text:
By John Waggoner, USA TODAY
When employers first rolled out 401(k) savings plans, the message was clear: Take control of your own retirement destiny. Invest your money as you see fit. Choose from among many different options.
Now, more than a year after the worst bear market since the Depression, 401(k) accounts are close to being where they were at the peak of the market in 2007 — thanks in large part to workers' own contributions. But the bear market and recession have also realized some of the shortcomings of a 401(k) plan. The markets can slash even a conservative portfolio in half. Companies can stop or reduce their matches. And a plan with a low participation rate can put tough limits on how much you can save.
Already, employers are tinkering with 401(k) plans to keep workers from making bad investment decisions and to make them start saving early. Call it the new paternalism. You can take charge of your own destiny, employers are saying, but we'd like to save you from yourself. While results are far from certain, early indications show that they are working.
A 401(k) plan has an intrinsic problem. It tries to reach a specific goal — the amount you need to retire — by investing in stocks, bonds and money market funds, none of which offer specific returns. In essence, a 401(k) takes the task of a highly paid pension manager and gives it to each worker.
Investors learned about the job's difficulties the hard way from 2007 to 2009, when the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 57%, the biggest bear market since the Depression. About 60% of all mutual fund assets in retirement plans is invested in U.S. and international stocks, according to the Investment Company Institute, the funds' trade group.
Consider a worker who made $75,000 a year and invested 7% of his income a year in a 401(k) plan. He invested in a conservative mix of 40% bonds and 60% stocks. If he had started with $250,000 in September 2007 and retired in February 2009, his retirement nest egg would have dropped to $168,000. If he held on until March 31 of this year, he'd have $248,000. Of course, $13,000 of that increase would have come from his own contributions.
Many real-life investors are closing in on full recovery, thanks to a roaring bull market and their own contributions. "I'm off about 4.5% from September 2008," says Aaron Wendel, 38, a software solution specialist in Wake Forest, N.C. Wendel is doing somewhat better than average: U.S. defined-contribution plans had $3.6 trillion in assets in 2009, vs. $4.5 trillion in 2007, according to the ICI.
The bear market revealed some of the other drawbacks of 401(k) plans:
•Company stock. Despite repeated warnings after Enron's collapse, nearly 7% of 401(k) participants who were offered company stock in their 401(k) plan had more than 80% of their accounts concentrated in that company stock, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Many stocks of the nation's largest companies fell sharply during the bear market: General Electric fell 60%, Ford tumbled 79%, and Citigroup plunged 98%.
•Company match. About two-thirds of all companies make a matching contribution to their 401(k) plans. Among those that had offered a match, 16% cut or eliminated the match, according to T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore fund company. Of those, about a third have restarted contributions. Among the cutters: Morningstar, the Chicago investment trackers, suspended the company's 401(k) contributions in January 2009 and reinstated a partial match in January 2010. It now pays 50 cents on the dollar, up to 7% of employee contributions; Morningstar had previously matched contributions dollar for dollar.
•Layoffs. You can't save for retirement if you don't have a job. And if you lose your job and have an outstanding 401(k) loan, it's even worse. For the nation's 21.5 million unemployed, retirement saving isn't an option. Steven Matejcek, 39, was saving 10% of his salary and making 14 mortgage payments a year until he was laid off as a financial analyst in Jacksonville. His goal: Retire early without a house payment. "Being unemployed may put a crimp in that," he says, "but, so far, I've been able to maintain the extra mortgage repayments."
•Contribution rates. In the broad workforce, 401(k) participation is meager, especially among the young. Low overall participation often limits the amount that older, better-paid workers can save. And many savers don't put in as much as they will need for retirement. T. Rowe Price — a company that sells 401(k) plans, it should be noted — has estimated that workers need to save about 15% of their salaries annually to have enough to retire. The average contribution rate is 7.6%, according to T. Rowe Price.
T. Rowe figures that retirees will give themselves an annual inflation adjustment, which is one reason the figure is so high. Nevertheless, most experts figure you can only start taking 4% to 6% of your savings each year to avoid running out of money. To get $50,000 a year, you'd need $833,000 to $1.25 million when you retire.
•Longevity. People may think they're saving enough, but not if they live longer than they expect. The average 65-year-old male can expect to live to 84½; the average female, 87, according to the American Academy of Actuaries. The average 65-year-old male has a 30% chance of living beyond 90; the average female, 40%.
•Fees. Every dollar you pay to your 401(k) administrator is a dollar that doesn't go to retirement. Companies have steadily been passing on administrative fees to workers, and small company plans can sometimes cost workers more than 2% a year.
Despite the pounding that investors have taken the past three years, they remain remarkably fond of their 401(k)s. At the end of 2009, 63% of investors polled by the ICI said they were somewhat confident or very confident that their retirement plan accounts will meet their retirement goals.
"I'm a firm believer in the fact that I at least control my own destiny," Wendel says. "I've had eight jobs in the last 15 years. If I had to rely on a traditional pension, I would not have had the flexibility that I currently enjoy."
Low participation rates
Like Wendel, few seem nostalgic for a traditional pension. "A pension seems to offer more security, but with the pension cutbacks you see, you have to wonder if even that is secure," says Mike Longwell, a 35-year-old landscape architect from McKees Rocks, Pa.
Nevertheless, the numbers seem to belie investors' confidence in a comfortable retirement. Overall participation rates in 401(k) plans fell from 65% in 2009 to 60% this year, says Jack VanDerhei, EBRI's research director. And 57% of plan participants contribute 5% or less of their pay, according to T. Rowe Price.
The low participation rates have sponsors wondering how to get people to save more for retirement, and how to keep them from getting hurt when they do. A few solutions:
•"Opt-out" plans. With most plans, you have to actively enroll. And many potential 401(k) participants don't sign up. An opt-out plan automatically enrolls employees — and, thanks to inertia, they generally stay enrolled. Just 25% of all plans use the auto-enroll feature, says T. Rowe Price. When a company switches to an opt-out plan, 90% of participants stay enrolled after one year.
•Auto-increase plans. These plans start you at a relatively low level and bump up your contribution rate each year until you reach the maximum. About 62% of those with the auto-increase feature stick with it over time.
•Target-date funds. These funds gear investments to the date an employee wants to retire and changes the mix to more conservative, income-producing investments as the retirement date approaches. While not a perfect solution — many target-date funds lost 40% or more in the bear market — they can prevent people close to retirement from choosing an asset mix that's too risky for them.
Many 401(k) plans are starting to put an employee's contributions into a target-date fund rather than a money market fund if the employee doesn't specify an investment, says Ed Bernard, vice chairman of the board of directors at T. Rowe Price.
Even though traditional pension plans are declining, the new 401(k) plan may start to look a lot more like a pension, with corporations helping out with the management.
"I think there is a new era of paternalism afoot in Corporate America," says Andy Sieg, head of retirement and philanthropic services for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "They are thinking about how to give more advice to employees, perhaps even more important, thinking a lot about how employees can have a more holistic view of their financial lives."
Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.


text: It's not easy to manage clutter. With our wide assortment of bins, boxes, totes, drawers, shelving and baskets including closet organizers, you are one step closer to no clutter. You will also find a variety of hooks, hangers and shelf liners. Come in to Davis Ace Housewares and see how you can turn chaos into order with organizing!

subset: commoncrawl


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02 Oct 2011
Despite the government's attempt to boost the primary education for children between 6 and 14 years by implementing Right to Education, one cannot ignore the harsh reality in Uttar Pradesh that the basic education system has been crippled by corruption.
23 Aug 2016
Lucknow: Flood situation on Tuesday worsened in Uttar Pradesh due to release of water from Nepal and adjoining states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttrakhand which led to further rise in water levels of major rivers. According to Central Water Commission (CWC), the Ganga is flowing above the danger marks at Fafamau and Chhatnag (both in Allahabad) besides in Mirzapur, Varanasi, Ghazipur and Ballia.
03 Aug 2016
Bareily (UP): A teacher was on Tuesday allegedly abducted in broad daylight and gangraped in a field along a state highway linking Delhi-Lucknow National Highway 24, days after the Bulandshahr gangrape incident.
03 Jun 2015
Lucknow: In an effort to improve education system in the state, Uttar Pradesh government has directed all district administrations to observe the current academic session as 'Education Quality Upgradation Year' wherein performance of schools will be regularly assessed.
17 Sep 2016
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh seems headed for a hung assembly in the next year's Assembly elections with Bahujan Samaj Party emerging as the single largest party, a opinion poll has claimed.
16 Sep 2016
Bijnor: Three persons were shot dead and many injured during a fight which broke out after the incident of sexually harassing a girl in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh.
10 Sep 2016
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday claimed that Samajwadi Party will return to power on the basis of development works undertaken during the five years of his government.
04 Sep 2016
Lucknow: In a scathing attack on Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati, BJP president Amit Shah said the "politics of bua and bhatija" has destroyed Uttar Pradesh. He was addressing a workshop of party's IT cell workers in Lucknow.
30 Aug 2016
New Delhi: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will launch a month-long Mahayatra in Uttar Pradesh covering 39 districts from September 6, the Congress announced on Monday.
27 Aug 2016
Lucknow: Two more legislators -- one each from the Congress and the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) -- on Friday switched loyalties and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Pradeep Chowdhary, Congress legislator from Saharanpur, joined the BJP in the presence of state unit president Keshav Prasad Maurya.


