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The story of a 16-year-old Morrocan girl who committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist reverberated through the Arab world on Tuesday. Amina reportedly ingested rat poison in her hometown Larache, in norther Morocco, on the weekend as a last resort to escape her marriage and the domestic violence she experienced at the hands of her husband. The girl's plight dates back to a year ago, when she was reportedly raped by a man 10 years her senior. After the incident was reported to authorities, the two families struck a deal in which Amina was married to her rapist to preserve her family's 'honour'. This example of a practice which is still common in some parts of the Arab world struck a nerve with many. Tweets tagged with #RIPAmina spread like wild fire through social media on Tuesday as many condemned laws that exempt rapists from punishment if they marry their victims.
Amina's case is far from an exception in the Arab world and one blogger and Middle East analyst commented that it is common to blame women if they get raped.
#previoustweet what is even more sickening, how they think the rapist is doing the girl a favour by marrying her! #RIPAmina
Nevertheless, the news that her parents forced her into marriage prompted outrage. In a mock personal ad one Moroccan Twitter user wryly joked: "I am a charming girl of 16 years, seeking a kind pervert or preferably rapist for marriage and more if we hit it off":
"Je suis une charmante fille de 16 ans, qui cherche un gentil pervers ou violeur de préférence pour Mariage et plus si affinité." #RIPAmina
Some reports claimed that the judge presiding over the matter in Tangier, northern Morocco, was responsible for the marriage but as one Egyptian Twitter user pointed out, under Moroccan law nobody can be married against his or her will:
From what I have read in Moroccan family law, a woman cannot be forced into marriage. I think there was some inaccurate reporting. #RipAmina
Instead, it appears more likely that the girl's family forced her into marriage:
Cont.: thus, most likely, the family judge recommended marriage as a solution, and Amina's parents forced her to accept. A tragedy.#RipAmina
A Syrian also laid the blame with the parents who arranged for the union:
#RipAmina :Disregarding the judiciary decision that consented on her marriage with her rapist,the massive problem is her parent's consent.
However, the likely role of the judiciary in encouraging, if not forcing, the union still outraged many as they considered the law to have failed in protecting human rights:
#RIPAmina, there needs to be a paradigm shit in our approach to religion & morality. Moderate Islam has failed to subdue extremist Islam.
Amid a tide of comments accusing Muslim laws of permitting such practices one blog post by a Moroccan, who strongly condemned the judiciary for its hand in the matter, insisted that not Islam, but judicial and cultural failings, were to blame.
Treating a rape victim, a minor, an innocent soul as a harlot is our court's house latest prowess. Many people condemn the Islamic way of dealing with crimes (Al Houdoud, the limits), referring to it as criminal, monstrous, staggering. Henceforth something not worthy of the 21st century. I've never been one of those people , I strongly believe that if we applied the Muslim justice rules , which many people don't know the details of nor the conditions under which they're applied , I wouldn't be hear witnessing this dismal reality.
Source: MBI's Corner
Some took the opportunity to rally against Islamists' demands for laws that provide for their cultural practices. This tweet asks: "Would it be this kind of practice that those who advocate the so-called identity safeguard are trying to perpetuate?"
#RIPAmina, Serait il ce genre de pratiques que ceux qui prônent la soi disant sauvegarde de l'identité tentent de faire perdurer?
One Twitter user commented: "After all, justice in Morocco is like the myth of aliens, we are willing to believe, but it does not exist."
Over the course of Tuesday tweets cropped up urging people to sign a petition calling for the abolition of the law that exempts rapists from punishment if they marry their victim:


