr/bin/sendmail -t -i"
You'll also want to ensure that the user running PHP (probably "nobody") is capable of executing sendmail.
Since the Windows platform does not offer sendmail, which is the default mail transfer agent for the
mail() function, an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, the protocol used for exchanging e-mails over the Internet) address is required. Furthermore, it's possible to specify the From: address directly within the
php.ini file. The two directives responsible for Windows configuration are shown here:
SMTP = localhost ; for win32 only
sendmail_from = firstname.lastname@example.com ; for win32 only
Once you have the configuration procedures out of the way, it's time to begin playing with the function. In the section "Using
mail()," I'll present a few examples that will introduce you to the various nuances of this cool function.
Incidentally, it's also possible to supply options to sendmail. In fact, by default, sendmail is called as
sendmail -t -i. The
-i switch tells sendmail to ignore any lines consisting of just a single dot, which otherwise would cause sendmail to quit reading in the message. The
-t switch will tell sendmail to search the message for To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines, deleting the Bcc: line before sending the message. For a complete listing of sendmail options, check out the respective man page on your server.
As you have seen from the mail() syntax, it's a rather straightforward function. However, there are a few tricks that may not be initially apparent. Let's begin with a simple example:
Listing 1-1: Sending e-mail with
$email = "email@example.com";
$subject = "Check out O'Reillynet.com!";
$message = <<<Message
Dear Reader,
O'Reillynet.com's PHP section is really cool, offering insightful material from that< PHP Phanatic Urb LeJeune, among others. Email us should you have any suggestions or comments!";
The O'Reilly PHP crew
mail($email, $subject, $message);
As you may have surmised, this short script will send an e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com having the subject line of "Check out O'Reillynet.com!" and a message body specified by
$message. Simple enough, right? However, those of you with particularly keen insight may be wondering who exactly the message will be attributed to, since it is not specified in the
mail() function. In fact, it will be addressed as from the user the webserver is running as. For example, let's assume that O'Reillynet.com's server is running as user "Matilda." Thus the From: header would state: firstname.lastname@example.com.
Chances are, you are going to want to customize this From: attribute, in addition to others such as Reply-To. This is where the
addl_headers parameter comes into play. For example, assume that I would like the same message to be addressed from "The O'Reilly PHP Crew", and also use the Reply-To address of O'Reillynet's PHP editor, "email@example.com." Therefore I would modify the call to the above
mail() function as shown here:
$headers = "From: The O'Reilly PHP Crew\nReply-To: firstname.lastname@example.com";
mail($email, $subject, $message, $headers);
There are two points worth noting regarding the
addl_headers parameter. The first is that each header must be separated by a newline character, as is shown in the above example. The second point to make is that you are certainly not limited to using just From and Reply-To; you are free to use any and all available message headers. In summary, using the
addl_headers parameter will result in a more organized and personalized e-mail.
It is important to keep in mind that the PHP mail() function is to be used for typical e-mail usage, and not for sending bulk mail. For those of you interested in sending bulk e-mail, I would suggest taking some time to review sendmail's switches carefully, and also check out several of the available bulk e-mail management packages like Majordomo or Listserv. Also check out www.faqs.org for a comprehensive comparison summary of the most popular e-mail management packages.
Although accumulating an e-mail-based newsletter subscriber base is a great way to keep in contact with your site community, it is also important to always keep in perspective one of the age-old adages of security: Never trust the user. This particularly applies to any situation in which you're forcing users to input e-mail addresses at some point within your web site. To illustrate, a common requirement for downloading software is the mandatory input of an e-mail address. Well, if you're anything like me, you probably enter something like "firstname.lastname@example.com." Of course, this is not my e-mail address, and it's likely that it's not even a valid one. While this is convenient for me since I typically don't want to be spammed by annoying organizations, it does not bode well for the organization that is storing thousands of potentially invalid e-mail addresses. Regardless of why you're storing e-mails, you may find it interesting to learn that PHP offers a rather trivial method for checking that e-mail addresses actually exist. Listing 1-2 illustrates just such a script.
Listing 1-2: Validating an e-mail's syntax and domain existence
$email = "email@example.com";
function validate_email($email) {
// verify that $email meets requirements specified
// by regular expression. Store various parts in $pieces array.
if (eregi("^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+
$email, $pieces)) :
// strstr() returns all of first parameter
// found after second parameter.
// substr() returns all of the string found
// between the first and second parameters.
// getmxrr() verifies that domain MX record exists.
if (getmxrr(substr(strstr($pieces[0], '@'), 1),
$mx_hosts) ) :
return TRUE;
return FALSE;
} // end validate_email()
// validate the email and output message accordingly.
if (validate_email($email)) :
print "email is valid!";
else :
print "bad email! baaaaad email!";
Of course, instead of outputting a message at the end of the script, chances are you will want to perform some function such as adding the e-mail to a database table if it's valid, otherwise informing the user that the e-mail is invalid and reprompting for input.
The only PHP function used in this example that is directly related to networking per se is the function
getmxrr(). This function searches for the mail exchanger record that specifies a domain's mail route. All MX records that are found are placed into the second input parameter: in the case of Listing 1-2, the variable
Keep in mind that this "foolproof" verification system is unlikely to deter those users who insist on not providing their real e-mail address. While the upside is that you are likely to store only "correct" e-mail addresses, this will not stop users from entering addresses that are not really theirs.
Of course, working with e-mail is just a small part of PHP's network-related functionality. PHP also offers several rather useful functions for retrieving information regarding servers and domains, a few of which I'll introduce here.
Let's assume for example that you wanted to write a script that translates the IP addresses found within Apache's server log into corresponding host names. Although I won't delve into the entire script, you may find it interesting to know that PHP offers a function that can readily perform these IP-to-host name translations. The function name is
gethostbyaddr(). I'll illustrate its usage in Listing 1-3.
Listing 1-3: Translating an IP to its corresponding host name.
$ip = "22.214.171.124";
$host = gethostbyaddr($ip);
print "The host name for $ip is $host.";
The above example would yield the following output:
The host name for 220.127.116.11 is www.oreillynet.com.
Incidentally, you can use Apache's
REMOTE_ADDR variable and the
gethostbyaddr() function to obtain the current client's host name, as is shown in Listing 1-4:
Listing 1-4: Obtaining the client's host name
$host = gethostbyaddr($REMOTE_ADDR);
print "Your host name is $host ($REMOTE_ADDR).";
Listing 1-4 would output:
Your host name is www.oreillynet.com (22.214.171.124).
As is the case with many PHP functions, there is a procedure that performs the opposite translation, that is, host name to IP. This is accomplished with the function
gethostbyname(). I'll illustrate its usage in Listing 1-5:
Listing 1-5: Obtaining a host name's corresponding IP address
$host = www.oreillynet.com;
$ip = gethostbyname($host);
print "The IP address for the host name $host is $ip.";
This would return the following output:
The IP address for the host name www.oreillynet.com is 18.104.22.168.
Incidentally, if PHP doesn't offer the particular network function that you require, you can probably call it via one of PHP's system execution functions. You can use these execution functions to call various commands located on the server operating system itself. For example, Listing 1-6 illustrates the use of PHP's
exec() function to call the ping command, which sends a request for a server response. The
exec() function will then store all output into the second input parameter, allowing for subsequent storage, display, or analysis of this data.
Listing 1-6: Using exec() to display ping output
// ping some server five times and store output in array $output
exec("ping -c 5 www.oreillynet.com", $output);
// format each line of output
while (list(,$val) = each($output)) :
print "
$val
";
Executing Listing 1-6 will result in output similar to the following:
Pinging www.oreillynet.com with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from www.oreillynet.com: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from www.oreillynet.com: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from www.oreillynet.com: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from www.oreillynet.com: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Reply from www.oreillynet.com: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for www.oreillynet.com:
Packets: Sent = 5, Received = 5, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 0ms
The French PHP resource site www.phpinfo.net offers for download a very slick user logging application written in PHP. This is something you should definitely check out.
Note that I used the HTML "pre" tags to ensure that the output is displayed in some readable format. If these tags were omitted, the array contents would run together in a rather confusing jumble.
Of course, you're not limited to calling just
ping with PHP's command functions; you can call any function available on the server.
In today's continuing craze of gobbling up domain names, it becomes ever more necessary for ISPs to offer users the capability to easily verify whether or not a particular domain has already been taken. While on the surface this may seem like a complicated feature to implement, it's actually rather trivial. In this section, I'll demonstrate just how easy it is to incorporate this feature into your web site. First however, allow me to take a moment to explain the underlying mechanics of domain name storage and retrieval.
Although many think of the Internet as this chaotic mess of servers, all that we do today in terms of sending e-mail, surfing the Web, or using a search engine would be impossible if it weren't for organization starting on the highest levels. Operational centers known as NICs (Network Information Centers) are responsible for maintaining databases containing information regarding various networks and the domains and other data pertinent to these networks. Chances are you are familiar with NICs such as Network Solutions and Register.com. Of course, these NICs do not handle all domain extensions. You may need to modify Listing 1-7 (shown below) to be in accordance with the domain extensions that you'd like to search.
The databases that NICs administrate are typically known as WHOIS databases. Using PHP, it's easy to create a web interface that can interact with just such a database, querying it and subsequently displaying the data to the browser. Let's consider just such an interface, making use of the Internic WHOIS database to perform the query. First off, take a moment to try the demo, and then review the code in Listing 1-7.
Listing 1-7: A WHOIS interface (whois.php)
// Has the HTML form been viewed yet?
if (! $seenform) :
$form = <<<Form
<form action="whois.php">
<input type="hidden" name="seenform" value="y" />
Domain name: (i.e. oreillynet.com)