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NEW YORK (Oct. 18)
Daniel Mayer, French political leader and chairman of the World ORT Union executive committee, said here tonight that the solidarity of American Jewry, patterned on a kind of "communal Marshall Plan" was the decisive factor in the reconstruction of the surviving Jewish communities of Western Europe. Mr. Mayer spoke at a dinner-reception in his honor given by the American Ort Federation.
The French leader, who was Minister of Labor in seven successive postwar French governments, said one of the most heartening developments for European Jewish communities was the coming of age of a new generation which was helping to replenish Jewish communities which had been decimated by the Hitler holocaust. He said the education of this youth was one of the most serious challenges to Jewish life today, asserting that the number of Jewish students in the 14-18 age bracket had doubled during the past decade.


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The Roman Polanski Case: Once Again, It's Hollywood vs. America
Kevin MacDonald
October 3, 2009
Over 30 years ago, director Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl. The details aren't pretty. According to the girl's Grand Jury Testimony, Polanski plied her with enough alcohol and Quaaludes to make her dizzy and disoriented. He then had oral copulation with her, followed by sexual intercourse, and ending with sodomy because he did not want to get her pregnant. In her testimony, the girl made it clear that she went along with Polanski's advances because of fear.
The girl declined to testify
at trial,
so Polanski was able to plead guilty to one charge of unlawful sexual intercourse
with a minor even though the Grand Jury charged him with rape of a minor,
sodomy, rape by use of a drug, and other crimes. He served 42 days in a
psychiatric observation facility before fleeing to France. Since 1997, the victim has urged
that the charges be dropped, but
apparently did so only after receiving a substantial financial
Since 1997, the victim has urged that the charges be dropped, but apparently did so only after receiving a substantial financial settlement.
Polanski's life as a fugitive has not exactly been a vale of tears. He has directed a number of movies, some with major Hollywood stars. His 2002 Holocaust movie, The Pianist, was widely acclaimed, winning an Oscar for Best Director, among other awards.
New York Daily News caption: "Film director Roman Polanski has lived a comfortable life while on the lam, including a swanky home in France with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner."
Of course, we shouldn't make too much of the fact that The Pianist received quite a few awards, since making movies about the Holocaust is well-known as the key to Oscar success. On the other hand, making movies like the Passion of Christ brings nothing but opprobrium and charges of anti-Semitism. Why this should be so is one of the great mysteries of life.
Be that as it may, Hollywood is not like the rest of us, and the fault lines are apparent in reaction to Polanski's recent jailing in Switzerland while awaiting extradition proceedings. An L. A. Times article discusses the gap between the attitudes toward Polanski among Hollywood's elite and the rest of the country:
From Michael Moore's politics to on-screen sex and violence, the
movie business is constantly being assailed for not sharing the country's
values. Rarely has the morality argument been as rancorous as with the Roman
Polanski case.
Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker. Top filmmakers are signing a pro-Polanski petition, Whoopi Goldberg says the director didn't really commit rape, and Debra Winger complains "the whole art world suffers" in such arrests.
The rest of the nation seems to hold a dramatically different perspective on Polanski's weekend capture. Even if decades have passed since he fled Los Angeles before his 1978 sentencing, Polanski must be extradited and serve his time, the thinking goes. There's no excuse for forcing sex on a 13-year-old girl. People who defend him have no principles.
In letters to the editor, comments on Internet blogs and remarks on talk radio and cable news channels, the national sentiment is running overwhelmingly against Polanski — and the industry's support of the 76-year-old "Pianist" Oscar winner.
The article goes on to suggest that Hollywood's refusal to condemn Polanski is simply a matter of protecting their own. As evidence, the article notes that even when Mel Gibson spewed his anti-Jewish rant after being arrested for speeding and drunk driving by a Jewish police officer, no one in Hollywood seemed to care.
Actually, there was quite a bit of negative reaction to Gibson's comments by the powerful in the movie industry, most notably from Rahm Emmanual's brother Ari. While over 100 of the most prominent Hollywood celebrities have signed a letter supporting Polanski, I am not aware of even one Hollywood celebrity who went to bat for Gibson over his anti-Jewish comments.
Moreover, the people who matter in Hollywood (not to mention the ADL and a whole slew of Jewish op-ed writers) were up in arms about Gibson's Passion. Michael Medved has documented Hollywood's very negative attitudes toward Christianity (and the traditional family, traditional sexual mores, and patriotism [apart from Israeli patriotism; see below]).
There certainly are norms that limit what Hollywood celebrities can and can't do to remain within the good graces of the community. Endorsing California's 2008 ballot Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage was definitely a bad career move in Hollywood. Opposing same-sex marriage is a career-ender in Hollywood, while supporting a child rapist is a great way to get ahead.
In fact, it is glaringly obvious that Hollywood's attitudes reflect its Jewish sensibilities. A recent example is the reaction to attempts to boycott an Israeli film at the Toronto International Film Festival. The protestors described Israel as an "apartheid regime" and dismissed the work of the filmmakers as "Israeli propaganda." A long list of the Hollywood best and brightest signed a petition in opposition to the protest — "a who's who of Hollywood's elite with a cast that runs from the executive suites to the sound stages and cuts across generations." Even a Jewish writer in the L.A. Times couldn't help but notice the ethnic angle in this rally-around-Israel response:
In today's Hollywood, signs of Jewish ethnic pride are everywhere. Judd Apatow's recent "Funny People" was populated with a host of openly Jewish comic characters, as is the new Coen brothers film, "A Serious Man," a drama ... that is, in part, about a troubled Jewish man who looks to his rabbi for guidance. And, of course, one of the biggest hit films of the summer was Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," which features as its heroes a scrum of tough-talking, baseball-bat wielding, Nazi-scalp-taking World War II-era Jewish soldiers.
So when trying to come up with a theory for why Hollywood would stand alone in supporting Polanski, a good bet is to suggest that Hollywood's stance reflects its Jewish identity.
A clue to understanding Hollywood's views on Polanski comes from a well-known sociological study comparing the attitudes of the Hollywood elite to the attitudes held by the general public and by traditional (non-Jewish) elites of pre-1960s White America (i.e., leaders in politics, business, and the military, as well as Protestant and Catholic religious figures). The largest difference between Hollywood and the other groups was on "expressive individualism." Expressive individualism taps ideas of sexual liberation (including approval of homosexuality and same-sex marriage), moral relativism, and a disdain for (Christian) religious institutions. The movie elite is also more tolerant of unusual or deviant lifestyles and of minority religions and ethnic groups.
In short, the attitudes of Hollywood
reflect the left/liberal cultural attitudes of the wider Jewish community
attitudes that are hostile to the traditional people and
culture of America and the West. Whatever else one might say about him, Polanski
is Exhibit A for the category of unusual or deviant lifestyle.
As I elaborated elsewhere, the Jewish intellectual movements that came to dominance in the US after WWII abandoned their Marxist roots in favor of promoting radical individualism among non-Jews. They did this not because of their allegiance to the ideals of the Enlightenment, but as a useful tool for ending anti-Semitism and preventing mass movements of the right.
One aspect of radical individualism was lack of racial identity for Whites. For the Frankfurt School, the ideal non-Jew was someone who was completely detached from all ingroups, including his race, his Christian religious affiliation, and even his family.
Indeed, a White person with a sense of ethnic pride was analyzed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder — a diagnosis that was not applied to any other race or ethnic group. Polanski can thus exemplify expressive individualism while at the same time demonstrating his Jewish identity by making a Holocaust movie. For non-Jews, expressive individualism means not identifying with your race or ethnic group.
aspect of radical individualism is disinhibited sexuality.
was especially important as an intellectual tool to undermine the traditional
American sexual mores deeply embedded in the Christian religious tradition of American culture.
The deviant,
perverted sexuality of Polanski fits well with expressive individualism,
although it is doubtless a rather extreme version. On the other hand, the
responsibilities of monogamous marriage, family, and parenting do not fit this
cultural profile. Nevertheless, expressive individualism is a cultural pattern
that has influenced a sizeable portion of the White population. It may not have
been disastrous if America had remained 90% White. But with mass immigration of
millions of non-Whites, many with high fertility, it is certainly speeding up
the decline of White America.
The centrality and legitimacy of expressive individualism in the
contemporary culture of the West are an important components of the culture of
Western suicide.
The centrality and legitimacy of expressive individualism in the contemporary culture of the West are an important components of the culture of Western suicide.
Expressive individualists basically want to express themselves with their own carefully cultivated, unique personal qualities. They advocate minimal controls on individual behavior, especially on sexuality. Expressive individualists prize creativity and the unconventional — a central aspect of the 1960s counterculture. At a relatively tame level, they want consumer goods that reflect their taste and individuality: They express their personality with their choices in cars, clothes, and music — Stuff White People Like, such as Vespa motorcycles, non-White cultural icons, and expensive camping equipment. (My take.)
A tendency toward expressive individualism is part of the individualist strain in traditional American culture. But it was a marginal phenomenon — confined to areas like Greenwich Village and the art world. When I was growing up, expressive individualism was certainly not part of the culture of the schools and churches in small-town Anglo-German Midwestern America.
Expressive individualism became an integral part of the counterculture of the 1960s — especially the hippie component of the 1960s counterculture. At that point, as Eric P. Kaufmann points out, it became ingrained in American mass culture, spreading from the intellectuals to the better-educated people in the mass media, the universities and the government. My view is that this movement of expressive individualism to the center of American culture was brought about by the Jewish intellectual movements that I describe in Culture of Critique—particularly psychoanalysis and the Frankfurt School (and their allies among the New York Intellectuals and their propagandists in the organized Jewish community and the media). At their core, these movements are hostile to the traditional Christian culture of America, its sexual mores, its ethnic pride, and even the idea that White people have a right or a legitimate interest in maintaining its status as a political majority. These movements rationalized and promoted this strand of individualist American culture at the highest level of intellectual discourse.
And because Hollywood fundamentally reflects Jewish attitudes on culture, it is not at all surprising that it would defend someone like Polanski whose behavior can only be described as reflecting the exact opposite of the traditional culture of America.
Another telling example that reflects the Jewish promotion of expressive individualism among non-Jews can be seen in Dr. Lasha Darkmoon's recent TOO articles on Jewish influence in the art world. She notes the predominance of wealthy Jews among art collectors, critics, and gallery owners. While retaining their own ethnic identity, they promote exactly the type of non-Jew prized by the Frankfurt School authors of The Authoritarian Personality: An expressive individualist with no allegiance to his race, his family, the Christian religion, or the traditional culture of the West.
The result is that an extreme expressive individualist, such as British artist Damien Hirst, can earn hundreds of millions of dollars by constructing works of art such as a glass case with maggots and flies feeding on a rotting cow's head. Or a shark suspended in formaldehyde. A recent show by Hirst sold for almost $200 million.
Hirst is entirely the creation of wealthy Jewish art collector Charles Saatchi who was deeply impressed by Hirst's maggot-infested cow's head and lavishly promoted him for the next ten years. Hirst has behaved as the prototypical expressive individualist, including drug and alcohol abuse, and violent and outrageous personal behavior:
Hirst has admitted serious drug and alcohol problems during a ten year period from the early 1990s [at a time when he was being promoted by Saatchi]: "I started taking cocaine and drink ... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck." During this time he was renowned for his wild behavior, and extrovert acts [we psychologists call it disinhibited psychopathy], including, for example, putting a cigarette in the end of his penis in front of journalists. He was an habitué of the high profile Groucho Club in Soho, London, and was banned on occasion for his behavior.
Charles Saatchi's Creation, Damien Hirst: Promote the Worst Gentiles
An artist wrote the following email to Dr. Darkmoon:
It was with great interest that I read your insightful and well-researched article regarding the art world. I have long been aware of the Jewish role that brought us to this lamentable state. I am a painter and photographer working in a neo-classical style and couldn't even get arrested at a gallery in the major art markets. I take encouragement however from the fact that there are other wonderful painters carrying on the great tradition and when the dust of postmodernism settles they will be properly recognized.
Such recognition will only come with a complete change at the highest levels of culture production. It is encouraging that the great majority of Americans find Polanski's behavior repulsive and believe that he should suffer a legal penalty. Similar attitudes are held by an overwhelming majority in France where we see the same gap between the cultural elite and the the rest of the people.
despite the healthy instincts of most White people, it is quite clear that the heights of culture
production in Europe and America are
controlled by people who absolutely reject anything resembling the
traditional culture of the West. And that is a disaster for our people.
And that is a disaster for our people.
Kevin MacDonald is editor of The Occidental Observer and a professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach.
Permanent URL:


