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But, most important, Damascus and Aleppo are where one finds the largest concentration of the government's secret police and other security forces.
"Don't misinterpret the quiet," said one businessman who has been in and out of Syria a couple of times since the protests began. "This isn't support. It's fear." Fear both of retribution, and chaos.
Syria's Kurds, who account for about 10 per cent of the population and who usually are the most vocal of the government's opponents, have been quiet as well. Perhaps they were mollified by the approval of citizenship for some 300,000 Druze that Mr. al-Assad announced in the early days of the protests.
More likely it's because this is not their fight. Theirs is a struggle for nationhood, not a battle for reform. Better they should wait and see how they might advance their own cause from whatever comes next.
The members of the Assad alliance care more about having their own interests safeguarded than in the protection of the President and his immediate family. If a way could be found for Bashar al-Assad to go and a reform-minded regime to stay, they would take it.
But if the President is determined to fight to the end, it will be every group for themselves.
"If the Alawites lose the battle for the Syrian street and their control of the government, the worst will transpire for them," said Mordechai Kedar, a professor at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv and a veteran of 25 years in Israel's military intelligence. "Frenzied Sunni masses will descend on Alawi neighbourhoods in Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo armed with knives, ready to detach Alawi heads from their necks."
After that, he predicts, the country that France cobbled together almost a century ago could be blown apart much as happened to Yugoslavia.
"The Kurds in the north will declare independence as did their brethren in Iraq; the Druze in the south will restore the autonomy stolen from them by France in 1925; the Bedouins in the east will establish a state with Dir a-Zur as its capital; the Aleppans will exploit the opportunity to throw off the yoke of the hated Damascenes."
"Thus," concludes Mr. Kedar, "six states will rise from the ruins of Syria, each more homogeneous than the former united Syria and more legitimate in the eyes of most of its inhabitants."
Bashar al-Assad is undoubtedly aware of all of this and may finally be shifting his tactics.
His efforts to contain the protests, and the most militarized of his responses, have increasingly been in the areas of historic Sunni agitation. From 1976 to 1982, Islamists sought to overthrow the regime of Hafez al-Assad. They were crushed in the very cities to which the current regime is turning its attention, including Jisr ash-Shughur.
But whereas the father's regime killed tens of thousands (facilitated by a lack of modern communications that hid the events for weeks if not months), the son is taking a different approach.
His armoured divisions spent an unusually long time assembling on the outskirts of Jisr ash-Shughur after warning of extreme retribution for the killing of 120 members of the security forces the previous week. The days taken to mount the attack gave the city's population ample time to disperse. Conveniently, the military forces were deployed to the south and east of the town, leaving the corridor to the Turkish frontier unobstructed.
Add to that the willingness of the government forces, for the first time, to allow journalists with connections to Western media to accompany the attack, and one of the first real glimpses into events in Syria in months has emerged.
It shows some evidence of a small armed opposition in the city, and a mass grave of uniformed people, although it remains unclear just which side did the killing of those buried.
All in all, it appears to have been an effort to escape some of the bad publicity the regime has encountered.
Elias Samo, a retired professor in Aleppo, hopes it's not too late for the President to turn things around. Mr. Samo, who conducted back-channel talks with Israeli academics some 20 years ago, said the regime has used far too much of the stick against the protesters and not enough of the carrot of political reforms. "One hopes the carrot and stick configuration now will be reversed," he said, "and the reforms will move at a faster rate."
Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, believes it is too late for the Syrian President. "He's already gone over the edge," he said. "I don't see any way back."
Not for Bashar al-Assad, but perhaps for the regime, minus its leader.Report Typo/Error
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I'll give Conor McGregor credit; the Irish bad boy knows how to get his name in the headlines, even while he sits on the sidelines, recovering from knee surgery.
McGregor, though, has a little bit of a misunderstanding going on about himself. He's not quite the best fighter in the world – yet – like he would have you believe.
The hype-train picked up steam after he destroyed Marcus Brimage, and continued on with a fine performance over Max Holloway in which he dominated. But McGregor needs to showcase much, much more before he makes the kind of statements he is already proclaiming.
Or he'll be nothing more than Chael Sonnen.
McGregor referred Cub Swanson as an "old man," says he'll "whip" Cole Miller, "smash" Chad Mendes and "annihilate" UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
Sound familiar? Sonnen made the same remarks about fighters such as Anderson Silva and Jon Jones before exiting the cage with a big "L" on his resume.
If you just heard McGregor's comments, you might think he is only doing a great job of self-publicity, which you can't fault in this day and age of social media and marketing. But McGregor believes his remarks. He lives by them. And this is where he might get himself in trouble.
You can call out all the fighters you want, but you won't have the respect of those challengers if you don't step up to the plate and knock out a home run each time.
That means no decision victories. No extended stays on the sidelines. And definitely no defeats.
McGregor has put so much pressure on himself, that even a small hiccup – which is very easy to see happen in the UFC – will deflate the tires on his express. Dana White and the rest of the UFC brass appear to believe in McGregor, bringing him back with a main event fight in his home country of Ireland, and that should only do more to boost his stock.
Can he smash Mendes like he says? Would he annihilate Aldo? It all starts with Miller, and it needs to be convincing.
By Dana Becker | TwitterTags: cole miller, Conor McGregor, Fight Night Dublin, mma, MMA NEWS, ufc, ufc news

subset: commoncrawl


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When Cypress Equities completes its plan for updating the interior and exterior of Lloyd Center, located in the heart of the Lloyd District adjacent to downtown Portland, Oregon, it will have executed a vision for a comprehensive redevelopment of the historic shopping center.
dd's DISCOUNTS, a division of Ross Stores, will open a new store in downtown Portland on June 28th in a former Ross Dress for Less location.
Ben & Jerry's Scoop Truck is launching a month-long tour in New York City July 1-28 and in Portland, Oregon, July 1-29, giving away free ice cream scoops in an omnichannel promotion.
Cypress Equities, the management company for Lloyd Center in Portland, Ore., has announced that the Center's owners intend to purchase the 130,000-sq.-ft. building currently owned and occupied by Nordstrom.
Cypress Equities, the management company for Lloyd Center, has shared its initial plans for updating the historic shopping center in the Lloyd District adjacent to downtown Portland.
Cypress Equities Real Estate Investment Management has announced the acquisition of Lloyd Center in Portland, Ore.
The city council of Portland, Ore., voted to expand the city's one-year old plastic bag ban, voting 5-0 to phase out plastic checkout bags at an estimated 5,000 restaurants and retailers.
Wal-Mart Stores said that its new store in Portland, Ore., will feature the state's largest green roof.
Office Depot said that its downtown Portland store has been remodeled to reflect a smaller footprint and an environmentally friendly design.
Mall owner DDR Corp. announced that it has acquired its joint-venture partner's 50% ownership interest in two power centers located in Portland, Ore., and in Phoenix.
Brixmor Property Group announced a 11,002-sq.-ft. Dollar Tree recently opened at Pine Tree Shopping Center, in Portland, Maine.
The Maine House on Wednesday voted to effectively repeal the Informed Growth Act, a law that was enacted four years ago to protect Maine's downtown business districts from big-box stores, The Portland Press Herald reported.
Hibbit Sports has opened a 4,000-sq.-ft. store at Northshore Plaza, in Portland, Texas.
Macy's Inc. said Thursday that it will expand its online order fulfillment center near Portland,...
Plymouth Meeting, Pa., ...


