text:
NYC Macroscope Puts Data at the Fingertips of City Officials
Aug 22, 2013, 8:00 AM, Posted by Brian C. Quinn
New York City is helping officials better understand and respond to public health needs by putting data at their fingertips. The NYC Macroscope uses information captured routinely in the doctor's office to paint a picture of health for the entire city—quickly, accurately and inexpensively. This powerful use of electronic health records has the potential to transform public health decision-making across the country. Learn more in this NewPublicHealth interview with the NYC Macroscope's Carolyn Greene, MD. — Brian Quinn
New York City is currently developing a pilot public health program known as NYC Macroscope — the first domestic effort to aggregate electronic health record (EHR) data into a surveillance tool to inform public health decisions. The population health surveillance system will compile electronic health records from primary care practices to help city health officials monitor—and respond to—the real-time prevalence of conditions that impact public health. The project is the result of a partnership between the New York City Health Department and the CUNY School of Public Health, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio, and additional support from the de Beaumont Foundation, Robin Hood and the New York State Health Foundation.
NewPublicHealth spoke with Carolyn Greene, MD, Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Division of Epidemiology, about the plans and goals for the program.
NewPublicHealth: Tell us about NYC Macroscope and how it will work.
Carolyn Greene: NYC Macroscope is going to be New York City's first electronic health record surveillance system. We have a program here at the health department called Primary Care Information Project (PCIP), and it's one of the nation's largest distributed electronic health record networks. PCIP began in 2005. It concentrated on primary care practices in high need areas where the Health Department really wanted to encourage providers to use electronic health records. The program has been extremely successful and they've completed many different activities to improve the quality of clinical care.
But in recent years, we've been asking the question: Can we use electronic health records for more than just patient care? Can we, in fact, use electronic health records to monitor the health of the population? Here at the Health Department, we have many different ways to conduct population health surveillance. We have surveys that we conduct by telephone, we have disease registries that we host, and we have our vital statistics registry on deaths and births. All these data are very important. But they are costly, resource-intensive and they often have a time lag from when the data are collected to when we can actually find the results from the data, so the advantages of an electronic health record surveillance system are many.
One advantage is that the architecture is already there. If you already have the electronic health records in place, you don't have to find additional resources to collect the data because you're already collecting the data through the EHR architecture. Other advantages are that potentially you can collect data in real time and potentially at low cost.
NPH: Do you see any potential disadvantages?
Greene: I think the first one is we always have to ask how representative the data will be in terms of representing the population as a whole. First of all, electronic health records only collect data on people who are in care and, because sicker patients go to the doctor more frequently, there's a greater likelihood that we may be picking up more information on sicker patients. So we have questions about how representative are the data.
And then we also have questions about data quality. In our surveys we have well-trained data collectors who collect data in a standardized way. Well, in an electronic health record the data collectors are, in fact, providers. There are thousands of providers who may be entering data in different ways and sometimes may not be entering data at all. So this was our question—we want to build an electronic health record surveillance system for health, but how can we validate it? How can we look at those data that we draw from an electronic health record and see how valid they are when we compare them to a gold standard surveillance system? And that's what we are going to do in this project.
We are developing this pilot electronic health record surveillance system to collect data on a set of health indicators— including blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, diabetes, body mass index, depression, smoking status, flu vaccines—and then we're going to compare what we get to gold-standard health data from a survey that we launched recently.
Through this voluntary survey, called the New York City Health and Nutrition Examination Survey or NYC HANES, we are systematically collecting information from a representative, random sample of about 2,000 adult New Yorkers. We're not only asking them questions about their health, but we're taking objective measurements including height, weight, blood pressure, pulse, as well as drawing blood, urine and saliva for laboratory testing. And what we will then do is compare the data we get from NYC HANES with data that we get from our pilot electronic health records surveillance system, which we are calling the NYC Macroscope.
NPH: Why is there such great potential in tapping into this real-time bank of comprehensive data for public health purposes?
Greene: What allows this project to be possible is the Primary Care Information Project technology called the Hub. The Hub is technology that allows us to query electronic health records at partner practices to ask a question such as, "In 2012, how many of your female patients age 30-40 had a body mass index of 30 or greater?," which is the definition of obesity. And we can send out this query to all practices that are on the Hub and overnight we will receive aggregate data counts back to a secure centralized data site. So what this means is that we ask a very specific query of our electronic health records and the very next day, we will have counts back on that question.
NPH: How does that compare to the traditional time lapse between when you have a question about your population from a public health department and you would get the results back on how your community is doing?
Greene: I can answer with real evidence since we've been working toward our New York City Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. We began really planning for this survey about a year ago and it requires creating survey tools, creating protocols, recruiting field interviewers and field phlebotomists, coming up with standard operating procedures, and training all of the interviewers and phlebotomists.
Next, we're going to have to recruit our study participants and even that process of sampling—of figuring out who we would sample to come up with a representative section—was extraordinarily complex. We have to recruit study participants, then, over a period of six months, we will engage in data collection. After that period, we will have a period of data cleaning and then we will begin analyzing the findings.
It's a gold standard survey and very scientifically rigorous, but it is labor intensive and it can take up to a year and a half to two years to actually get the data. Now, that's not always the case, there are other ways to collect data, of course, but in that example you can see just the resources and the time required.
What's so great about electronic health records is that, if they can be validated, they not only allow us to look at indicators that we look at very well with some traditional methods of surveillance (such as body mass index and blood pressure), but they enhance our ability to track the prevalence, treatment and control of many chronic diseases. We'll also be able to look at the use or the implementation of clinical preventive services.
But again, I should add that there are challenges here too. In a survey, we have a very clear way of how we're asking a question, how we're going to analyze the data. In electronic health records, for example, even to ask the question of how many patients in 2012 had high blood pressure, well, how are we going to define high blood pressure? Their blood pressure may be measured five times in a year. Do we look at the highest, the average, or the most recent blood pressure reading? There are all these questions that we have to ask. So, while the idea is very exciting, it really requires a lot of thought about how to do it in a way that it will make the data the most valid and most meaningful.
NPH: Do you think it's important that the public health department is taking such a lead role in this?
Greene: Absolutely. One of the things that we've seen in the field in general is the importance of increasing connections between public health and clinical care, and I think this is one way for public health to interact with the clinical care system. And ultimately, in public health one of our jobs is to monitor the health of the population, and electronic health records offer a very useful tool to do this. In turn, it is our responsibility to feed data back to policymakers, to those who come up with clinical guidelines, to providers, to the public, and we hope that the data we gather and monitor using electronic health records will have an impact on clinical care. It's a very nice feedback loop, where this is a tool that could potentially help us monitor the health of the population, but more than that we can use the data to then positively influence clinical care moving forward.
NPH: How do you see the role of different kinds of surveillance systems evolving, as EHR real-time surveillance become a reality?
Greene: As you can tell, I'm very excited by the NYC Macroscope and I'm excited by the potential of using electronic health records for population health surveillance. I think I should emphasize, though, that we don't believe that electronic health records surveillance will ever replace the need to conduct some of our traditional surveillance. And I say this because I think we have the sense that electronic health record data will be particularly useful for some indicators and perhaps less useful for others.
Here are a couple of examples. We have a community health survey—an annual telephone survey—that we administer every year, and that survey is based on the behavioral risk factors surveillance system that is done nationally. We ask a lot of behavioral questions about nutritional intake, physical activity, sexual behavior, drug use, etc., and I think especially for those behavioral questions we're not close to a point when electronic health records will have those data. So we'll probably always want to be conducting these other forms of surveys in order to collect data on behaviors.
Another example, in our pilot we're going to be looking at influenza vaccination, and again we suspect our data will not be very complete because now people can get their flu vaccine outside of their doctor's office. We still will need to rely on other surveillance methods to figure out how we are doing in terms of coverage for flu vaccine. So those are some examples of how we'll always want to supplement data from electronic health records with other surveillance tools, but I still think this offers new opportunities and will complement existing sources of data.
And I guess the one other thing I would add with the NYC Macroscope is how we hope to use it in the future. I think something that's been very important to us in this project is that this is not a project about New York City alone. So throughout our planning phase, we have had a very diverse and talented Scientific Advisory Group working with us from other state and local health departments, from academia, from the federal government, CDC, HHS. Their advice has been very important because we've been very clear from the beginning that we want this project to inform other jurisdictions so that in the future other jurisdictions can think about how they can implement their own electronic health records surveillance systems.
NPH: Do you think this kind of project and overall the connection between the EHR data and population health surveillance can be an entree into more cohesive collaboration between the two sectors?
Greene: I think it does open up the possibility of increasing dialogue between the public health world and the clinical world. There's some dialogue already, but having data that we are jointly invested in understanding, jointly invested in monitoring—and data that comes from the very electronic health records that clinicians are using—I think can only increase the conversation and the collaboration between these two fields.
This commentary originally appeared on the RWJF Pioneering Ideas blog.


text:
Bulk Energizer N Batteries - Energizer E90 BatteryBuy the Energizer E90 battery in bulk and save. Medic Batteries carries discounted, high quality bulk Energizer N batteries and properly stores them in cool, dry facility. The Energizer E90 battery is used to power photography devices, calculators and other electronic equipment. Bulk Energizer N batteries from Medic Batteries ship free and have some of the best bulk price Energizer N around! Trust Medic Batteries with your bulk Energizer N batteries!
View More