text:
Hi, I'm 61 yrs old and my skin still breaks out. I had Deep FX and started getting so many blackheads. I still pick, so needless to say, my face is a mess. I also have very large pores around my nose and on my chin.
Really unhappy with my skin. At this point I think I would give my left arm to have decent skin. Years ago, I had a Phenol peel with which left my skin two toned, but it's very smooth.


text:
Justin Bieber Kicks Into High Gear for Billboard Music Awards
He's been riding the wave of hype thanks to his hot new single, and Justin Bieber delivered the goods on the 2012 Billboard Music Awards stage tonight (May 20).
The "Baby" hitmaker thrilled the crowd by singing "Boyfriend," dressed in a white and yellow getup complete with neon lights.
During the middle of the track, Biebs broke down and performed an extended dance remix, showing off his constantly-improving moves.
Prior to his performance, Justin accepted the trophy for Top Social Artist, declaring, "First of all, I just want to say how much of a blessing it's been the past three, four years, just growing up in front of everybody."
"I want to thank all my fans, 'cause the Internet is where I got my start. I want to thank my boy [and manager] Scooter Braun for all he's done. He's more than just a manager to me. I want to thank Usher. ... He takes the time to really care. I just want to say 'thank you so much' to my mom and my dad and to God. I could keep rambling forever. I just want to thank you so much. Swaggie."


text:
got my outline done just gotta colour it
got my outline done just gotta colour it
^^^so fresh and so clean clean
yo weak i sent u a pm but i did thistonight if it aint to late
nicee zoner and alts, shit this might turn out not too bad after all
fuck it i might as well post mine in here also (weak sent u mine earlier)
Good to see some good fucking shit on this. I'm in on the next one, if I don't finish mine by tomorrow night.
No More Weekly Toy Battles.
plz do finish, weak wont eat you
Im gonna take a break, printer ink is expensive and im broke. if one of you guys wanna step up for a week and try to do this be my guest, I might do another production later but not for another month or so. I have more pics im just to lazy to post them all right now.
Anyone smell OhNo?
Sorry, Squint. Just my opinion.
No More Weekly Toy Battles.
Im pretty sure ohno is in my area, and ive seen his stuff. I take no offence but its a straight forward N with a long middle bar just to take up space on the whole wall. I dident do any really small skinny bars and connected letters like ohno does. I dont even know why im even writing this
thats pretty dope weak, thanks again for putting these things together, im sure its a bitch to do lol.
crust - i really dont see any comparison with weaks letters and ohno.... like at all
and is ohno is the 905? never knew that lol
and theres a pic of ohno there that you can see i dident bite
Fresh, Fresher, Freshershist!
Fuck yo bars.
props boys especialy weak, hopfully ill be on yo guys level one day.
it reminds me of ohno but wouldnt call it a straight bite its just a standard long middle N lol
I wasn't trying to call a bite, I like it. I love OhNo, to be honest. haha, it just reminds me.
No More Weekly Toy Battles.
fuck you weak you dint even put me in, not even my character!


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Welcome to the forum, Linda.
I'm glad to hear you've found our main website useful. I hope you enjoy looking around here and perhaps make some new friends amongst our members.
We're also on Facebook as London Internet Church and on Twitter as @LInternetChurch
I travel to Italy a fair bit, too. Where do you usually go?
If you're ever in Assisi, St Leonard's Church has Anglican services in English on Sundays. The congregation is one of the friendliest I've ever met and most of them go together for lunch to a lovely restaurant across the road from the church after the services.
God bless. Lynda
© 2017 Created by Admin at LIC (network creator). Powered by


text:
National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project
Go to:
Why study urbanization:
As land areas urbanize, stream ecosystems can be substantially altered. Changes in the landscape as a watershed urbanizes may cause changes in stream hydrology, water quality, physical habitat, and water temperature that are known to have profound effects on aquatic communities of algae, invertebrate and fish. Understanding these interrelationships may contribute to informed decisions that result in practical and effective water-resource management and strategies that protect and restore stream ecosystems.
How this study is unique:
Although there have been many studies conducted on the effects of urbanization on streams, these studies have different designs, limited geographic scope, and measure a limited number of responses. In this study, each study adheres to a nationally consistent design, and measures many response variables using consistent sampling protocols and lab analytical procedures, so that responses to urbanization can be compared locally, regionally, and nationally.
Questions Addressed:
• How do stream ecosystems respond to land-use changes associated with urbanization?
• How do these responses vary across metropolitan areas located in different geographic settings?
• Determine the physical, chemical, and biological responses of stream systems to a gradient of increasing urban intensity.
• Determine the most important landscape features driving hydrologic, chemical, geomorphic, habitat, and ecological responses to urbanization.
• Determine the physical and chemical factors associated with biological responses.
• Compare these responses among metropolitan areas located in different geographic settings (climate, geology, hydrology, biology, water use) across the United States.
Study Design:
For each metropolitan area, locate stream sites in 28-30 basins that have minimal natural variability among them and represent a broad range of urban intensity from low to high. Examine hydrologic, physical habitat, chemical, and biological characteristics of the streams at these sites.
Timing and Locations:
Studies are conducted on a rotational sampling schedule through 2012, including in Birmingham, Alabama; Boston, Massachusetts; and Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2000; Raleigh, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Denver, Colorado, in 2003; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Milwaukee-Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Portland, Oregon, in 2004; and Seattle, Washington, in 2007.
What we measure:
• Physical: physical habitat, stream stage, and water temperature.
• Chemical: nutrients, pesticides, organic carbon, suspended sediment, sulfate, chloride, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance in water, and organic contaminants and potential toxicity of extracts of semi-permeable membrane devices (SPMDs - devices that concentrate trace levels of hydrophobic organic contaminants from water).
• Biological: invertebrate, algae, and fish communities, and algal biomass (chlorophyll a, ash-free dry mass).
Glossary of Terms