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Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.
Big data was one of Frankfurt Book Fair's hottest topics of discussion this year among digital publishing professionals.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute and author of the recent international best-seller Big Data, spoke forcefully about big data's relevance to publishers and the insights they can gain from it during the Contec Conference. He acknowledged the adoption challenges from an organizational perspective but seemed very confident about the future. According to Mayer-Schönberger, it's less a matter of if than of when the publishing industry will meaningfully embrace big data analysis.
Of course, big data is not for everybody; size matters. Small and mid-sized publishers and retailers may not be able to capture enough data to warrant close analysis, to say nothing of the financial, technological and organizational capabilities required to undertake it.
Meanwhile, big publishers, distributors and retailers theoretically benefit from vast economies of scale when it comes to data, but taking advantage of this resource isn't always immediately attainable. The very few that can afford to do so should invest in new big data technologies and bring in technical competences from outside, rather than rely on self-styled technology and data experts on an ad hoc basis. The temptation to wait for others to do it first and defer costs and investment until then is considerable—and often for good reasons.
Innovating with big data technology
Nevertheless, one publishing/distribution group showcased a brand-new approach to big data, showing that long-term thinking can be the key to departing from the waiting-for-others-to-do-it-first attitude and embracing a more proactive one. Vincenzo Russi, Chief Digital Officer of Messaggerie Italiane explained a new methodology for harnessing big data technologies to solve the complex data analysis challenges in short time and at moderate cost.
Messaggerie Italiane is the owner of Italy's largest book distributor; its largest national online bookseller; and the country's third largest book publishing group with an overall yearly turnover of about $620 million. Russi and his team were looking for new sources of information to inform their decision-making process–innovative, efficient techniques to gather data from disparate sources and to cost-effectively convert it into actionable insights.
Russi's ingenious approach actually exploited state-of-the-art big data technologies, practices and methods to address sophisticated (but not big) data analytical challenges that would otherwise have cost ten times the investment and time. By leveraging cost-effective technologies powered by Moore's law, scalable cloud capabilities and stacked services, big data technologies can also be excellent for "small data" analysis from a business perspective, at the same time inducing heavy cost-reductions, shorter time-to-deploy and more engagement of internal users.
Of course, most publishers aren't nearly as big in their primary markets as Messaggerie Italiane is in its own, which means big data analysis is not only out of reach for them but an inappropriate goal to pursue. In fact, it apparently wasn't even the goal of Messeggerie Italiane either; the company just wanted to address sophisticated analyses of "small data" in a more cost-effective manner, by using big-data technologies. Needless to say, the infrastructure they put in place is also capable of running analysis on "big data" too. (But this was not part of Russi's presentation; he has promised to publish a long article on his project very soon on Tisp. Check it out it's available now.)
Data analysis and big data
As Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Chief Digital Officer of HarperCollins, reminded at Digital Book World Conference in January 2014 "big data is a little bit like teenagers talking about how many girlfriends they have."
When it comes down to actually undertaking meaningful data analysis, everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, and therefore everyone claims they are doing it, too.
Note that I'm referring here to data analysis and not big data. Frankfurt gave us the latest proof that many people are still very confused about the distinction between the two. Data analysis and big data analysis aren't the same thing, as I had to explain it during the Q&A of the masterclass on creativity and commerce.
For many stakeholders in today's publishing industry, any serious effort to analyze information beyond a few thousands rows of Excel data still feels like something very big and challenging. Yet that is exactly what many industries have been doing for years. In fact, book retailers and large publishers have been doing it, too.
Many already use database management systems (DBMS) and data visualization tools that allow for complex data analysis that cannot be done using very basic tools like Excel. DBMS don't have anything to do with "big data," even though they handle lots of data.
The simple fact that some forms of data analysis require a larger technology infrastructure and methods that are more sophisticated doesn't mean the data being analyzed is "big." It just means the analysis is somewhat complex.
Here are three key features – among others – that distinguish big data analysis from "just" data analysis (of what we might as well call "small data"):
- Big data typically consists of a very large volume of unstructured data that cannot be handled by standard DBMS or more advanced relational database management systems (RDBMS) or object-relational database management systems (ORDBMS).
- Big data is not only distinguished by the size of databases used to analyze it. The order of magnitude typically is the Exabyte. For your understanding if you stack up 1 Exabyte of SSD memory cards that hold 1 Terabyte each, you will end up with a pile that is higher than Mount Everest (do you really have so much data?). But beyond size, big data analysis is also characterized by the challenges related to the workflow and the effective services delivered to the adopting organization that make the standard DBMS/RDBMS/ORDBMS unfit for the purpose. A big data analysis system needs adequate data-centric processes from capture, ingestion and curation to search, modelling, analysis and visualization, not to mention other critical operations like storage, maintenance, sharing, transfer, security and availability.
- Big data analysis aims to gain the additional information derivable from analysis of a huge set of related data, as compared to separate, smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be identified that suggest business trends. This excludes any hard, divide-and-conquer approach to make size more manageable, as it would lead to fewer chances to spot new trends (In other words, you don't just divide your data into a thousand smaller data sets).
Not only are publishers confused, retailers also seem to mix up big data analysis and advanced data analysis, possibly just for the sake of simplifying communication with publishers. Kobo's new white paper provides very useful insights on ebook reading data analysis, plus concrete examples of how publishers can take advantage of it. However, the white paper misleadingly suggests these strategies are related to big data, while they are actually just innovative analytical approaches to ebook reading data.
These aren't analyses of exabytes of unstructured data at all. On the contrary, the data is very well structured indeed: for any given ebook, there are very interesting statistics to gather on reading behaviors. If you publish a thousand ebooks, you can run a report for these thousand ebooks with dozens of numbers attached to each one. Of course, producing these statistics entails quite a significant effort devoted to first processing the raw data. However, that can usually be accomplished with a divide-and-conquer approach (title by title) and by using a robust ORDBMS infrastructure and services. One just needs to keep track of a few aggregated statistics at title level. If Kobo uses a big data technology infrastructure to handle small data, in a comparable way as Messaggerie Italiane does, they could be more clear about it.
More precise terminology would help reduce the confusion in the publishing industry. Exploiting Kobo's recommended analytical approach is certainly a very good idea for many publishers (I've personally overseen several projects with their reading analytics, and I'm very confident about the insights you can gain. Feel free to reach out if you need advices.), and it would also be useful if other large ebook retailers like Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Google were to offer similar ebook reading statistics and even share their own white papers. But none of that should not be mistaken for big data analysis.
The publishing industry should seriously think about smart data analysis beyond the old good Excel spreadsheet or the simple aggregation/segmentation of plain sales figures on DBMSs. And it should stop fooling itself with a buzzword like "big data" that has a very precise meaning outside this industry. Let's call those practices "smart data analysis" instead (meaning smart analysis with "small data").
After all, the kind of analyses publishers can undertake with less-than-"big" data sets can help most publishers smaller than the Big Five to gain valuable insights and trigger informed data-driven decision-making throughout their organizational structures. That makes "smart data analysis'' a much more widely applicable practice within the publishing ecosystem. With or without big data technologies, the focus shall be smart data analysis, beyond just book-keeping, sales breakdown, growth rates and average prices. Data scientists can do a better job for you than in-house self-styled data experts.
Finally even if truly big data analysis can only be relevant for few big players in the near and mid-terms, the good news is there's space for scalable big data technologies in several organizations. As Messaggerie Italiane has shown, big data technologies and methods can also be exploited to address smart data analysis on small data, while helping organizations improve efficiencies and strengthen their data-driven decision-making. Using scalable big-data technologies appears a very promising and innovative opportunity for more than just the few usual big players. As we used to say, the future cannot be predicted, but it can be invented.
And for those who can't wait and already dream of truly big data today, consider how the Formula One McLaren team became the "McKinsey of Big Data" and what they are doing to manage busy airports like London's Heathrow, oil and gas exploration, drug discovery, healthcare for kids and more.
What does McLaren have to do with books? Absolutely nothing. But Formula One racing had nothing to do with airports, oil drilling, pharmaceuticals and healthcare until just few years ago. The power of big data goes way beyond our present imaginations. Publishing is one of the most creative industries of the world–just think what could happen if we were to successfully integrate publishing and big data
One last thought: in addition to asking Ron Dennis to finally publish his autobiography with you, you might also want to invite the McLaren Applied Technologies team to your headquarters… Or maybe not–let others do it first, right?
Learn more: Get up to Speed on the Latest in Data-Driven Publishing at Digital Book World 2015