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Meet the Obscure Federal Regulator Who's Not Helping Homeowners
Our reading guide on the head of the regulatory agency that oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — who's putting profits (and repaying taxpayers) ahead of homeowners.
Last week, ProPublica and NPR raised questions about a risky investment strategy at Freddie Mac that would pay off if homeowners stayed trapped in expensive mortgages. It's just the latest example of how government-owned Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have frustrated many by not putting homeowners first.
Fannie and Freddie are required to help homeowners while earning profits so they can pay back the taxpayers who bailed them out. Here is our guide to the little-known federal regulator, Edward DeMarco, ultimately in charge of the two companies. You may have never heard of him, but as The Washington Post put it, he's "the most powerful man in housing policy."
The basics
In the summer of 2008, as part of a larger economic stimulus bill amid the subprime mortgage crisis, President George W. Bush created the Federal Housing Finance Agency, combining several agencies overseeing housing policy, and increasing regulation of government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie and Freddie. When the government bailed out Fannie and Freddie a few months later, the FHFA took charge of them.
DeMarco, a lifelong regulator, was named the acting head of the FHFA roughly a year after the bailout when his Bush-appointed predecessor stepped down. Obama nominated a consumer-friendly replacement for DeMarco in October 2010, but Republicans blocked him. (Republican opposition to Obama's nominee for DeMarco's successor stemmed in part from concerns that he would push banks and others too far to help homeowners, unfairly rewarding reckless borrowers.)
As head of the FHFA, DeMarco has a three-part mission: to promote the soundness of Fannie and Freddie, and to support affordable housing and a stable and liquid mortgage market (in other words, to expand access to home ownership loans and make it easier to buy and sell mortgages).
The last two goals, though, can clash with the fact that under the bailout, DeMarco is the "conservator" of Freddie and Fannie, meaning he has to protect their finances for the benefit of their shareholders. (And the majority shareholder is now the federal government.) According to The Washington Post's Brad Plumer and Ezra Klein, there is "a conflict tucked deep into DeMarco's job description: The head of the FHFA is stuck between the narrow needs of Fannie and Freddie and the broader needs of the housing market."
DeMarco has focused almost solely on that first goal, telling Congress many times that "as conservator, FHFA has a statutory responsibility to preserve and conserve the enterprises' assets." In plainer terms, he told NPR last week that his role is to "make sure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac undertake activities that don't cause further losses for the American taxpayers."
DeMarco has strongly asserted his independence, insisting that he is promoting needed fiscal discipline. (He did not respond to our latest requests for comment on his role with the FHFA).
Clashes with Congress and Obama
Democrats and Obama administration officials have been frustrated with DeMarco, saying the FHFA's narrow focus on Fannie and Freddie's health has hurt the housing market.
The Obama administration has repeatedly tried to push principal reduction — reducing the size of a borrower's mortgage — as a way to help homeowners, especially those with homes worth less than their mortgages. But as ProPublica and others have reported, time and again, Fannie and Freddie wouldn't participate: a crippling problem, since the two companies own or guarantee about half of the country's mortgages.
Last month, the administration unveiled yet another plan to encourage principal reduction, but a former administration adviser called DeMarco "the boulder" in the way of making it happen.
DeMarco says principal reduction could cost taxpayers $100 billion. Some economists counter that while principal reductions might lead to a short-term hit for Fannie and Freddie, it would ultimately result in fewer underwater mortgages, fewer foreclosures and a healthier housing market — all good for Fannie and Freddie's bottom line.
On another administration plan, to allow more borrowers to refinance at lower rates, DeMarco shifted somewhat toward the White House's position. He agreed to lift some fees on refinancing and make it easier to qualify. Freddie Mac told ProPublica in a statement that it has helped more than 830,000 families refinance, but as we noted, critics say that the refinancing effort could be helping millions more.
As DeMarco told Politico, he's been no "particular friend" of banks. He brought a massive lawsuit against 17 banks, alleging fraud over $200 billion in toxic mortgages sold to Fannie and Freddie. The case is ongoing.
DeMarco is also charged with helping Fannie and Freddie go gently into the night. As part of their bailout, the two companies are supposed to wind down their operations. And just as DeMarco has resisted Democratic calls for more aggressive help for homeowners, he's also pushed back against Republican calls to spin off the companies more quickly. He's also rejected GOP plans to cap executive pay at Fannie and Freddie.
Why he's still there
Last week, DeMarco described his job as a "balancing act." It's certainly thankless. While Democrats have called for DeMarco's head, the FHFA is an independent agency, meaning the Obama administration can't just get rid of him over policy disputes such as his stance on refinancing or principal reduction. He could also be replaced if Obama decides to offer another nominee and the Senate confirms the choice. Barring that, DeMarco will likely remain where he is for some time, walking his own line on Fannie and Freddie's contradictory mission.
27 comments
Why does the fhfa sue 17 banks for mortgage fraud, then tell its underwater homeowners that there underwater problem is just due to "free market" conditions, and not all the fraud? Its either a fraud problem for both or no fraud at all. It the banks sells a home to my neighbor who cant afford it and then they foreclose on the home and drive my homes value down them I'm just as affected (if not more) by the fraud as the investors. Multiply that situation times millions of people and you can see why some of us live in areas where we are literally 100's of thousands of dollars underwater. FHFA should be doing principal reductions and adding those costs to all the fraud lawsuits.
thanks for the article…....to me it appears that our regulators have sold u out the public interest (and should be held civilly and criminally liable for same) just as our governments appear to have done the same.
Here is the story of how government and regulators in Canada have sold out the public investment protections to the highest bidder:
first video is two minutes:
Why wasn't he one of the people replaced during the recess?
Eric Schniederman, Beau Biden and other AG's need to go after this guy. We cannot permit these banksters to get away with the crisis in our economy, they caused. I have children and friends who are losing their homes, not through any fault of their own. They could afford their mortgage, were paying them, until the economy crashed and they lost their jobs. These people are truly the gangster class among us, we cannot let them off the hook, regardless of what political party you belong too…this is all about our future and our childrens future. Proscecute, arrest and jail the banksters…
Thank you pro publica for posting his picture. I printed his picture, then wadded it in a ball, and threw it in the proper recepticle. This is a preview for where he is really going to go. Where is he going to go?
Answer: Universal Garbage Bin! TRUE and SO!
THANK YOU MR. DEMARCO! As a taxpayer I am thrilled that someone is looking out for me. Bad economies happen and people lose jobs. It is not the government's responsibility to make sure they don't have to meet the obligations of a legal mortgage contract they signed on to. People have always had to meet mortgage payments even in good economies. Why is a bank not entitled to foreclose when a customer defaults? The taxpayer should never be put on the hook in this case! Life is full of risks.
Fairly snide tone to this piece, which lacks the substance and care of other pro public work. Major problem: really lite reporting or "analysis." You are kneading concerns around for years. No news. No new conclusions. One step removed from cable TV bloviation.
It sounds like this guy is just trying to do his very difficult job
I guess the citizens are too blame according to republicans. Let me tell you this. My daughter put down $80,000 on her home…she got laid off from a stockbroker office. In 6 months all savings gone and no job in sight. She not only lost the $80,000, but all her mortgage payments and the equity…walked away with nothing. That is her fault? No. Its the economy and the robber barrons on Wall Street. Thank God there are no indictments for Bank ofAmerica, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. Send the banksters to jail…prosecute them. My daughter didnt have a fanni or freddie…she had Bank of America. YOUR home is NOT a risk. If you can afford your home, make your payments and get laid off…due to bad economy, you still OWN that house. Turns out she had to leave and they sold her $200,000 home for $80,000…so who made out there. Like ole Mitt said, "let him go bankrupt". then the uber rich can buy them for a song and rent them back to you…republicans truly hate the american people.
I couldn't get past the 1st paragraph. Do you really think it's an accurate reflection that people are really "frustrated". Are you kidding me??? I would say that people are really pissed off, and feel like their getting screwed and have absolutely no power. Because unless they are one of the people with the power to make a change, they don't have any power. Congress, and the people/entities they are protecting, are the ones who have the power, and they are the ones making the money… they have no incentive to change and are deeply motivated to keep the status quo.
Shelley, yes, we are pissed off, getting screwed, but we DO have power! We're just not using it. We need to organize to run decent people for Congress, instead of throwing up our hands and letting the incumbent whores get re-elected,
So few people are politically aware and active, that the incumbents get a free ride back on the gravy train. I'm not underestimating the power of money like the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove and their ilk throw into a Senate or House race. They can buy a lot more ads than we can.
But we can organize community meetings; use the social media; write letters to the editor (yes, I know; sounds futile, but not if the volume is so great that even those media whores have to pay attention.)
(Apologies, BTW, to honest sex workers for comparing them to the likes of Congress!)
There is no reason that the government or anyone else has the right to take from some to buy others a house. The taxpayers who were forced to pay into Freddie and Fannie deserve to get their money back before the homeowners get a house.
The email promo for this piece invites readers to meet the regulator who's putting "paying back taxpayers" ahead of homeowners. Many of those taxpayers are renters. I can hear them chorusing "go regulator!"