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A Picture's Worth a Thousand Laughs
With a title like that, I certainly couldn't run the story without providing the photo! As usual, the story first, from True's 14 November 2010 issue:
Weekly Weird News
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Laughs
Matthew Nieveen, 19, was arrested in Lincoln, Neb., for alleged drunk driving after police noticed his pickup truck cross the center line several times. It was his second offense. Not news? How about this: he was arrested on Halloween, and was in costume. His blood alcohol level was "more than twice" the .08 percent limit for adults. Nieveen was also charged with having an open container of alcohol in his vehicle, negligent driving, and being a minor in possession of alcohol, since he is under 21. The costume: "He was dressed as a PBT [preliminary breath testing] alcohol sensor," his arrest report notes -- a Breathalyzer, with the blow tube sticking out below ...well... his waist. (Lincoln Journal-Star) ...And the only one who blew it was Nieveen.
And the photo is, indeed, a classic:
19 Comments on This Entry
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Posted by Julie UK on November 16, 2010:
I suppose for him that was a scary halloween costume.
Posted by Mike from Dallas on November 17, 2010:
I dislike the hyperbole used in such descriptions; i.e. "...more than TWICE the legal limit..." to infer blind stinking drunkenness. A BAC of .16% may be twice the legal limit (.08%), but for commercial truck drivers, it would be FOUR times the legal limit (.04%). Is that somehow MORE drunk than twice the legal limit? And what about those under 21 when the legal limit for driving conditions is only .02%? That would make them EIGHT times the legal limit and, therefore, incredibly "beyond" drunk?
As I said, hyperbole intended to color the story rather than state facts. (I realize that it was the reporter or possibly the officer that used such hyperbole, so this critique is not directed at Randy.)
Good save at the end! As you probably know, I usually put the specific measured result in; I prefer it since it's more accurate, and (as you imply) less subjective. I would have used the number here too, but as you guessed, the original reporter from the identified source didn't see fit to say what the specific number was. -rc
Posted by Patricia, Dearborn Heights, MI on November 18, 2010:
You may "dislike the hyperbole used in such descriptions", Mike, but, in this case, I believe your premise is moot. The reporter or police DID quantify Nieveen's BAC as being "more than twice" the .08 percent limit for ADULTS. Other than the legal aspect (which IS imperative, of course) of being "over the limit", the pivotal pieces of this article are that this would be Nieveen's SECOND offense, that he is 19 and UNDERAGE, that the police actually observed him CROSSING THE CENTER LINE several times and he had an OPEN ALCOHOLIC CONTAINER in his truck. For the life of me, I can't figure out WHY the police blacked out his face. Even though he's not legally old enough to drink, at 19, he IS considered an adult. Hopefully, they'll take his license away (at the very least), so he doesn't get third chance to kill someone before he reaches the ripe old age of 21.
The sentiment against drunk drivers runs high here, Mike. And I can't say I disagree with them. -rc
Posted by Mike from Dallas on November 18, 2010:
Actually, any comment to the story is essentially moot. What can be said about some clown who hasn't even reached drinking age yet, but has already accumulated two DUI's, one dressed as the instrument of his conviction? He's lucky that we are a society that looks out for the idiots; otherwise, he'd never make it to 25 when, ostensibly, his insurance rate is supposed to go down.
Still, there is always the obligatory comment about how he can't help it because his mama didn't love him, or his daddy gave him some weird name. Or maybe he was bullied on MySpace.
So I took the opportunity to address a sentiment that many have commented on, the pervasively increasing bias in reporting the news. Hyperbole is designed to elicit emotion, not report facts. Once over the legal limit, does it really matter by how much? Is it even worse if he were 3x the legal limit? Does it matter when a murderer kills someone, but a drunk driver killed him dead? Is it somehow a worse offense when a drunk driver "wipes out" a family of five, when I only kill a family of four due to inattention?
Journalists are expected to report the facts and minimize their own bias, but I suspect that editors actually demand the opposite. "If it bleeds, it leads!" Even if it doesn't bleed, try to make it look like it.
You're right, it's a moot point, because it's not the journalists; it's not the editors; it's not even the media. It's the paying public. The lyrics to Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" come to mind, but I'll leave this link from the Washington Post and Ted Koppel: Olbermann, O'Reilly and the death of real news.
I think the amount of alcohol in his system is totally relevant, as is the fact that it's his second offense, as well as his age. I also agree with Olbermann in his video response that "objectivity" in journalism is -- and always has been -- a myth. -rc
Posted by Sylvain, Beloeil, QC, Canada on November 20, 2010:
The way I see it is, young people learn to drive at the same time as they learn to drink. Look to European countries where the legal drinking age is much lower, and you will find a lower occurrence of drinking and driving incidents.
And as a truck driver myself, I must correct "Mike from Dallas": the legal limit for us, over much of North America, is .00, or none at all. Would you want someone at the control of what is essentially an 80 000-pound weapon to have ANY impairment to his or her reflexes?
In some jurisdictions, even a motorcycle can be labeled a weapon, if involved in a deadly accident (vehicular homicide). Drunk driving laws exist for good reason; this story shows that not even laws can correct stupidity.
And as to where he chose to put the blow tube, it unfortunately also shows how bad his taste is (Can you spell "immature"?)
Posted by Raven, Boston on November 20, 2010:
"Twice the legal limit" may be sensationalism, but it also fact, not "hyperbole" (i.e. exaggeration). Further, the level of drunkenness is relevant because the more drunk the driver, the more he should realize he is drunk and avoid getting behind the wheel.
Posted by Eric, Naples, FL on November 20, 2010:
At least this report was not about a Florida incident. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but as a fifth-generation Floridian, it seems that there is either an abundance of Florida-based low-lifes on thisistrue.com or maybe I've seen too many TV shows (cops, world's most wanted, speeders, world's dumbest, etc.) that seem to highlight Florida... in fact, when was the last time you remember a crime entertainment series that focused on Colorado? Wait, that might be because we have the world's dumbest moving in here... I forgot.
I'm not sure about the dumbest, but definitely the weirdest. -rc
Posted by Rick - Florida on November 20, 2010:
Like Ron White says, "You can't cure stupid".
My question concerns the laws about drinking and driving. Why is it that getting drunk, getting behind the wheel and killing someone while you're impaired gets a lighter sentence than someone in possession of cocaine (even if it's not been used)? I think someone drunk behind the wheel should be charged with misuse of a deadly weapon and, if they kill another person with it, murder. Forget Vehicular homicide. That's a slap on the wrist when there has been so much advertising for so many years that only a totally ignorant person wouldn't know that they are committing a criminal act when they drink and drive and have no excuse.
I'm not a cocaine user, by the way. I just used that as an example. A drunk driver killed two of my friends when he went through a red light and broadsided them. He got three years for vehicular homicide. A neighbor's son was nineteen when he had consensual sex with a seventeen year old girl. Her parents charged him with sexual battery and he got eight years in prison. Where is the justice here? Did either of these sentences fit the crime? The drunk can get out, get drunk, kill a few more people and finish THAT sentence, all while the kid is still in prison.
Drunk driving is attempted murder. Killing someone while driving drunk is murder. Pure and simple.
Posted by rewinn, Mercer Island on November 20, 2010:
What I like about this story is that it, in a fair way, makes fun of someone who drank and drove. Perhaps it will resonate with a few people ...not enough of course ... who may not be moved to change their behavior by logic, but may be by fear of humiliation.
Posted by Mark - Florida on November 20, 2010:
"Only two things are infinite. Rocket science and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
The stupidity of people (especially people like this guy)... It only gets worse.
Um, "It's not rocket science!" The quote attributed to Einstein is, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." (emphasis added). But still, we get the point. -rc
Posted by Don, California on November 21, 2010:
It isn't so much that Mark got the quotation wrong, it's that he got it so spectacularly wrong, coming up with a substitution that makes no sense whatever. Really, "rocket science"?
So why am I not surprised that he's in Florida? But I guess it could be worse: he could be in Mississippi, home of the worst schools in the nation, which would at least give him an excuse.
Posted by Carolyn Walla Walla WA on November 21, 2010:
Oh those funny replies !! Keep it up Randy... you make my day.
Hey -- it's not rocket science! -rc
Posted by Mike, Oregon on November 21, 2010:
The story is even more absurd when you notice he is wearing dinosaur pajama pants.
I actually didn't notice! There was just too much to love about that whole photo. Thanks for pointing that out! -rc
Posted by Kevin, Arlington VA on November 23, 2010:
to rewinn, Mercer Island:
Actually, resonating with ONE person who decides not to drive while drunk is enough.
"Perhaps it will resonate with a few people ...not enough of course ... who may not be moved to change their behavior by logic, but may be by fear of humiliation."
Posted by Carolyn walla walla area on November 23, 2010:
Worse than publishing your name: in our newspaper they state your AGE... not worth a ticket!!
But I do not drink, so what do I know?
It's standard in news stories to list subjects' ages. I include them in TRUE's stories, when available, too. -rc
Posted by Stephen! (Montana) on November 23, 2010:
What galls me to no end is when you hear a report of a person being arrested at a bar, walking down the street, or even in their own home and their BAC is "twice the legal limit".
I never realized there was a legal BAC limit for sitting in your own living room.
I was in agreement until you went too far! There are laws in most places against being drunk in public, but it seems to me that someone walking home and not being a problem should be able to walk home, rather than drive. Same with being in a bar -- if they aren't likely to drive. That's what "designated drivers" are for. I've never heard of anyone arrested solely for being drunk in their living room, and would want to hear about it if such a story appeared in a legit news source. -rc
Posted by Mike from Dallas on November 24, 2010:
People tend to misunderstand the Public Intoxication laws in Texas. While it sounds like simply being drunk in public is a crime, the full law refers to those who are an imminent danger to themselves or to others. However, some police do use the threat of public intoxication to harass people.
Several years ago (2005), the TABC (Tx Alcoholic Beverage Commission) hired hundreds of additional agents to work undercover in drinking establishments, ostensibly to reduce the incidence of bartenders selling to obviously over-intoxicated patrons. Instead, they abused their authority to issue citations for being drunk in public. The program was drastically reduced in 2006 in response to national outcry.
Same for being charged with intoxication in your own living room. While that's not a crime, all by itself, it occasionally arises from some other incident in which the police have been called. It's a sledge hammer approach to resolve an otherwise minor incident, similar to a Disorderly Conduct charge. Usually, it's FAR cheaper and quicker to just pay the fine and suffer the criminal record than to pay an exorbitant defense cost. (And going into court without an attorney, hoping for "common sense", is tantamount to going to a gunfight without a gun.)
Interesting and useful, to be sure. But did someone say Texas? -rc
Posted by Stephen! (Montana) on November 24, 2010:
"I've never heard of anyone arrested solely for being drunk in their living room, and would want to hear about it if such a story appeared in a legit news source. -rc"
Please note that I did not say *anything* about them being arrested for being "over the legal limit". My commentary was on the *REPORTING* of such affairs. The media seems to have a love affair with "the legal limit" even in cases where there *IS* no legal limit. (In one's own home, for example.) "...when you hear a report of a person being arrested..."
Posted by Mike from Dallas on November 25, 2010:
True that the original article did not involve Texas, but while also true that DUI and other drinking laws are similar among the 50 states, there are differences, so I chose to point out the details in the one state that I know about. It provides some details if others want to compare it with the laws in their states.
For Nebraska, where the story originated, the "legal limit" is, in fact, .08%. The hype that the defendant was "more than twice the legal limit" was pointless, since the only relevance is for sentencing purposes, and THAT is related to .15% (which is less than the "twice the legal limit").
Contrary to the remark from the Canadian(?) truck driver, the Nebraska "legal limit" for holders of a CDL while driving a commercial vehicle is .04%, not 0.0%.
And then there is the "legal limit" for DUI for a person under 21 years of age at .02%. Now, given that it's already illegal for anyone under 21 to drink alcohol at all, why would they be allowed to "legally" pass a breathalyzer at, say, .019%? Actually, Minor In Possession only applies to physical alcohol externally to the body, so DUI is one way to penalize him even without the bottle. (Or additionally under a separate law if he still has the bottle.) So to be accurate, Nieveen was really more than EIGHT times over the "legal limit".
But what I find most interesting about Nebraska's DUI laws is that a driver may be charged AND convicted of DUI for APPEARING to be intoxicated, even if NO alcohol nor drugs are found in his body at all.
I think we're getting too far from the point here. Which is: the guy is under 21, and thus (in many/most states) his "limit" of blood alcohol for driving is zero. The story put it into the perspective that his was "more than twice" the ".08 percent limit" for those over 21. That's pretty damned drunk. -rc
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Complementary Health Approaches
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The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have warned the public to be aware of fraudulent cancer treatments. Cancer treatment frauds are not new, but in recent years, it has become easier for the people who market them to reach the public using the Internet.
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I was chatting with Customer Support for an hour on Monday about this issue, who kept treating me like a moron but couldn't understand this very simple issue. Area code 249 is not in South Sudan, it is in Ontario, Canada. Google it. My daughter has a new phone number and I've had Skype to Go for years and use it to call Canada. All their area codes were 705, but now she has 249 and Skype will not recognize it and cannot call it. What is up? Will I need to cancel my Skype to Go that I have had for years? Bummer.