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Contained Places
Paso Robles (full name: El Paso de Robles 'The Pass of the Oaks') is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Located on the Salinas River north of San Luis Obispo, California, the city is known for its hot springs, its abundance of wineries, production of olive oil, almond orchards, and for playing host to the California Mid-State Fair.
This area of the Central Coast, known as the City of El Paso De Robles, Paso Robles or simply, "Paso,"[1] is known for its thermal springs. The Salinan Indians lived in the area thousands of years even before the mission era. They knew this area as the "Springs" or the "Hot Springs."
Paso Robles is located on the Rancho Paso de Robles Mexican land grant that was purchased by James and Daniel Blackburn in 1857. The land was a rest-stop for travelers of the Camino Real trail, and was known for its mineral hot springs. In fact, Franciscan priests from neighboring Mission San Miguel constructed the first mineral baths in the area. During this period, Paso Robles began to attract the pioneer settlers who would become the founding members of the community. They would later establish cattle ranches, apple and almond orchards, dairy farms, and vineyards.
In 1864, the first El Paso de Robles Hotel was constructed and featured a hot mineral springs bath house. Today, only three locations (Paso Robles Inn, River Oaks Hot Spring, and Franklin Hot Springs) are left that offer the healing mineral bath hot spring experience which brought famous people like Ignacy Jan Paderewski to Paso Robles.
James and Daniel Blackburn donated two blocks to the city for a public park to be used for the pleasure of its citizens and visitors. By original deed, the land was to revert to the donors if used for any other purpose than a public park. The grounds were laid out by a Mr. Redington and a planting day was held when each citizen set out his own donation. Originally, the whole park was hedged in by a fence of cactus, and in 1890 a bandstand was built with money raised by private theatricals.
In 1886, after the coming of the Southern Pacific Railroad, work began on laying out a town site, with the resort as the nucleus. Two weeks after the first train arrived on October 31, 1886, a three-day celebration was held including a special train from San Francisco bringing prospective buyers, who toured the area and enjoyed the daily barbecues. On November 17, the "Grand Auction" was held, resulting in the sale of 228 lots.
The local agent for the SPR when it arrived in Paso Robles was R. M. 'Dick' Shackelford, a Kentucky native who had come to California in 1853 to dig for gold. Shackelford had a varied career, going from gold mining to hauling freight by ox team, to lumbering, which took him to Nevada, where he served one term as a delegate in the state's first legislature for Washoe County. By 1886 Shackelford had returned to California and was living in Paso Robles, where he began buying up extensive property, building warehouses and starting lumber yards along the railroad's route. Shackelford also established the Southern Pacific Milling Company, which had a virtual monopoly on local milling until local farmers, in an effort to break Shackelford's strangehold, themselves organized their own milling cooperative, the Farmers' Alliance Flour Mill.
In 1889, the same year that Paso Robles incorporated as a city, construction began on a magnificent new hotel. The hotel required over one-million bricks and cost a princely $160,000. The new El Paso de Robles Hotel opened for business in 1891. The new hotel was three stories tall and built of solid masonry, set off by sandstone arches. This ensured the hotel was completely fireproof. The hotel also featured a seven acre (28,000 m²) garden and nine hole golf course. Inside there was a library, a beauty salon, a barber shop, and various billiard and lounging rooms. The new hotel also offered an improved hot springs plunge bath as well as 32 individual bath rooms. The 20 by plunge bath was considered one of the finest and most complete of its time in the United States.
On January 17, 1914, the world's most well-known concert pianist and composer came to the hotel: Ignace Paderewski. After three weeks of treatments at the hotel's mineral hot springs for his arthritis, he resumed his concert tour. He later returned to live at the hotel and bought two beautiful ranches just west of Paso Robles.
During the next 30 years, the hotel was visited by other notables: Boxing champion Jack Dempsey, President Theodore Roosevelt, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Phoebe Apperson Hearst (the mother of William Randolph Hearst), actors Douglas Fairbanks, Boris Karloff, Bob Hope, and Clark Gable all stayed at the El Paso de Robles Hotel. And when Major League baseball teams used Paso Robles as a spring training home, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago White Sox stayed at the hotel and soaked in the mineral hot springs to sooth tired muscles.
For a time, Paso Robles was known as the "Almond City" because the local almond growers created the largest concentration of almond orchards in the world. The ranchers in the outlying areas were very important to the Paso Robles area. On these ranches were cattle and horses, grain crops (primarily wheat and barley), garden produce and fruit and nut orchards. Many of these ranch lands and orchards have become vineyards for the many wineries which currently draw tourists to the area.
To show their appreciation to the ranchers, the business people established Pioneer Day in October 1931, which is still a huge annual celebration. Pioneer Day is celebrated every year on the Saturday prior to October 12. It was originally organized by community volunteers working with generous donations of time, materials and money from individuals, businesses, churches and service organizations. Their goal was to provide a day of community friendship and a commemoration of the heritage of the Paso Robles area. It would also become a day set aside to say "Thank You" to all of the people who support the business and professional community of the area throughout the year. Most businesses closed so that their employees could enjoy and participate in the activities and family reunions. There were to be no charges for any of the events, no commercial concessions and lunch would be provided at no cost.
In December 1940, a fire completely destroyed the "fire-proof" El Paso de Robles Hotel. Guests staying the night escaped unharmed. However, the night clerk who discovered the fire suffered a fatal heart attack immediately after sounding the alarm. Within months after the blaze, plans for a new hotel to be built on the site were drawn up. The design was an entirely new concept: A Garden Inn – Hotel, designed to accommodate motor vehicle travellers. By February 1942 construction was complete and the new Paso Robles Inn opened for business.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, the City of Paso Robles experienced significant growth. The area's wine industry flourished, the California Mid-State Fair expanded into a regional attraction, and local lakes, such as Lake Nacimiento, became family vacation destinations.
The waters
As far back as 1795, Paso Robles has been spoken of and written about as "California's oldest watering place"—the place to go for springs and mud baths. In 1864, a correspondent to the San Francisco Bulletin wrote that there was every prospect of the Paso Robles hot springs becoming the watering place of the state. By 1868 people were coming from as far away as Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, and even Alabama. Besides the well-known mud baths, there were the Iron Spring and the Sand Spring, which bubbles through the sand and was said to produce delightful sensations.
In 1882, Drury James and the Blackburn brothers issued a pamphlet advertising "El Paso de Robles Hot and Cold Sulphur Springs and the Only Natural Mud Baths in the World." By then there were first class accommodations—a reading room, barber shop, and telegraph office; a general store, a top-of-the-line livery stable, and comfortably furnished cottages for families that preferred privacy to quarters in the hotel. Visitors could stay in touch with the rest of the world, as there were two daily mails, a Western Union telegraph office, and a Wells Fargo agency with special rates for guests. As the springs became more and more a destination of the well-to-do as a place to go to socialize, the original purpose of the springs—to heal—became peripheral.
The bathhouse was erected over the sulphur spring in 1888, with a plunge and thirty-seven bath rooms. In the following year, work began on the large Hot Springs Hotel, (today the Paso Robles Inn), which was completed in 1900 and burned down 40 years later. Since the privileges of using the baths were restricted to guests of the hotel and many sufferers of the ailments the baths cured could not pay the rates of the fashionable hotel, a few businessmen in Paso Robles made arrangements with Felix Liss for the right to bore for sulphur water on a lot which Liss owned. A sulphur well was reached, a bath house built and baths offered at an affordable rate of twenty-five cents. The establishment was later offered to the City and is currently the site of the Municipal Pool.
The wine
Paso Robles' growth industry—wine—has a long history with the area. Wine grapes were introduced to the Paso Robles soil in 1797 by the Spanish conquistadors and Franciscan missionaries. Spanish explorer Francisco Cortez envisioned an abundant wine-producing operation and encouraged settlers from Mexico and other parts of California to cultivate the land. The first vineyardists in the area were the Padres of the Mission San Miguel, and their old fermentation vats and grapevine artwork can still be seen at the Mission, north of the city of Paso Robles.
Commercial winemaking was introduced to the Paso Robles region in 1882 when Andrew York, a settler from Indiana, began planting vineyards and established the Ascension Winery at what is now York Mountain Winery. When York purchased the land, it was primarily apple orchards, with a small plot of wine grape vines. York found that the climate and soil were more suitable for vineyards and he expanded the vineyards. Within a few years, he found that the vines were yielding more than he could market, prompting him to build a small, stone winery.
Following Andrew York's early success in the wine business, Gerd and Ilsabe Klintworth planted a vineyard in the Geneseo/Linne area in approximately 1886. They were licensed to sell jugs of Zinfandel, Port, and Muscatel, as well as some of the area's first white wine made from Burger grapes. The Casteel Vineyards in the Willow Creek area were planted just prior to 1908. Casteel wines were stored and aged in a cave cellar. Cuttings from the old vines provided the start for other vineyards, still producing in the area today.
As the popularity of wines began to grow, so did the Paso Robles wine region. Lorenzo and Rena Nerelli purchased their vineyard at the foot of York Mountain in 1917. Their Templeton Winery was the area's first to be bonded following the repeal of Prohibition.
The early 1920s saw a flurry of winemaking activity when several families immigrated to the area to establish family vineyards and wineries. Sylvester and Caterina Dusi purchased a vineyard in 1924. The old head-pruned Zinfandel vines are now owned and cultivated by their son, Benito. The Martinelli, Busi, Vosti and Bianchi Winery vineyards were also established around this time.
The Paso Robles wine region gained more notoriety when Ignace Paderewski, the famous Polish statesman and concert pianist, visited Paso Robles, became enchanted with the area, and purchased . In the early 1920s, he planted Petite Sirah and Zinfandel on his Rancho San Ignacio vineyard in the Adelaide area. Following Prohibition, Paderewski's wine was made at York Mountain Winery. The wines produced from grapes grown on Rancho San Ignacio went on to become award-winners. Paso Robles' reputation as a premier wine region became firmly established as a result of this and later successes, and through to the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new generation of vineyard pioneers came forth and flourished in the Paso Robles area.[2]
San Simeon earthquake
At 11:15am PST on December 22, 2003, an earthquake, known as the San Simeon earthquake, struck about North-West of Paso Robles. The quake registered a magnitude 6.5 on the Richter Magnitude Scale, and caused two deaths when the roof slid off the clock tower building, a popular landmark in downtown Paso Robles. The dormant underground springs that had once been used for the spa were brought back to life by the quake, causing flooding and a large sinkhole in the parking lot of the city hall and library. Due to lengthy environmental and engineering considerations, it took until December 2010 for the sinkhole to be filled and the parking lot resurfaced. Paso Robles has dedicated a new clock tower in memory of the two women who died on that day.
Research Tips