text:
The Saint Benedict School Band, under the direction of Ann Marie Donlon, meets weekly at Saint Benedict School. Small group lessons, separated by instrument and ability, are held during school hours. The full, advanced band rehearsal is after school. Students participate in winter and spring concerts, including joint concerts with other Richmond Diocese Catholic Schools.
Contact: Ann Marie Donlon at firstname.lastname@example.com .
Children's Choir
The Children's Choir meets weekly after school. It is directed by the parish choirmaster/organist, Mr. Francis Koerber. The choir sings monthly at selected Saint Benedict Parish Masses, and on special events by request.
Contact: Mr. Francis Koerber at 254-8810 or PENDING EMAIL
Private Music Lessons
The Greater Richmond School of Music offers music lessons at Saint Benedict Catholic School.


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Online Conferencing & Seminar Tools
Idealware is hosting a webinar June 4th from 1-2:30 EST on getting started with online conferencing and seminar tools. Registration is $40, but it looks like they'll cover a lot of ground for the money:
"We'll talk about the features that can help you conduct meetings or training over the Web - for instance, desktop sharing, slide shows, chat functionality, polls, voice conferencing, and more - and then look at some of the free and affordable options, such as Glance, DimDim, Yugma, GoToMeeting, ReadyTalk, and Adobe Connect. We'll close with some tips and tricks about conducting training via the web."
For those of you who are interested in being able to conduct more online training, this might be a good use of resources. There's great potential for collaboration among programs to host online education or peer review sessions (or really any other type of gathering that will help maintain competency and increase clinical knowledge). It might also be a fantastic opportunity for state IAFN chapters to conduct meetings and provide continuing ed.
BTW, if any of you will be in Anaheim next week for the EVAW conference, be sure to join Diana Faugno, Mike Weaver and me Tuesday evening from 5-6pm for a conversation about running quality SANE programs regardless of budget. We'll talk online education and a host of other topics. Hope to see you there!


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Last minute tips for parents when the SHTF
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Alternative communication
There are many times you will need to communicate, but it's just not possible or frowned upon. It may be inappropriate to speak aloud, impossible by distance, imprudent to speak, dangerous, or impossible.
link to www.freewebs.com
I love to read. I always have. As an adolescent, I would often go to library, check out ten or more books, devour them, and return in a few days. Don't read good books, there isn't time. Read great ones.
While there one day, some librarian had hung up a fingerspelling chart for American Sign Language(ASL) . I'd read a book on codes using morse or writing with lemon juice or using symbol like hierogylphics or kanji, and I fascinated by non-verbal means of communication. I stuck around until I could replicate all of them, went and got my sister, and we both learned it in about an hour. Then we used it to talk sometimes for fun on long drives in the car, or simply as a game.
Because I'd practiced fingerspelling at age eleven, it unexpectedly prepared me for my first real summer camp at age 14. One of the young ladies named T_____ was deaf, and gorgeous. Only two other people could speak her language. Since I could speak in the "baby language of fingerspelling", I could communicate albeit painfully slow. She was incredibly sweet, kind, and considerate, and drop dead gorgeous. Those are rare qualities, and were high motivators for me to learn more.
We wrote each other. I encouraged her to come back to camp. I purchased a book on ASL in the meantime, and learned the entire book by practicing and holding up signs in the mirror. My sister was minimally interested, so she learned some, and decided to come to camp too. T decided to come to camp again, and brought another of her deaf friends. Her brother translated everything for them, but still few people at first could communicate. They did see we had minimal trouble, so a few there asked out of curiosity, and we taught them. By the end of the camp week, almost everyone (more than forty kids and adults) could fingerspell, and some could speak in rudimentary sign words.
A few years later when I was a young man, I had a beautiful girlfriend, and I'd sit next to her in church, and we were so absorbed in each other, that while we were supposed to be listening to the sermon, we'd make fingerspelling signs with our hands surreptitiously. It made us closer.
Several charts are at the website above, one of which is fingerspelling. It is painfully slow. The easiest thing to do is practice each of the individual fingerspelling hand positions, then do them randomly with the other person guessing them, then spell small words, and so on. In many cases people will guess the word as you are spelling it, so you need not spell the whole word.
If you got a book on ASL, then you could silently communicate with the people in your group, and depending on the hand movements, communicate over a distance. The military uses this process:
link to www.specialoperations.com
A universal sign of distress is an upside down flag. A white flag hung up is a universal sign for distress too. A black flag hung up is a universal sign of disease present. Such things could be used in a pandemic to alert medical personnel.
The spectrum
All energy vibrates at certain oscillations. Some of it is visible, and we see this as white light and color. Other is invisible to our eyes as the rods and cones that make up the color and black/white optical receivers cannot see those frequencies. Other frequencies can be picked up by specially constructed electronics called receivers. Other devices can transmit those frequencies and receive them too. This allows AM, FM, shortwave, VHF, UHF, and other frequencies to transmit over great distances.
Wireless communication
People do not realize this, but communication often occurs on narrow bands of the spectrum and on not many frequency choices. The early wireless telephones were like this, and anyone with a special radio scanner could listen in on conversations. Even cell phone communications could be picked up this way. Journalists listened in on many celebrity communications, and picked up information, which they then published.
Even to this day, many frequencies on baby monitors, wireless video cameras, some cordless telephones and cell phones can be easily picked up depending upon the technical expertise of electronics enthusiasts. In a SHTF scenario, you should take this to heart. Any communication might be intercepted.
Here's a comprehensive list of frequencies that are used and in what capacity:
link to www.radioreference.com
If you know the ones that are most likely to help you in a bug in or bug out situation, then you'll save time gathering information.
Local radio/HAM enthusiasts will often meet in your area. In the event of a pandemic or a SHTF scenario, they might be the best means of transmitting information across distances, and allowing the flow of information. It could then be relayed to progressive further distances. They usually publish the frequencies that are used locally by emergency responders. Such folks have special codes to describe situations. This gives some privacy as it takes a little time to know what that code means. If you knew the code, and things were degenerating, then you would be alerted before the rest of the people.
link to www.radiolabs.com
Because things could break down, the medium of the Internet, radio, or television could break down, even if power was still operating. Prior to the Internet, there were ways of communicating like the Internet, they were just simpler means to transmit that information. Such ways might be used to communicate to people, but would be extremely slow compared to the normal Internet since they'd be relayed.
One such alternative is packet radio: [
link to www.tapr.org
Another weblink which descibes alternatives: [
link to en.wikipedia.org
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About the Book
These are some portraits I made in 2007 and 2008. They are all friends or people I have met out in the world. No models.
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- Category Fine Art Photography
Small Square, 7×7 in, 18×18 cm
20 Pages
- Publish Date Feb 06, 2009
- Tags black and white, large format, live music, folk music, portraiture, hasselblad, musicians, bands, rock, jazz, models
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I moved to San Francisco in 2005 after I finished school at Northeastern University in Boston. I work in the music industry as a photographer, videographer for live concerts, and an amateur audio engineer. I love all types of music and photography and it brings me great joy to work in both of these industries every day.
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text: Magical Minds Studio is an art studio that allows children to learn through hands on art experiences. The studio fosters intellectual, physical, social and emotional development through the child's artistic endeavors. In art classes, children work on everything from water painting to sculpting clay. Also offers spring and summer camps plus after-school programming.