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And so it's time again for our gala ceremony to announce the Australian Whinger of the Year. I got more than 400 emails from readers last week, most agreeing with my short list of Tony Abbott, the retailer Gerry Harvey, those meddlesome priests George Pell and Fred Nile, and the moaning, mining magnates Twiggy Forrest and Gina Rinehart.
But there was a slew of other nominations, headed by Christopher ''Poodles'' Pyne, the manager of opposition business in the Parliament. Or Whiny Pyney, as one reader dubbed him. Scott Morrison, the ''Shadow Minister for Xenophobia'', Andrew Robb, the Liberals' lugubrious finance spokesman, and Barnaby Joyce also got gonged.
Kevin Rudd won a couple of mentions. Inexplicable, that, for as Kevin never ceases to tell us, he is sublimely happy being Foreign Minister, working hand in glove with Julia Gillard for the national good. (Pigs cleared for takeoff.)
The media also copped a hammering, including my good self. One nark suggested a winning trio of my Fairfax colleagues Michelle Grattan, Peter FitzSimons and Richard Glover; an eclectic combination, to say the least.
There was a torrent of scorn for the radio ranters Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, for Melbourne's village idiot Andrew Bolt, and for his News Ltd alter ego in Sydney, Piers Akerman. Bolt was singled out for his week of tear-stained self-pity after he got done for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. And The Australian took a heavy beating, too, exquisitely birched by one reader for ''its bullying, fact distortion and the flagrant abuse of the newspaper for News Ltd's own corporate purposes''. Deary me.
Quite a few emails nominated all of us. The Australian people, that is. ''I suffered some pretty nasty reverse-culture shock,'' wrote a man newly returned home after three years as an aid worker in Laos. ''I couldn't believe how bad things had become here: the rampant sense of middle-class entitlement, aggressive self-interest, the constant braying over a thousand petty grievances. There is no sense of proportion on how lucky we actually are.'' Good point.
But there'll be no surprise at the outright winner. The best of our national leaders have sought to draw out what Paul Keating calls the golden threads of our society. Robert Menzies could do this when he chose to; Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke understood it instinctively.
Tony Abbott does not. Like his mentor John Howard, he plays to our base instincts of greed, selfishness and fear. He wallows in the politics of NO, apeing the hysteria of the shock jocks: we are on the brink of economic disaster; climate change is ''crap''; we are ''threatened'' by gays and left-wing social engineering; a flood of ''illegals'' is swamping our borders.
We have the ''worst government in our history'', he howls, blithely ignoring Billy McMahon's Coalition shambles of the 1970s and Arthur Fadden's wartime conservatives of 1941, who collapsed in a heap after just 40 days in office.
And so on and on, ad nauseam. Tony Abbott: you are the 2011 Australian Whinger of the Year.
HOW sad to read that Fletcher Jones, the ladies' and gentlemen's outfitters, have gone bust. They were a retail legend, so ancient and venerable that I am sure they were here before the First Fleet. Arthur Phillip and his convicts stepped ashore in 1788 to find them already set up in a gum-tree'd glade where George Street runs today, respectfully offering conservative tailoring to fit all.
So there goes another piece of our past. My first grown-up suit was a Fletcher Jones number in sober navy blue, and what a soaring delight it was after those scratchy old Stamina-brand, grey worsted schoolboy uniforms that you bought at David Jones or another now regrettably defunct firm, Peapes near Wynyard station.
I can't remember what it cost - about 25 bucks in the old money, I guess. At the age of 16, feeling as suave as Cary Grant, I wore it to my first job interview, for an executive traineeship with Qantas. Which I got. Lordy, if only I had stayed on there, we might never have heard of Alan Joyce. (Who also scored a mention above.)
A week later, I pressed it into service again, to parade before some grandees of the ABC news department. Evidently bowled over by such finery - I had no other qualifications - they hired me on the spot as a cadet journalist and for the rest, well, here we are.
Farewell, fine old family firm. I feel that I owe you one.
THIS is my last column for the year. Best to go out on a cheerful note. Last Tuesday, I was the guest speaker for Presentation Day at Tempe High School, in Sydney's south. I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be terrific. The school hall-cum-gymnasium-cum exam centre was filled with bright-eyed kids, neatly uniformed and bubbling with pride and enthusiasm. The principal, a good and dedicated man named John Fairburn, told me his students, almost 900 of them, came from 44 different ethnic and language backgrounds, an astounding mix.
One by one, they marched on stage to collect prizes in everything from Aboriginal studies to information technology, Vietnamese to economics. The highlight of the show was a piano recital by Justin Lin, 16, from year 10, a breathtaking performance of Liszt's Liebestraum (No.3). Admittedly I don't know one end of a piano from the other, and John Fairburn mightn't appreciate me suggesting this all that much, but if I were running the Conservatorium of Music, I would be hot-footing it down to Unwins Bridge Road with Justin's name on a contract and a dripping pen.
So congratulations, Tempe High. I felt I was looking at the future of Australia and seeing that it works.
At which point, my thanks for your support this year, and my annual grovelling apology for not being able to answer all your thousands of emails and letters. But they are read and appreciated; even the occasional volley of low-Tory obscene abuse, which cheers me up no end.
Have a happy Christmas, or Hanukkah, or whatever you are celebrating this summer, and a terrific new year.


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I am desperately looking for one 50g ball of orange Fairytale Dreamtime 4-ply (shade 0097). This shade has been discontinued but I've been asked to knit a jumper for a friend's baby which has rainbow-coloured stripes across it so I can't really get away with substituting the orange with another colour, then it would just be multicoloured rather than a rainbow Does anyone have some I can buy, or know where I can get some?
I'm also a bit low on bright zingy green (shade 2941, also discontinued), so if anyone knows where I can get hold of that then I'd be grateful. Thanks for any help you can give :hug:


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I have this smell of oil burning while i'm driving the car and after it's in the garage, but the car is not leaking anywhere on the ground.
What I have found is about 6" under the intercooler fill tank, there appears to be oil seeping out of a seal, but i can not see what that is.
So, my main question is what's below the intercooler fill tank on an '04 WRX?