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CEF and QoS
Does anybody have a good reference to explain why many QoS features require CEF to be enabled, and how the two interact? I've seen the Cisco doc:
But this only tells you *when* it's needed and not why. I'm interested to know about how the entries in the FIB must be used to determine how packets are marked up and queued.
If anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful!


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Arizona Christian took second place at the Cal-Pac/GSAC Unaffiliated Grouping Women's Golf Tournament that took place at Antelope Hills Golf Course in Prescott, Arizona, April 14-15. The Firestorm were led by Mary Driscol, who finished in second place individually with a scores of 76-76-83—235 on the 71-par course.
Biola also competed in the tournament and placed fifth out of six teams. The Eagles were led by Amanda Hobbs, who finished in a tie for 5th with scores of 76-82-86—244.


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Barneys New York: Women's City Carving Ring by Sevan
I don't think you win the keys to the city if you achieve #Olympic #gold status . . . but this ring would be a smashing (if none-too-subtle) substitute souvenir. Watching and waiting for @ApoloOhno to have more than one golden moment at the upcoming #Vancouver Games . . .
This guy was clearly a pirate in his former life. But now he is enjoying a second life as a striking, jewel-encrusted cocktail ring. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, baby!Tags: jewelry, diamonds, skull, fine jewelry, Halloween, cocktail rings, ruby, oxidized silver, octoberAdded 6 Years Ago from Max and Chloe


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Sydney, Jan 15(ANI): Cricket Australia (CA) would look after young fast bowler Mitchell Starc, who is suffering from bone spurs, during a grueling tour of sub-continent and back-to-back Ashes, just like India took care of quick Ishant Sharma.
Starc has an impingement at the front of his right ankle, which is manageable at the moment but serves as a sign that the joint is under stress when it flares up, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Starc had spurs removed from the same ankle two years ago, an operation that requires about three months' recuperation.
The belated revelation that Starc is bowling in pain was central to coach Mickey Arthur's fierce attack on critics of the rotation policy, after an almost unrecognisable Australian one-day team's humbling loss to Sri Lanka in Adelaide on Sunday, the paper said.
The decision to delay Starc's surgery is similar to the calculated risk taken by India with Sharma, who carried bone spurs through last summer's four-Test series in Australia, the paper added.
The injury flared up during the series and he endured a difficult tour, managing just five wickets at 90.2 before having surgery to remove the impingement, followed by a three-month recovery period, it further said.
Glenn McGrath missed a whole Australian summer after having two operations to have spurs removed from his ankle in 2003-04 and there are precious few gaps in Australia's schedule to allow Starc enough time to have surgery, recover and build up his bowling workload again.
If Starc had the operation now then he would miss the four-Test tour of India but could get fit in time for the Ashes, the paper concluded. (ANI)


text:
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Casa Loma is a gated community that offers professional service, value and comfort. At this property you can enjoy the lush landscaping, our beautiful sparkling pool and the on site community laundry room. Casa Loma is also a pet friendly community.
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text:
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/7/2002 (5508 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
But the women -- and they are all women -- who bring their pies, breads and cookies fresh to the Homecraft and Junior Fair don't really care what the public sees. On judgment day, two days before the fair opens, they arrive with Tupperware containers and covered trays filled with their still-warm efforts.
And then they wait as a team of trained judges, all of whom live outside Morris, decide who's got the best buns. With a blue or red ribbon, they've got bragging rights for a year. The judges do a blind testing, looking for superior taste and texture.
"They look at it, smell it and taste it," says Diamond. "They just take a little bite."
No mixes are allowed, not that any woman worth her bundt cake recipe would consider such a thing.
"It feels good to win," says Cindy Diamond, co-chair of the Homecraft Fair. "I think I'm a pretty good cook. It's nice that some other people agree."
Diamond, who entered for the first time this year, is being modest. The full-time mom, who also helps with the family's team of sled dogs at home west of Rosenort, nabbed a stack of ribbons at this year's competition. That's her prize-winning Manitoba fruit pie, her bread machine bread and her carrot cake. She also picked up ribbons for a child's angel Halloween costume, a fancy purse she sewed for her wedding, a table runner, a wall hanging and a dress.
There's a $2 entry fee for each item but kids can enter the junior section free. The skills demonstrated are nothing short of astonishing -- 37 different homecraft (generally baking) sections, 22 sections of canning and 24 seniors' categories.
In some categories, winners get more than a ribbon. Diamond takes home a knife, recipe book and a pair of "well-needed" oven mitts for her winning bread.
"I'm just an ordinary person," says the mother of two. "Other people do lots more. I wish I had more time. I don't do canning. I do freezer jam, though."
The hall is filled with the best offerings of women who were Martha Stewarts long before the famous blonde told them it was a good thing. Their mothers put up food and sewed and hand-stitched and passed the skills onto their daughters. It was the way things were done and, at least out in the country, that way hasn't been forgotten. "This is something we all do as a family," says Diamond. "My daughter Caitlyn entered in 30 categories."
Eleven-year-old Caitlyn's fudge won first place. Her mom, who entered her own fudge into competition as a child in her hometown, beams. Her five-year-old son also entered chocolate chip cookies but didn't pick up a ribbon this year. It's no surprise that the Diamonds don't have a computer at home and television viewing is limited to an hour a night.
The men aren't totally left out. Some men entered the photography section, Diamond says, but that was about it for male influence in the Homecraft Fair. This is a traditional place filled with the efforts of women comfortable -- no, proud -- of the skills they have mastered.
"I think we're all glad we learned this," says Diamond. "It's not really about winning prizes. This is something you do for yourself, for your family. This is something we enjoy doing together."