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by Staff Writers
University Park, PA (SPX) Feb 25, 2013
Researchers have studied viruses as agents of disease in humans, domestic animals and plants, but a study of plant viruses in the wild may point to a more cooperative, benevolent role of the microbe, according to a Penn State virologist.
"Most of these wild plants have viruses," said Marilyn Roossinck, professor of plant pathology and environmental microbiology and biology, who has examined more than 7,000 individual plants for viruses. "But they don't have any of the symptoms that we usually see in crop plants with viruses."
Most of the viruses Roossinck studied are new viruses, although they are related to viruses that have been examined in crops. According to the researcher, about half of the viruses that infect wild plants tend to be continually present in the plant -- persistent.
The viruses get passed from plants to their offspring through the seeds. Researchers are still trying to uncover exactly what viruses are doing in the plants. Since the viruses are found so often, they may be playing some role in the life of the plant, according to Roossinck.
In fact, studies indicate that viruses can be beneficial to some plants, making them hardier and helping them survive extreme temperatures and drought, said Roossinck, who reported on her research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"When most people think of viruses, they think of serious diseases and death, such as the AIDS virus," Roossinck said.
However, on a research trip in Costa Rica, a biodiversity hot spot in Central America, she noticed that unmanaged wild plants looked healthier than managed agricultural fields.
During her research, Roossinck observed that most of the approximately 10,000 species of wild plants at the study site appeared healthy. The wild plants she studied included Fabaceae, an abundant family of plants related to beans. However, commercial crops -- melons, oranges, pineapple and aloe -- that were growing near the site were not as healthy.
"When I went to the forest, the wild plants looked healthy and gorgeous," Roossinck said. "Then, I went 10 kilometers away and the plants in the agricultural field were not looking so healthy. In the forest the plants are full of microbes: viruses, fungi and bacteria, whereas in crops farmers try to eliminate the microbes. Perhaps there is a connection."
Indeed, one plant virus that was found frequently in the forest was also found in nearby melon crops. In the melons it was causing severe disease, while in the wild plants there were no symptoms. Analyzing the viruses suggested that they were moving from the crops into the wild plants, but somehow the wild plants remained healthy.
Roossinck said she is curious about how the wild plants avoid disease, and if there is a way this can be used in agriculture.
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Gemini Cell Phone Charm
This is a cute horoscope cell phone charm. It's simple but I like the crystals. Very cute.
Sport your cell around like a regal thing that you are. Detailed with decorative jewels, these cell cases are sure to make a scene.Added 9 Years Ago from Yahoo