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Shelby Nichols is an average woman who is married to the only guy she ever fell for. Her life is organized and predictable, revolving around her husband and two children. All that changes the day she stops at the grocery store for some carrots. As the cashier rings up her purchases, a gunman is busy robbing the bank inside the store. When a customer grabs the robber's mask, he is shot and everyone runs for cover. Everyone except Shelby, who finds herself face to face with the killer.
The next thing she knows, she's lying on the floor with a bullet wound to her head. Luckily, the bullet only grazes her scalp, and she doesn't suspect any lasting affects until later, when she suddenly 'hears' what people are thinking. With this uncanny ability, her life takes on a whole new dimension. Her kids think she's bossy and too old to understand them, but that's nothing compared to her husband. He says he loves her, but what is it about the redhead at work that he doesn't want her to know?
As if that isn't enough, the gunman knows she can identify him, and he's out to silence her forever. In her fight to stay alive, she is saved from certain death by a handsome hit-man with ties to organized crime. This pulls Shelby even deeper into danger, where knowing someone's thoughts can not only hurt her feelings, but get her killed.
©2011 Colleen Helme (P)2013 Colleen Helme
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"Fantastic story and flawless audio! Get it!"
I first bought Carrots for Kindle in 2011 on a whim. Naturally when I got the chance to listen to it as an Audible book I couldn't wait to listen to it.
As a Regional Officer with the British Diplomatic Corps, I travel bi-weekly, usually to a foreign country and usually it is a long, long long airplane trip. So I really want something that will capture my attention, and really pass the time without FEELING like 9, 10, or 11 hours is going by, steadily sucking the will to live from my body like a black hole.
I decided to start getting audible books since I have devices I can use that will enable me to listen in comfort and pass the time.
I was a little concerned about listening to Carrots, as I had read it, and I have just finished the newest book in the series, Trapped by Revenge, the 5th Shelby Nichols adventure. Boy, was I wrong.
Well, was I? There I am, sitting in my seat, and listening to Wendy King's phenomenal audio production, and now I'm gasping out loud. The first time, I knocked my drink over. Next thing I know, I'm laughing out loud, and Mr. 5E sitting next to me thinks I'm taking a nutty. Nothing daunted, I'm worse than the person at the movie theater who then starts talking to the screen: "No, no, don't go in there!" By this time on my overnight flight Mr. 5E is snoring, but I think the flight attendants began rooting about for their Valium reserves.
Fortunately, I was not incarcerated upon landing, but I just loved listening to the book. Possibly more than reading it! It was fresh, it was so well done and so consistently produced that there was nothing to complain about. I was sucked into the story completely, and 8 plus hours seem to pass in the blink of an eye.
It is hard in a way to separate the content of the book from the audio production. The book was incredibly well written, the story very enjoyable, the characters entirely believable, and the quality of the writing fantastic. Equally, Wendy's voice characterizations were right on the money. She puts just enough intonation and inflection into the recordings that you can tell when it's Shelby, you can tell when it's Uncle Joey, and you can tell when it's Ramos. It is what I think of as understated elegance.
I would recommend this Audible book to anyone. The Shelby Nichols adventures stand in and of their own right, but it is far more enjoyable listening to the professional, flawless recording in some ways than reading the book. What it really did was make me want to listen to them all, so I am now eagerly awaiting the release of the next book through Audible.
This is an absolute winner: Do yourself a favor: Get it!
"Entertaining work."
This was a totally implausible, yet highly entertaining piece of fiction. Shelby Nichols is a highly likable well-drawn character. Uncle Joe is the ruthless, yet loyal and good-hearted Mafia Chieftain. Enjoy the selection; it's all in good fun; even the gunfights that kill multiple people.
"I thoroughly enjoyed this book"
I very much enjoyed this book. It made me laugh and you could just image the main character. The narrator was very good.
"Interesting listen with a twist, great!"
This is a great cozy, I can't wait for the next installment. The story and characters are easy to follow and the narrator is perfect and does a wonderful job.
Wendy does a fantastic job reading this book, she nails every inflection and switches characters seamlessly.
"AudioBook Review Stars: Overall: 4 Narration: 4"
Oh this was a fun story, and the narration provided by Wendy Tremont King provided lots of aural interest as she moves between characters, with subtle and distinct changes to pitch and tone that provided each character with their own particular feel. As the main character, Shelby, her performance managed to incorporate the character's emotions, concerns, patios and sense of 'thinking on her feet' in the delivery: a really good match.
Shelby is your more typical suburban Mom, or was, before a badly aimed gunshot grazed her head and left her able to hear everyone's thoughts. The complications could be endless in this situation: married, kids, grocery shopping, running into a colleague of her husband that doesn't particularly like or respect you. Sure, we think we want to know what people think, but having that much honesty and unfiltered access to someone's thoughts not spoken would be overwhelming. And that is exactly Shelby's reactions. At first.
But, when the realization hits, and it seems that the person who shot her is also gunning for her: poor Shelby, rather reserved, clean spoken, and not particularly good at lying to her husband is tossed into a series of situations that will test her skills and her nerves.
Told in Shelby's point of view, we are able to see that her natural manner of behavior is not to be sly or dishonest, and her habit of speaking first and thinking later combined with her own lack of pretense and agenda in her relationships make her rather a poor judge of character. It isn't until she uses the new gift that she is brought face to face with her own lack of dissembling, and her sharing with us also gives us a unique perspective into the characters: good and bad.
And there are several characters: Shelby's husband Chris is understanding, loves her dearly, and is completely unnerved by her own new skill. Even with his lack of realization of Kate's interest in him in more than a lawyer to lawyer colleague way is rather typically male, he isn't interested, so he doesn't see it. Kate is not particularly likable: even without her overt attentions toward her husband, but there was more beneath her veneer. Uncle Joey and his other associates are rather fun characters: you see the bad guys from the thoughts Shelby shares with us, and through her particular skewed desire to be helpful and wanting to like them.
No, this wasn't a mystery with the culprit a total surprise at the end, but I find those more entertaining: especially when you are led through the story by a character like Shelby. She's just klutzy enough to hint at a Lucille Ball styled character, and like Lucy her intentions are really all good. She just doesn't always see the writing on the wall until it is too late. It was light, fun and entertaining and wrapped up satisfactorily at the end.
I received an AudioBook copy of the title from the publisher via AudioBook Jukebox for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
"Great story line"
Have listened to it again..to see what I might have missed the first time through.The plot is great...it kept you wondering,whats next.
Wendy King is the character.
Will be happy when the rest of the series can be had at audibel..Hope it will be soon!!!!!!
"Light, Fun and Entertaing!"
I got "Carrots" after listening to book six "Deep in Death" and enjoyed it so much I picked the first book to start the series from the beginning.
Carrots was a really good story but after listening to book six in the series, I can confidently say the stories get better so if you are undecided about continuing the series, I think you definitely like the other books in the series (at least book six which hints of events from earlier stories.)
Carrots does set the foundation for future stories and the characters are developed throughout the series.
While PNR are my favorite types of stories, I love to break and listen to stories like Carrots that are light, fun and highly entertaining.
"Great Book. Surprised being read too"
Being able to do other things, like your nails or cooking. Not being interrupted by running to BR. LOL!!!
Shelby. It is so funny at how she gets into so many situations with out trying. She is almost always at the wrong place at the wrong time or else says the wrong thing at the wrong time.(Mentioning Uncle Joey in front of Kate to get a reaction.)
No this was my first audiobook. I really enjoyed it.
At first I was a little skeptical about "listening" to a book. I am glad I have had this opportunity. I can see that it has a lot of advantages. I am game to buy/rent another one. Especially another one of Shelby's Adventures. LOL.I have read all of them so far but now that I have "listened" to Carrots, I am going to go back and re-read them all. It is amazing how much you forget or something else pops out from a former book. Thank you so much for this gift Colleen. Kudos to Shelby's next Adventure.
I will look at "listening" to other books as well from other Authors I love to read.
Penny K. Clark AKA penchic
"Where is Book 2?"
I really, really enjoyed this one. I finished it in 2 days. That's like a record for me. It had plenty of humor and suspense to keep me interested. It was a great listen. Lots of fun. I was laughing out loud in my cubicle on some parts. I was disappointed when I did not see book 2. I guess I'll have to buy the print version because I really want to see what happened.
"Loved It!"
Top 5
Even though mind reading isn't possible, the author and narrator made it believable, I also loved the way all the characters interacted, I felt like I really got to know them.
Shelby for sure! :)
Oh yes, I was laughing out loud quite a bit! Shelby gets in to some pretty interesting predicaments and I love the way she handles everything. She's such a great character!
I loved this book and would highly recommend it! I will be looking for more audible books in the series! :)
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It was Ok, nothing crazy, I brought it with me on a trip which was nice to have a small sample size to carry on the road.3


text:
Snows have now had my vehicle for FIVE days. It is apparently dry and the leak fixed. They have had the dashboard in bits since Monday waiting for a new heater motor and regulator which has apparently been exposed to water.
They now at 1600hrs on the day i was supposed to collect it and three days after the dashboard has been in out of the vehicle, decide that they are going to hunt for the fault that is causing the heated mirrors not to work!!!!!!!
Surely whilst the dashboard was in bits and the car sat around the workshop waiting for parts, the common sense fairy could have put an appearance in and worked her magic???
I have put off writing to BMW Customer service until i know the problem is fixed and i can be sure that the engine will not fall out the next time the wind changes direction.
I will keep you all posted, please keep your opinions coming as i am interested to know if i am being unreasonable?


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by B. Gil Horman - Monday, January 23, 2012
Although it was announced last year, Kel-Tec is nearly ready to start shipping the new RMR-30 .22 Mag. rifle. This long gun features the same grip and fire controls of the popular PMR-30 pistol. The rifle also uses the same innovative pie-wedge 30-round magazines as the pistol, allowing for both ammunition and magazine compatibility.
The RMR-30 rifle features an adjustable stock, Picatinny rails for optics and lasers, and an unloaded weight of just 4 pounds. The 16-inch barrel is threaded to accept muzzle accessories like flash hiders and sound suppressors.
E-mail your comments/questions about this site to:
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You can contact the NRA via phone at: NRA Member Programs
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text: When your OSP pathways cross public or private properties, right-of-way permission gets tricky. That's why many designers are hiring a right-of-way specialist. There may be no more challenging obligation for a designer than securing a legal right-of-way for the passage of a proposed outside plant (OSP) system. Many campus designs are confined to a single property owner, but as you expand your services


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You all did a great job! We had a total of 371 students from 18 schools. Here's the breakdown of the numbers:
Click here for a printable contest brochure and registration form: Apply Here!
Once again, APSU is pleased to host the TMTA High School Mathematics Contest. Should you have questions, you may email
Dr. Jennifer Yantz: email@example.com
We look forward to having your teams on campus this Spring!


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Re: st: AW: AW: Exporting ivreg2 results in a simple long table
Austin Nichols <firstname.lastname@example.com>
Re: st: AW: AW: Exporting ivreg2 results in a simple long table
Thu, 20 May 2010 10:53:59 -0400
Chuck Cleland:
You can also post all models to one estimation result (stack models)
as described in e.g.
and then use -estout- (on SSC, as is -ivreg2-) to write out your file,
or you can estimate all together (if you don't care about the id
stats); compare:
clear all
u http://pped.org/card
unab x: exper expersq
unab y: educ
unab z: nearc2 nearc4
bys south66:eststo:ivreg2 lwage (`y'=`z') `x', gmm2s cl(hhid)
foreach l in y x z {
foreach v of loc `l' {
g s0`v'=`v'*(south66==0)
g s1`v'=`v'*(south66==1)
loc `l'2 ``l'2' s0`v' s1`v'
eststo: ivreg2 lwage (`y2'=`z2') `x2' south66, gmm2s cl(hhid)
esttab *, scal(j jp idstat idp widstat)
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 10:27 AM, Martin Weiss <email@example.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Dear All,
> I am using ivreg2 in combination with a "by" prefix command as follows:
> by imp: ivreg2 mydv mycov (endotx = myinstru) , ffirst
> This works fine, but I would like to save the resulting coefficients
> and standard errors in a simple, long table. Something like the following:
> coef estim se imp
> ----------------------
> mycov 1.11 0.40 1
> endotx 3.11 0.49 1
> mycov 1.07 0.51 2
> endotx 3.02 0.63 2
> mycov 1.61 0.38 3
> endotx 3.18 0.56 3
> ..
> endotx 2.83 0.44 10
> Then I would like to export the table to a *.dta or plain text file.
> What is the best way to go about this?
> Thanks,
> Chuck Cleland
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/


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text:
In physics, the treatment of time is a central issue.
In physics, the treatment of time is a central issue.
It has been treated as a question of geometry.
One can measure time and treat it as a geometrical dimension, such as length, and perform mathematical operations on it.
It is a scalar quantity and, like length, mass, and charge, is usually listed in most physics books as a fundamental quantity.
Time can be combined mathematically with other fundamental quantities to derive other concepts such as motion, energy and fields.
Time is largely defined by its measurement in physics.