text:
Wheelie bin roadshow dates announced
***May 1 update – edited with extra Brandwood locations and some altered times***
Residents of Brandwood and Harborne have the chance to learn more about the wheelie bin pilot schemes coming to their streets during a roadshow tour which starts next week.
From May 6 to June 1, the council will be staging a series of events across the two wards to field questions and ensure citizens are fully prepared for the roll out of the bins.
Deliveries of the bins are due to start in Brandwood on the week commencing May 27, while bins will start being distributed in Harborne on the week commencing June 10. Bin collections will begin in both wards a week after delivery - meaning the roadshows come at an ideal time for people to learn more about the scheme.
Cllr James McKay, Cabinet Member for a Green, Safe and Smart City said: "The plans to introduce wheelie bins are coming along well, and they'll give Birmingham cleaner streets and a waste collection service we can afford. This series of events is a great way for people to learn more about the improvements to the way in which we collect their waste.
"The feedback so far has been encouraging, so this offers everyone in Brandwood and Harborne a chance to see the bins for themselves and ask any questions that they may have.
"We know that refuse collection is one of the most important universal services that we provide, so we are keen to ensure we keep residents updated on every step we take to modernise our refuse collection services, and make them affordable going forward."
The roadshow timetable is as follows:
Brandwood Ward
Monday 6 May - Sainsbury's, 1059-1061 Alcester Road South, B14 5TN (1pm to 5pm)
Tuesday 7 May – Cocks Moor Woods Leisure Centre, Alcester Rd South, King's Heath, B14 6ER, (10am to 12pm)
Tuesday 7 May – One Stop Stores, 305 Broad Lane, King's Heath, B14 5AF (1pm to 4pm)
Wednesday 8 May - Manningford Hall, Manningford Road, B14 5TJ (10am to 12pm)
Wednesday 8 May – Car wash onWoodthorpe Rd, B14 6EQ (1pm to 4pm)
Thursday 9 May – Druids Heath Library, Idmiston Croft, B14 5NJ (10am to 1pm)
Thursday 9 May - St Bede's Church, Bryndale Avenue, B14 6NG (4pm to 8pm)
Friday 10 May – Elim Pentecostal Church, 159 Allens Croft Road, B14 6RP (10am to 12pm)
Friday 10 May - Dell Meadow Centre, Bells Lane, B14 5RY (1pm to 4pm)
Saturday 11 May - Sainsbury's, 1059-1061 Alcester Road South, B14 5TN (11am to 5pm)
Harborne Ward
Monday 27 May - Lord Mayor's Show, Victoria Square and Chamberlain Square, B1 1BB (11am to 5pm)
Tuesday 28 May - Harborne Library, 193 High Street, B17 9QG (10am to 1pm)
Wednesday 29 May - St Germain's Church,180 Portland Road, B16 9TD (2pm to 6.30pm)
Thursday 30 May - Harborne Pool and Fitness Centre, Lordswood Rd, B17 9QS (10am to 4pm)
Friday 31 May - Harborne Library, 193 High Street, B17 9QG (1pm to 5pm)
Saturday 1 June - Harborne Pool and Fitness Centre, Lordswood Rd, B17 9QS (10am to 4pm)
For more information please contact Kris Kowalewski on 0121 303 3621


text:
Worker Flows and Job Flows in Danish Manufacturing, 1980-91
The authors map turnover of workers and jobs in Danish manufacturing over the 1980 to 1991 period, using information about all individual manufacturing plants. They examine the relation between worker flows and job flows and the authors study separations from, and hires to, existing jobs (replacement hiring) in detail. Their results reveal large heterogeneity among workers as well as plants, even adjusting for the level of job flows. The cyclical properties of worker reallocation point to worker-flow dynamics being driven by workers quitting in upturns to find better jobs, rather than by plants upgrading the labor force in recessions.
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Volume (Year): 108 (1998)
Issue (Month): 451 (November)
Pages: 1750-1771
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text:
Life Insurance for Seniors Over 70 in Menlo Park, CA
Term Life insurance is a terrific method to ensure that your hard work is managed and your valued member of the family are taken care of for many years ahead. Life insurance for seniors is available, yet it is essential to contrast rates as well as discover the ideal fit.
Is It Feasible to obtain Life Insurance if You Are Over 75 in Menlo Park, CA?
Popular sorts of life insurance for the elderly
Term life insurance for seniors:
This policy is good for elders that intend to secure their loved ones for a specific variety of years. It could be cheaper than other plans, particularly for senior citizens in good health. Since senior citizens are living longer, it's not uncommon for an individual in their 60s to acquire a 20-year-term life insurance policy plan.
Permanent life for baby boomers:
This kind of life insurance is normally extra expensive yet will certainly last for the rest of your life. Part of the premium you pay obtains invested with the goal of making more cash for your beneficiary.
Guaranteed life insurance for seniors:
With this policy, you possibly will not need to undergo a physical exam, which makes it an excellent option for seniors with health problems. Your recipients may just get the full amount of your survivor benefit if the plan is active for a variety of years prior to you die (typically two or 3 years).
Cost of life insurance policy for senior citizens in CA
Both term and also irreversible life insurance plans are available for senior citizens, no matter age. There are some limitations when it comes to getting term life insurance policy All life insurance policy firms have actually a cut off duration for term life insurance policy plans, which could vary from business to company. After this cut-off point, term life insurance might not be available to you, yet you can common discover specific sorts of permanent plans and also annuities.
For most individuals, term life is the most effective alternative. You choose the term length as well as the plan pays a death benefit to your beneficiary if you die throughout the term. You would certainly acquire term life to cover income substitute during your working years or for the years extending home loan settlements.
Some people are simply as well old to get term life insurance quotes, yet the age limitation for elderly life insurance policy could be more than you assume.
See exactly what seniors in Menlo Park need to understand when picking or transforming a life-insurance policy, consisting of benefits as well as premiums.
Life insurance policy could reduce monetary worries that come up later in life. You might worry that your partner or grown kids will experience financially after your death. As soon as taken unneeded or also pricey, life insurance for senior citizens has come to be a crucial and also sensible method to secure your family and also their long-lasting economic goals.
Reasons senior citizens in Menlo Park, CA purchase life insurance policy.
1) You desire a second life insurance policy to give added insurance coverage.
2) Your previous term plan expired.
3) You retired and also lost group life insurance policy from your company.
4) Your youngsters or grandchildren might gain from financial assistance after your death.
5) You fret about lowered Social Safety or lost pension funds for your partner.
Loan from a life insurance policy plan is payable instantly and also is typically tax free, which suggests your enjoyed ones or other beneficiaries could swiftly obtain the full amount of your life insurance plan.
Some ways beneficiaries can use your life insurance payment
Without a life insurance policy payout, your beneficiaries might need to sell off possessions or obtain loan to pay your debt or other expenses. With your death advantage, your beneficiaries can pay:
1) Funeral expenses
2) College tuition
3) Estate tax
4) Costly medical costs
5) Daily living expenses
If you pass away suddenly, your family members might be responsible for some major expenditures, especially if you don't live insurance coverage to assist carry the burden. Life insurance is an outstanding means for seniors to secure their family members from ending up being financially strained with end of life expenses.
An additional benefit life insurance for seniors is that a plan will certainly help connect the void which can happen for the survivor getting Social Safety and security advantages. As many survivors uncover, it requires time to modify the Social Protection advantages and also begin getting assistance. Life insurance benefits are paid through a round figure payment and are typically non-taxable, so the recipients could use the proceeds as they pick or need.