Banks had better write down principal to market prices or else 4 million people walk away. Strategic default en masse. If Morgan Stanley and the Mortgage Bankers Association can default on their own office buildings, why shouldn't the little guy? If bank bondholders lose their shirts, they should have exercised more due diligence in regards to CDO exposure and MERS before committing. Does the first line of every prospectus say "investment involves risk?"
So, I just posted a comment criticizing your article and your article from last week. Amazingly, when I hit send I was informed my comment was held for moderation. I will try here, again, in a slightly different form:
Your article makes it sound like the GSEs and FHFA are merely obstinate and ignores the important role that the rule of law plays regarding their respective abilities. You might actually want to read the law rather than brushing over it (12 U.S.C. § 4617(b)(2)(B)(iv)).
The story verges on yellow journalism given that you don't bother to explain that the GSEs are operating under a congressionally legislated conservatorship regime which requires the conservator to CONSERVE the assets of the companies for the benefit of stakeholders. While the government does own 80% of the companies preferred debt there are still public investors who own the debt and equity of these still public companies.
If the government wants to use them as tools of public policy then they should put them in receivership, legislate what they are, wipe out the capital structure and take them on the federal balance sheet. All of the whining by those who want to use them as social policy tools (against their legally required charters and the conservatorship) reminds me of precisely what got these companies into trouble.
You can't be half pregnant yet those who want to use them as tools are arguing that they want the baby.
Thanks for the article, I am realtor working with the banks on short sale and very frustrated..
Our sheriff's sale is tomorrow. Thanks BOA and Freddie Mac. We ran the numbers for you if you refinanced us at the going market rate…to no avail. Now we understand why. We could have kept our home. 13 1/2 years here, but now we're run out due to skyrocketing health insurance premiums ($1,500/month), rising medical costs (now up to $7,000/yr out of pocket allowed), property taxes that more than doubled, the soaring cost of living, and barely a raise in over 5 years. Over $10K in uncovered medical/dental expenses last year alone. Tell us it's our fault. Yeah, right.
Now do a story, ProPublica, on what is happening to skyrocketing rents across America. Rental units we were looking at a year ago have gone up $300-$600/month, and they're still rising. Our health insurance premium will now cost more than our rent and still our medical debts will continue to mount. What goes next, the apartment or health insurance? We never dreamed we could be homeless, but now it is a real fear. What is becoming of America??
DeMarco is one of the few regulators/polciticians with any sense of fiscal responsibility. So home values have dropped. Does that mean you and me have to foot the bill for this? Many of these people used there homes as an ATM machine, pulling cash out, taking out equity lines, etc. Others didnt but you know what, there are no guarantees that your home cant go down in value. If we subsidize losses for underwater homeowners, it can be justified that i must be bailed out for the drop in price on my netflix stock. Where does the fiscal recklessness and moral hazard end?
Home values have dropped, because they were falsely raised in the first place. You and ME are footing the bills, because the banksters who used housing as their personal ponzi scheme got off scott free. Those toxic mortgages were bundled by wall street and sold to countries like Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Portugal. Now those countries are going into default, the euro is going under, an the Euro nations are stealing the future of their people but huge unemployment, stealing their pension funds and every other criminal act they can to keep their governments going. Schneider has the indictments against Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo three of the worst violators. Attorney General Beau Biden has filed a case in the Court of Chancery in Delaware against these banksters. For decades mortgages were placed in the local county recorder of deeds, that is until George WAR Bush and his regulators created a phony fake corporation called MERS to "record mortgages". They have "lost" over 3 million of them. So if your losing your house the first thing to do is "demand a copy of your mortage", chances are they dont have a copy of it…they cant put you out of your house if they dont have a mortage to claim against!!! Also, contact your local Occupy movement. They are winning cases all over the country. They will come to your house and stand with you. In many states, when the Sherrif shows up and the occupiers are there…the sherrif leaves. Its a stand off, but one people can win if they organize their community, their street and join the occupy movement…
Why are multifamily loans non-recourse and single family program are recourse loans? Where is the equality in the lending products? Why are developers and owners of low/affordable housing given a free ride while single family borrowers who are upside down in their mortgage have to beg for reform? The policies are all wrong? Check out Fannie Mae's Standard DUS Mortgage fact sheet for details.
Another ProPublica liberal hack piece. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are already into the taxpayers for $183 billion and are easily expected to hit around $250 billion when they're done. If allowed to do a mass principal writedown, expect to add another $100 billion to that. But that's what I like about ProPublica and the Democrats, they've never met a bailout they didn't like…especially since they're not paying for it! And let's not forget, the FHA is in imminent need of a bailout too. When does it end? When do good people get to stop bailing out bad decisions that other people made??? They didn't have to take that leaser loan!!! Stupid article.
I'm always torn on this topic.
On the one hand, I really don't care that your investment in your house is more than the value of the house. I've bought many, many things over the years that have less market value than the price, especially if I bought it with a credit card. If you did that with a house, just be happy that you have someplace to live!
(As a sidenote, I considered buying a house until someone trying to support my decision "sagely" told me that "housing prices always go up." When I heard some "expert" say the same thing on the news, I knew it was a bubble.)
On the other hand, the government caused this problem by "encouraging" banks to give loans to people who couldn't afford them. By not keeping homeowners in their mortgages, they'll turn the suburbs into slums, which harms everybody. And eviction means that the government owns the houses, and I have trouble envisioning any administration putting them to good use.
I also don't like the idea of the government taxing us, then wringing its hands over how to make a profit off of the homeowners (who, by and large, are also taxpayers).
If the government wants to go into banking (which I actually support, since "free market" banking has always been a cesspool and it can't ever be anything else, since no real product or service is provided), it should open banks instead of messing around with contradictory half-measures.
DeMarco is a hero. "Helping Homeowners"?? Is that his job, or is it about ensuring the solvency of those companies? Plus, shame on any dumbass who believes that homeowners are a priveleged class, or deserve a fortune of borrowed taxpayer dollars. They're disproportionally upper-class folks.
All the whining about Demarco is about his hesitance to SACK taxpayers with hundreds of billions of dollars, it makes me sick. Any idea how probability and incentives work? Like, you pay 100 people the underwater amount which would cost you almost the same as if they bailed, but only 25 or 35 actually would have. Fundamental mathematics and finance, not required reading for those asking for more bailouts apparently.
What do you think would have happened if - as you would apparently prefer - all the investors in the dot-com bubble were reimbursed?
Except that was their money, and underwater so-called "owners" were almost 100% leveraged. This is an outright F-ing insult to anyone who has made a significant downpayment or slaved to purchase a house. Let the bubble buyers live with their choices. They actively participated in the bubble, as well as the stupidity/greed that came with it.
And FFS, stop demonizing a guy who's going to lose his job for no other reason than keeping Fannie/Freddie from hemorrhaging an ungodly amount of money. Sorry, but beloved snowflake homeowners aren't deserved of anything.
To elizabeth allen - 2/7/12 @ 2pm
I agree with you and would even go farther with the idea that the whole concept of having a home increase in value and thusly be able to use as an ATM is so STUPID, that it borders on mass insanity and retardation.
Some 'einstein' who problally teaches at one a them thar institiutions of 'higher learning', thought this turkey up at the behest of the thieves in 3 piece suits on Wall St. like Miltion Friedman specifically or some clone like him.
I don't think for a New York minute that the higher ups didn't initally incubate this and possibly find out it might develop the way it has. They needed the 'hired help' of economics to flesh this out down to the penny to see how much they could legally steal.
Bad enough as that is, the 'troops' who actually go out an peddle these financial booby traps to justify their greasy, narrowly defined legal paramiter type mentality by trying to shift the blame, and to rid themselves of ANY responsibility or guilt, exclusively to the consumer. Part of their piece of the process is to go after people who are emotionally/financially vulnerable to a slick and ultimately overwhelming sales pitch designed to suck them in easily and leave 'em hanging with the responsibility for the demise of it, if it craps out.
I've got two words for all supposed 'professionals' involved in this process, and it ain't merry christmas or happy chanuka.
Welcome to the modern world of high finance that's no better for the consumer chances of success than a poker game or shootin' craps.
Welcome back to 'Amerika', as we said in the early 70's.
I don't believe this new deal with the Banks is a good deal for our citizens,but good for the bansters. Freedie and Fannie arent even included in this deal?
If the Banks had to pay back all their fraud, robo calls, foreclosing on people instead of working out a deal…they would owe us over $700 BILLION. Now Schneiderman, and the other AG's have the ability to go after some of these banksters, but if you think a big deal to protect the banksters AGAIN wasnt done by both parties, you need to put down your crackpipe.
Why do you think the repukes are not saying a word about this…because they whole heartily agree with it…its always about protecting the banks vs the people. We have only one shot left, the occupy movement has already taken on this issue and stopped some foreclosures….(when the sheriff and his deputy showed up and there were 10 or 20 occupiers with the homeowner.) they left. Why, because the sherriff has taken an oath to protect the citizens not the banksters, and not the mortage banksters…
Commenting on this story is closed.
The taxpayer-owned mortgage giant made investments that profited if borrowers stayed stuck in high-interest loans while making it harder for them to get out of those loans.