text:
Dorothy Brown
Dorothy Gillett Brown passed away on Wednesday, April 16, 2014, after living a full and beautiful life of 95 years. She was born on June 22, 1918 to Grover and Gertrude Gillett in Whitewright, Texas. In 1931, Dorothy, her three brothers and parents moved to Lubbock County. The rural community of Shallowater embraced the Gillett family and helped them with the transition to farm life. Dorothy attended Shallowater High School, and graduated as valedictorian. She attended Texas Tech University for a year prior to marrying Cyrus H. Brown in 1938. She returned to Texas Tech in 1963 to complete her degree in education, graduating with high honors. She worked as a speech therapist in the Lubbock public schools for a number of years. In 1984 at the age of 66, she returned to her hometown of Whitewright and built a home on the outskirts of town in a beautiful setting surrounded by trees and a creek. This location brought her closer to Dallas where her son and daughter lived. Her home became a sanctuary for family and friends and served as an inspiration for many of her poems. Dorothy's gentle spirit flourished in Whitewright, where she enjoyed bird watching, the change of seasons and all of God's beautiful creation. Dorothy was a loving mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend. She was a true lady, always dignified, calm and sweet. She loved nature, life-long learning, all mankind, and creating beauty through poetry and art. Her perseverance through adversity served as an example to all who knew her. When asked the most important lesson she learned in her 95 years, she replied, "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Dorothy is survived by her brother Grover Gillett Jr. and wife Margaret; son Dan Brown and wife Susie and daughter Beverly Heyen and husband Gary, grandchildren Dan Heyen, Amy Jones and husband Matt, Samantha Smoot, Dr. Brannan Smoot and wife Stacy; and great-grandchildren Taylor and Sophie Heyen, Mick Jones, and Erica, Deuce and Elise Smoot; as well as numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. She was preceded in death by her parents, Grover and Gertrude Gillett and her brothers, Dan and Will Gillett. The family expresses appreciation to the staff at Buckner Nursing Home and Buckner Hospice for their loving care. We are particularly grateful for Rosa Velasco and Linda Galloway for their many kindnesses to Dorothy. We thank Saint John's United Methodist Church for opening their hearts to all of us and for loving Dorothy these past two years. A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 26 at Saint John's United Methodist Church at 2140 Allandale Road, Austin 78756. Burial will take place in Lubbock at a later date. Memorials may be made to the Whitewright Public Library, P.O. Box 984 Whitewright, TX 75491; Saint John's United Methodist Church; or a charity of your choice. THE PRECEDING IS A PAID OBITUARY.
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text: You've always known something isn't quite right with Mondays, but this one has been officially branded "abnormal" by Environment Canada. Normally, we wake up to a cooler temperature and expect to feel warmer as we go into the afternoon. Not today. Don't be fooled by the current 15C temperature this morning. Strong winds travelling south west and gusting as fast as 60 km/hr will pull the mercury down throughout the day, reaching a low of 9C this afternoon.Environment Canada calls the phenomenon " an abnormal temperature trend," where there is a temperature drop of at least 3C during the day or a temperature rise of at least 3C at night-time. It will be colder in some parts of Southern Ontario that are under a wind warning early Monday morning. Environment Canada is cautioning residents in the Niagara Falls region of "strong, damaging winds." "The passage of a cold front during the night has resulted in southwest winds gusting as high as 90 km/hr," Environment Canada said. The winds are expected to calm by mid-morning but it will still be "rather gusty for much of the day," according to the weather warning. The Dunnville - Caledonia – Haldimand and Simcoe - Delhi – Norfolk are also covered under the wind warning. For most of the GTA, including Toronto, the winds are likely coming with rain. There's a 60 per cent chance of showers in Toronto.But don't let the "abnormal temperature trend" scare you. Today's low isn't uncharacteristic for this time of year. In fact, the average minimum for this time of year is 3.9C, while the average maximum is 14.1C.


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After taking her top – and bra – off for FHM (as we all sometimes do on a Thursday afternoon) Millie Mackintosh casually poses with a whip to cover her *cough* modesty. Yes. A whip. Clearly it's not just Harry Styles who has an obsession with 50 Shades of Grey !
MIC's Millie is totally at ease in the buff, she says so, herself: "I am very comfortable naked. Naturally at home I would just be wearing my favourite jumper over underwear… I think that's probably how girls look sexiest – when you are kind of vulnerable but comfortable. I've always found it fun to be a bit of an exhibitionist and get my kit off," she told the lads' mag.
Professor Green's 23-year-old lover looked as though she might've been happy to go full frontal too (we're slightly relieved she didn't) as she posed unbuttoning her jeans, all doe-eyed, towards the camera. The minx.
She came 15th in FHM's sexiest woman poll, so perhaps Millie is hoping this might help her nick the top spot from Tulisa next year.
Now that's a catfight we'd pay to see!


text:
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Thread: flash position help
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flash position help
I'm trying to create a page where i want to position a flash object
in top right position regarding resolution,
how can i do that ?
how can i do that ?The Dream is not what you see in sleep; Dream is the thing which doesn't let you sleep. --(Dr. APJ. Abdul Kalam)
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It's about the loadMovie action. The loadMovie loads external swfs in movie clips of our movie.
Always have in mind that the top-left corner of the loaded movie clip will be placed in the registration point of the "host" movie clip.
The registration point in a movie clip is this little cross inside each movie clip that defines the position of our elements.
Why is this happening? Flash places the registration point of the external movie (which is always the top-left corner) in the position of the registration point of the host clip.
We can have an ordinary clip or a blank one as our host (the target for our loadMovie action), it makes no difference. We just place the host clip in the position we want, having in mind the above rule.
Below we see our stage with a blank clip on the left and a filled one on the right. See how a blank clip is presented in the stage? The little circle exists to show us where the clip is placed and is also the registration point of our clip. Also notice the registration point of our filled clip. It's the cross in the top-left corner of the orange rectangle.
I have named the blank's instance blankhost and the filled's host. The two buttons contain the script to load an external swf (mov.swf) in each host clip:
on (release) {
loadMovie ("mov.swf", "blankhost");
on (release) {
loadMovie ("mov.swf", "host");
And now the real thing:
Also keep in mind that the loaded movies, apart from taking the hosts' place, are taking their names also.
So when we want to call them we use the instance names of our original host clips. In this movie: host and blankhost.
The black buttons unload the clips using their instance names.
Hope this helps!
Source: http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Ti...-737/index.php
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this is what i've done so far:
my html page:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">   <link rel="Stylesheet" href="~/styles/global.css" type="text/css" /> <title>Design Master</title>   <form id="form1" runat="server">

 <embed src="flash/knopka_with_urls.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" name="knopka_with_urls" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" wmode="transparent" style="float:right;z-index:1000; width:60%; height:10%; position:fixed; right:1%;"/>

 </form>
html, body {margin:0; padding:0; width:1024px; height:100%; overflow:hidden;} body {font-family:verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size:76%;} #bg{position:absolute; z-index:1; width:100%; height:100%;} #scroller {position:absolute; width:100%; height:100%; top:0; left:0; overflow:auto; z-index:2;} #content {padding:10px 10px 10px 250px;} p {line-height:1.8em; letter-spacing:0.1em; text-align:justify;} #fixed {position:absolute; top:25px; left:10px; width:150px; z-index:10; color:#567; border:1px solid #000; padding:10px;}


text:
Article Preview
General Finds 'Indications' Black Panthers Took Part in Camp Lejeune Clash
Special to The New York Times ();
July 29, 1969,
, Section , Page 19, Column , words
CAMP LEJEUNE, N. C., July 28 -- The commanding officer of the Second Marine Division said today that there were "indications" but "no tangible evidence" that Negro marines involved in a racial flare-up here a week ago were members of the Black Panther party.
July 29, 1969
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Wexford Fringe Festival is an annual open-access arts festival which will run in parallel to Wexford Opera Festival from Friday, 21st October to Sunday, 6th November 2016. Now in its 64th year, Wexford Fringe offers an eclectic mix of over 300 events over 17 days including cabaret, comedy, circus, dance, film, theatre, puppetry, music, and visual art, many of which are free to attend.
Unlike a curated festival, the open-access nature of Wexford Fringe means that anyone with a show, exhibition or cultural event can register and be part of one of Ireland's largest Fringe Events. The result is one of the most diverse fringe festivals in Ireland, renowned for fresh ideas, spontaneity and fun. Artists from around Ireland and further afield participate alongside home-grown talent, in art forms spanning cabaret, comedy, circus, dance, film, theatre, puppetry, music, visual art and design.
Wexford Fringe literally takes over the entire town with over 300 events staged in pop up venues as well as established venues such as theatres, hotels, art galleries, cafes and civic buildings.
What differentiates Wexford Fringe from many other Fringe Festivals is that alongside the ticketed open access programme are the Fringe produced and/or supported special free events, which run throughout the programme. These events add to the carnival atmosphere that engulfs the town and includes the Wexford Festival Opera and Wexford Speigeltent Festival.
For independent artists, Wexford Fringe is an inspirational environment to showcase their work. For audiences, it's an opportunity to see exciting and entertaining contemporary work in an atmosphere that encourages taking a chance and seeing and discovering something new.
The Wexford Fringe Guide 2016 will be released in early September. Some tickets and information will be available from the Wexford Fringe Festival Hub, Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford. Contact www.wexfordartscentre.ie or 00 353 539123764. Tickets will also be available from various venues across Wexford Town.
The programme includes, but is not limited to, a variety of art forms including cabaret, children's events, comedy, circus & physical theatre, dance, film, theatre, music, visual art and design. In 2016 there were over 300 events with something for everyone.