<input type="text" name="domain" value="" size="55" maxsize="65" />

<input type="submit" value="Look it up!" />
echo $form;
// The form has been viewed; Process information.
else :
$fh = fsockopen("whois.internic.net", 43)
or die("Can't open WHOIS!");
if ($fh) :
fputs($fh, $domain);
while (! feof($fh)) :
echo fgets($fh, 1048);
I'll assume that you are familiar with many of the functions used in Listing 1-7, save for perhaps
fsockopen(). This function attempts to open a socket connection with some Internet domain. In the above example, I use
fsockopen() to open a connection on hostname "whois.internic.net" on port 43.
I'd also like to note that Listing 1-7 is for demonstration purposes only. Some NICs restrict usage of their WHOIS database. Therefore, if you're interested in integrating this type of functionality into your site, please check with the NIC before doing so.
This article touched upon networking as it relates to the PHP scripting language. Quite a few topics were touched upon, including PHP's
mail() function, bulk-e-mail software, e-mail validation, IP translation, PHP's system functions, and finally, verifying domain availablity via PHP. Hopefully I've provided you with some insight as to how to begin exploiting PHP's vast set of networking capabilities for your own purposes.
W.J. Gilmore has been developing PHP applications since 1997, and is frequently published on the subject within some of the Web's most popular development sites. He is the author of 'A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0' (January 2001, Apress), and is the Assistant Editorial Director of Web and Open Source Technologies at Apress.
Return to the PHP DevCenter.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Central Street residence damaged in fire
Smelling a rat in Washington
For months we have been smelling a rat – a big one in Washington – in the National Flood Insurance Program. As it has developed, our noses were right.
Now, with numbers surfacing to confirm our suspicion, a few members of Congress are looking into the matter. Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., is in the lead.
Late last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began informing some holders of federal flood insurance policies that their premiums would be going up – some quite drastically. Asked why, FEMA functionaries pointed to the 2012 Biggert-Waters Act.
By wide margins, Congress approved the act after being told the flood insurance program has a $24 billion deficit.
Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were blamed for much of the imbalance between premiums and claims.
But after hearing horror stories from local residents, we suggested FEMA might be paying for coastal storm damage by disproportionately increasing flood insurance costs for inland residents. In other words, people like those here in West Virginia and Ohio were being told to pay unncecessarily high premiums to subsidize flood insurance policies in coastal areas.
Now, as we reported earlier this month, the numbers are out – and they back up our contention. McKinley and some other lawmakers have seen them, too – and they are not happy.
This week, McKinley demanded an explanation in a letter to FEMA official David Miller.
Flood insurance premium increases were so outrageous that Congress in effect put a hold on Biggert-Waters, as McKinley noted.
He added, "Much of the stress on the flood insurance program has come as a result of flooding in coastal areas. Yet states like West Virginia are paying higher rates and premiums than many of these areas."
Precisely. As McKinley noted, West Virginians paid the highest premium rate in the nation last year, at 6.5 percent. The national average is 3.5 percent.
"Compared to other states, West Virginia policyholders are paying more in premiums, a higher rate, and have smaller claims," McKinley noted. His letter included some statistics:
In West Virginia, the average flood insurance premium last year was $896.38, while in South Carolina it was $666.85.
Yet West Virginia accounts for a much lower percentage of total flood insurance claims – less than 1 percent during the progam's history.
Those numbers are merely the tip of the iceberg. Other FEMA statistics back up the point that inland residents are paying more than their fair share of flood insurance premiums, while those in coastal regions are paying less.
This is a matter of simple fairness. McKinley and other lawmakers from inland states should not allow FEMA to balance flood insurance books on our backs.


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September 27, 2012 —
The stinkhorn mushroom, aptly named for its offensive fragrance and stalklike form, is a member of a family of fungi known as Phallaceae. Stinkhorns are characterized by very unpleasant-smelling sticky spore masses that occur on the end of a stalk called the receptaculum.
Likened to the odor of carrion or dung, the spore mass attracts flies and other insects. While feeding on the slime, the insects' feet become coated with the spore-laden substance that they then transport to other locations, allowing the stinkhorns to grow elsewhere.
While body structures may vary, all Phallaceae species begin development as oval or round structures known as eggs, which reveal layers of slime when cut open.
Stinkhorns appear suddenly and often sport gaudy coloration like that depicted here. Other common but imaginative names are "devil's dipstick" and "dog stinkhorn." Mature stinkhorn mushrooms can be smelled from 50 feet away, making them less than delightful for humans who suddenly find themselves with a new neighbor in the backyard.


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February 22, 2013
Mr. James A. Mooney, age 69, of Forest Hill Towers, Gloversville, passed away peacefully on Friday, February 22, 2013 at the Hospice Inn at St. Peter's Hospital, Albany, with his loving daughter by his side after a long illness.
He was born December 25, 1943 in Port Leyden, NY, the son of the late Clarence and Theresa Bauer Mooney. He attended Port Leyden Central School and Lowville Academy. In 1963 he served in the Naval Reserve. He grew up in Fort Plain where he resided until 2011.
Jim worked for himself as a carpenter/handyman. He loved to help people and made many friends doing so. His greatest joy was spending time with his family, especially his grandson. He enjoyed watching NASCAR and PGA Golf. Prior to his illness he enjoyed riding his motorcycle, dancing and being a member of the Fort Plain Elks Lodge.
Special thanks to his dear friends Gerri Maring and Taya Kardash for helping care for him over the years.
Jim is survived by: his daughter, Michelle Ippoliti; son-in-law, Bruce Skinner, Jr; stepson, Michael Mooney (Cathy) and grandson and "best buddy" Makoa Skinner. Also surviving are his grandpets that he loved: Po, Taco and Bubba; his siblings: Shirley Duesler of Englewood, FL, Phyllis Mooney of Homossossa, FL, Tom Mooney (Linda) of Arlington, TN, Don Mooney (Karen) of Lowville, NY, Millie Oeser of Homossossa, FL, Joanne Mooney of Plymouth, MA, Richard Mooney (Linda) of Adams, NY and Kathy Rollman (Butch) of Indian Trail, NC; several nieces and nephews.
Cremation took place at Park View Crematorium, Schenectady. Arrangements have been entrusted to Walrath & Stewart Funeral Home, Gloversville.
Please visit the family's online guestbook at www.brbsfuneral.com.