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Tuesday, September 18th 2007
Team Fortress 2 Beta Now Available on Steam
The beta of Valve's Team Fortress 2 is now playing on Steam for gamers who pre-purchased The Orange Box through Steam. In Team Fortress 2 players choose from a range of unique character classes such as medic, spy, sniper, or engineer and must work together to complete a variety of tactical objectives. The PC edition of The Orange Box - which also features Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, as well as the complete Half-Life 2 series - is now available for pre-purchase via Steam through October 10th for 10% off the $49.95 regular price.Source: Steam
7 Comments on Team Fortress 2 Beta Now Available on Steam
i've waited all day and night yesterday (germany) and then the beta was opened only minutes before i had to leave for work. there i'm sitting now and can't concentrate....
tell me guys. should i stay or just go home?
tell me guys. should i stay or just go home?
Go home and have fun all night. :)
cool, i got the black box wit meh 2900,
*goes off to play :)
*goes off to play :)
i've managed to get me a copy... seems vaguely amusing so far, i'm more interested in episode 2.
Bird of Prey
Im just not a huge fan of this series at all, it doesnt hook me like it does some. However, my friend will be very anxious to hear about this, he has been waiting for awhile.
mandelore said:How the hell did you get to play the beta!? O WAIT NEVERMIND!!! STEAM IS DECRYPTING MY FILES NOW!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOT i'll SEE YOU IN THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :toast: :toast:
cool, i got the black box wit meh 2900,
*goes off to play :)
OMG! TF2 is beautiful! I'm playing 1920x1200 Full graphics and the motion blur is purfect! This is one of the best looking games I've ever played! Can't wait until the full release!


text: Pest Inspections – with many years of extensive experience in the industry, we are confident that we can deliver top-quality services around your home, offices, commercial and industrial spaces. We offer professional property inspections using thermal imaging complete with reliable inspection reports.Pest Control – our licenced and insured pest technicians provide general pest control and treatment. We eliminate ants, cockroaches, fleas, possums, silverfish, spiders, and termites. We also offer preconstruction treatments, reticulation, termite treatments, termite baiting system and birds control.


text:
Dimension Films will hold exclusive late night screenings on "Grindhouse" in thirteen U.S. cities a day earlier from its theatrical debut on April 6, 2007.
Delightful news has come out from Dimension Films' pit concerning "Grindhouse." Sure will bring joy to horror fans all around the States, the studio has announced that the anticipated flick will have exclusive late night engagements one day before its official opening date on April 6, 2007.
The exclusive screenings of the movie, however, will be held in thirteen U.S. cities only as they begin on April 5. Included in the list are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
A double feature within a single release, "Grindhouse" consists of Robert Rodriguez-directed zombie flick "Planet Terror" and slasher picture "Death Proof" helmed by Quentin Tarantino with several faux trailers made by Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, and Edgar Wright. The film, however, will be split in two in non-English speaking countries as "Grindhouse: Planet Terror" and "Grindhouse: Death Proof" instead.


text:
by Jiing-Feng Lirng, Po-Shan Wang, Hung-Chieh Chen, Bing-Wen Soong, Wan Yuo Guo, Hsiu-Mei Wu, Cheng-Yen Chang
A broad spectrum of diseases can manifest cerebellar ataxia. In this study, we investigated whether proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) may help differentiate spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA) from multiple systemic atrophy- cerebellar type (MSA-C).
This prospective study recruited 156 patients with ataxia, including spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA) types 1, 2, 3, 6 and 17 (N?=?94) and MSA-C (N?=?62), and 44 healthy controls. Single voxel proton MRS in the cerebellar hemispheres and vermis were measured. The differences were evaluated using nonparametric statistic tests.
When compared with healthy controls, the cerebellar and vermis NAA/Cr and NAA/Cho were lower in all patients(p<0.002). The Cho/Cr was lower in SCA2 and MSA-C (p<0.0005). The NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr were lower in MSA-C or SCA2 comparing with SCA3 or SCA6. The MRS features of SCA1 were in between (p<0.018). The cerebellar NAA/Cho was lower in SCA2 than SCA1, SCA3 or SCA6 (p<0.04). The cerebellar NAA/Cho in MSA-C was lower than SCA3 (p<0.0005). In the early stages of diseases (SARA score<10), significant lower NAA/Cr and NAA/Cho in SCA2, SCA3, SCA6 or MSA-C were observed comparing with healthy controls (p<0.017). The Cho/Cr was lower in MSA-C or SCA2 (p<0.0005). Patients with MSA-C and SCA2 had lower NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr than SCA3 or SCA6 (p<0.016).
By using MRS, significantly lower NAA/Cr, Cho/Cr and NAA/Cho in the cerebellar hemispheres and vermis were found in patients with ataxia (SCAs and MSA-C). Rapid neuronal degeneration and impairment of membrane activities were observed more often in patients with MSA-C than those with SCA, even in early stages. MRS could also help distinguish between SCA2 and other subtypes of SCAs. MRS ratios may be of use as biomarkers in early stages of disease and should be further assessed in a longitudinal study.