text: Adults Only (AO) have content suitable only for adults. Titles in this category may include graphic depictions of sex and/or violence. Adult Only products are not intended for persons under the age of 18. Extreme caution should be taken, you will be cybored. GUILD OF SUN © 1997-2011. Powered by Webnodes & Filecamp. Development by Khael[SUN].


text:
Hi all,
So I've never used a CRM before until just a few weeks ago.
Someone pointed me to Zoho, but I can already tell they are not the quality I need.
They didn't respond back to me when I e-mailed them a complaint about not having 2 address fields. Who doesn't have 2 address fields LOL, so that's 2 strikes already.
And once a lead is either finished, I should be able to file them into folders.
Does anyone know of a really good CRM that's user friendly, free or low cost, good customer service where I can file them into folders I label?
Try salesforce.com
What is your budget?
Thanks Sagewig.
Metavisia - right now nothing. After Google's beating, things are tough.
You are asking a lot
These factors don't go together very well:
- you have no experience with CRM
- you have no money
- you were dissatisfied with Zoho
Personally we are on CapsuleCRM, which is super cheap and works well. Base is also pretty cool, but their 'free' model ain't free for long. You might also spend $200 on something like Prohpet and take that approach, which is cheaper long run. Or you could do a SugarCRM type implementation. But, no free lunch in the lucrative CRM world.
So b/c I have no experience with CRMS, this makes me a problem? Very strange answer.
So everyone is supposed to LOVE Zoho? Amazing, well I'm not like everyone else. I already said why I had problems with them.
Even if I had the money, I would want to try the CRM out first.
Right now I'm looking to find the CRM that meets my needs. If I find it & it's within a price range I feel is acceptable, then I'll deal with that down the road.
And I wasn't happy when I went to salesforce. Their entire site was in Spanish, There was no CLEAR way to get English & I'm waiting on a response from them, but Ill wait until Monday to pass judgement.
Hi Michelle,
having no experience with CRM software shouldn't be a problem. Maybe you should start with smaller, simpler application, and later (if there is a need to) move to a bigger, more expensive product.Most of the online applications offer a free 30 days trial, so checking them out requires only a bit of your time.
If you looking for something simple and affordable - please check out our software centriumcrm.com - simple pricing, and first user is free.I can also recommend some of our competitors - capsule, nutshell, insightly.Every application is a bit different, has different strong and weak points, you just need to spot the one that feels the best for you.
What kind of things are you looking for specifically in your CRM?
I'm sure the salesforce spanish thing can be solved in a breeze after you find the right language link..so don't get too discouraged about that.
Thank you, not having experience of course should not be a drawback, only a learning curve.
Does your CRM allow me to file the leads into different folders/categories so dead leads aren't seen in the long list or leads pending are in the pending folder?
I already answered your question in my post.
Well it wasn't a breeze to switch to English otherwise I wouldn't be on here complaining. And I don't like the fact that they ignored me when I wrote to them (even that was stressful as the field names were all in Spanish).
A sales person finally wrote to me, but that was like a week or 10 days later & he had no clue what was wrong so I'm already getting the feeling they don't know how to run their business properly which will make a difference when I choose the company I ultimately go with. If all they care about is sales, I'm not interested. Same with Zoho, never received a response back to my e-mail & I know they read it.
Having no experience with CRM software isn't a issue
You should go with Microsoft Dynamics CRM .first its very user friendly second its very effective in terms of lead tracking and opportunity conversion. Also post opportunity conversion it keeps a track of all details of customers vendors for their entire life cycle.
In terms of cost its very effective as its available both on premise and on cloud.
The answer is yes - we have automatic filters that allow you to quickly list only open, lost or won deals(leads). So with one mouse click you can get a list of leads that You need to work on.
You can also use date filters - for example deals from this month, last month, this year etc.
Another option is to add tags to deals (categorize them) and then use these tags to filter your lead list. You can use multiple tags for every deal - so you can group your leads in the way you want.
Hope this helps a bit.
Yes someone mentioned that CRMS only use filters. Why is that? I would much rather have folders & I really don't want to have to be adding tags to everything just so I can then get access to what I need. That takes extra work.
Hi Michelle, if you have a small team of less than 5, you can give Podio a try. Yes, it may seem like a project management tool but it allows you to create your own app with different fields and forms customized for your own usage. So, it could be turned into a CRM fairly easily.
I've been using it for about 6 months now and I'm happy with it. The learning curve might be quite steep at first but once you have everything setup and used it a few times, you'll start to like it.


text:
In this code:

<textarea name="Summaries" cols="20" rows="7" style="background-color:#fff; color:#000; height:40em;" placeholder="Don't type here. After tapping Load, what you typed above will appear here. Just copy data from here to your email client to export." ></textarea>

The placeholder text does not wrap and stay in the field, but stays on one line and is cut off at right border. How do I get it to wrap? This is on an HTML page and will be viewed in the iPhone.
It also does not wrap when viewed in Safari on the desktop Is this normal behavior?
It wraps in Fx as it should, so I am guessing you have some other styles at play or something.
Why are you using a placeholder attribute to tell people not to type in the field rather than using a readonly attribute which will simply prevent them from doing so?

<textarea name="Summaries" cols="20" rows="7" style="background-color:#fff; color:#000; height:40em;" readonly></textarea>

I never heard of the readonly attribute! Thanks! Besides, I wanted to let them know the purpose of the field so they could use it.
The readonly attribute was introduced in HTML 3.02 so it is fast approaching its 20th anniversary as a part of the standards - unlike the placeholder attribute which is over 20 years younger (since it is still a long way off becoming a part of the standards).
I'm using placeholders everywhere to let the user know he has only 30 characters. Then he knows the field won't expand for more text.
Just as long as you remember that most browsers don't support it yet as it is still only a proposed addition to a future standard.
Oh, that's good to know. I'm only using it in the Safari browser engine, which is used in the iPhone.


text:
Raise your hand — how many of you know that this is Idea Week? All righty then.
You might have seen it buzzing around on Twitter and Facebook, but Idea Week is kind of a great idea which you can read more about on the link. Wednesday's Pecha Kucha event I wrote about is one of the events throughout the week which will feature Cathey Miller and Rawlins Gilliland as presenters and repping the LGBT community. Artistic director Kevin Moriarty also reps when he speaks Thursday at the Dallas Museum of Art on the State of the Arts with DMA director Bonnie Pitman, KERA's Jeff Whittington and Creative Time president Anne Pasternak.
Nice to see the LGBT community partake in the events going on even in a peripheral way. But I thought, we could do a little more ideating (as they call it). So I posed the question to a few colleagues around the office with no other direction: What's you're big idea?
Read 'em below.


text:
Would you like to save as your currency permanently or for this visit only?
Stare Miasto
Spotlessly clean, friendly and efficient staff, great location, value for money,,,,, what more could you ask ! If staying in room at front of hotel, light sleepers may be troubled by noise of trams. Have to say they didn't bother us!
Central location
Cleanliness of room and cute bar downstairs! Three flights of stairs to our room!
Beautiful linens (towels and bed) and very friendly and helpful staff. The room we stayed in looked like a refurbished hostel room. It lacked 'polish' with some decor in general (although the bathroom was very nice). There were additional fold-out out bed and a single bed that just made the place look like a dorm room.
close to main turistic sites, clean, new furniture
The rooms were quite luxurious for the price paid. Our room was warm, very comfortable and spotlessly clean. There were tea and coffee facilities and the desk staff were very helpful. We really enjoyed our stay at this hotel and would definately stay again. Breakfast was also very good. No complaints. The hotel was really great.
Convenient location: 7 minutes walk from the city center; nice and helpful staff.
The staff very polite, helpfull and informative. The hotel itself is in good location and access to all functions. Very clean and comfortable. The kitchen staff serving breakfast were extremely helpfully and polite. I highly recommend for any guest. I choose this hotel account of location near the square.
Price/quality ratio. Breakfast (although basic, it was fine) included in the price. Friendly & helpful hotel staff. Hall- & stairway interior. Large (3 person) room, although less atmospheric than the hall- & stairway. 10 minute walk from the Old Market Square & Wavel Castle. Tram stop in front of the door. Influences from outside: quite some noise and a shaking floor when a tram came by. No elevator in the building, which was okey for us as young adolescents, but for elderly it can be more difficult.
I thought the hotel was everything you would expect or need for a short break.