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st: Bootstrapping panel data xttobit
"Catharina Klepsch" <email@example.com>
st: Bootstrapping panel data xttobit
Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:38:46 +0200
Hi together,
I have a problem with the bootstrap command, and there are not a lot
information referring to panel data problems..
I am not sure if I get the right bootstrap standard errors if I have a panel
data set (data are clustered for different companies)
If I use the following command:
Bootstrap, reps(500) seed (123) saving(ergbenis.dta)cluster(clustervar)
idcluster(newclustervar): xttobit y x i(newclustervar), ul() ll()
I just want to be sure that for each estimation of the bootstrap the sample
includes all datas for the company which was drawn (as there are sometimes
different time periods for each company available). I am not quite sure if
the above mentioned bootstrap guarantees this. Because I also did not find
out when to use the group option?
So if anyone has some experience with bootstrapping panel data this would
help us a lot.
Otherwise perhaps someone knows if it is possible to get more information
about the drawn sample using bootstrap (which companies were chosen at the
first replication which companies for the second rep.) to check the results.
Best regards
Institute for Finance and Banking
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
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Indians Divide Over Policing a Watchdog: World Viewby
Can political corruption in India be addressed by reforming the institutions currently assigned to check it, or does the country need a new vigilance institution to help restore trust in its corruption-blotted democracy? Has the Indian Parliament reneged on its primary function, which is to debate and pass laws? And if so, can citizens' groups, or "civil society," come up with draft bills of laws, or would such a step be extra-constitutional?
Should the position of an ombudsman, or "Lokpal" -- from the Sanskrit roots "lok" (people) and "pal" (protector) -- be set up to investigate corruption and maladministration at the highest level? What kinds of checks and balances would be placed upon the office of the Lokpal itself? And would its powers of investigation extend to the highest office in the land -- the prime minister -- and to the judiciary? More widely, are hunger strikes to the death a legitimate method of exerting pressure on the government to address the issue? And wider still, what are the duties and responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy and have Indian citizens been remiss in fulfilling them?
All these questions have been widely debated by Indian citizens over the last three months and in New Delhi's North Block in the last week, as a ten-member committee made up of five ministers and five representatives of civil society sat down to thrash out their differences and ready a draft of the Lokpal Bill by the end of the month. The civil society group included four members of the campaign India Against Corruption, which earlier this year began a nationwide protest that was seen by some commentators as India's own version of Egypt's Tahrir Square movement, a spontaneous mass uprising against longstanding governmental apathy. Others perceived it as an emotive and misguided attempt to promote a utopian one-step solution to corruption.
Indian citizens have a right to be skeptical of the government's interest in getting the bill through Parliament, as the draft legislation has been bouncing between the two houses of the legislature, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, for more than four decades. As the journalist Pradeep Baisakh explained a few years ago in a piece on the history of the bill:
The Lokpal Bill was for the first time presented during the fourth Lok Sabha in 1968, and was passed there in 1969. However, while it was pending in the Rajya Sabha, the Lok Sabha was dissolved, resulting [in] the first death of the bill. The bill was revived in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998 and most recently in 2001. Each time, after the bill was introduced to the house, it was referred to some committee for improvements -- a joint committee of parliament, or a departmental standing committee of the Home Ministry -- and before the government could take a final stand on the issue the house was dissolved.
Anna Hazare, a veteran social activist who in April had begun a fast unto death to force the government to table a bill guaranteeing comprehensive and not cosmetic powers to the proposed Lokpal, was among those on the Joint Drafting Committee. The two halves of the panel sparred all week over a final version of the bill that melded the government's own draft with the one prepared by India Against Corruption (called the "Jan Lokpal Bill", or "The Lokpal Bill of the People"). Each side made derisive remarks about the other in the press. Arvind Kejriwal, one of the members on the civil-society side, devised the pun "Jokepal Bill" to mock the draft favored by the government side; Kapil Sibal, one of the ministers on the committee, said Hazare was "like the Pied Piper of Hamlin," (an analogy with very low recognition value in India). The committee's last meeting was June 20, and its resolutions were reported the next day by The Indian Express in a piece titled "In Final Lap, Rush To Reconcile":
After the heated exchanges of last week, Team Anna and government representatives got back together to cover substantial ground on the Lokpal Bill today. The two sides agreed on several issues, including a 10-year maximum sentence for corruption and a large corpus to fund the Lokpal.
But the larger issue of control over the bureaucracy and the extent of the Lokpal's powers remained unresolved. Government representatives strongly resisted the bid by Team Anna to include clauses with a potential to weaken the political executive and create a possibly counterproductive superstructure.
Each side will now present its own draft of the Bill at the final meeting of the committee tomorrow evening, where an attempt will be made to merge them into a common draft for Cabinet and, subsequently, Parliament approval.
In a piece in the Hindustan Times called "Who's Afraid of the Lokpal Bill?," Jagdeep Chhokar played down fears that the bill would supply the Lokpal with draconian powers and an impossible roster of responsibilities, and concluded by saying:
The Jan Lokpal Bill, if it comes into force, will not eradicate corruption or its root causes from society. Only large-scale social change impacting basic values of society can do that.
The Jan Lokpal can only put obstacles in the path of and fear of the law into the minds of the potentially corrupt. It is not a panacea for all of Indian social ills. Nothing can be. But it certainly is a good and necessary step in a long journey.
In an acute piece in The Telegraph on Anna Hazare's fast in April, and his threat to begin another fast unto death Aug. 16 if a diluted bill was presented to Parliament, the academic Prabhat Patnaik made several telling points. He argued that, contrary to popular perception, Hazare's fasts were not "Gandhian," since Gandhi always used the practice of fasts not to sway governments but instead in opposition to the people. The difference between the two, Patnaik argued, was the difference between violence and non-violence:
[Gandhi's] fasts-unto-death were directed at the people, not so much at an institution or government, with the objective of uniting them against violence. Even if any such fast-unto-death had claimed Gandhiji's life, this would have had no fallout by way of popular anger against any person or institution and hence no visitation of violence against such a target; what it would have produced is a general sense of shock that would have shamed people precisely into the kind of behaviour that Gandhiji had wanted when he undertook the fast in the first place.
It follows that there are fasts-unto-death and fasts-unto-death. There are fasts-unto-death whose objective is to extract some specific concession from an adversary, and which by nature, therefore, are coercive and entail an implicit threat of violence; and there are fasts-unto-death which are not directed against any particular adversary, which seek to unite the people, and which, therefore, entail no threat of violence. Anna Hazare's and Baba Ramdev's fasts fall into the former category; Gandhiji's fell into the latter.
A coercive fast-unto-death is not only anti-Gandhian; it is anti-democratic in the context of independent India. And even when the objective it seeks to achieve is laudable, it is fraught with dangerous implications for our constitutional order. This order is not to be pooh-poohed, because it represents perhaps the biggest advance for the people in the last two millennia of our history.
A different, out-of-the-box approach to the intricate tangle of corruption, government, law enforcement, policy, democracy and discontent was taken recently by the lawyer Gautam Patel in the Economic and Political Weekly. In an essay called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Corruption," he suggested that corruption might be thought of as existing not just on the level of financial malfeasance but at the very level of policy, and that the proposed bill would hand the Lokpal too much power. He wrote:
Hazare's movement does nothing to address policy. It assumes that monetary corruption can be separated from policy, and that a skewed set of development priorities can peacefully coexist with complete and transparent financial honesty. This is a fundamental mistake. The studied policies and definitions of "development" of the past 20 years have been aimed at producing only visible artefacts of apparent development – glittering buildings, broad roads, shiny airports, expensive cars – but have done little to address issues of primary education, primary health, drinking water, nutrition, environmental protection and employment. The result is peculiar: in India with its 8-9% growth rate, the rich have become impossibly rich and the poor have been left to their own devices to catch up if they can, or be forever left behind. The gap between the rich and poor is larger now than ever before; in terms of policy, this is like the cup of Tantalus, forever out of reach.
The argument that civil society was trampling upon the dignity, legitimacy and sovereignty of Parliament in seeking to draft laws was vigorously contested by MG Vaidya, a former spokesperson for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, who wrote an acerbic piece called "The Sovereign's Right" in the Indian Express last week:
In a few recent issues of The Indian Express, I find an extraordinary, incessant vehemence in criticising Anna Hazare's and Baba Ramdev's agitations. The principle underlining this criticism appears to underscore the sovereignty of the Parliament. But is that sovereignty absolute? No, it is relative. [...] The Constitution is superior to Parliament. And as for the Constitution, the people are superior to it. It is the people who have framed the Constitution. The very words that begin it are "We the People of India" have resolved to have this Constitution. People are supreme; and people constitute the nation. Actually the people are the nation. The Parliament as well as all other institutions of democratic polity are, in a way, subservient to the people.
If civil society drafts a bill, what is the harm in it? It does not become a law. Even this bill will have to be discussed and debated in Parliament. If Parliament passes it, then only can it become a law. Anna Hazare's team that drafted the Jan Lokpal bill is denigrated as outsiders with no mandate to draft it. May I ask then about the National Advisory Council (NAC) drafting the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence bill? Which provision of the Constitution empowers the NAC to draft the Bill? If NAC can draft a bill, why not Anna's team? A bill drafted by civil society neither usurps nor curtails the legislative powers of Parliament.
Analyzing the context in which popular discontent about political malfeasance had finally detonated in "a season of outrage," the political scientist Sunil Khilnani, author of the book The Idea of India, wrote in an essay in the weekend paper Mint Lounge called "The Social Network" :
We have entered dangerous years in the life of our democracy. We can feel somewhat secure in the conduct of our elections; we have perfected the routines (by no means unimportant) of throwing the rogues out of office. But, once we vote a fresh lot into office, we are quite impotent in trying to make the new knaves honest. And they have little incentive, or perhaps even skills, to become good practising politicians.
In fact the problem may even be structural. Our electoral democracy and our economic growth have combined to place us in an awkward double bind, and suggest a vicious spiral. On the one hand, the fruits of liberalization fall not just to the private sector but also to government. As the overall economy grows, so too does the government's disposable income. This makes the stakes of gaining access to the offices and patronage of government higher than ever. It necessarily leads to more electoral competition for office, and it requires competitors to devote more energy to honing the skills needed for electoral victory; skills that are not easily transferable to the different task of governing well.
On the other hand, precisely because government now has more disposable largesse, it requires effective governing. But the politicians who have managed to gain office are the ones who are best at winning competitive elections, with a different skill-set from that needed to govern effectively.
And in a further twist, electoral politics in an age of economic growth will also see a vast expansion in the opportunity for corruption. There just is more corruptible material all round. That's precisely what we are seeing—what is rightly provoking a season of outrage. [...] In this sense, the current stand-off between government and those who profoundly dislike it is more significant that just an indictment of the performance of current office holders. It suggests something more endemic: a weakening in the legitimacy of our democracy, our constitutional pact, itself.
Khilnani's words were echoed by the columnist Tavleen Sing in a piece called "Postcard From A Private Club," which bemoaned the narrowing and the feudalization of Indian democracy:
It is through a democratic deviation of serious dimensions that nearly all our younger MPs are political heirs. These heirs collude, across party lines, in strengthening hereditary democracy because they know that they have got into Parliament on false pretences and would not have made it in the normal course of politics. [...] The problem is colossal and cannot be solved by a Lokpal. What is needed is a sweeping reduction of ministerial discretionary powers, vastly improved governance and mandatory inner party elections. Only when political parties start infusing new life into their crumbling edifices by bringing in better people through a process of elections, will things improve.
As long as we continue to tolerate heirs, their cohorts and their sycophants, we will continue to have democratic feudalism with corruption built into its foundations. If Anna and his team want something to chew on during his next fast unto death, let them think about why the unemployable progeny of our political leaders always find employment in politics.
Expect plenty more on the Lokpal Bill in this space in the months to come.
(Chandrahas Choudhury is the New Delhi correspondent for the World View blog. The opinions expressed are his own.)
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg View's editorial board or Bloomberg LP, its owners and investors.
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The University Libraries' Employee of the Month award is intended to recognize the special effort of faculty, staff, or student employees. The award is granted at the discretion of the Associate Director for Administrative Services. To nominate an employee, please email a letter of support to email@example.com.
December 2008 Employee of the Month:
Helene McHendry, Cataloging & Metadata Services
The following nomination was received from by Paul Moeller, Cataloging & Metadata Services.
It is a distinct pleasure to nominate Helene McHendry for employee of the month. I returned from the 2007 Innovative User Group Annual Conference with some information about converting non-MARC holdings statements to full MARC21 Format for Holdings Data (MFHD). I shared the information with Helene and she ran with it. Helene studied holdings standards, devised ways to utilize Millennium's Global Update to aid in converting our holdings, assisted with training, developed procedures, and worked with Interlibrary Loan to determine how best to communicate our lend/reproduction policies through our holdings records to OCLC. Over the last 18 months Helene, with the help of one student assistant, has converted over 75,000 of our non MARC holdings statements and anticipates completing the final 15,000 of them over the next few months. When we began this project I figured we'd be working on it for the next five years. Thanks to Helene's efforts we may finish in two.
Bringing our holdings into compliance with current standards will allow us to more easily share data with outside parties such as OCLC and RAPID (OCLC will load our holdings in 2009). It will also promote a consistent display of holdings, allow us to take advantage of future developments in periodicals check-in, and ease migration to a new system should we need to do so. These upgraded holdings records for serial titles should also reduce the number of requests to ILL for materials that are not available for lending thus alleviating demands on staff time and effort.
Congratulations Helene.
November 2008 Employee of the Month:
Linda Rogers, Government Publications
The following nomination was received from Peggy Jobe, Government Publications:
I would like to nominate Linda Rogers for Employee of the Month. My reasons are as follows:
When the Research Desk opens this semester, staff from the Government Publications Library will join their colleagues from Science and Research and Instruction in the provision of all reference services from one location. For some, Government Publications are an arcane and intimidating branch of librarianship. In order to make its collections more intelligible and accessible to colleagues, the department has undertaken a massive shift of materials. The department has also agreed to create temporary space in the locked storage area for materials from the Blue Room in order to free up space for work area for the IT staff who will provide support to the Research floor and Information Commons. The shift involves:
- Creating flow charts and planning carefully for each step of the move. Because of space constraints, one collection had to be moved before another could take its place. Planning for the move involved taking measurements of both physical space and collection sizes.
- Creating detailed lists of the contents of each and every microfiche cabinet in Government Publications. This will be used to create a clickable map to assist colleagues from the Research Desk in the use of our collections.
- Shifting print collections from the Government Publications Reference area to either the open stacks or the locked storage area in Norbase.
- Shifting workstations from the Government Publications Reference area to the office. This required close coordination with Systems.
- Removing shelving and getting it installed in the office. This required close coordination with the building proctor.
- Supervising the dismantling and storage of unused shelving.
- Supervising the shift and consolidation of the Reference collection.
- Unloading and moving cabinets of microfiche to a locked storage area in Norbase or to different spaces in the office. Moving loaded cabinets would damage the cabinets and contents.
- Making space in the Government Publications Office Collections for: British Parliamentary materials on microcard, circulation returns, and materials in need of processing. Many of these materials lack bibliographic records.
- Shifting British microforms into the Government Publications Reference area.
- Integrating a new collection of Environmental Impact Statements on microfiche into the existing fiche collections.
- Making space in the locked storage area in Norbase for temporary housing of materials from the Blue Room. This involved shifting collections and discarding duplicate materials.
Linda has supervised all of the above with cheerfulness and dedication. And she has done all it all at the start of a new semester -- hiring, training, and coordinating a small army of student and community service workers. We could not have done it without her.
October 2008 Employee of the Month:
Sean Peneyra, Earth Sciences
The following nomination was received from Brittany Reed, Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences:
I would like to nominate my student assistant Sean Peneyra for student employee of the month. Sean is an amazing asset to the Earth Sciences Library. He is smart, quick and always helpful This summer, he has played a huge role in our library shift. We have shifted our entire collection, some 50,000+ pieces. Sean himself moved more than 75% of these. This shift has included not only moving books around in the stacks, but moving books from the first floor to the second floor and vice versa. Incredibly, this has taken less than two months to accomplish. There is no doubt that the speed of the shift was made possible by Sean.
On top of all the physical labor Sean has mastered, he also helped come up with a beautiful system for tracking books while they were in temporary locations. He made an incredible spreadsheet and mapping system that laid out where each title was located. This has helped immensely when a patron required a book that was not in its normal location. All we had to do was check the chart and we could find the book in only a few minutes.
Even during this huge shift, Sean was still our main student assistant for the summer. He maintained his regular duties, running our circulation desk and helping patrons. He always helps cover other students' shifts and comes in whenever asked.
Sean is funny and smart, and makes the Earth Sciences library a great place to work. I truly enjoy supervising him and he has proven that he is not only dedicated to the libraries, but always goes above and beyond the work of a student assistant.
September 2008 Employee of the Month:
Pan Stanfield, Acquisitions
The following is the nomination received from Linda Helgoth, Charlene Kellsey, Naomi Seko, Lisa Gould, Randy Key and Cal Callahan:
We would like to nominate Pam Stanfield as employee of the month. Pam is our bookkeeper extraordinaire! It may not be evident to most people in the libraries that invoices for library materials have to be posted in Chinook and then paid in AP/PeopleSoft. It's fairly easy to make an error on one or the other, and if left to the end of the year, the problems fester and book closing turns into a dreaded, painful time. But not with Pam! She loves her job working with numbers. She keeps constant spreadsheets of what's in and out of both Chinook and PeopleSoft, and handles problems as they come along. Not only does she work well, she works well with others, and has a great non-confrontational manner when she approaches us with problems. She has definitely taken all the stress out of book-closing! WooHoo for Pam!!
August 2008 Employee of the Month:
Dick Bryant, Access Services
The following is the nomination received from Jane Thomas:
I would like to nominate Dick Bryant as Employee-of-the-Month for his hard work and dedication with the Periodicals/Reference Room Project this spring.
Access Services received word in October 2007 that we would be physically responsible for moving the entire collection of journals, both bound and current, out of the Periodicals Room in preparation for construction and renovation. Planning started soon after, with the complication of having half of the journals go down to the basement for eventual removal to PASCAL, our off-site storage facility, and half of the journals go down to temporary storage in the basement. An additional factor was the fact that the shelving available for temporary storage in the basement was inadequate both in condition (broken 'moveable' shelving) and in the number of shelves actually available. This required a delicate balancing act of removing as much as possible each day, but not so much that we got ahead of the company PSI, who was selected to come several times a week to clear out the items going to PASCAL. To further complicate matters, journals in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean were to be identified and stored in a separate area, to be incorporated into the Asian Collection.
Dick calculated how many existing students we could spare from regular shelving duties, and how many we would need to hire extra, in order to get the task done by the deadline of May 15, 2008. He calculated how many volumes could be moved per cart, per hour, and per week, and factored in how many volumes PSI could take away each trip and how many shelves would thus be freed up for more volumes. He personally trained the new student hires, and supervised their work. He worked closely with the Periodicals Transition Group, attending meetings when invited, so that everyone understood which journals would be shelved where, and how they were to be labeled, all the while managing Shelving and Materials Management in Access Services.
The fact that the project was completed just before the deadline of May 15, 2008, with little disruption or confusion, and the least number of student assistants, displays superb planning and analytical skills, and I feel he should be recognized by the Libraries for his excellent work.
July 2008 Employee of the Month:
Shannon Delay, Preservation
Shannon Delay, who has worked in the Preservation Department as a student and temporary employee is the July Employee of the Month.
The following is the nomination we received from Christine DeVries, Shannon's supervisor:
"We hired Shannon DeLay in December, 2006 to work on the Collection Needs Assessment Project (CNAP). Her work on CNAP has been invaluable. She absorbs new information and procedures with amazing speed and has a thorough grasp of both the details and big picture. In addition to assessing the condition of library holdings, she has helped maintain databases and prepare reports. This summer, she assumed responsibility for training several other students. In addition, she supervises their daily activities. In the Spring semester we have been conducting the Assessment Project in the Archives. This has required training and research on a wide variety of materials including photographic prints, motion picture film, architectural drawings, and realia. Shannon used the basic training materials as a spring board for her own research and has become quite knowledgeable about these materials. She manages the day-to-day operation of this part of the project."
Congratulations and thanks for the hard work!
June 2008 Employees of the Month:
Members of the Periodicals Transition Group (PTG)
Alison Graber (chair), Karen Campbell, Jennifer Davis, Skip Hamilton, Sara Holladay, Mark Mabbett, Becki Perna
The PTG was charged with completing a relocation of at least 50% of the bound periodical collection to prepare for construction of the Learning Commons. This was no easy task and involved the cooperation of many. The PTG completed their charge on time without cutting any corners while maintaining their regular duties. Congratulations on a job well-done. Each member of the PTG will receive a day of administrative leave.
Employee of the Month: 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014