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Kiang is a round tabletop computer for general use.
[edit] access
please feel free to use the table as a kiosk, but be prepared for unpredictable uptime while the system is experimented with. OpenSSH server is installed for remote management.
noisetable.noise user: noisetable pass: noisebridge
[edit] spec
- Zytouch capacaitive touch screen built into it, and a small x86 embedded system underneath that..
- VIA Eden board with a code name 'Esther' processor on it. It clocks at 400mHz but cat /proc/cpuinfo shows it may be able to go up to 1Ghz (with active cooling?)
- there are faster drivers than the default vesa setting in the xorg.conf file. they should be installed now
- bluetooth
- wifi card
- 05:08.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)
- Ubuntu 10.04 installed on a 80gig 3.5 IDE drive. The generic install works fine out of the box, but optimizations for an older memory and speed limited system would never hurt.
- 2011-10-02: upgrade to 11.04 in progress
[edit] To Do
- Cant get the openchrome Xorg driver to work well with the VIA eden board. The Ubuntu package is called xserver-xorg-video-openchrome. xorg.conf was modified to use the 'openchrome' device and dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg was run. Then gdm was cycled by /etc/init.d/gdm restart
- A round tabletop system presents challenges to window management designer, it would be interesting to get a touch based system like Android running on this machine. The machine may be down for work on projects like this.
- It needs some Zytouch driver love, which comes from the touch-base website: http://touch-base.com/documentation/LinuxPlatformNotes.htm#_Serial_port_issues
- The serial connection has been routed through a keyspan 19HS serial-to-USB converter. Unfortunately, drivers for the damned thing are only available for Windows, and John has been bashing his head against getting the Ubuntu host to recognize the converter and pass the serial connection through to wine. Windows may need to be installed.
- Another option is to reverse engineer a driver. This could theoretically be a userland daemon providing an input device to Xorg. There are many ways to help this effort:
Here is a hex dump of the serial data sent by the touchpad with "no interaction": http://pastebin.com/wmCaQMdK
I can't guarantee that the output represents _zero_ interaction because some values in the stream appear to be _very_ sensitive to proximity.
There are 11 or so unique values sent from the touchscreen. We have to figure out what they mean and when they are sent.
If you want to have a look at those values, open the homebrew "driver" in the works: ~/noisetap/noisetap.c
There you will find the list of values and the best explanations we can come up with as to what they mean.
Another way to help out would be to bring a Windows box with a serial connection to the table (see what I did there?). If you can get the touchscreen driver to work, we may be able to step through the driver code and reverse engineer it that way. This would probably be a lot easier than figuring it out from the raw data dump, but it requires some Windows know-how (That's a tough thing to find at Noisebridge). If you want to lend a Windows box to the project, John will gladly take care of the gory details involved in DLL sniffing (or whatever it is we need to do).
This link may or not be helpful on data format, but this guy RE'd a different model over USB... -> http://www.mega-nerd.com/erikd/Blog/CodeHacking/zytouch-driver.html
[edit] How to reset the BIOS video settings
While playing around with the BIOS settings, I ended up disabling the built-in LCD from working anymore. Problem was, I couldn't see the BIOS screen to reset it! I ended up taking the table apart in order to find the VGA out connector. Plugging an external monitor to this allowed me to see what I was doing, at least part of the time. There were other times when even the BIOS screen appeared garbled. Here are the steps to reset the screens back to normal...
This is what we want to set in the BIOS to restore the LCD:
- Advanced Chipset Features
- AGP & P2P Bridge Control
- Panel Type
- set to "1280x1024 2x24B"
- Panel Type
- AGP & P2P Bridge Control
- Problem is, just setting the above won't immediately fix the LCD. Try setting first to "1024x768 1x18B", save and reboot, then set to above resolution.
- Make sure "Display Device" is set to "CRT+LCD" prior to setting the above. (CRT is the VGA out, LCD is the built-in monitor)
Steps to restore monitors while working blind:
- On boot, press "del" key a few times right after colored lines on LCD flash to get into BIOS.
- To reset BIOS to minimal failsafe defaults, press:
- Right, Down, Enter, "Y", Enter, F10, Enter.
- (Computer should now reboot. Press Del to enter BIOS.)
- Now we must set "Display Device" to "CRT+LCD":
- Down, Down, Enter, Down, Enter, 4*Up, Enter, 12*Up, 5*Down, Enter, F10, Enter.
- (Computer should now reboot. Press Del to enter BIOS.)
- Now to fix the resolution:
- Down, Down, Enter, Down, Enter, 3*Up, Enter, F10, Enter.
Hopefully, that should restore the built-in LCD.
[edit] Boosting the CPU speed
After reseting the BIOS to minimal failsafe defaults, the CPU is reset to 400 MHz. The CPU can actually go much faster. Reseting the BIOS using the Optimal Defaults will reset the CPU to it's full 1GHz. Resetting the defaults will disable the monitor though, so I wouldn't recommend doing this.
Instead, I changed the CPU frequency settings to an x8 multiplier instead of the minimal x4, which doubled the CPU's clock to 800 MHz. This appears to work just fine, and is what the CPU is currently set to.
[edit] Getting basic video to work in X11
To configure X11 to work with the basic VESA video driver:
sudo cp ~/carl/backup/etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11
Or enter the following in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Section "Device" Identifier "Configured Video Device" Driver "vesa" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Monitor "Configured Monitor" Device "Configured Video Device" EndSection
- Then run:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
- Currently uses "vesa" driver. Have not been able to get "openchrome" to work yet.
- May also want to:
cp ~/carl/backup/config/monitors.xml ~/.config/
- Note the value under
<rate>60</rate>. May want to try 61.
Here's a working copy of ~/.config/monitors.xml:
<monitors version="1"> <configuration> <clone>no</clone> <output name="default"> <vendor>???</vendor> <product>0x0000</product> <serial>0x00000000</serial> <width>800</width> <height>600</height> <rate>60</rate> <x>0</x> <y>0</y> <rotation>normal</rotation> <reflect_x>no</reflect_x> <reflect_y>no</reflect_y> <primary>no</primary> </output> </configuration> </monitors>


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Clinical equipoise versus scientific rigor in cancer clinical trials
A critical aspect of both evidence-based medicine (EBM) and science-based medicine (SBM) is the randomized clinical trial. Ideally, particularly for conditions with a large subjective component in symptomatology, the trial should be randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled. As Kimball Atwood pointed out just last week, in EBM, scientific prior probability tends to be discounted while in SBM it is not, particularly for therapies that are wildly improbable strictly on the basis of basic science, but for both the randomized clinical trial remains, in essence, where the "rubber hits the road," so to speak. Indeed, when the prior probability of a therapy working based on preclinical basic science investigations appears high, EBM and SBM should be (and are, for the most part) more or less indistinguishable.
The ethics of clinical trials, however, demand a characteristic known as clinical equipoise. Stated briefly, for purposes of clinical trials, clinical equipoise demands that at the time a clinical trial is being carried out there be a state of genuine scientific uncertainty in the medical community over which of the drugs or treatments being tested is more efficacious and safer. One reason (among many) why the Gonzalez trial was completely unethical was a lack of clinical equipose. (Lack of adequate informed consent was another.) Lack of clinical equipoise is also the reason why a prospective randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial testing an unvaccinated group versus a vaccinated control group to determine whether vaccines cause autism would be completely unethical. Such a trial would egregiously violate the principle of clinical equipoise because the unvaccinated group would be left unprotected against potentially life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases, and that is completely unacceptable from an ethical perspective. Consequently, we have had to rely on on the accumulation of data from less rigorous trial designs to demonstrate that there is no correlation between vaccines and autism. Even so, the accumulated weight of such evidence is enough, and for some questions that is the best we can do because scientific rigor sometimes conflicts with human subjects research ethics. This is an extreme example of lack of clinical equipoise, but it illustrates the point. If we know (or have good scientific reason to suspect) that one treatment is better than another, it is unethical to randomize patients to the arm that receives what is, based on what is known at the time of the trial, likely to be an inferior treatment.
Sometimes, however, the question of whether clinical equipoise exists in a clinical trial is not so obvious as it is for trials proposed by cranks. This situation sometimes crops up in clinical trials for cancer. I was reminded of this issue by a front page story in the New York Times yesterday, New Drugs Stir Debate on Basic Rules of Clinical Trials. In it, reporter Amy Harmon uses a classic human interest story to highlight the issue of clinical equipoise in a clinical trial for a new drug for melanoma that shows great promise. In brief, it is the story of two cousins, one of whom is receiving the new "wonder drug" (whether it is truly a wonder drug or not remains to be seen) in a clinical trial and one of whom is receiving the current standard of care for stage IV melanoma, which, to put it bluntly, sucks in that it has very little effect in prolonging life:
Posted in: Cancer, Clinical Trials, Medical EthicsLeave a Comment (34) →