text:
Our big announcement on the Trump-Russia scandal.
You knew this was coming. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.), the new oversight chief on the House financial services committee, sent a letter on Tuesday to Elizabeth Warren, who runs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, grilling her on the bureau's plans while slamming the bureau altogether. According to Politico, Neugebauer writes that Warren is "tasked with executing a fatally flawed plan" by getting the consumer bureau up and running.
Neugebauer's questioning ranges from the nuts and bolts of running the bureau to requests for detailed information on Warren's meetings with top financial regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, among others. But other questions clearly show Neugebauer's opposition to the agency and belief that it's just more unneeded regulation. For instance, he asks: "What policies are in place to avoid potential duplicative, conflicting or overlapping rule-making that are currently underway, but will ultimately be under the regulatory authority of the CFPB?" He also demands Warren explain how the bureau's new rule-making would "avoid the kind of overregulation that might stifle innovation."
Not that Neugebauer's dislike of the bureau is surprising. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the financial services committee chair, has expressed his distaste for Warren's outfit. So has Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), a top member on the committee, who's tried to hack away at the bureau's rule-making power by giving bank regulators—the ones who failed to prevent the meltdown of 2008—veto power over the bureau. Already Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the banking committee and consumer bureau opponent, has demanded that Warren make her schedule public.
Neugebauer's letter is only the beginning. The GOP-led financial services committee will no doubt make the declawing of the consumer bureau a priority in the 112th Congress, and it'll be up to Democrats to stand their ground and defend the much-needed bureau for which they fought so hard.


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There have been controversies associated with the show before like the foster family that screwed over the kids for whom a home was built, but this one beats them all.
Here is a description of the home built for the Harpers by the neighbors in their community.
The finished product was a four-bedroom house with decorative rock walls and a three-car garage that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighbourhood. The home's door opened into a lobby that featured four fireplaces, a solarium, a music room and a plush new office.
Materials and labour were donated for the home, which would have cost about $450,000 to build. Beazer Homes' employees and company partners also raised $250,000 in contributions for the family, including scholarships for the couple's three children and a home maintenance fund.
So, what did the Harpers do with their full paid for, best in the neighborhood home? They used it for collateral on a construction business. When the business went under, so did their house. It is being sold at a foreclosure auction on August 5th.
At the time the house was built it was by far the largest, most expensive home the show had done. 1,800 people helped to get it completed in six days. Needless to say the people who helped build it and donate everything are pissed.
"It's aggravating. It just makes you mad. You do that much work, and they just squander it," Lake City Mayor Willie Oswalt, who helped vault a massive beam into place in the Harper's living room, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
And that is a mayor who is probably being nice because the Harpers might still vote for him. All this family had to do was find any job and they were set. No mortgage, no college tuition, no home maintenance costs. Ever. I understand the dream of wanting your own business, but you don't risk what other people gave you and donated and did out of love. It just isn't right.
It is so freaking aggravating and I feel sorry for the Harper kids and the 1,800 people who contributed. I feel sorry for all the people that spent two hours watching the damn show and getting invested in the family's misfortune. I feel sorry for everyone except the parents who are the biggest idiots in the world. Well, wherever they are living now, they better get used to it because I don't think anyone will ever volunteer to help them ever again. Idiots, idiots, idiots.


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MANHATAN LOVE SONG. By Kathleen Norris. 293 pp. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc. $2.
A fair sign that the depression has actually turned the fatal corner is that it has become a tremendously popular subject for light fiction. Kathleen Norris uses it for the background of her light-hearted, breezy "Manhattan Love Song." Two boys and two girls, fresh from Stanford University, descend upon New York with their eyes open, prepared to buck the depression.
April 01, 1934
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(401) 863-9556
Betsy P. Shimberg is the Director of Community Partnerships, managing programs that place Brown students into service opportunities. Previously, she worked with a team to develop the TRI-Lab, a new initiative at Brown that leverages students, faculty, and community practitioners to develop potential solutions to complex social issues.
Betsy has worked with social service and education non-profit organizations for most of her career. Prior to joining the Swearer Center, she was a policy researcher with RI KIDS COUNT and an independent consultant. She served as the Director of Policy and Planning for Mercer Street Friends, a comprehensive social services non-profit organization in Trenton, NJ. In addition, she worked with several organizations in New York City in the fields of advocacy, research, development and public relations.
From 2008-2013, Betsy served as a member of the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education. In addition to her term on the Regents, Betsy has served on multiple non-profit boards including Youth in Action, City Year, the Paul Cuffee Charter School, and Generation Citizen, and she has been an active member of the parent associations of her children's schools.
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Betsy graduated from Wellesley College in 1990. She earned a Master's degree in Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. Betsy lives in Providence with her husband and their two children.


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Technology Program
Thursday, June 7th * 3:25 - 4:35 p.m. * Location: Short Creek 3 & 4
Tablet Wars: Which One is Best for Your Practice
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The battle lines have been drawn and the war rages between Apple's iPad and its many challengers. Who's winning, who's losing, and who is already out of the game? In this session, you'll learn about the different types of tablets available, the pros and cons of each tablet platform, and how you can take advantage of this lightweight computing technology in your practice.
Questions? Click here to contact us
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The Daggers midfielder has struggled to break into John Still's first team this season making just five substitute appearances in the league.
His move to Dartford in the Blue Square Conference will hopefully provide Dominic with the chance to play games.
The loan will run until the 9th February 2013
John Still thinks the move will be good for Dominic "Dom needs to get some games under his belt. He hasn't played very much this season and hopefully the loan move will help him gain his confidence.
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How to: View Errors Within a DataSet with the Windows Forms ErrorProvider Component
You can use the Windows Forms ErrorProvider component to view column errors within a dataset or other data source. For an ErrorProvider component to display data errors on a form, it does not have to be directly associated with a control. Once it is bound to a data source, it can display an error icon next to any control that is bound to the same data source.
If you change the error provider's DataSource and DataMember properties at run time, you should use the BindToDataAndErrors method to avoid conflicts.
To display data errors
Bind the component to a specific column within a data table.
Set the ContainerControl property to the form.
Set the position of the current record to a row that contains a column error.
ErrorProvider Component Overview
How to: Display Error Icons for Form Validation with the Windows Forms ErrorProvider Component