text:
HOSUTON - Houston police said a party in northwest Houston ended with one person dead and at least two others injured.
It happened around 12:55 a.m. Sunday at the Shadyvilla Condos near Antoine.
Police said a violent fight broke out after a party in one of the units and three victims were stabbed.
"We currently have one deceased Hispanic male, and at least two others injured," said Houston police department Detective Steven Straughter.
According to authorities, Jose Fernandez Maes, a resident in the complex, died at 47-years-old.
The suspects, Neva Gonzales, 24, and Samuel Alvardo, 33, were taken into police custody and charged with capital murder.
A resident who did not want to be identified told Local 2 the fight involved a man and a woman.
"They just moved in yesterday. One used to live here. He moved out and moved back yesterday. That was a big heartache," said resident Zach Mansee.
Copyright 2013 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
Funday PawPet Show
|The use of time in this article lacks definition. Dates should be used instead of words like "today" and "currently".
For specifics, check the edit history and talk page. Consult the Furry Book of Style for editing help.
The Funday PawPet Show is a weekly internet broadcast featuring the puppetry talents of several Florida Furs, including show founder Randy "Yappy" Fox.
- Addresses:
- Web site: http://www.pawpet.tv
- LiveJournal: http://pawpet.livejournal.com/
- Shown on: Sundays, from 6:00pm to 10:00pm ET (GMT-5). The schedule observes Daylight Saving Time.
- Watch: http://pawpet.tv/watch/
- Episode archive: http://pawpet.tv/doku.php?id=episodes
- Rating: "TV-PG-DLS". The "DLS" is mostly irreverent comedy and mild innuendo, with much of the latter coming from the mouth of Poink. As Yappy puts it, "Don't just plop your eight year old down in front of the show and let them watch it."
The Funday Pawpet Show originated in November of 1999; Yappy and friends were working on their puppetry at his home when they came up with the idea of streaming a puppet show on the Internet. Various changes have come and gone — in equipment, location, and performers alike — but the show continues to this day, with some gaps and re-runs. The show's 400th episode aired Dec 21, 2008 and it held its 10-year anniversary in November 2009. The FPS crew also perform live shows at various conventions around the country, most notably at Megaplex.
The audience can log onto the PawPet IRC server and join channel #pawpet to chat with the performers during the show.
- Main article: List of Funday PawPet Show characters
The show is hosted by a cast of animal puppets, all mostly made by Folkmanis. The primary roles are played by the main Master of ceremonies sheepdog, Mutt, along with his sheepdog stand-in, Ezra. All the while, everyone's favorite Poink T. Ferret acts as the show's free-willed comic, often with the beloved Lili playing along with his lines.
As the show is four hours long, its content is open-ended and nearly all of it is completely improvised. Aside from the opening and closing sequences, other fixed content includes:
- Roll Call, in which a guest or cast member, usually flummoxed by constant /nick changes, attempts to read the screennames of everyone in the IRC channel.
- Photo Captions, in which viewers are encouraged to send in a caption for a humorous photograph.
- Shout Outs, in which viewers and Channel chatters post personal and general interest messages, which are read aloud.
- ArtJam, in which viewers are encouraged to send in original artwork. Current practice is to begin showing these at 9:30, so as to allow for completion of themed pieces, yet leave time for the show to wind down.
Any themes or topics for the evening are either brought up during conversation or are planned out in advance, as in the case of a cast member leaving or a statutory holiday, for example.
Spits or Swallows is an event held infrequently, in which the cast (and sometimes, guests) give their honest opinions about food items that they taste on camera. The food is usually sent in by viewers, and can range anywhere from obscure Asian beverages to new fast food items; in some extreme cases, the cast has "enjoyed" MREs, durian fruit and Cheeseburger-in-a-Can.
Guests who visit the show often participate by being interviewed by the PawPets and the IRC audience, and are usually given the Pink Flamingos Challenge, in which they are asked to eat a (preferably chocolate) confection while watching the finale to the film Pink Flamingos, in which drag queen Divine eats actual dog feces (during which, "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" plays.) Because of the graphic nature of this scene, the film itself is forbidden from being seen on screen and only the guests' reactions are taped.
Recently,[when?] a segment entitled Subservient Fursuit has been broadcast on an infrequent basis. It is based on the Subservient Chicken viral marketing campaign by Burger King and features a fursuiter having their actions directed by the IRC audience. The word "Fursuit" in the title is replaced by the fursuit's name at the time of the broadcast. While the show is not intended to be rebroadcast or redistributed at any point, many of the Subservient Fursuit segments have wound up on YouTube.
The Funday PawPet Show also features videos submitted from its viewers, ranging from homemade films to professional animated shorts to humorous commercials. Several PawPet groups across the United States have also sent in their own videos; these outside contributors include:
- Fluff & Such Pawpet Productions
- PawPets West
- PawPet Rocky Mountain
- PawPet Monterey Bay
- PawPet North Coast
- PawPet South West
- Southpaw Video Productions
- Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends
Notable broadcasts[edit]
- Show #169 - broadcast 25 May 2003 - the program featured three segments:
- The "Pawpet Newlywed Game" - three Florida Fur married couples play the Newlywed Game.
- A "G-Rated Uber Cute" version of the FPS, including a baby food Spits or Swallows, and over-the-top performing on a completely "clean" version of the program.
- "The Poink Show" - Poink lets loose (with help from the others), explaining the reason for the "Uber Cute" version (a flamewar on the FPS mailing list over certain subjects being "offensive").
|This section is a stub. You can help by adding to it.
- The show costs around $2,400 (excluding equipment costs) for a year of broadcasting; costs include licensing for the music played on the show, as well as the bandwidth needed for broadcast.
- Increasingly, the majority of the funding for this is provided by donations, and the show has run a number of "telethons" during their history to raise funds. The most recent telethon was on 23 November 2013. As of the closing song $7,248 had been raised. The highest ever raised was $10,052 in 2007.
- 2 recorded The Pawpet Song about his friends on the Funday PawPet Show. Lyrics
- 2 was also the inspiration for what was to become Strawberry. When visiting the show after Megaplex 2003, he puppeted along to The PawPet Song with the pink Pecker, and then in a high, skwawky voice, began to complain about arm burn as he was pressed into doing a second song. Almost two years later in 2005, after using the pink Pecker in homage to 2 to puppet to The PawPet Song, Jess used a similar voice to interact with another character afterward — and Liesl followed shortly using a similar voice with the blue Pecker — and Strawberry and Blueberry were born.
- The title animation and logo is the work of numerous people, including:
- Herbie Bearclaw (original logo)
- Rikki-Tik (flash version with singing pawpets)
- Nonsanity_Cat (After Effects version with fireworks)
- Future versions may include elements of this flash animation by Brian Reynolds
- Shawn Keller recognized the show's popularity with a half-page ad parody (as The Sundae Sock-Monkey Show) in Horrifying Look at the Furries
- The show appeared in Jim Groat's West Corner Of the Park strip on 11 April 2003.
- Many of the puppets appearing on the show were made by Folkmanis.
- Once, on a Sunday when no show was playing, Liesel tried to take roll-call in-channel and was kicked by the IRC bot for flooding.
- The Funday Pawpet Show is referred to in the Jack comic arc Those That Run[1] [2].
The closing theme is "Adios, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen" from The Lawrence Welk Show and the lyrics are as follows:
Good night, Good night, until we meet again, Adios, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen 'til then. And though it's always sweet sorrow to part You'll know you'll always remain in my heart. Good night, sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you. Here's a wish, and a prayer, that every dream comes true. And now 'til we meet again, Adios, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen. Good night!


text:
This basic course is for parents, grandparents, foster and adoptive parents, community volunteers and even survivors who are interested in learning more about preventing and reducing the negative impact of child sexual abuse.
© 2016 National Sexual Violence Resource Center – Founded by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape
This site is supported by Grant/ Cooperative Agreement No. 1UF2CE002359-04 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


text:
Throughout this series, countless operas have been given the title of an "opera that changed my life." An art form such as opera, that is so diverse in terms of artistic output, is going to appeal to people in different ways. Here is the next instalment in our blog series that explores the moments when normal people became opera lovers.
Boris Krivy
I am 81 years old. I hated opera until the time that I was 17 or 18 years old. To me, it was just loud noise and screaming. Then, my best buddy lent me his recording of Turandot and said, "Try it, you'll like it." I did, and it is still my favourite opera. But, more than that, it introduced me to a new and magnificent world of music. However, I still do not care much for Wagner, with one or two exceptions.
Above: a recording of Franco Corelli singing "Non piangere, Liu" from Puccini's Tosca.
Horst Widl
Something lasting I took away from [Die] Meistersinger [von Nürnberg]: embedded in enchanting music, that without respect for the wisdom of the old, it is very hard to create something new.
Above: a recording of the overture to Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Georg Solti.
Banner image: A scene from Turandot (COC, 2004), photo by Michael Cooper.
Posted by Tanner Davies / in TOTCML / comments (0) / permalink
For those who are fortunate enough to have been exposed to opera from a young age, the connection often lasts a lifetime. Here is the next instalment in our blog series that explores the moments when normal people became opera lovers.
As a young girl growing up in the Lower East Side of NYC in the 1940s, I was fortunate to have a teacher who convinced my parents to let me take the test to attend the Hunter College High School junior high program that would lead into the high school. While there, a student teacher from the college came to my music class and sang the arias from Aida. I had wanted to sing since I was very young and even told my aunt at the age of five that I would be a singer. When I asked the young woman which high school she attended she told me it had been The High School of Music and Art. I was determined that I would attend there and began the preparations. When my parents wouldn't sign the papers necessary for me to take the exam, I signed them myself and after the test I was accepted.
I have sung for the rest of my life and credit Aida for my good fortune. I was even a regional finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and have had church and synagogue jobs, sung opera leading roles with the Rochester Opera Theatre, and with the Pittsburgh and Syracuse symphonies.
Aida changed my life, and all for the better!!
World War II was not long over when an Italian opera company came to Australia. My father met one of the tenors (Plinio Clabassi) who gave him two free tickets to Madama Butterfly. My mother, who had seen Toti Dal Monte in the role, took me, aged 10, to the performance that enchanted and imprinted me on opera for the rest of my life. It wasn't a major opera company, but I still remember the names of the principals: Aldo Feracucci was Pinkerton, Mercedes Fortunati was Madama Butterfly, Maria Huder was Suzuki, and the conductor was [Manno] Wolf-Ferrari. I have "Googled" the singers' names in vain. The entrance of Madama Butterfly remains as one of the most beautiful scenes in opera that one could ever see and hear. Since that Madame Butterfly so long ago, opera has been one of the lights of my life.
Photo credits (top - bottom): A scene from Madama Butterfly (COC, 2014), Sondra Radvanovsky in Aida (COC, 2010), (l) Elizabeth DeShong and (r) Kelly Kaduce in Madama Butterfly (COC, 2014), Photos: Michael Cooper.
Harry Somers' Louis Riel is the epic presentation of an intensely contentious moment in Canada's political history dramatizing the story of the Métis leader, Louis Riel, and Canada's westward expansion, while also being a landmark work in the canon of Canadian opera.
In reviving the opera for 2017, the COC/NAC co-production confronts the traditions and demands of an art form that make Louis Riel a dynamic and compelling opera and its collision with the voice, culture and representation of indigeneity. This production uses historical research and multiple community perspectives to expose the lines between truth and mythology and co-existing perspectives of settler and indigenous stances as Riel's story is told and retold.
"The challenges are many and well worth the undertaking. We're looking at this opera from a more inclusive perspective," says Louis Riel director Peter Hinton. "We're not changing the intentions of the piece, but revisions are being made that honour the virtuosic complexity of the music, while allowing for the introduction of voices that have not been heard before."
Louis Riel distinguishes itself from other operas with its musical diversity. In addition to incorporating original folk music and traditional melody lines, Somers wrote in an abstract atonal orchestral style which heightens the dramatic intensity and sets the orchestra entirely apart from the singing. Electronic music also comes into play, creating at times an auditory surrealism that mirrors the distortion and confusion of events unfolding in the narrative.
Louis Riel demands singers to demonstrate a range of vocal techniques and dramatic intonation, sometimes in harmony with the orchestra and sometimes in conflict, and other times delivering gripping musical lines with the voice completely laid bare to scrutiny and unsupported by the orchestra. An orchestra of 67 musicians, including strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, and large percussion ensemble requiring six players, accompanies the cast and chorus.
Unique to the score of Louis Riel is the "Kuyas" aria which opens Act III and is sung in Cree by the artist in the role of Marguerite Riel, Louis Riel's wife. The music for the "Kuyas" aria was based on a Nisg̱a'a mourning song called "Song of Skateen" that was recorded by Marius Barbeau and and transcribed by Sir Ernest MacMillan on the Nass River in 1927. The words for "Kuyas" were selected by Somers from Cree Grammar by Rev. H. E. Hivers and the English-Cree Primer and Vocabulary by Rev. F. G. Stevens, as well as from a story told by Coming Day to Leonard Bloomfield on the Sweetgrass Reserve in Saskatchewan. The composer was further assisted in ascertaining pronunciation and feeling for the language by Mrs. Lou Waller of Cree descent from Alberta, to whom Somers dedicated the "Kuyas" aria. With respect to both the Nisg̱a'a and Métis peoples and in recognition of how the songs of one nation are not the same as another's, the COC and NAC's co-production of Louis Riel acknowledges the current holder of the hereditary rights to this song: Sim'oogit Sg̱at'iin, hereditary chief Isaac Gonu, Gisḵ'ansnaat (Grizzly Bear Clan), Gitlax̱t'aamiks, B.C.
For the 2017 production, Louis Riel will continue to be sung in English, French and Cree, however, it will now feature a new translation of the Cree and include spoken dialogue in Michif, the official language of the Métis that would have been spoken in the 19th century, in select scenes between Métis characters. The new Cree translation is by Manitoba-born actor and writer Billy Merasty, who is of Cree descent, and the Métis dialogue is translated by Norman Fleury, a Métis elder, Michif language expert and translator, professor, and historian. The 2017 production of Louis Riel will also feature English, French, Cree and Michif SURTITLESTM.
The role of the chorus in Louis Riel has also been redesigned. The original opera called for a single large chorus to act and sing a variety of groups and assemblies in the narrative. For the 2017 revival, there will be two choruses performing in contrast to the historical figures represented by the principal cast, representing the modern dynamic of debate and protest that continue of this history, both in the houses of parliament and on the land.
The COC Chorus takes on the role of the Parliamentary Chorus and represents a group of settler and immigrant men and women. The Parliamentary Chorus sings and is seen but does not participate in the physical action of the narrative, only commenting and debating on what should take place. They serve as a modern-day Greek Chorus while also representing the functions of Members of Parliament who legislate and validate the struggles of all Canadians in Ottawa. Additional members of the COC Chorus will be members of the Métis Nation.
A group of Indigenous men and women will be cast as the physical chorus known as the Land Assembly. On stage throughout the opera, the Land Assembly is a silent chorus in protest, and stands for the people for whom the opera has not provided a voice. The Land Assembly shift and transform in response to the actions on stage and are a constant, physical representation of the Indigenous men and women who are directly affected by the outcomes, victories and losses of Riel. The players in the Land Assembly will be announced at a later date as part of the COC's complete casting release for Louis Riel.
New characters have been introduced to bring Indigenous voices into the opera as well as present a more informed history of the Métis and Indigenous peoples in Riel's history. The previously unattributed opening vocal line is now delivered by a character known as The Folksinger, to be sung by a contemporary Métis singer. The role of The Activist, to be played by a Métis actor, will deliver the Land Acknowledgement as the opera unfolds, setting the tone for interpreting the action playing out on stage. The artists in these roles will be announced at a later date as part of the COC's complete casting release for Louis Riel.
Louis Riel is onstage at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts from April 20 to May 13, 2017. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
Posted by Tanner Davies / in Louis Riel / comments (0) / permalink
Sara Fulgoni in the COC production of Bluebeard's Castle. Photo: Michael Cooper © 2001