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Liberty buy enough for now, says Flight Centre
AFTER snapping up one of the biggest largest travel agencies in the United States, Flight Centre's managing director, Graham Turner, said he was not planning to buy any other chains.
Last week, Flight Centre agreed to buy one of North America's biggest travel agents, Liberty Travel, for around $US135 million ($149.2 million).
Mr Turner told the ABC yesterday that following this acquisition, which was expected to lift Flight Centre's US sales to more than $US2 billion a year, it would have about 400 retail shops.
When asked whether he would buy more shops, he said: "No. Our main focus will be growing the corporate side of it off the base of these retail shops, growing the product offering."
Mr Turner said, contrary to other reports, Flight Centre's North American operations were successful.
"In North America, we make money," he said.
"Our retail operations for the last few years have lost money, but that is more than made up by our corporate."
Mr Turner said one reason he was keen on Liberty Travel was because of its success at the retail level in the US.
"There are certainly some things we want to put in place on the Liberty lessons if you like," he said.
The acquisition comes four months after Flight Centre executives abandoned a second proposal to join Pacific Equity Partners in a management buy-out of the group.
Shareholders voted down a first attempt and the board's independent directors opposed the second version.
Mr Turner said it was not likely that the company would look to private equity again, at least not in the near future.
When news happens: send photos, videos & tip-offs to 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764), or us.
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safetyqueen's Mom Answers Activity
safetyqueen is a star in these topics:
Baby > Special Situations (1 helpful answer)
I am 31 weeks pregnant and my baby's head shape is abnormal Watch this
Most recent answer (01/02/2013):
Well there is nothing one can do to straighten out the baby's head while the baby is still in the womb but once the baby is born,they off...posted by Nancy142
How long was your baby in newborn diapers for? When to switch?? Watch this
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We also used newborns for around a month. Then went to size one, they worked well. We switched to cloth at 3 months and have never looked...posted by mommyjmw
Am I going into labor??? Watch this
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Sounds like your water broke!posted by safetyqueen
Is it possible to have milk secretion after absence of 7months breastfeeding? Watch this
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Are you just starting the adoption process? If so then that itself can take a few years unless you know someone personally who's looking...posted by safetyqueen
I am in my sixth week of pregnancy , bleeding started , what should i do ?? Watch this
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As long as it's not bright blood it's normal. Sometimes you bleed a little when the baby implants itself. This early in your pregnancy ...posted by safetyqueen
i had a positive in the morning and then blood test came up positive what does this mean? Watch this
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i agree that u should wait a couple days and get another blood test..glposted by samanthaprentice81