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At an event at the British Academy in London the other day I used the term Extremist Feminism to describe the sort that convicted a man for buying sex in Sweden although evidence was lacking to show he had bought it, on the ground that he should have known that someone must have paid. The court assumed the female playmates in a hotel room to be prostitutes because of their appearance and their foreign-accented English. Dismal stereotyping of women going on there – not so different from the comment about disreputable women made with impunity by a hotel magnate in Luxor. Extremist also describes feminists who evaluated the sex-buying law without doing any actual investigation but declared it a success on purely ideological principles. And who then proceeded to propose increased penalties for clients convicted. Extremism means assuming men have bad intentions towards women and seeing their sexualities, and in fact their bodies themselves, as inherently exploitative. Others have used extremist to refer to man-haters like Valerie Solanas, author of SCUM Manifesto, and people throw around ruder terms like feminazi. But I prefer not to sound like someone trying to discredit all sorts of feminism.
I usually use the term fundamentalist feminism, referring to a stream of feminism that wants to go back 'to the roots', by which they mean early 1960s universalist feminism, the idea that Woman can be known through a biologically female body and Women are all ultimately alike. Authoritarian Feminism is another possible term, this time putting emphasis on the tendency of fundamentalists to decree that their view is the only correct one and must be followed by everyone. Theory calling itself radical feminism in the 1960s has moved in a direction Orwell might have called Big Sister Feminism, where no disagreement is brooked. This particular feminism happens to hold power in Swedish government bureaucracy. It is State Feminism (coming from government employees empowered to set policy on women and gender), but there is no reason why State Feminism should have to be extremist; this is just how history has played out in Sweden. This view of women and men exists in every country I have lived in, and that is quite a few. And my, how many extremist feminists wish it would play out the same way in their countries! Here is the review of the BA event from Something Dark, in which government attempts to censor and silence were discussed in detail.
'Sex and Regulation': seminar focuses on the excesses of the state, media and lobbyists
3 Febrary 2011, Something Dark
A UK academic organisation, the Onscenity* research network, hosted a seminar at the British Academy, London, on 1 February to draw attention to increasing state regulation of sex in relation to media, labour and the internet.
Julian Petley, professor of screen media and journalism at London's Brunel University, chaired the seminar, and introduced it with his own presentation, "Censoring the image". Petley is a veteran advocate of free speech, and he once again demonstrated his detailed grasp of a broad range of censorship and free speech issues in the United Kingdom.
Petley began his delivery with the sobering declaration that there were many UK laws limiting freedom of speech; he then tabled an overview of these laws, their history and their socio–legal impact today. He drew particular attention to the evolution and problems of the Obscene Publications Act (OPA), various child protection laws, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (CJIA) 2008.
He pointed to how the typology of child sexual abuse imagery adopted by the UK legal system regarding the mildest category, "level 1" – which refers to "images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity" – had led to "controversy", for example, by allowing for "police bullying" of galleries exhibiting the work of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe [see the feature articles concerning Mapplethorpe from page 28 in SomethingDark webmagazine issue 1, beginning with "Twenty years later: Mapplethorpe, art and politics"; see also our Latest News entry of 9 July 2010, "Further viewing – the art of Robert Mapplethorpe"].
Regarding the CJIA 2008, specifically the sections criminalising simple possession of "extreme pornographic material", Petley repeated the oft-quoted charge of critical specialists by stating the law was so vague and subjective that it is impossible for anyone to know whether a great body of material will be regarded as illegal or not. He summarised the approach of regulators as one that tends to "collapse" the offensive into the harmful, "as if being offended is the same as being harmed".
The first speaker, Martin Barker, professor of film and television studies at Aberystwyth University, in his presentation "The problems of speaking about porn", outlined the difficulties faced by individuals, including academic researchers, in dealing with themes of sex and pornography due to the stigma often attached to critics of heavy-handed regulation by the advocates of such regulation.
Barker referred to "the politics of disgust" and summarised the results of a survey he had conducted on print media coverage of issues concerning pornography. He said tabloid press coverage of "pornography" had increased since 2000 but had fluctuated within this trend, and consisted of two attitudes: (a) a "prurient fascination"; and, (b) an exaggerated morality that proclaimed certain categories of sexually oriented material as kinky and unacceptable.
Revealingly, Barker spent more time on broadsheet coverage, particularly on a steady increase in their use of the term "porn" as a metaphor with a range of negative connotations. He maintained the evidence suggested that the individual and subjective, emotional response of disgust automatically authorises commentators to adopt a simplified, morally superior position when dealing with complex issues such as pornography, and that "the politics of disgust" was driving public discourse and regulation.
Yaman Akdeniz, formerly at the University of Leeds but now an associate professor of law at Istanbul Bilgi University, outlined his work in legal campaigns to reduce the growing censorship of the internet by the Turkish state. He emphasised his concern at the potential for a "domino effect" that would see developing countries seize upon internet- and website-blocking policies, either already implemented or proposed, in developed Western countries such as the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia as justification for furthering their own, already relatively severe, censorship of the internet.
Turning his attention to the case being made for restricting internet access in the Western world, Akdeniz stressed the increasing prominence of arguments claiming that child protection demanded more robust, state-enforced internet regulation and censorship that targets all forms of sexual content, not just child abuse material. He cited an article in the Guardian newspaper from December to illustrate the pro-censorship argument being furthered in the United Kingdom, in this case as advocated by the UK parliamentary under-secretary of state for culture, communications and creative industries, Ed Vaizey.
Laura Agustín, a consultant anthropologist and author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (2007), focussed on attempts to regulate sexuality and society based on exaggerated claims regarding the extent of human trafficking in the international sex industry. She had recently counselled lawyers for Julian Assange of Wikileaks notoriety, who sought her advice on Swedish rape law in preparing their client's defence against extradition to Sweden. Agustín, who has lived and worked in Sweden, criticised "state feminism" in the Scandinavian country, describing it as "extremism" that "has gone too far". She went on to discuss Sweden's "sex purchase law", which criminalises those who pay for sexual services – a law that, using unsound and concocted, ideologically driven research, was last July evaluated by the Swedish government as having significantly reduced prostitution and prevented trafficking. It is a law that has been marketed with some success to other countries, including the United Kingdom.
Agustín narrated her experience as a panelist at the BBC World Debate Can Human Trafficking Be Stopped?, held in Luxor, Egypt, on 12 December 2010, which she likened to a "religious revivalism" meeting for "the rescue industry". This industry, she maintained, bases much of its fervour on enthusiastically publicised – but bogus – statistics on the numbers of trafficked women. She emphasised the fact that sound and genuine research on the subject does not exist, but this does not deter the rescue industry from what is, in effect, a misguided and unrealistic attempt to eradicate prostitution globally, with damaging social consequences at ground level in individual countries [see Laura Agustín's blog entry, "BBC World Debate on Trafficking Online: Sex, lies and videotaping"].
Clarissa Smith, senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, rounded off the seminar with a summary of the issues and the work that lies ahead in contributing towards the realisation of a more mature society.
Onscenity is a research network dedicated to developing new approaches to the relationships between sex, commerce, media and technology. It draws on the work of leading scholars from around the world and is working to map a transformed landscape of sexual practices and to coordinate a new wave of research in relevant fields. The body was founded in 2009 with funding from the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). "Sex and Regulation" was Onscenity's second seminar.
–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist
25 comments
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The only valid numbers concerning sex-trafficking is the different national police-statistic over trafficking cases. According to the Trafficking in persons report (2010) – which in other circumstances claims huge numbers of sex trafficking victims – the average number in 100 000 inhabitants in Europe is 0.24. It's a bit problematic to compare that number with other crimes, which mostly are declared in how many reports there are. But even if we multiply the actual 0.24 ten times (in Sweden about a tenth part of all reports of sex-trafficking end up in the court), the figure is very small compared to other crimes. For the sake of Sweden we for example have 927 cases of battering in 100 000 inhabitants, 64 cases of rape, 5947 cases of burglary/robbery and 1062 cases of fraud. If one compare those figures with the possible figure of 2.4, so, in reality, one sees that sex trafficking at an international level is a rare crime. But the real and only existing trafficking industry – that is the "rescuing industry" – gets enormous sums of money. Here in Sweden, for example, the government 2008 did put aside 21 million Euro "to fight prostitution and sex trafficking" but 2009 the police couldn't find one case that went all the way to the court! And even if I personally have reported those figures to EU commissioner Cecilia Malmström she continues to claim hundreds of thousands of sex trafficking victims in Europe every year. Although absolutely no scientific or empirical evidences for such unrealistic figures exist at all.
And what's more, even though it is well known that other types of trafficking are much more common than sex trafficking, lesser than a tenth part of all reported trafficking cases in Europe are of another type than sex trafficking, which shows that it's not politically interesting to protect other victims than those few that are trafficked for sexual purposes. And the only reason for that is that the radical feminists, politicians and other moral groups can take advantage from it. And how many have seen any paper writing about other forms of trafficking than sex trafficking in comparable numbers? Here in Sweden it hardly exist any news about it at all – but a lot of reports about claimed "sex trafficking". So even the medias take advantage of it and are not interested in reporting this in a balanced and neutral way.
Laura — and Dick — what I find curious about this particular figure manipulation (or rather simple lack of attention to any figures there might be) is that it happens in a country that has always prided itself of taking the most advanced social/scientific approaches to the solution of social problems — a country in which things deemed unspeakable or laughable in other countries could be safely tried and shown to work.
Yet we see the same kind of behavior there as we see in other countries with respect to whatever a dominant social group doesn't like. How can this be?