text:
hello,checked in gtmetrix the site performance and see this:
I see that the logo and social media icons slow down the site. Is there any way to improve it? I installed W3 Total Cache, it helped a little bit but it did not save me totally.Appreciate your advice.The site: www.publicdifferent.com
I checked your site after 3 AM EST and it loaded in about 13 seconds first load. I also tested using tools.pingdom.com which showed a load time of 1.93 seconds (much faster than I could get it). Web server traffic is low this time of night. So this may be as good as it gets.
Looking at your test results, your png images are coming down a little slow (but not too bad). Have you had this problem for long? It may be your web server is a little slow temporarily, overloaded, or a temporary bottleneck in the data center your server is in. Doing a lookup on the IP, it looks like you are hosting on one of those "unlimited" web hosts. Are you? Don't expect too much performance from an "unlimited" web host. Those hosts appeal to the lower end that wants to use a server for all it is worth while paying as little as possible. Poor performance is a well-known consequence of using an "unlimited" web host.
To get an idea if the server may be overloaded, I found some more websites hosted on the same IP address as yours. All of them loaded dismally slow. To be fair, this time of night the server may be performing backups or maintenance functions. I'll try to check it again later during mid day and see how it does.
One more thing I wanted to mention is that there is a whole lot of odd looking comments in your HTML about your caching plugin. I am not familiar with W3 so I do not know what is normal.
Check your server load. If you are using cPanel, there should be a way to do that on the left at the bottom when you first log in. You can also get it using `php(http://php.net/manual/en/function.sys-getloadavg.php). I have a feeling your server load may be high.
Thank you, @cheesedude! Indeed, I have principal domain and its addons hosted by justhost, I liked their customer service, and price I guess. Who can you advice from your own experience to have better speed? As for portfolio site and for ecommerce.
Could you please explain how can I check my server load using cPanel?
On the left side of the main page when you log into cPanel you will see at the bottom "Service Status Click to View". Click that. Look for the line that says "Server Load".
A general rule of thumb is that a load of 1 or less per CPU core is acceptable. If you are on a server with one quad core CPU, that's 4 cores so a server load of 4 or less would be acceptable. If you were on a dual core server with hex core CPUs (2 physical CPUs with 6 cores each CPU for a total of 12 cores), a load of 12 or less would be acceptable. A server may perform without any noticeable lag with a server load above 1 per core. The "load of 1 per core" rule of thumb is not an absolute rule. But there comes a point where server load does impact performance. So it's a good idea to see what your server's load is as it may explain your page load issues. For some reason when cPanel lists the number of cores next to the load average it lists the total number of virtual cores. For the shared server I am on, it is double the number of actual cores.
You can also stick this code in a PHP file, navigate to it using your browser and it should output the 1, 5, and 15 minute load averages along with some CPU info.
<!doctype HTML>

<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>CPU Load Averages & CPU Info</title>

Server Load Averages

$arr_load_avg = sys_getloadavg();
1 minute average: <?php echo $arr_load_avg[0];?>

5 minute average: <?php echo $arr_load_avg[1];?>

15 minute average: <?php echo $arr_load_avg[2];?>

if (exec('lscpu', $cpu_info))
echo '
';
foreach ($cpu_info as $key => $val)
echo $val . "\
echo '
';
echo 'Could not retrieve CPU info.';
It looks like the total number of cores is the "Core(s) per socket:" multiplied by the "Socket(s):" number. The Sockets number gives the number of CPUs. Let's see what you have.
Your website load performance is even worse right now at 9:45 EST. As a rule, I am not a fan of "unlimited" web hosts and if you are serious about hosting your sites, I recommend a fixed limit web host. That's the kind I use. If you need a recommendation I can recommend the one I use. Otherwise, search for a fixed limit host. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people complaining about poor load performance on "unlimited" hosts.
Edit: A tools.pingdom.com load test just now took 42.57 seconds to load the page and content. Of that, 31.21 seconds was the "connect" time. I don't know why that is so long unless there is a DNS problem as well.
@Cheesedude, I'm still digesting the information. I looked at the cPAnel, did not find the information you was talking about (Service Status Click to View), than contacted my hosting company, they said this information is not available via cPanel So I'm stuck. I dont know how should I add the php file to my server. Could you please explain?
Cant I see some helpful information about cores in CPU Throttling History?
By scrutinising my cPanel, I also found that I have this message:Your account contains more than 9740 directories and may pose a potential performance risk to the server.
Please reduce the number of directories for your account to prevent possible account deactivation.
Could this slow down my site performance?
I do not know how you get a message saying you have 9740 directories when you only have about 11 pages!Perhaps that's all the directories on the server?
Save cheesdudes code as a file and call it something like load.php, upload that file to your server and the go to that page e.g. www.publicdifferent.com/load.php
I cannot say I am surprised that an "unlimited" host would not want their customers to know what the server load is.
Sure. Take the PHP code below (I have since updated it) and copy and paste it into a text file (such as Notepad on Windows or any other text editor program). Save the text file as load.php (or another name of your choosing such as server_load.php, etc.). Then upload the file to your server using cPanel's file upload feature or FTP. Upload the file into your root folder for your website (which may be public_html if that is your only website on your account).
Then type into your browser: publicdifferent.com/load.php (or whatever you named the file). Your browser will request the PHP file which will then run on the server and return the HTML to your browser. The script will attempt to retrieve the system load averages and then attempt to retrieve the CPU info for the server your website is hosted on.
<!doctype HTML>

<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>CPU Load Averages & CPU Info</title>