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The Eternal Beach-Body Plan
Phase II - Week 6: Workout V
Exercise VIII: Lying Dumbbell Triceps Extension
Sets: 2 Reps: 10 Rest: 45 Seconds
Hold a dumbbell in each hand and lie back on a bench. Press the weights overhead so that they are directly above your face [1]. Keeping your upper arms in place, bend your elbows and lower the dumbbells until they are just above your forehead [2]. Reverse the motion to return to the starting position. That's one rep.
The Eternal Beach-Body Plan: Phase II was shot at Gold's Gym, Manhattan—Wall Street


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This Easter was a difficult one for me. In February, my husband and I joined Weight Watchers. We've had incredible success (I'm down 23 pounds so far!), and while we are able to eat whatever we want as long as we plan for it, it's sort of frowned upon to eat nothing but dessert and candy, which is pretty much what I eat at Easter.
So this year, I did some research and determined that Angel Food Cake is actually a pretty Weight Watchers-friendly dessert. For those counting Points Plus, Alton Brown's Angel Food Cake recipe is only 6 points a slice if you cut the cake so that you get 10 slices (which is incredibly easy to do). I even mascerated my strawberries in a little of the free sample of Truvia I recently got to further reduce Points.
This was my first time baking an Angel Food Cake, so not only did I get to try a new recipe, I also got to buy a new toy– a tube pan. Win-win situation!
I was very intimidated by this recipe and was worried that the egg white mixture was NOT going to fluff up. I shouldn't have worried. Ol' Trusty the KitchenAid Mixer took care of it. The cake puffed up just like it was supposed to and even released from the tube pan with minimal effort.
The cake was a hit at Easter dinner where at least half of it was polished off after dinner. The strawberries and Truvia lent a perfect amount of sweetness and the cake was light and airy and tasty! I used lemon extract in my cake and the lemon and strawberry flavors were delightful together.
If you're looking for a lighter dessert, I would definitely recommend this cake and Alton Brown's recipe. Also, make sure your eggs come to room temperature before you whip them, or it will take an exceptionally long time and you'll start to think you royally screwed up.


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New York Receives Award as National Leader in Advancing Health Information Technology to Improve Quality of Care
New York Leads U.S. in Health IT Commitment to Help Transform Paper-Based, Fragmented System to Interoperable Electronic Health Records
ALBANY, N.Y. (June 11, 2008) – The state of New York has received the 2008 State Advocacy Award from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for its leadership and commitment to health information technology.
New York is making an unprecedented $200 million commitment over five years in the organizational, clinical and technical aspects of an interoperable health information and quality improvement infrastructure to support improvements in health care quality, affordability and outcomes.
This includes the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) and a statewide health information network for New York (SHIN-NY, pronounced "shiny") so that medical information follows consumers to keep them at the center of their care. New York's health information technology (IT) tools will measure quality and accountability based on the information needed to assess patient outcomes.
Serving more than 320 corporate and 20,000 individual members, HIMSS is the health care industry's organization focused exclusively on providing global leadership for the best use of health IT and management systems to improve health care quality and patient health. The group's annual state advocacy awards are presented to states that serve as a national beacon for the health IT revolution.
"New York proudly accepts this national recognition for our leadership in health information technology," Governor David A. Paterson said. "New York participates in national collaborative efforts to use information technology to improve the quality of care by allowing doctors to see a patient's full medical records to more quickly diagnose emergencies and work together to improve a patient's health."
Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D., said, "Our current work to build the health IT infrastructure piece by piece statewide will stand as one of this administration's landmark achievements."
Key aspects of New York's health IT program, ensuring health IT advances in the public's interest and benefits all New Yorkers, are the following:
- Policy alignment – Health IT is an essential underpinning to the state's strategy to transform our health care system. This requires a coordination of policy efforts to improve the delivery and payment of preventive and high-quality care, while ensuring that information is in the hands of clinicians and their patients so that it guides medical decisions and supports the delivery of more coordinated, patient-centered care. Without the coordination of key policy efforts, health IT will not achieve the expected quality and efficiency goals.
- Funding – New York is investing $250 million in a comprehensive health information and quality improvement infrastructure. This commitment is well above what the federal and other state governments combined are making in health IT to support improvements in health care quality, affordability and outcomes. Of the total, $105 million was awarded to 19 community-based initiatives in March 2008.
- Public-Private Governance – To develop the rules and discipline required to ensure that the public interest is placed above proprietary interests, New York is leading the nation in setting health IT policy, including the formalization of collaborative structures and governance processes as well as the definition of clear roles, responsibilities and accountability mechanisms among government, the health care system and the health IT industry. Further, the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), as a public-private partnership with the Department of Health, is facilitating a statewide governance process to advance interoperability via the SHIN-NY, including consensus on key standards, policies and technical approaches to achieve care improvement goals and ensure that clinical priorities drive technical implementation.
- Comprehensive Privacy and Security Framework – New York is developing privacy and security policies, including addressing issues of patient consent; data access rules (including the right for New Yorkers to have greater control over and access to their personal health information) and security, providing comprehensive protections for New Yorkers.
Funding for this program is made available through the Public Authorities Law, Health Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers (HEAL-NY), Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) bonding authority and the Federal State Health Reform Partnership (F-SHRP). The program is managed by the Department of Health's Office for Health Information Technology Transformation.


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But Clay and Erin Jostes, on the other hand, have no qualms about discussing how much the nearly century-old structure means to them. They recently purchased it (staying mum about the final price tag) and are using their own money to renovate.
Erin Jostes, who has lived in Live Oak County all her life, has wonderful memories of the hotel from childhood.
"It was such a great old building," she said with a smile.
Clay Jostes said he has long wanted to purchase the hotel for his wife because he knows how much it means to her.
"She always loved this building," he said. "She always wanted to have this building, and I finally had the financial means to do something about it. … We bought it, and took possession of it a few months ago."
It was one of many such structures founder West chose to build—including a courthouse, a school and a light plant—when creating a town on the site of his ranch around the turn of the century.
The hotel specifically was built to give people a place to stay as they came into town via the railroad, officials said.
Right now, the couple is not sure right now what they are going to do with the hotel—other than restore it.
Clay Jostes recently gave a reporter a tour of the hotel, which he and his wife are still in the process of cleaning. Getting rid of debris and such has already taken hundreds of man hours. Reconstruction could take years, the couple said.
In addition to the upstairs hotel rooms and the downstairs hotel lobby, the downstairs also used to house a separate office and a separate bank once upon a time.
The couple welcomes anyone willing to volunteer to help renovate. They said they couldn't have made it to this point without the help of family and friends such as John Ed Holland, Sue Holland, Julia Wasicek, Annette Beck, Dillon Orr, Tiffany Stewart, Bridget Wright and Tivi Ybanez.
Clay Jostes, 35, said he and his wife (who is around the same age) will probably spent a lot more money getting the structure into shape before it's all said and done.
But the time and effort spent on renovation will be well worth it, he added. After all, even when this estimated 20,000 square foot structure fell into disrepair, many of the town's residents still adored the George Washington West-constructed building.
"The courthouse, the hotel, the elementary school are all built by the same brick," Clay Jostes said. "We hope that one day over the next couple of years the hotel can look as good as the courthouse does now. Those renovations have gone well."
Rena McWilliams, executive director of the George West Chamber of Commerce, said it is exciting to watch such an important historical structure be restored.
"I have lived here for 36 years and have watched since it was an emporium with little shops and things in it," she said. "This is easily the most wonderful piece of history we have."
Clay Jostes said he has no desire to restore the building as a hotel, but there are several other options. He said he expects the renovation work to lead to something truly great.
"As you keep going to find little glimpses of 'Wow,'" Clay Jostes said. "This will be so cool when its done."
Erin Jostes said it will be a dream come true.
"My grandmother always wanted to have the hotel, but it didn't work out," she said. "I always wanted somebody to bring it back to life."
Ben Tinsley is a reporter for The Progress newspaper in Three Rivers. He can be contacted by email at firstname.lastname@example.com or by phone at 361-786-3022. Tinsley can also be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BenTinsley, Google at http://plus.google.com/+BenTinsley or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ben.tinsley.12.