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Many longtime gamers, including me, were disappointed by the news that the new XCOM is a first-person shooter. Having witnessed a hands-off demo of the game at E3, I can tell you two things. One, it's definitely a first-person shooter. Guns, grenades, sprinting; you know the drill. Two, the game actually has much more in common with the original X-COM games than you may think.
Many longtime gamers, including me, were disappointed by the news that the new XCOM is a first-person shooter. Having witnessed a hands-off demo of the game at E3, I can tell you two things. One, it's definitely a first-person shooter. Guns, grenades, sprinting; you know the drill. Two, the game actually has much more in common with the original X-COM games than you may think.
The opening portion of my demonstration was given over entirely to assuaging fears that XCOM has abandoned its more strategic roots. Players assume the role of William Carter, a man whose discovery of an alien artifact led to the creation of XCOM, an organization tasked with defending us all from extraterrestrial threats. The demo, which was played entirely in first person, began in an airplane hangar. The hangar itself is only a facade however: Deep below is an underground facility that serves as the player's headquarters.
Almost everything that happens in the HQ should be familiar to X-COM vets. You research alien technology, try out repurposed alien weapons, monitor the US for alien activity and accept missions. Navigation of the XCOM HQ is done entirely in real time and in first-person. The game takes place in the 1950s, and the HQ is replete with old typewriters, computers, green-shaded desk lamps and checkerboard floors. The characters themselves have a stylized, angular look that evokes the feeling of old pulp comic books.
Players can visit the research lab -- filled with scurrying scientists and alien technology -- or try out new equipment obtained through research in the weapons lab. Missions are selected from a large map in the center of the facility. Rather than popping up a menu when a mission is selected, you are simply handed a dossier in first-person, similar to the map function in Far Cry 2. Mission selection is a strategic choice -- similar to X-COM games of yore -- tasking players with furthering their tech research, earning more Elerium (a useful alien substance), or rescuing civilians from an alien emergency. My demonstrator chose an emergency mission.
Armed with a trusty shotgun, an alien lightning gun and what I'll call goo grenades -- essentially alien napalm -- agent Carter piled into a car with two more agents and headed off to the mission. The mission itself took place in a typical, idyllic 1950s neighborhood -- picket fences and all -- thought it was immediately apparent that something was wrong. Porches and sidewalks were empty, cars were stopped in the middle of the street and it was quiet, too quiet. The pervasive eeriness -- laced with just a bit of terror -- should be all too familiar to X-COM fans.
From here, Carter and the two AI-controlled agents proceeded up the street, occasionally spotting (and shooting) amorphous, crawling blobs of black goo. Carter took a quick detour to investigate a scream and follow a trail of goo, which lead to a very sticky civilian collapsed in his own back yard. Carter pulled out a camera and snapped a picture for the XCOM research lab. I was told that many secondary objectives like this are littered throughout the missions.
Eventually, the sound of more screams led the team inside a house, where a few civilians were still alive and being mauled by the goo. It didn't take long before the situation got out of hand -- our demonstrator even shot one of the agents accidentally, killing him instantly -- so it was time to pull out the goo grenades, affectionately referred to as 'blobatovs.' The flames handily destroyed the goo, but the house wasn't clear yet: A woman was still screaming upstairs.
Venturing up the stairs, Carter entered a bedroom just in time to see a blob latch onto the woman's face. A carefully placed shotgun blast and she was saved. With the house cleared, it was time to leave, but the mission still wasn't over. An oppressive red light filled the air outside and a vortex opened in the sky, revealing a huge alien disintegration ray. It was clear Carter was outmatched -- even the lightning gun had no effect on it -- so it was time to run. Carter managed to make back to the car safely, though the same can't be said for his poor, disintegrated partner.
Agent Phil never stood a chance
While there are still some unanswered questions -- 2K Marin wouldn't say whether or not you can issue squad commands, for one -- I walked away from the demonstration fairly impressed. At the very least, 2K Marin has nailed the feeling of the old X-COM games, especially the feeling of otherworldly fear during missions. If the research progression manages to be as addicting as it was in the originals, XCOM just might surprise some die-hard fans. It certainly surprised me.


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Join as a member. There's a certificate with your name on it.
Posted by attiks on
A module to do automated QUnit testing
- Strict javascript client side testing.
- Can be extended to test multiple themes at the same time.
- Works for authenticated and anonymous users.
- Detailed recording of all test runs.
- All submit and validate handlers are disabled.
- Permissions are checked before running a test.
- Testing of submit handlers running in iframes
- Allow certain roles to submit forms
- Implement hook_testswarm_tests to define all your tests.
- Create a javascript file containing QUnit code.
- Navigate to /testswarm-browser-tests.
In order to run a test you need the permission 'run testswarm tests', it should be save to allow anonymous users to use this as well. For each tests you can specify additional permissions and all validate and submit handlers are removed for all forms (except for UID1).
Included tests
- Basic test
- JQuery once
- Re order blocks
- Create page content
- States.js
- Autocomplete
- ...
- add full theme support to tests running inside an iframe
- better reporting
Based on idea of QUnit module with some ideas of JQuery TestSwarm
Supporting organizations:
Project Information
- Maintenance status: Actively maintained
- Development status: Under active development
- Module categories: Developer
- Reported installs: 52 sites currently report using this module. View usage statistics.
- Downloads: 3,583
- Automated tests: Enabled
- Last modified: 24 September 2015
- Stable releases for this project are covered by the security advisory policy.
Look for the shield icon below.
|tar.gz (47.26 KB) | zip (59.01 KB)


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Ridder Digest (7 items)
Welcome back! Whilst you were away we added the functionality to view auctions and bid in pounds.
Ridder Digest: Information on the Catawiki site about De strijd van Nimbostratus, 2005.
At its heart, Catawiki is an online catalogue with images of, and information on, collectibles. Our catalogue is compiled by users in a similar way to Wikipedia.


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It only takes a minute to get started. Fill out our simple sign up form and login to the website.
This step is optional but will greatly enhance your chances of getting interest from other over 50s members on the site. Write a little about yourself, your pasttimes and attach a nice photograph of yourself.
Use our website's state-of-the-art search to discover over 50s members who satisfy your needs. Or just scan through listings and discover singles that pique your interest.
Discovered someone who looks right? Send them a few words or just a wink and see what happens next. With a little luck you'll be on your way to locating your soulmate.
It'll only take 30 seconds


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House Bill 172 would have replaced E-Check with a less intrusive tailpipe test and required counties in affected areas to come up with other air pollution reduction strategies. The E-Check program is required in 14 Ohio counties, including Portage.
Voinovich said he objects to replacing one test with another.
"Worse, the proposed test is insufficient to meet federally mandated clean air requirements," he said.
Voinovich said he has read many letters and talked to residents frustrated by the current program and he is committed to improving it.
"I clearly explained to the private contractors who operate the program that it was bad enough the federal government, through the Clean Air Act, was forcing us to do this program, but it was even worse to add insult to injury by doing a poor job of running the operation," Voinovich said.
The governor announced the veto this morning at the Kenyon Center for Environmental Study.
In Portage County, E-Check has been under fire since it was imposed two years ago. Testing began January, 1996 for county residents.
County commissioners have passed a resolution calling for the program's elimination from the county and State Rep. Ann Womer Benjamin of Aurora wanted the county removed from the test area after Portage was redesignated as having attained pollution goals.
The program is also blamed for a loss of $100,000 in license fee revenues for county roads. County Engineer Michael Marozzi told commissioners earlier this year that the number of vehicles registered in the county has decreased since E-Check began, causing a drop in revenues for his road repair funds.
In April, Portage County's state representatives, Womer Benjamin and
Twyla Roman of Springfield Township, voted against replacing E-Check
with the basic tailpipe test. Roman said she voted for her district and
her district is against testing.


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This miniaturized gym routine enabled the scientists to grow usable quantities of bovine muscle—otherwise known as beef.
A star is born, another goes down courtesy of a synonym for bovine rabies, and the judges try but fail to steal the show.
Host Joe Rogan gleefully watches the contestants gag and struggle through the bovine brains until one young man quits altogether.
He sat before a wall full of badges, in a big swivel chair, his bovine features set in mistrustful concentration.
Two hobbledehoys were standing by the forge staring in a bovine way at the proceedings.
How different from anything of the bovine tribe I have yet observed!
The surveyor would stop with a sort of bovine surprise, and break out in irritable parenthesis.
But the Doctor had not calculated upon hunger and bovine obstinacy.
The normal temperature of the bovine is 101 to 102 F., which is higher than that of the horse.
As if in answer, the bovine proprietor, encouraged by the laughter, crept in again.
1817, from French bovin (14c.), from Late Latin bovinus, from Latin bos (genitive bovis) "ox, cow," from PIE *gwous- (see cow (n.)). Figurative sense of "inert and stupid" is from 1855.


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Selected Community Events
One-Time Opportunity to Receive Free Diabetes Education
Dec 26, 2012 - Jan 10, 2013 See below for dates and times.
Frederick Square at 2910 South 84th St, Omaha, NE
Preregistration requested one week prior to class.
The Diabetes Education Center of the Midlands, a nationally recognized resource for diabetes education and management since 1984, is seeking 20-25 persons with diabetes willing to receive "free diabetes education" and provide honest feedback regarding their experience.
Must be able to attend the two session class on January 7 and 10, 2013 from 5:00pm - 8:00pm at 2910 South 84th Street in Omaha.
Must be willing to provide honest feedback about your experience.
Must be an appropriate candidate:
Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes with either limited or no previous diabetes education.
English speaking.
May be treated with: diet and exercise only, oral meds, nightime insullin (such as Victoza).
May be on insulin (multiple daily injection) IF reasonably controlled (A1C <8.0%).
To enroll, call Jean at 402-399-0777 ext 230. Feel free to leave a message with your name and contact information. Enrollment is on a first come, first served basis since class size is limited.


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Well HI TR. BP is back -- I think again. haha
I joined awhile back: THREAD but got distracted and forgot to come back to the forums. I tend to read the front page, read the news and get all excited and forget to talk to peoples here.
Things have changed a bit since my original post -- but since you don't really know me, not sure you care...haha
ANYWAYS -- Second Welcome round?