Server Load Averages & CPU Info

Server Load Average

// Check to see if sys_getloadavg function exists. If so, run it to get system load averages.
if (function_exists('sys_getloadavg'))
if ($arr_load_avg = sys_getloadavg())
echo '
';
echo '1 minute: ', $arr_load_avg[0], '
';
echo '5 minute: ', $arr_load_avg[1], '
';
echo '15 minute: ', $arr_load_avg[2], '
';
echo '
';
echo '
Could not get load averages.
';
echo 'Could not get load averages. sys_getloadavg() function may have been disabled.';
echo '
CPU Info
';
// Run a system command to retrieve CPU info. Check to see if exec function exists first. It may be disabled for security purposes.
if (function_exists('exec'))
if (exec('lscpu', $cpu_info))
echo '
';
foreach ($cpu_info as $key => $val)
echo $val . "\
echo '
';
echo '
Could not get CPU info.
';
echo '
Could not retrieve CPU info. exec() function may have been disabled.
';
You may want to copy and save the HTML output after running the script so we can see it. You can paste it back into your reply. As I mentioned earlier, a load average of 1 per core is considered acceptable. A little over that is nothing to be concerned about. If the load gets too high, server performance will suffer and often result in slow page loads.
No. That will just show you when the system limited your account for consuming too much CPU resources.
No. That will not impact your site's load performance. As I mentioned, the night I checked it I looked for more websites hosted on the same IP address and they all loaded slowly. I checked your site again about 24 hours ago and it loaded pretty fast. I checked a few minutes ago and it loaded in about 9 seconds. The real test is during peak internet traffic which is in the late afternoon here in America (about 4 PM - 6 PM New York time).
I copied your code, created server_load.php and uploaded it into public_html folder via FTP. I dont know what I have done wrong but it didnt show me any html code just normal Page not found something. I did screenshot http://imgur.com/oqHDZTK What I have done wrong? Thank you!
I accessed the file just fine (you named the file with an underscore but typed a dash into your address bar). Your server is SEVERELY overloaded. Worst I have ever seen. Right now in America it is almost midnight EST Sunday Night. Web traffic is probably as low as it gets right now. This is your server's load averages:
Server Load Averages & CPU InfoServer Load Average1 minute: 56.985 minute: 49.0615 minute: 52.9CPU Info
Architecture: x86_64CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bitByte Order: Little EndianCPU(s): 20On-line CPU(s) list: 0-19Thread(s) per core: 1Core(s) per socket: 2Socket(s): 10NUMA node(s): 1Vendor ID: AuthenticAMDCPU family: 21Model: 1Stepping: 2CPU MHz: 2200.024BogoMIPS: 4400.04Hypervisor vendor: KVMVirtualization type: fullL1d cache: 64KL1i cache: 64KL2 cache: 512KNUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-19
Your server has a sustained 15-minute load average of 52.9. On a Sunday night. Server load will be worse during the work week at peak time. I cannot tell how many cores/CPUs your server has. It looks like your server is using AMD CPU and possibly operating on a virtualized server setup. I don't know exactly what the deal is. Since I cannot decipher the CPU info, I'll focus on the part that says "CPU(s): 20" and with a load average of 52.9 on a Sunday night, your server is severely overloaded.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of performance we see all to often on oversellers promising "unlimited" resources. Your website's performance is going to be slow with a server load that high. Hosts promising "unlimited" appeal to those who want to hammer the server for all they can get away with and it looks like you have some real resource hogs on your server.
Here is the server load on the shared host I am on taken seconds after I checked yours:
Server Load Averages & CPU InfoServer Load Average1 minute: 1.615 minute: 1.9715 minute: 2.21CPU Info
Architecture: x86_64CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bitByte Order: Little EndianCPU(s): 24On-line CPU(s) list: 0-23Thread(s) per core: 2Core(s) per socket: 6Socket(s): 2NUMA node(s): 2Vendor ID: GenuineIntelCPU family: 6Model: 44Stepping: 2CPU MHz: 2399.848BogoMIPS: 4799.87Virtualization: VT-xL1d cache: 32KL1i cache: 32KL2 cache: 256KL3 cache: 12288KNUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-5,12-17NUMA node1 CPU(s): 6-11,18-23
Do you see the difference in load average between yours and mine? 52.9 on your server, 2.21 on mine. That is why my pages load fast and yours load slowly.
My host is A Small Orange. They are very good. They don't do "unlimited" web hosting. For $5 a month you can get much higher quality hosting than you are getting right now. And you can pay month-to-month meaning you can bail at any time without fear of losing anything in a long-term contract. Do yourself a favor and check them out (and any other fixed-limit hosts you can find if you want to spend the time looking around).
A disclaimer: A Small Orange and your current host are owned by the same parent company. They operate as separate hosting companies with separate management. The parent company is owned by some private equity firms and they have been gobbling up hosting companies but operating them separately. They target different segments of the hosting market and as you can see, perform much differently.
Find a fixed-limit host and you will have much better performance. If you are going to try to get clients, you are not going to make a good impression with a slow-loading website. Nobody is going to wait 40 seconds for a page load. My experience hosting with an overseller is the same as yours. Those types of hosts are fine for a certain segment of customer. If your website is important to you, I would recommend a fixed-limit host over an "unlimited" host any day. We see this server overloading with "unlimited" hosts all the time.
It is 3:43 AM EST here in America and here is the original poster's server load right now:
1 minute: 85.935 minute: 76.3815 minute: 65.28
I can't wait to see it 12 hours from now at peak internet traffic.
The original poster's server load went higher as I thought it might. This is the highest I've seen so far today at 11:51 AM EST:
1 minute: 140.485 minute: 164.8515 minute: 147.24
That's about triple the severely overloaded figures from the first time I checked late Sunday night.
This is the load on a shared server at my host at the same time:
1 minute: 1.885 minute: 2.5515 minute: 2.83
Quite a difference. I've been on that server for 16 months and have never seen it overloaded.
I don't know how any host can charge money for such an overloaded server. It's downright shameful to operate like that. But at least now you know what is causing your poor page load performance.
It's a disaster. I would definitely look to transfer my sites from justhost this weekend. I have publicdifferent.com as primary site, and 5 different sites that justhost added as addons to publicdifferent.com I presume that addons slow or are being slowed mutually by the effect being attached to publicdifferent.com?I looked at A Small Orange and read some reviews about them, I think I'm gonna move my two sites there, I'll see later for three others... As I understand their "shared" hosting, for exemple for $5 per month + fee for domain is a same "shared" and unlimited hosting as justhost?
Your main site and your add-ons and every other customer's account on the server is slow due to server overloading. When the server is overloaded, everything on it performs badly.
No, not "unlimited" disk space and transfer. It's a fixed-limit host. $5 a month gets 1 GB of space and 20 GB of data transfer. That's all you get. You want more, you have to upgrade to the next highest shared plan or pay for overage. That small plan can easily serve 20,000 - 40,000 visitors per month if you are not doing file downloads or hosting lots of images. There are bigger shared plans available than the $5 account. You can host as many domain names on the plan as you want within your limit. I have at one point or another had upwards of 7 websites hosted on a small account. You can have more than that within the limit. That is, all of your websites on the account share the 1 GB of disk space and 20 GB of data transfer. A $10 plan offers 5 GB of disk space and 100 GB of monthly data transfer. I hope that is understandable.
Your experience with an "unlimited" host is extreme, but poor performance is something I have read about a lot of with them and have experienced myself. If you want a good host, whatever you choose, I recommend a fixed-limit host. Customers on fixed-limit hosts do not have the incentive to abuse the server for all they can get away with because they cannot. Their accounts have a limit. On your "unlimited" host, you can see how bad server performance is as the incentive is for the customers to use as much as they can. Also, if you are a fledgling web designer, you need a good host because your website is going to make an impression on potential customers.
Realistically estimate how much disk space and data transfer you need then go from there. People have a tendency to over-estimate how many visitors they are going to get. Start with a basic plan and if you need to upgrade later, you can do so.
Good hosting is worth it. You will notice a big difference in performance. If you want to go with another "unlimited" host, you could try looking at HostGator. However, I would hope you have learned a lesson about the "unlimited" oversellers and how bad they can be.
Here is your server load right now:
1 minute: 82.835 minute: 81.0715 minute: 71.86
Here is mine on a fixed-limit account at A Small Orange.
1 minute: 2.555 minute: 2.3715 minute: 2.33
Good luck.
hello @cheesedude,I live now at A Small Orange, so far I moved only one account to test and so far so good:
here is server load speed:http://soapmarine.com/server_load_soapmarine.php youuuhouuu!
1 minute: 2.155 minute: 1.6515 minute: 1.5
Big improvement from a server load of 164.85, isn't it?
You are getting some 404 page not found errors on your secondary URLs. Did you move your entire Wordpress database? Moving Wordpress is not too hard, but it can be tricky if you have never done it before.
Also, I see you are using W3 Super Cache. How much traffic are you getting across your Wordpress sites? Because if you are low traffic, you can probably disable the caching plugin. If you have heavy traffic, you may want to keep it. Otherwise, it just adds complications that you really don't need on a decent web host. Wordpress is a resource hog, that's a fact. If you are only getting a few hundred visitors per day you can probably shut off the caching plugins because they will be more trouble than they are worth.
Thank you, cheesedude! Very handy advice! I activated W3 Super cache because I wanted to speed up the site load. Wrong approach to solve this problem, now I see I'm happy now with server load, and going to move publicdifferent.com website as well.
Yes, I moved the wordpress database and it's very painful for me everytime, this was super simple one-language site and it's mine, so I can live with it and fix it when I have time. But for client's sites it's a real pain for me, especially I live in Europe and I'm asked to do multi-language sites. Moving databases freaking me out Did not now that I have secondary permalinks broken. Damn it! I didnt check all the links one per one, after move. How did you spot them?
Can I ask you something? How do you insert code here in forums like you did in this thread? I tried to do it here but it spread the code everywhere and it hard to read, maybe that is why I dont have any replies to my topic
As cheesedude's offline just now, I'll jump in and answer a couple of points.
I use gURLChecker to check site links. It's only available for Linux, but I expect there will be something similar available for other OSs. There are certainly online tools available: http://www.everyclick.com/search?keyword=broken+link+checker
[quote="Soapmarine,post:16,topic:40095"]Can I ask you something? How do you insert code here in forums like you did in this thread? I tried to do it here but it spread the code everywhere and it hard to read, maybe that is why I dont have any replies to my topic [/quote]Use the # button at the top of the "basic" reply window to wrap [noparse]
[/noparse] tags around your code. If you want to highlight a specific syntax, click the "Go Advanced" button in the lower right-hand corner, which will take you to an interface with more options. The Syntax drop-down menu contains all the options. (You can also just type in the tags by hand, of course - if you can remember them. :))
Xenu is a popular link checker for windows and I have also used LinkChecker.
Thank you, Technobear! Today I definitely learn something. And thank you for correcting my other thread Hm, hm as you are much experienced php kung-fu panda than I, maybe you can point me to the right direction in my problem? You can also punch me, if I'm bad student
I went to your home page and clicked on one of the links from the front page:
Did you change your permalink structure at all or do any other config changes? Because doing a search for the letter "a", I could find your post content but clicking on the URLs are led to error messages.
Give this a read:
Moving your domain without changing the Home and Site URLs of your WordPress site is very simple, and in most cases can be done by moving the files.
Moving a website is not that hard, but it can be a little scary if you are not used to it. It is just files on a server that can be downloaded using FTP or, if you have a decent control panel, compressed into one archive and downloaded to your computer then re-uploaded to another server. phpMyAdmin is the database tool frequently used to export databases. Same thing, export your databases, download them to your computer, then upload them to the new server.
It's a pretty easy process. The trouble spots come in creating a new database(s) at the new host and updating the Wordpress config file if the database user name or password changes. Another complication can arise with plugins as some of them may store file paths or URLs in the database that may change when moving to another server.
I would advise you not to delete anything from your old host until you are set up at your new host. Do not delete any files or databases. Then see this:
Note: if your current host is a cPanel host, the easiest thing to do is to allow one of our talented Tech Support Ninja's take care of it for you. Just open a ticket and they'll get it moved over for you.
I think your old host was using cPanel, right? If you deleted anything from your old host, you will not be able to take advantage of that. However, it is important for you to learn how to do this so you should probably take a stab at doing it yourself (if you are willing).
How many sites do you have to move? Because you are using plugins which may (or may not) store file path information in the database that can change on a new server. So I would advise to move each site one-by-one. And before you prepare to move the site from your old host, disable all plugins first, then download the files and export the database. You can re-enable plugins when you get everything uploaded and imported at the new host.
You may also want to take a look at this Wordpress migration plugin. I have never used it, but the reviews of it are all positive.
To use that, it looks like you: install it at old host and download an archive of your Wordpress site. Then on your new host, you would do a fresh install of Wordpress, install that plugin into your fresh install, then run the plugin to import the archive of your old site. It may be worth a few minutes for you to look at it.
Always keep backup copies of your websites. When you get everything set up at your new host, spend three or four minutes making backups of everything. Compress your public_html folder using the cPanel File Manager and then go into phpMyAdmin to export all your databases (you should be able to do this all at one time), and download them to your computer. Then also make another copy of that backup copy.
Years ago I lost many hours of work when my hard drive failed. Now I make lots of backups. For my most critical stuff, I have the copy on the web server, the copy on the hard drive, and copies on two thumb drives and two external hard drives.