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Richard Childress Racing
Recent News
Sprint Cup Series Coke Zero 400 Preview
July 2, 2014
Richard Childress Racing
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series News and Notes
Event Coke Zero 400 presented by Coca-Cola
Date: Saturday, July 5, 2014
Location: Daytona International Speedway
Richard Childress Racing's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history at Daytona International Speedway ... Dating back to 1976, Richard Childress Racing has won 11 poles and collected five points-paying victories at the most-storied race track on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series circuit. RCR owns two Daytona 500 wins (Dale Earnhardt - 1998, Kevin Harvick - 2007), three Coke Zero 400 trophies (Earnhardt - 1990, 1993 and Harvick - 2010) and 14 qualifying races, including 10-consecutive victories with Earnhardt (1990 - 1999). In addition, RCR has earned the Sprint Unlimited a total of eight times, with drivers Harvick (2009, 2010, 2013) and Earnhardt (1986, '88, '91, '93, and '95).
RCR in the NSCS ... In 2,443 Sprint Cup Series starts dating back to 1969, RCR has amassed 46 pole awards,105 wins, 453 top-five finishes and 962 top-10 finishes, with an average starting position of 17.8 and an average finishing position of 15.8. RCR has earned 15 total championships (six Sprint Cup Series championships with Earnhardt in 1986, '87, '90, '91, '93 and '94, six NASCAR Nationwide Series titles, two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series titles and one ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards title) and was the first organization to win titles in NASCAR's three national series.
The Collective RCR ...Throughout the season's first 17 races, RCR's Sprint Cup Series entries have earned one pole award with Austin Dillon at Daytona International Speedway in February. Collectively, the organization has notched four top-five and 16 top-10 finishes with drivers Dillon, Ryan Newman and Paul Menard. RCR's three full-time Sprint Cup Series drivers rank eighth (Newman), 11th (Menard) and 18th (Dillon) in the driver championship point standings.
RCR Kentucky Rewind ... Last weekend, RCR teammates Newman, Menard and Dillon finished third, 15th and 16th, respectively, in the Quaker State 400 presented by Advance Auto Parts at Kentucky Speedway.
Save Kids' Lives by Joining the Childress Champions ... Help support the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma by selecting your favorite driver when making a bronze level donation of $33 (Austin Dillon), $27 (Paul Menard) or $31 (Ryan Newman) to CIPT. To make a tax deductable donation, visit: https://www.wakehealth.edu/OnlineGift.htm?fid=45. The Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma invests resources in research, education and awareness to improve the treatment for critically injured children in the U.S. The Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center was established through the generosity of Richard and Judy Childress. For more information, please visit www.InjuredKids.org.
Interactive RCR ... For up-to-date news and exclusive content, visit RCR's Twitter page - @RCRracing - along with the RCR Sprint Cup Series team Twitter pages - @RCR3ADillon, @RCR27PMenard, @RCR31RNewman, and driver Twitter pages @austindillon3 and @RyanJNewman. Information about the 15-time championship winning organization can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RichardChildressRacing and at www.RCRracing.com along with official driver pages - www.facebook.com/austindillon3 , www.facebook.com/PaulMenard27 and www.facebook.com/RyanNewmanNASCAR.
Catch the Action ... The Coke Zero 400 presented by Coca-Cola will be televised live Saturday, July 5 beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET on TNT and will be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Austin Dillon
No. 3 Bass Pro Shops/NRA Museum Chevrolet SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet
This Week's Bass Pro Shops/NRA Museum Chevrolet at Daytona International Speedway ... Austin Dillon will pilot Chassis No. 468 in the Coke Zero 400 presented by Coca-Cola at Daytona International Speedway. This is a new Chevrolet SS that will be utilized for the first time under race conditions.
Dillon at Daytona International Speedway ... Dillon made his first start in the Great American Race in the 2013 Daytona 500, driving the No. 33 Honey Nut Cheerios Chevrolet to a 31st-place finish after he was involved in a multi-car incident on lap 137 of 200. He also debuted the No. 3 Dow Chevrolet in the 2014 edition of the Daytona 500, leading the 43-car starting field to the green flag after earning his career first Sprint Cup Series pole award before earning a season-to-date best finish of ninth. In four NASCAR Nationwide Series starts at the 2.5-mile restrictor-plate track, the Welcome, N.C., driver has three top-five finishes, with a best finish of fourth in July 2012. He also has two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts at the track.
About Bass Pro Shops ... Bass Pro Shops, which specializes in outdoor fun, operates 85 retail stores and Tracker Marine Centers across America and Canada that are visited by more than 116 million people every year. Bass Pro Shops stores, many of which feature restaurants, offer hunting, fishing, camping and other outdoor gear while their catalogs and website serve shoppers throughout the world. The company's Tracker Marine Group which has produced the number one selling brand of fishing boats for more than 35 years, manufactures and sells a variety of boats for fishing and cruising. Family fun is on tap at Bass Pro Shops resort Big Cedar Lodge, voted number six by Travel + Leisure Magazine as World's Best Hotels for Families. For more information, visit http://www.basspro.com. To request a free catalog, call 1-800-BASS PRO. Follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/bassproshops.
About the NRA Museum ... Bass Pro Shops, the primary sponsor of Richard Childress Racing's No. 3 Chevrolet SS driven by Austin Dillon in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, will pay tribute to the National Rifle Association's members and the NRA National Sporting Arms Museum with a special paint scheme for the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway on July 5. The NRA National Sporting Arms Museum houses an important collection of more than a thousand firearms and other artifacts and dioramas that trace the evolution of hunting, conservation and freedom from the 1600s to modern day. The museum, which is located at Bass Pro Shops' flagship store in Springfield, Missouri, is open every day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and admission is free. For more information about the NRA National Sporting Arms Museum, visit http://www.basspro.com/nramuseum or http://nramuseum.com/.
Get to the Points ... Dillon ranks 18th in the championship point standings entering this weekend's race event at Daytona International Speedway.
Bass Pro Shops Twitter Takeover ... On Thursday at 2 p.m. ET @austindillon3 is scheduled to take over the @Bass_Pro_Shops Twitter account. Follow both accounts for an inside glimpse at the @Bass_Pro_Shops driver's life leading into the Daytona International Speedway race weekend.
Meet Dillon ... Dillon is scheduled to participate in the Coca-Cola Racing Family Track Walk at Daytona International Speedway on Friday, July 4. The event is open to anyone with a ticket to the same-day NASCAR Nationwide Series race. Gates open at 8:30 a.m. and the walk starts at 9 a.m.
You've had some success at Daytona International Speedway with a pole and a top-10 finish in February. I bet you're licking your chops to get back there?
"Daytona International Speedway in July is always fun. It will be hot. It will be slicker and I think your handling will come a little bit more into play. I'm looking forward to it. I've learned a lot drafting the last couple of races. We're getting better at it, I have a great spotter and we'll work hard to do what we can to get to the front."
How much do you feel a track like Daytona International Speedway is in your control, or is it all about circumstances?
"A little bit is in my control. I feel like most of it is. With that place, putting yourself in position is a big part of it and not having the cars around you that likely will wreck. You can look and see the cars that are out of control and on the edge of it most of the time. It's a fine line between those two."
Paul Menard
No. 27 SPLASH/Menards Chevrolet SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet
This Week's SPLASH / Menards Chevrolet at Daytona International Speedway ... This weekend in the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway, Paul Menard and the No. 27 SPLASH / Menards Chevrolet SS team will race chassis No. 447. This Chevrolet SS was previously raced at this year's Daytona 500, where Menard led 29 laps of competition. The team's great run was ended short when Menard was collected in an on-track incident and had to take the No. 27 Chevrolet to the garage for repairs.
Menard at Daytona ... In 14 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts at Daytona International Speedway, Menard has an average starting position of 20.1 and an average finish of 20.2. Menard has completed 93.3 percent of the laps around the 2.5-mile track. The Eau Claire, Wis., native also has three top-10 finishes in Daytona. In addition, Menard has eight NASCAR Nationwide Series starts.
About SPLASH ... SPLASH Products Inc., a national provider of seasonal safety products based in Eagan, Minn., manufactures and distributes a comprehensive assortment of windshield washer fluids, RV and marine antifreeze, gas line antifreeze and winter deicers. With distribution in almost every type of retail channel, SPLASH is conveniently available throughout the Unites States. For more information on SPLASH, please visit www.splashwash.com.
Season-to-date ... Through the first 17 Sprint Cup Series races of the 2014 season, Menard has completed 4,969 of 5,094 laps contested (97.5 percent), led 45 laps and is currently 11th in the driver point standings.
Test, Test ... Menard, along with his Richard Childress Racing teammates Ryan Newman and Austin Dillon, is scheduled to test at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 1 - 2 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Time.
What's Your Point ... After finishing 15th at Kentucky Speedway, Menard moved up in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver championship point standings to 11th, only 20 markers out of 10th heading into Daytona this weekend.
Looking Back ... Menard qualified sixth for last year's Coke Zero 400 and raced in the top three before mechanical issues ended his night early and relegated the team to a 43rd-place finish.
What are your thoughts on racing in Daytona at night and with the restrictor plate?
"You just have to survive. You know, Daytona and Talladega we've always had really fast Chevrolets. We can qualify up front, it's just a matter of getting through the race and to the end in one piece so you can go race the last 20 laps. Restrictor-plate racing the last couple of years has been harder to pass, so you have to make your move earlier than you used to. You have to position yourself with 20 to 30 laps to go to be in that lead pack and make a move. A lot of it is just biding your time, trying to make decisions so you can be there at the end."
How much of a confident feeling do you have knowing RCR has a good ECR Engine package at Daytona?
"The Daytona 500 was pure speed, single-car qualifying and RCR had the front row there. Then in Talladega, we had five of the top-six spots powered by ECR Engines, so that was a good qualifying effort. We will try to be smart about it and qualify up front again. Obviously it's what we try to do every week, but you can kind of manipulate it more there by having a plan and sticking to it. The track is wearing out a little bit too, so you're not wide open the entire fuel run so handling comes back in to play especially in July at Daytona."
Ryan Newman
No. 31 WIX Filters Chevrolet SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet
This Week's WIX Filters Chevrolet SS at Daytona International Speedway ... Ryan Newman will drive chassis No. 436 in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 powered by Coca-Cola at Daytona International Speedway. This No. 31 Chevrolet SS competed earlier this season in the Sprint Unlimited at Daytona International Speedway and the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Newman at Daytona ... Newman is the proud owner of a Harley J. Earl trophy by winning the 50th running of the Daytona 500 in 2008. In total, the South Bend, Ind., native has 25 starts at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, as well as four top-five and six top-10 finishes. His average start and average finish is 20th. He's led 101 laps in competition.
About WIX Filters ... Since 1939, WIX® Filters has been an innovator in filtration products. WIX designs, manufactures and distributes products for automotive, diesel, agricultural, industrial and specialty filter markets. Its product line includes oil, air, cabin interior, fuel, coolant, transmission and hydraulic filters for automobiles, trucks, off-road equipment and manufacturing applications. For more information, visit www.wixfilters.com.
Point of Interest ... Newman ranks eighth in the Sprint Cup Series championship point standings, trailing the current leader by 104 points, entering the 18th event on the schedule - the Coke Zero 400 powered by Coca-Cola.
Where's Ryan? ... On Friday morning, Newman is scheduled to participate in the Coca-Cola Family Track Walk at DIS starting at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
Race Rewind ... Last season, Newman managed a top-10 finish in the Coke Zero 400, despite getting collected in a crash coming to the start/finish line.
Team Test ... On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, all three Richard Childress Racing Sprint Cup teams are testing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Plus, Newman and Dillon are scheduled to stop by the NHMS media center today at 12:30 p.m.
What is the key to finishing up front at Daytona?
"Daytona is just so much different than it used to be, which is how I liked it when you could slip and slide around. But you have to have a fast race car and you have to put yourself in position for that last little section. And you have to have a good enough car to not get shucked out of line. It all depends. It could end up being a fuel mileage race. It could end up being a multiple green-white-checkered race. You just never know there."
The No. 31 team is currently ranked second out of the six teams without a victory in the Chase hunt. How would you rate your season so far with your new RCR team?
"This is probably the best/worst season I've had as far as just not having the ultimate numbers. Our average is good, which is still a part of getting yourself into the Chase if there are not 16 winners. So, we have to win. We want to win. If you're going to win the championship, you're probably going to have to win something. I don't see that the winner of the championship doesn't have a race victory under his belt. But we've been working hard at it. The guys at RCR, as well as ECR Engines, have been working really hard at it and I think we have some things in the works that are going to make us better. But I know that everybody else does, too.
"We're sitting eighth in points, which is probably twice as good as I was at this time last year, if I remember correctly. So, that part of it is better. That's why I said it's the best/worst year I've had with a top-five and a couple of top 10's; and yet consistency-wise, we're still eighth in points."