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I am in Ithaca for a conference honoring a distinguished scholar. This conference began — as many do — over an evening of drinks and informal chat as we awaited the proceedings that would commence today. After the usual introductions (this includes assurances that one has met before — which is likely among historians, even if neither of us is sure where we met) folks got down to the business of launching conversations and extracting wine from cunning banks of mechanical dispensers.
One topic was the prevalence of cheating among college students. Specifically we discussed this article in the New York Times (9/26/2012) in which students at Stuyvesant, a prestigious New York public high school, opened up to a reporter about how they cheat and why cheating is necessary to academic success. Read it and weep.
I think our group would have agreed with a letter writer in today's paper who noted:
What I find so disturbing is not that students cheated. It is the rationalization, utilitarianism and entitlement used to justify their actions. I fear that this is something that children don't outgrow. Instead, it lays the foundation for a Faustian bargain with far more dangerous consequences.
Word. What I find more disturbing is how many adults in the article made excuses for student cheating, blaming it on the admittedly pointless regime of testing that students are exposed to, a regime that replaces learning with memorizing $hit you need to know for the test. This undoubtedly plays a role, but are we really ready to make an argument that cheating is a form of resistance, particularly when it is done with the specific goal of being admitted to a selective college?
Faculty at Stuyvesant don't seem to think that cheating should hold a student back — or at least, that's what the students who were interviewed think. In one case, a student caught cheating was not turned in because she had already been admitted to an Ivy League school (did the teacher ever wonder how the student got the grades that achieved that result?) "[In] general, [Stuyvesant] students said that harsh discipline was not the norm and that many teachers were so understanding of the pressure students faced that they would hand out lighter punishments for cheating."
How did we reach a consensus that cheating is an appropriate way to deal with academic stress? If so, why is it appropriate? And what are the consequences of making cheating integral to the culture of excellence? Imagine if Nixon had explained the Watergate break-in by telling us he was really stressed out about the election.
The recent cheating scandal at Harvard is a great example of privileged students who blame everyone but themselves. 125 Harvard students have claimed that it was the fault of the exam, the TA's and the professor that they cheated on a government course that was, itself, a notoriously easy course. Selective school curricula are larded with such courses, what we used to call "guts" in New Haven. They are a kind of sub-curriculum of easy A's and even easier B's designed to bolster the GPAs of the medical and law school bound and keep the descendants of George W. Bush from flunking out. Show me a Phi Beta Kappa recipient and I'll show you a student with a nose for gut courses.
In any case: the press reports on said government course suggest that there may have been problems with it, but these allegations (made by students) are not based on any journalist having access to the readings, assignments or lectures. The real problem appears to be that, easy as the course was, it wasn't easy enough. Students who expected to be able to do well (perhaps even get an A) without attending class or discussion sections were soon disappointed.
The teaching evaluations, according to the New York Times (8/31/2012), were
filled with seething assessments, and made clear that the class was no longer easy. Many students, who posted anonymously, described Dr. Platt as a great lecturer, but the guide included far more comments like "I felt that many of the exam questions were designed to trick you rather than test your understanding of the material," "the exams are absolutely absurd and don't match the material covered in the lecture at all," "went from being easy last year to just being plain old confusing," and "this was perhaps the worst class I have ever taken."
OK, so Stuyesant students cheat so they can get to Harvard; and Harvard students cheat so they can go to — Harvard Law?
I would like to point out that, while I do not lack empathy, it is difficult to me to summon it up for students who have been given the keys to the kingdom and have decided that they are so meritorious that they are no longer required to work as other do to maintain their privilege. This strikes me as particularly strange since all the students around them aren't cheating.
Recently, a professor at another prestigious school resigned after plagiarism surfaced during a tenure review. Some students at this institution apparently blame the college for a pattern of unethical behavior on the part of the author that, as it turns out, had been initiated at least as far back as graduate school. This article in the college's newspaper argues that the scholar plagiarized — extensively and repeatedly — because s/he was not working in a "safe and understanding place" where people feel "comfortable coming forward with their academic problems."
It should be noted that the scholar has never made this claim, has taken complete responsibility, and chose resignation rather than appealing the case. Hence, one suspects that the students who wrote and were interviewed for the article were actually writing about themselves.
The above accounts suggest that cheating counts as normal behavior for students in our most prestigious schools, a narrative that is bolstered by adults who anxiously wonder why good kids turn bad. (Few speculate about what happens to the kids who don't cheat and, as a result, get the thin envelope from Fancy Public High and Ivy U.) Even critical accounts of cheating scandals seem to go out of their way to privilege student explanations about why cheating is a reasonable response to unfair expectations imposed upon them by teachers, by college admissions committees, by parents, or by the hyper-competitive atmosphere of the school (that they themselves chose to attend.) This is the equivalent of an athlete explaining that s/he was "forced" to dope because everyone else was doping (cycling) or because other athletes are getting better results through conventional, legal training and this evens the playing field.
Absent from many of these account is any speculation about the longterm consequences of normalizing cheating, or when the students plan to stop cheating. I would love to see a study, based on interviews of convicted felons in the financial industry, politics, athletics and other high-status professions. I would like to see narratives that describe in detail when their cheating began and specifically, if and why they cheated in school. Did Bernie Madoff begin his contemptuous treatment of others as an ambitious boy who saw no reason why his progress should be inhibited by a test he hadn't studied for?
When a student begins cheating s/he may believe that it is a temporary measure, but confirmed cheaters may be those who believe that they really are more deserving than other people and shouldn't have to prove it. Others may be students who dig themselves in so deep that they no longer have confidence that their work can compete with other students' work. Many of the students quoted in the Stuyvesant article seem to have created a new ethical framework in which some classes and teachers deserve cheating behavior, and others do not. Becoming a self appointed review committee, students claim to have shifted honest study and examination habits to the classes that they have decided they value.
But what makes them think that, because they affirm it, that any of us believe that they don't cheat in all their courses? After all, they are admitted liars and cheaters.
A bigger question about cheating is — how does this play out in the life beyond school? Can a person cheat and ultimately be successful? Is it ok for students to decide what is and is not worthwhile for their education and still succeed in a world where other people ultimately make the rules?
I would say no. I have seen at least one manuscript submitted for a tenure review that was plagiarized, and I am far from the only one. A loose thread in a tenure or promotion review, pulled slightly, reveals more plagiarism in other published work, and sometimes a plagiarized dissertation. (I occasionally read a story where someone several decades into a career is discovered to have submitted a dissertation, written by someone in, say, German, and translated it into English.) Depending on how you feel about such things, what happens is either a tragic story or just desserts, but the point may be that early short cuts and undetected cheating meant that this person never actually learned how to do the research and writing required to make a career as a scholar.
Academics sometimes continue to function surprisingly well in the classroom despite having cheated their way through these milestones, perhaps because they are great readers. But how about the Stuyvesant student mentioned in the New York Times who didn't think it was worth her while to memorize the periodic table? Will s/he ever learn the self-discipline to complete such a task? And do you want an ER doctor who passed anatomy tests, not by memorizing the parts of the body, but by cheating? Who has to look up which one of your facial nerves might be compromised by a particular procedure?
We tend instead to focus on the here and now, and particularly the competition for admission to elite schools. One argument is that students cheat because the testing regime implemented in the last decade has been so punishing, and competition for coveted spots in good schools is increasingly based on the results of such tests. I don't disagree: as Chris Hayes has pointed out, the meritocracy is in crisis and this is but one symptom. Even secondary teachers are cheating on standardized tests (often led by the principles who fear that undoctored tests will force a school to close.)
But this knowledge should lead to critique and reform — not assuming that cheating among elite students is something for which we should muster empathy, and not assuming that only school is corrupted by such cheating. When a person cheats — whether it is faking research in the lab, cribbing primary material from another person's book, collaborating on an exam in a way that the professor did not think to prohibit — that person is not learning.
And nowhere in either of these articles about elite schools can I find that conversation.


text:
included mailroom clerk at the Guggenheim Museum and guard at the Museum of Modern Art, and, later, the American Museum of Natural History. During this period, Flavin made important art world contacts and produced mixed media collages that included found objects from the streets, especially crushed cans.
(continue to Early Work and Icons)
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Copyright © 2008 National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC


text:
Women and Body Image
As women, we all want to look and feel our best.
This is not always easy, considering the busy life today's woman leads and the
many responsibilities she may have. It can be tough to find time for exercising
and eating right, not to mention controlling stress! Sometimes women can feel
pressured to look and feel a certain way. We live in a culture that
puts much emphasis on physical appearance. Developing and nurturing a positive
body image and a healthy mental attitude is crucial to our happiness and
wellness, as we move through the different stages of our lives.