text:
take three slices of kraft cheese put them in to a ball and stuff in to a females vaginal regions and close legs for extra heat for three hours. spread legs and let simmer for two min after two min have the female stand up and have the melted cheese ouzz out of the pussy and into your mounth.
the triple grill cheese is made famous by carry howard
the triple grill cheese is made famous by carry howard
hey miss i was woundering if i can use your vagina to store this cheese ball for three hours and two minutes? to make a triple grill cheese
by random adam August 11, 2009
The Urban Dictionary Mug
One side has the word, one side has the definition. Microwave and dishwasher safe. Lotsa space for your liquids.Buy the mug


text:
GONZALES — The officer in the high-speed chase Tuesday that ended with the deaths of two alleged shoplifters who slammed into another vehicle, injuring its two occupants, had been cautioned by his supervisor during the chase to end it if it became too dangerous.
According to 911 dispatch recordings released Thursday, a Gonzales Police Department supervisor told the officer that if the situation became too dangerous he should abort the pursuit, which started at Tanger Outlet Center in Gonzales and ended with a head-on collision with the third vehicle on La. 30 in St. Gabriel.
"If it's too dangerous, 10-22 it, you understand? If it's too dangerous, 10-22 it," the supervisor said. "You got a 28 already on the vehicle. We'll cut a warrant if we need to."
In police scanner code, 10-22 is the signal to disregard the assignment. A 10-28 is a vehicle registration request.
The Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office released a 12-minute 25-second recording of the 911 dispatch that chronicled the chase, which reached speeds in excess of 90 mph, as well as recordings of 911 calls from the OshKosh B'gosh and Reebok stores at Tanger to report the shoplifting incidents.
The OshKosh B'gosh call came in at 10:41 a.m., followed by the Reebok call at 10:48 a.m.
Kevdrinka Williams, 25, of Baton Rouge, and Tremaine Wickem, 20, of New Orleans, were stopped by a Gonzales officer in front of the Nike Factory Outlet at the shopping center after they allegedly "stole a couple of pairs of shoes" from Reebok and after Williams "filled her purse full of stuff" at OshKosh B'gosh, the 911 recordings show.
While the officer was on the phone with the dispatch center, he reported that Williams and Wickem "just took off on me" in Williams' 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser.
The chase began about 10:55 a.m. and ended with the crash at 11:07 a.m.
The officer pursued the suspects along La. 30, requesting help from the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office, and he later asked the dispatcher to call State Police and the St. Gabriel Police Department. Sheriff's officials chose not to get involved. The crash happened before State Police and the St. Gabriel Police Department were notified.
Williams lost control of her vehicle soon after she entered St. Gabriel, according to the dispatch tape.
Along the way, the PT Cruiser and police car reached speeds in excess of 80 and 90 mph, the pursuing officer reported.
"(We're) using the 'do-or-die' lane right now, speeds about 90 mph in the curve," the officer said.
After receiving the warning from his supervisor, the pursuing officer reported light traffic and continued the pursuit at speeds in excess of 90 mph.
"We don't have any traffic in front of me right now," the officer reported.
The traffic came as the vehicles left Ascension Parish and entered St. Gabriel, in Iberville Parish. When Williams attempted to pass vehicles on the shoulder, she lost control of her car and collided head-on with a Toyota Tundra driven by Warren Porta III, 34, of Gonzales.
Williams and Wickem died as a result of the crash. Porta and his passenger, Bradley Nolan, 48, of Geismar, sustained moderate injuries, State Police said.
Gonzales Police Chief Sherman Jackson declined to release the officer's name and said he will not discuss the case until the internal investigation is completed. He did say, however, that the officer remains on active duty.
On Thursday, Wickem's family members said they did not know Williams, but it appeared Wickem got caught in a bad situation.
"Tremaine was not a bad child. He really wasn't," Jean Wickem, his grandmother, said in a telephone interview from her New Orleans home. "He just got tied up with the wrong person."
His mother, Belinda Wickem, of New Orleans, said in a telephone interview: "I just think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
A recent graduate of Chalmette High School in St. Bernard Parish, Tremaine Wickem had no criminal history and was working on a degree in nursing, his grandmother said. She said he told her Tuesday morning he was headed to buy her a Christmas present.
Samantha Wickem, his aunt, also from New Orleans, said in a telephone interview that a family friend claimed Tremaine Wickem had called him from the speeding car, saying he was trying to get Williams to pull over and stop fleeing.
Williams had a prior misdemeanor theft conviction in Dallas in 2006 and was on probation after pleading guilty in Slidell in 2008 to felony charges of drug possession and obtaining a controlled dangerous substance by fraud, criminal records show.
"We know that is not of his character," Samantha Wickem said. "We don't know why he would make the decision to be in her presence, period."
Attempts to reach Williams' family members in New Orleans were unsuccessful. The injured people in the other car, Porta and Nolan, could not be located for comment Thursday.
Belinda Wickem, who said Gonzales police authorities "should have handled (the situation) better than they did," said she saw the wreck on the news and knows her son was petrified at the end of his life.
"Every time I close my eyes, that's all see," she said.


text:
Spare me the "shareholder spring" allusions. Not only does the parallel devalue the genuine sacrifice of those who took part in the popular revolts of the "Arab spring", it misrepresents the nature of the shareholder rebellions that have now defenestrated three UK chief executives, including, today, Andrew Moss of Aviva.
The natural assumption is that high pay is the root cause of investors' disgruntlement, whereas tone-deafness on remuneration was merely a symptom of a wider concern about Trinity Mirror, AstraZeneca and now Aviva. What really did for Mr Moss (apart from his habit of letting himself be photographed looking out over the City, like a jut-jawed lord of all he surveyed) was his performance not his pay. Read more


text:
A LONG-standing tourism champion has been made an honorary life member of the Ribble Valley Tourism Association.
Coun Joyce Holgate, who has represented Whalley on the borough council for 19 years, received the award at a special ceremony.
Coun Holgate, who has been a member of the association since its inception 23 years ago, was presented with the award by Ribble Valley Mayor, Coun Richard Sherras.
She said: "I'm very proud to have received this award and it's something that I never expected.
"I firmly believe in tourism and its benefits and always have done.
"It employs a lot of people in and around the Ribble Valley and that's very important.
"The Ribble Valley is a beautiful place to visit but not enough people know about it.
"It always seems to be voted 'Britian's Best Kept Secret' but it doesn't need to be a secret.
"The association does vital work that helps to promote the borough and get its name out there as much as possible.
"I had no idea that I was going to be presented with this award and it was quite a surprise."
The Ribble Valley Tourism Association is run alongside the borough council and is made up of councillors, business owners and council officers.


text:
26 = M P in R CLetter Equations are well known phrases or facts where the key words have been replaced with the first letter of that word. These are often in the form of an equation, which contain a number, an = sign and the rest of the obscured phrase or fact.
26 = M P in R C
HintIt's a very common game.
Answer26 = moving pieces in Rubik's cube.
It should have 27 cubes, however the cube in the center does not exist.
What Next?
See another brain teaser just like this one...
Or, just get a random brain teaser
If you become a registered user you can vote on this brain teaser, keep track of
which ones you have seen, and even make your own.
Back to Top


text:
Silver Whisper
Customer Reviews
View more
Silver Whisper Cruises
From booking to boarding and beyond, a personal concierge's expert knowledge can help guide you in arranging the luxury cruise of your dreams.
Please fill out the form to the right and a concierge will call you shortly.
1-888-999-3271 | 9am-9pm M-F, 9am-6pm Sat-Sun (EST)
Need Help Planning?
1-888-999-3271 1-888-999-3271
Cruise Deals by Email
Sign Up for Exclusive Offers and Discounts