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Cancellation, 1965
Bruce ConnerAmerican, 1933-2008
Sheet: 21 1/2 x 32 in. (54.61 x 81.28 cm.)
Norton Simon Museum, Anonymous Gift, 1967
© 2015 Conner Family Trust, San Francisco / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Reproduction, including downloading of ARS works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Not on view
This print, one of the earliest examples of conceptual printmaking, reflects Bruce Conner's somewhat strained fellowship at Tamarind. Its subject refers to Tamarind's editioning conventions, which insisted, among other stipulations, that once a stone had been cancelled, it could not be used to make any more impressions, and that each print had to be signed (Conner opted to use his thumbprint instead). When Conner wanted to edition a cancelled lithograph, Calvin Goodman, a business consultant who was overseeing the shop while June Wayne was abroad, stopped production. Goodman was clearly ill equipped to handle Conner's conceptual explorations, allegedly confronting the artist by exclaiming, "What is this crap you're trying to put over here?" When Wayne returned, she was amused and respectful of the artist's boundary-pushing, and she immediately ordered production to continue.
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Richard Childress Racing
Recent News
From The Pit Box with No. 2 Crew Chief Phil Gould
July 23, 2014
This weekend at the prestigious Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Phil Gould and his No. 2 Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff Chevrolet Camaro team have redemption on their minds. After leading in the closing laps of last season's NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and finishing second, Brian Scott and his Richard Childress Racing team are ready to kiss the bricks.
The Kendall Park, N.J.-native notes the 2.5-mile speedway setup is reminiscent of Michigan International Speedway. Earlier this season, the RCR team collected its second top-five finish of the season at MIS with teammate Paul Menard earning the victory. With consistency, fight and determination, look for the No. 2 team in contention this weekend at Indianapolis.
We sat down with Gould to discuss what it takes to be successful at Indianapolis Motor Speedway:
How do you set up the No. 2 Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff Chevrolet Camaro for Indianapolis Motor Speedway?
Indy is a unique track. The set up usually will end up close to what we run at Michigan. It is the most aerodynamic sensitive track we go to, so that will be our key focus.
What does it mean for the Nationwide Series to race at a prestigious track like Indy?
I think it's awesome. I still get goose bumps walking through the gate. Indy is such a special place rich in the history of auto racing.
Are your expectations for this year's race higher after leading laps and contending for the win last year?
Absolutely, after coming so close to a win last year our team is motivated and determined to finish one spot better this year.
What are the keys to success at Indianapolis Motor Speedway?
You need a fast car, and the right strategy to give you the best track position. You'll hear crew chiefs and drivers say it every week, but Indy is by far the most track-position sensitive track we go to. The closer to the front you are the better your car will drive. And the air is so sensitive; no tire advantage will offset a deficit in track position at Indy.
Do you have a special memory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in your time at RCR?
In 2006 when I was the car chief on the 07 car, I was a part of an all RCR qualifying front row. That was pretty cool. But we are hoping to make a special memory this weekend with our Smokey Herbal Snuff Camaro.
Halfway through the season, how do you assess the year for the No. 2 RCR team?
I'm pleased with our team so far. We have improved a lot of our weaknesses and have shown speed week in and week out. We have been consistent, which has helped us claw our way back into contention for the drivers' championship. This team has a lot of fight and determination in it. I'm positive we will continue to get better, and hopefully break into victory lane soon.