Either you'd have to assume that Swedish society is actually quite coherent — the overwhelming majority either agrees with, or doesn't care about, the actual extent of the problem of sex trafficking. If the former is true, then there must be — despite all the PR to the contrary — some very conservative rather than progressive traits in Swedish society, since they apparently accept, from the radfem sprectrum of ideas, precisely those which agree with age-old sexual/gender stereotypes ('woman the lamb', 'man the wolf', women as helpless beings in need of help, men as aggressive beings in need of containment). If the latter is true, then there is a certain level of social apathy — 'we don't care' — in Sweden that again doesn't agree with all that has been said about this country.
I don't know what to think. Once I was part of an education and research project among Amazonian Indians that was paid by the Regnskogfondet, the Norwegian Rainforest Foundation. The money for the project had been freely donated by Norwegian highschool students, who collected the money with the hope of helping the situation of indigenous peoples in an area of the world very far away from their home and which had nothing to do with the kind of reality they lived in.
Of course Norway isn't Sweden; but their histories and social systems are sufficiently close for me to ask: how come they are so willing to hear about the suffering of others and help them, but then won't heed what sex workers in their own country say about their situation?
Maybe the reason is that activism in the absence of reflection, self-criticism, humility, always ends up doning arrogant features; even if it starts out as the very opposite of arrogance. Once you think you "know everything", you tend towards arrogance. And maybe Scandinavian countries have had so many clear successes on the social front, they now think they can't possibly be wrong.
I say "Scandinavian countries", not simply Scandinavian radfems, because of the place that radfems have found in the Swedish (and apparently Scandinavian) system. They couldn't possibly have gotten there without the assistance of others. They can't possibly succeed in "silencing other voices" and having so many in Sweden agree with their viewpoints without the help, active or passive, of others. And that is what I would like to understand: how this happened, and how people with such obviously relevant arguments like Ms Agustín here simply don't seem to have an impact.
Ms, Agustín, I have a question for you. You said (or so this report claims) that "sound and genuine research on the subject [sex trafficking] does not exist". In your opinion, why is it so? It shouldn't be more difficult to get funding for a really good and methodologically sound study on sex trafficking — not any more difficult than it is to get funds for studies on other cultural topics. In fact, given the relevance that trafficking activists want to give to the topic, more funding for this kind of studies should be available than for other topics, deemed less important or less urgent. So, how come there really is no sound and genuine research on the subject? It can't be for lack of interested researchers; I'm sure there are good specialists (like yourself) who would be able to conduct such studies in an impartial manner. Why aren't they doing that? Is it because the "rescue industry" is absorbing these resources and excluding others from getting them? Or is there some other reason?
I do think i have written about this last issue quite a bit. There are indeed many scholars in migration studies who research undocumented migration – how it happens, who is involved, what people think as they are doing it. there are now several researchers working with smugglers themselves. but no one – that is pretty much an absolute – CAN have correct figures, since the people involved are operating in the informal economy. undocumented migrants don't register at the border or with any official bodies and workers without papers also aren't registered anywhere. therefore, everyone is estimating and guessing, and they do that from their various subject positions. the police are usually the ones asked to estimate, and of course their point of view is biased towards believing crime to be rising all the time.
i have indeed done research with undocumented migrants, and have met people who were genuinely exploited and abused and rescued into shelters. it is sound research but it is not about statistics.
there has been pretty endless acknowledgement of this problem for ten years, from all sides.
Well, then at least the fact that numbers are mentioned by the rescue industry as being acknowledged truth should be challenged by these researchers, right? The absence of a consensus on the number of trafficked people shouldn't be hidden or left aside when numbers are used as arguments on how important the problem is. At least the serious researchers should (as you do yourself) be out there protesting against this use of numbers that they themselves don't agree on — shouldn't they?
I'm in a different field (linguistics), so I don't know much about what is going on in these areas, other than what I hear and read in the media and in blogs like yours.
What you say does make it sound mysterious. Maybe the anti-sex part of our culture is sufficiently entrenched to make people simply not believe in such protests?
This does remind me of the creationism-evolution 'debate', in which, despite the clear consensus of pretty much every single serious researcher on the topic that evolution is a fact, plus endless articles, videos, radio and TV programs, etc. debunking creationist 'arguments', still an important — and apparently growing — fraction of the general population simply does not accept them. People like Prof. Dawkins are apparently not enough, despite the weight of their well-researcher arguments, to convince people like Bill O'Reilly and his viewers. Even in Europe and Australia creationism seems to be on the rise. Could the imperviousness to protest and criticism from researchers about exaggerated trafficking numbers be an example of a similar phenomenon?
probably there is an ahistorical human tendency towards comforting simplification of complex issues. our present zeitgeist shows a clear move towards fundamentalisms of all kinds, including in feminism. the anti-slavery movement, which is what the anti-trafficking movement has become, is only one example of all this – coupled with an antipathy to academicians and scientists, to arguments about facts and figures.
I'm researching the Dutch sex industry for 6 years now. I think I have found a clue about the numbers.
I compared characteristics (nationality, age) of prostitutes in the Netherlands in general by looking at a forum where clients post reviews about their visits to prostitutes. Then you can compare this information to characteristics of forced prostitutes mainly retrieved from Comensha (the Dutch foundation against trafficking in women). It seems that forced prostitution happens among certain groups of prostitutes in the Netherlands. For instance: young Dutch window prostitutes, or young Eastern European prostitutes mainly from Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. It also involves prostitutes from Nigeria.
That courtcase you mentioned, kind of reminds me of a casein New York in the 1930`s.
In the 1920 Nwe York was quite liberal when it came to at least tolerating homosexuals. Then in came The Great Depression, and tough anti-sodomy laws.
- Resulting, among other cases, a couple of male friends being accused of bing homosexual, on the basis that they were heard speaking about opera.
Showing thees anti-sodomy laws (like the Nordic criminalization of the act of buying sex, and like you show in your text) wasn`t about homosexuality, but about how "real men" should behave in general.
Maybe it's more about how widespread certain memes are, and how likely it is that the proportion of its adherents — and those of its opposing memes — will change.
After all, evolution basically became the accepted foundation of biology in the 1920′s after the work of Ernst Mayr. Ninety years later, we still have groups putting a lot of money and effort on fighting it.
There is no reason to expect that views on trafficking and prostitution as inherently evil will take any less time to change (assuming they will change significantly).
a chord is struck with the sex slavery idea that transcends reason.
This would be an interesting topic for research, in case it hasn't already been researched: what are the causes and sources of the fear that specific forms of sex have caused in pretty much every human civilization (possibly with sex slavery as a test case)? And, historically speaking, what forces have been able to achieve change, in the specific cases where taboos have changed throughout history?
There were civilizations and moments in history in which sex slavery was actually accepted — this was, I believe, a common function for female slaves in classical antiquity. The chord being struck here may actually include some other element; something I feel is associated with sexual violence and rape (things in general much less popular throughout history than mere sex slavery).
If I can say one thing (forgive my English mistakes ) you wrote about extremist feminism or authoritarian feminism or radical feminism, I have the right words for it. lesbian feminism.
I was once convinced to join a very extremist form of feminism (but obviously it wasn't promoted like that in the beginning) and after some days the "feminists" started to, I don't know if it is the right word but, yes they were touching me. At the beginning I taught it was like joking or having fun, but no, they were hitting on me and expecting me to return the same kind of attention. Well when I told them that I wasn't interested and that I liked boys, they shouted at me and I even received a slap in my face. I was called names, a "man pleasing whore" and a traitor of women.
Radical feminists (or the way you prefer to call them) simply hate men. They deny it, but they do. They trivialize men, but they reject the idea of man hating or misandry or male bashing, but yes, it is man hating, it is misandry. i guess if you want to rob a bank you aren't going to say it, you deny it. A lot of people (bothe males and females) still believe feminists are angry women or frustrade females who don't have sex. No feminists are lesbians who really hate all things manly. They do have an agenda, and I know that agenda becose in the beginning I was part of it untill I decided to abandon that fascism. They are simply trying to "sabotrage" men in any form, any way, any possible direction. Today I have changed the way I see both men and women, both can be equally evil and fanatics, liars and dishonest. Today I just want to marry my boyfriend and have babies. If there is a way to good, positive revenge towards them, I choose love, motherhood, family and my man with me. lesbian feminist misandry showed me one thing: I really really love men.
Sabrina – While being pretty far from a lesbian, I feel compelled to defend actual lesbians against association with this so-called "lesbian feminism". The stereotype that lesbians inherently are hateful, and out to hurt men and force other women into lesbian is not only wholly inaccurate, its a pretty hateful stereotype as well.
The thing is, the so-called "lesbian feminism" advocated by women like Sheila Jeffreys has very little connection to most lesbians. It is an ideology of mainly heterosexual women who have had problems with men and who have created this ideology of the "political lesbian" as a response. "Political lesbianism" is merely a reaction by a small group against heterosexuality and has nothing to do with what actual lesbians think or how they live. In fact, most lesbians, including feminist ones, who I've read on the subject of "political lesbianism" have had little good to say about it.
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In response to Sabrina D. N.
«you wrote about extremist feminism or authoritarian feminism or radical feminism, I have the right words for it. lesbian feminism»
As a disclaimer, i can only respond from personal anecdotes. I've become interested in this domain because (thanks?) to an acquaintance who is a radical feminist, and whose discourse sounded extremely quixotic to me; she does have abolitionist goals in regard to sex-trade, and is a strong proponent of the Swedish model and of even more coercitive options.
In definitive opposition to your proposition, she deems LGBT people as her (their) obvious opponents; and strongly denounces the «LGBT-lobby» as being on the side of sex-traffickers and other social evils. Indeed it seems that gay, lesbian and trans people are more often active in the defense of the rights of sex-trade workers, than in opposition to them.
I know about a dozen gay and lesbian people (a few of whom are close friends) and they are indeed not at all in phase with such radical feminism, being either less politically minded or simple more interested in what we could call «sex-positive» stances than in coercitive and radical ones.
It's always a mistake to generalise about huge groups of human beings, lesbians being one. Thank goodness for unpredictable variation everywhere, otherwise life would be very dull. So I can think of women who have sex with women who hate prostitution and others who are sex workers and others who promote sex workers' rights but hate trafficking… etc etc