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Ashley's simulations are putting Ford on the fast track to self-driving vehicle technology.
For Jiwon, the price of a Ford vehicle is about more than the sum of its parts.
Across media, Crystal is shaping the conversation about Ford and maintaining the brand's place in popular culture.
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At every level of the company, Ford embraces diversity of thought, experience, perspective, race, gender, faith and more. As a global company, our diversity mirrors the communities where we do business, and our inclusion helps us innovate and maintain our competitive edge. In the last few years we have received hundreds of awards from publications and organizations that recognize the value we place on our employees and our ability to work inclusively.
Ford Motor Company is an equal opportunity employer committed to a culturally diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. Ford Motor Company also is committed to take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment such persons.
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Plans are under way for the 16th annual Tartan Ball to benefit the boys of the Bonnie Brae Residential Treatment and Special Education Center in Bernards Township. The theme of the 2002 ball, set for Saturday, Feb. 2 at the Fiddler's Elbow County Club in Bedminster Township, is An Elegant Era Gone By with the Peter Duchin Orchestra providing the evening's music. In the back row from left are Karen Nitti of Warren Township, Erica Davidson of Livingston, Pam Seelig of Bernardsville, Elizabeth O'Connell and Laney Fowler, both of the Basking Ridge section of Bernards Township, Margot Muratore of Far Hills, Moira Colquhoun of Morristown and Allison Murray of the MIllington section of Long Hill Township. In the front row are event co-chairs Barbara Curtin of Far Hills, Donna Donaldson of Basking Ridge and Amy Chatwin of Bernardsville. For more information about the Tartan Ball, call (908) 647-0800.
The 2002 Tartan Ball Committee
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In recent weeks, Long Hill Township and Watchung Borough passed ordinances allowing their police departments to be able to apply for surplus equipment from the Department of Defense. Long Hill recently procured a Humvee to use in times of flooding, which Watchung states as the reason they are getting into the program. However, in cities around the country, police forces have used the program to obtain military gear, such as weapons and armor. For more background, go to the link below http://www.newjerseyhills.com/echoes-sentinel/news/watchung-police-department-hopes-to-receive-equipment-from-department-of/article_12ad002a-92b3-5449-a2cc-4b2cf0ce4339.html


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A town of Holland man is facing charges after investigators break up what appeared to be a cockfighting ring.
Nhia Vang, 54, is charged with instigating fights between animals as well as training and keeping animals for fighting.
Investigators found out about the operation through an anonymous letter.
Vang and another man involved told investigators they were raising roosters as a hobby and the roosters first belonged to one of their fathers, who recently passed away.
After a closer look, investigators found a cockfighting pen on the property along with more than 40 roosters.
Investigators said the condition of the roosters led them to believe Vang was using and raising the roosters to fight for money.
"A few of the roosters that we saw had a majority of their breast feathers missing (and feathers missing) on top of their shoulders," said Sgt. Mark Yehle of the La Crosse County Sheriff's Department. "One thing that we really noted were that on a couple of roosters the spurs on their feet were duct taped over, and my understanding is the reason for that is if they're with other roosters they're aggressive and they'll attack each other."
Yehle also said blood and feathers were found sprayed on and around the pen.
Raising roosters for fighting is not very common in the La Crosse area. Yehle said this is the first case they've seen in his more than 20 years with the department.
He said the investigation is still ongoing and hopes the public can help.
"We'll probably have some follow-up interviews," said Yehle. "We're hoping that if the public hears about it, that maybe someone else will come forward with more information. "It seems pretty clear that there's probably more individuals involved outside of the two that have been identified so far."
The roosters are being cared for in an undisclosed location
Vang was released on a $1,000 signature bond.
His next court appearance will be on March 26.
If you have any information on the case you are asked to contact the La Crosse County Sheriff's Department 608-785-9629.


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Freddie and Fannie Trades Bet on Elizabeth Warren
As our Philip van Doorn reports , the hope is, both can recapture massive tax valuation allowances with which they could repay some of their government bailouts.
The full recapture of the deferred tax assets would provide Fannie and Freddie with $93.2 billion, going quite a long way to a fully redemption of $188.3 billion in preferred shares held by the government.
Back in 2007 Freddie and Fannie were seen as licenses to print money. Both sold at over $60/share. The latest speculative bubble has both of them trading at around 85 cents/share.
The two companies were rendered worthless by the bailout's terms, under which the Treasury Department got preferred stock paying a 10% dividend whether or not they were profitable. This meant they were borrowing to pay dividends. Reuters says that only $58 billion of the bailout has been repaid. Both are now profitable on an operating basis.
But wait, there's more.
Marketwatch reports a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the "Jumpstart GSE Reform Act," which would keep the government from just funneling money from loan guarantees into the Treasury, and perhaps let Fannie and Freddie arise like little Frankenstein monsters. The sponsors are Bob Corker of Tennessee, David Vitter of Louisiana, Mark Warner of Virginia and ... Elizabeth Warren?
That's right, gang, speculators are betting on Elizabeth Warren to save Fannie and Freddie. Warren, former Harvard professor, designer of the dreaded Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and mild-mannered populist who defeated the Clark Kent stand-in, Scott Brown, last November to become senator from Massachusetts. THAT Elizabeth Warren.
Absent some new guidance from Congress, the Federal Housing Finance Agency is planning its own restructure, described at the Credit Union Times . This would be a market utility, separate from Fannie and Freddie, that would replace their system for turning mortgages into securities.
It's this move by FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, who was first appointed by former President Bush and then re-appointed by President Obama in 2009, that seems to have lit a fire under reform. Mortgage Orb calls DeMarco indestructible , like styrofoam or Cher, because the Administration has yet to move forward on housing reform and because Republicans would oppose any reform-oriented replacements.
Still, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported nine attorneys general recently called for his ouster because he refuses to grant write-downs of principal on mortgages that remain under water; 45 Congressional Democrats are also calling for DeMarco to go, according to the Huffington Post .
So you have business demanding reform because it wants to make mortgages, liberals demanding reform because they hate the present rules, and a bill to do the job supported by a bipartisan coalition. Does this make FNMA or FMCC worth 85 cents a share?


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The headline of the New York Times piece on Secretary of State John Kerry's determination to focus his agency on climate change policy read "Kerry Quietly Makes Priority of Climate Pact." To which we reply, if quietly is what it takes to get this nation to follow through in actually making a difference in global climate actions we'll take it.
It has long been obvious that participating in the Republican strategy of disavowing climate change science, or tolerating U.S. promises of action and the resulting inaction is unacceptable. A new direction of working behind the scenes, as Kerry did recently with China on a pact to reduce production of hydrocarbons is not only tactically smart, it's necessary.
Kerry has a long history of pushing climate change legislation including bipartisan efforts, most of which went nowhere. His current efforts are similarly challenging. But we wish him the best as he does whatever he can in his current position to commit the United States to a lead role in the next phase of climate change negotiations.


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Blue jeans turn 140
Published On: May 20 2013 09:49:33 AM CDT Updated On: May 20 2013 09:52:35 AM CDT
That wardrobe staple the blue jean is celebrating its 140th birthday. Celebrate by checking out blue jean styles of days gone by.
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Panthers not satisfied after picking up 6th win
PITTSBURGH No offense to the fine people who run the BBVA Compass Bowl, but Pittsburgh offensive guard Ryan Schlieper doesnt want to spend the final football game of his career hanging out in Alabama again.
A win over Miami (Fla.) in the season finale on Friday would take care of that and then some.
The Panthers (6-5, 3-4) secured a sixth straight bowl bid by edging Syracuse 17-16 last Saturday, using a blocked extra point by all-everything defensive tackle Aaron Donald and an astute timeout call in the final minutes to foil a fake field goal attempt by the Orange.
Pitts move to the ACC means theres almost zero chance of the Panthers returning to Birmingham, Ala., for a fourth consecutive year to play in the Compass Bowl, though stranger things have happened. If the Southeastern Conference cant fill its bowl allotment and Pitt falls to the Hurricanes (8-3, 4-3) and the ACC has an extra bowl eligible team laying around, you never know.
Schlieper would rather not think about it. Its a script hes known all too well.
Hes started each of the last two seasons, ones that have ended with Pitt stumbling at Legion Field to finish 6-7.
Its a scenario thats in play no matter where the Panthers end up if they cant beat Miami for the first time in nine tries. Its why their focus is on finishing strong and not so much what awaits after this weekend.
Asked to define the gap between ending the regular season 6-6 for the third straight fall or 7-5 with a win over Notre Dame and Miami and Schlieper cant help but get excited.
I think its a huge difference, Schlieper said. Every year Ive played weve gone 6-6 and went to a bowl game and lost and went 6-7. I dont want that to happen.
The game will be the final appearance for Schlieper and 17 other seniors who have endured perhaps one of the most unsettled stretches in the programs history. Pitt rolled through four full-time head coaches (and two interim ones) over the last four years. Its not exactly what Donald and company signed up for, but hell take it. His focus was never on the men wearing the headsets but his friends in the shoulder pads.
Its not a certain game (that stands out) but just being able to play with these guys Im playing with, Donald said. Just being around them and building a brotherhood with them. Im truly blessed to have played with these guys and go out and ball with them every week.
Its a sentiment echoed throughout a group that was recruited by three coaches with three divergent personalities, from the gruff Dave Wannstedt to the hyperactive Todd Graham to laidback Paul Chryst.
For all the credit Chryst has received for his ability to return Pitt to calmer waters, freshman wide receiver Tyler Boyd knows what has really kept things together.
This senior class is leaders, Boyd said. These boys dont take nothing from nobody. They lead us in the right direction. They want to win as bad as we want to win.MORE IN Sports WireOXON HILL, Md. Wade Davis already had closed out a World Series. Full StoryBOSTON New Boston Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale said he isnt worried that he might not be the ace... Full StoryNORMAN, Okla. Full Story
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Castleton trapping seminar planned for JanuaryDecember 20,2013Trapping seminar
planned for January
The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department will hold a free seminar, Trapping Through the Ice, at the Edward Kehoe Education Center in Castleton in January.
Bill Pickens, president of the Vermont Trappers Association, will lead topics on rules and regulations, trapping equipment, personal safety and trapping techniques. Participants will spend a large portion of the day on Lake Bomoseen.
The seminar will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 11.
Participants are advised to bring a lunch and dress to be outdoors for a majority of the day.
The department will provide all the trapping equipment.
Register by calling Alison Thomas at 371-9975 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Include your full name, address and daytime phone number in your message. A confirmation letter will be sent.
Beavers and muskrats can be legally trapped until March 31.
Hunter education training coordinator John Pellegrini said the course can help trappers improve their success rate.MORE IN This Just InWASHINGTON Long-term U.S. Full StoryMONTPELIER The Vermont attorney generals office says drug companies have complied with a state... Full StoryMOUNT HOLLY At its meeting next week, the Mount Holly Select Board will consider an ordinance... Full Story
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Admiral Hostel
Hostel in the center of Irkutsk city. Offered by backpackers. 10 minutes walk from the train station. Free internet, Wi-Fi, modern design, big space, cheapest travel options, public tickets to Lake Baikal, free luggage storage, free linen & towels. The most comprehensive hostel service in lake Baikal & Irkutsk city.
The hostel apartment is close to everything. We offer all the facilities, three spacious rooms for a total of 13 persons max. Fully equipped kitchen, Bathroom, Laundry. Prime cosy location - near the train station (1.5km). Friendly atmosphere, travel information, clean and roomy. Visa registration service, professional cleaning, fresh towels, and linens are provided.
Irkutsk hostel Admiral occupies the 1st floor of the building, no need to climb the stairs with heavy luggage. The hostel's professional staff provide comprehensive tourist information: itineraries, public bus transportations, hydrofoils & schedules / updated daily.
Tickets for public buses to Lake Baikal, Olkhon Island are available right in the hostel. Budget tour packages, trips & transfers to Lake Baikal, Olkhon Island, Listvyanka are arranged upon request.
Availability & RatesTo view availability and prices please select dates and click 'Update Dates'
Hostel Facilities & Policies
- 24 Hour Reception
- 24 Hour Security
- Book Exchange
- Breakfast Not Included
- Cable TV
- Child Friendly
- Common Room
- Free City Maps
- Free Internet Access
- Free Parking
- Free WiFi
- Hair Dryers
- Hair Dryers For Hire
- Hot Showers
- Internet Access
- Key Card Access
- Self-Catering Facilities
- Laundry Facilities
- Linen Included
- Luggage Storage
- No Curfew
- Parking
- Reading Light
- Steam Room
- Tours/Travel Desk
- Towels For Hire
- Towels Included
- Washing Machine
Cancellation PolicyThis property has a 1 day cancellation policy. Failure to cancel within this time will result in a cancellation charge equal to the first night of your stay.
DirectionsShow MapHide Map
Please also see the photos of the hostel at HostelWorld. One is a map with detailed directions.
From the Train station:
1) The distance from the train station to the hostel is 1.5km / 20 minutes by foot. When you leave the train station walk to the right 600 meters to find the bridge. Walk over the bridge and turn to the left road (Chkalova street) right after the bridge. The first street to the right is Cheremhovsky. It is just after a new building construction on this street and there is an only one brick light blue-green 4-storey block on the Right side. This is the hostel.
2) Take any tram (tram moving from left to the right when you leave the train station) across the bridge and get off at the second stop. Cross the street to the other side and walk in 50 meters between the pizza cafe and building N9. The second blue 4-storey building infront of you is the hostel. Trams number 1 and 2 are the most frequent.
3) Take minibus number 16, 116, or 20 and get off at the 1st stop after the bridge called 'Bytovaya'. Walk 30 meters further and turn to the first street on the right. It is just after a new building construction on this street and there is an only one brick light blue-green 4-storey block on the Right side.
From the Airport:
1) The easiest way to get to the hostel from the airport is to take a taxi. The highest possible taxi price is 300 rubles total.
2) Public transport: take minibus number 20 or 45 and get off at the bus-stop called 'Bytovaya' - the last bus-stop before the bridge. Cheremhosvsky street is right infront of the bus-stop. Cross in to the street. Among 2-storey wooden buildings find the only one brick light blue 4-storey block on the Right side. This is the 5th building on the right from the beginning of the street.
Meeting and transfer can be arranged from the train station from 10:00 till 23:00. Price: 400 rubles total. Please email to book.
Located Near
1) The hostel apartment is close to everything: train station 1.5km, nearest ATM+Bank 200m, bus & tram stop 100m, 24 hour food-store and restaurant 170m, Irkutsk central square and sightseeing center 600m, Internet cafe 200m.
2) The hostel convenient location, city center hidden from noisy traffic and exhausted streets, allows to enjoy fresh air and silence with open windows even during hot (+36C') summer days.