text:
BWW Reviews: Molotov Theatre's Intimate Take on EXTREMITIES Does Not Shy Away from Challenge
William Mastrosimone's intense play Extremities may have premiered off-Broadway over 30 years ago, but the questions it considers are also all too relevant today. Certainly, there have been no shortage of television series, movies, magazine articles, and the like that explore the effects of a sexual assault upon women and society in general. They consider the issue from a variety of angles - what would motivate someone to do it (at both a social and psychological level), what are the impacts of such an experience on the victim, and what justice 'looks like', as well as several others.
Yet, this play - now receiving a production from the ambitious Molotov Theatre Group in an intimate, bare bones black box theatre in trendy Adams Morgan - examines the problem in a slightly more nuanced and complex way. Focusing on the grey areas rather than the black and white, it brings attention to the fact that perception is everything and there are truly no easy or singular answers to explain why someone might engage in sexual assault and how it should be dealt with.
The play begins like any play about a rape attempt might. Marjorie (Sherry Berg), scantily-clad in a silk robe and lingerie, is at home alone in her secluded farmhouse near a highway. She leaves the door slightly ajar as she kills a wasp and a man, dressed in work clothes (Ray, played by Alex Zavistovich), enters her home and asks for "Joe" and to use her phone. An initial attempt to coax him to leave fails and he makes sexual advances. Yet, after an initial struggle, the table turns. Suddenly, Marjorie has the control - spraying raid in his eyes and tying him up, placing him in the fireplace ready to burn him. As she begins to dehumanize her attacker (referring to him as 'animal') and disassociates herself from the situation, she takes on a seemingly new persona (as does Ray). When her roommates Terry and Patricia come home (Jennifer Osborn and Alexia Poe, respectively), there are some difficult decisions to be made and many points of view - including what really happened in the farmhouse before their arrival, who is at 'fault,' and how/why the man came to the house - are shared as to what to do or not do with the man.
The powerfully dramatic story is far from clear-cut and Michael Wright's exceptionally perceptive direction highlights the ambiguity of the situation. The attention to detail - both in terms of the acting and the staging - is also noteworthy. Wright's professional group of actors - led by the equally creepy and convincing Berg and Zavistovich who give transformative performances - are more than up to the challenge of doing justice to the dark material. Uncomfortable, in-your-face, honest, and realistic, there is not one bit of false acting on stage, including in the difficult fight scenes (expertly choreographed by the multi-talented Zavistovich).
Although Osborn and Poe have less stage time, both prove adept at subtly letting us know their character's backstories in mere moments, which illuminates why they do what they do. Poe, dressed in business wear, is appropriately rational given her character's job as a social worker, focusing on the need to compassionately deal with the situation in the way that's best for all involved. Osborn, as the slightly more flighty roommate with her own experience with sexual assault, is equally convincing as she wears a flirty, sunny flowered dress and shows off her colorfully painted nails.
Using only minimal effects designed by Zavistovich - aerosolized spray that's used as a weapon and makeup to demonstrate the injuries resulting from that spray - to the utmost advantage, the production does not rely on any unnecessary gimmicks. Instead, the focus is rightly on the power of Mastrosimone's words and the actions of each of the characters. The quiet moments in the first few and final moments of the play are just as powerful as the more explosive middle section. Matt Vossekuil's subtle lighting design nicely enhances the power of the final few moments in particular.
This is a play that deserves to be seen and Molotov certainly does it justice and then some. Incidentally, as my first experience with a Molotov Theatre Group production, I can't wait to see what the company does next.
Running Time: 85 minutes with no intermission.
Extremities plays through November 3, 2013 at the DC Arts Center - 2438 18 Street, NW in Washington, DC. Tickets ($25) are available online.
Graphic: Courtesy of Molotov Theatre Group website.


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Olay Age Defying Body Wash Reviews
EhIt's alright I guess but I find it almost imposible to use, the bottle is set up in a way that it's rediculously hard to get any of the product out, or maybe it was just MY bottle but seriously if your going to make a body wash this thick then it might be a good idea to idk... add a pump or something. The smell is alright but not one I'm too fond of and it lathers up nice but doesn't last long (neither does the scent), all in all it's just a body wash... nothing impressive. — 7 years, 4 months agoBon_Bon | 522 reviews
This review is: Helpful | Not helpful | Inappropriate | 0 of 1 people said helpful
Age Defying FormulaThis is a great formula for those looking to smooth wrinkles and soften your skin. The body wash has a light scent and goes on in a great lather. It leaves your skin soft and you'll notice smoother lines and a soft glow after just a few uses. — 9 years, 1 month agoStef42678 | 500 reviews
smells kinda yuckii dont know what it is but this bw has a yucky smell to it. it does moisturise like it says, but the smell is unforgivable. my sister bought this same wash and said the same thing, it feels good but there's this lingering unpleasant smell to it. smell before you buy it, maybe you wont hate it, although its not to expensive so i guess you wont be out too much money if you do. — 9 years, 3 months agocorizotti | 550 reviews
This review is: Helpful | Not helpful | Inappropriate | 3 of 3 people said helpful
not my favI had a coupon for a free bottle, and ended up not using more than 1/3 of it. it still sits in my cabinet — 9 years agomeadowwood1 | 413 reviews
Soft skinI love the way this body wash makes my skin feel - soft, softer and softest. I recommend! — 9 years, 2 months ago23Amber | 146 reviews
Don't Like The Smell...Can't exactly put my finger on what it is about the scent of this that does not agree with me, but I really don't like the smell of this much. Oil of Olay Body Washes are way up there on my HG list, but this one is unfortunate in my opinion. I'd love for them to put the age defying effects into one of their other body washes, like Quench or my personal favorite, Ultra Moisture. — 2 years, 1 month agoSomeGeekyGirl | 116 reviews
Like this!I use this in our household. It moisturizes and does not leave skin dry and itchy. Also, you don't have to clean up the soap bars no one to throw away. — 3 years, 3 months agoSallye | 9 reviews
It's alrightPros: Smells pretty good like Eternity perfume I love the smell the best of this product. Makes skin soft for temporary about time. Age defying: Yes somewhat Cons: Makes your skin feel bit irritated or a bit itchy sometimes. — 4 years agoUggie | 6 reviews
Love it!For years I've had to use a body lotion after my shower or else my skin would feel dry and tight. That was until I used this. I didn't notice until I'd used it for about a week, but suddenly I noticed how soft and smooth my skin looked and felt. I no longer need body lotion (more money in my pocket). I also love the scent and have had no problems with the packaging. I'll definitely keep a supply of this on hand! Thanks Olay!! — 5 years, 2 months agoanatevka | 5 reviews
This review is: Helpful | Not helpful | Inappropriate | 1 of 1 people said helpful
Love itAfter 3 days could tell a big difference in my skin,it is very soft . am going to use it all the time. — 8 years agolisaeloise | 1 reviews
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My Reasons for Reporting This


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Gwyneth Paltrow converts to Kabbalah. Who saw that coming?
Gwyneth Paltrow wore a Kabbalah bracelet to the premiere of her new movie Two Lovers last night, and seriously, is anyone surprised? I'm pretty sure Gwyneth will do at least one, if not all, of the following things in the coming year:
- Steal a child from an African village. Call it "adoption."
– Divorce her British husband.
– Have sex with Hispanic men regardless of age, marital status.
– Sleep for 1,000 years in a sarcophagus only to awaken and lay waste to civilization by wearing fishnet stockings on her really gross legs.
Ah, peer pressure. I knew that shit would kill us.
Photos: Splash News, WENN


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Cumberland football coach Donnie Suber announced the signing of 13 players to scholarship papers this week for the 2014 season, including area products Dakota Self, Coleton Thomas and Jeff Benson.
Benson was a three-year letterwinner for coach Thomas McDaniel at Oakland High School in Murfreesboro. He was named the team's Lineman of the Year as a senior and played in the Toyota East/West All-Star Game at the conclusion of the season.
Benson also won an award for Dedication in the Weight Room as a junior. He has also lettered four years in wrestling and was a state qualifier as a sophomore and junior, recording 27 pins last season and reaching the 100 career win plateau this year. He is the son of Becky and Jeff Benson, Sr.
Self was a four-year letterwinner for coach Gavin Webster at Watertown High School, garnering All-District 8-A honors as a junior and senior. He was named the squad's Special Teams Player of the Year as a junior and Defensive Player of the Year as a senior, recording 100 tackles with three fumble recoveries and six sacks this season.
He registered 84 tackles with three tackles for loss and three fumble recoveries as a junior and collected 64 stops with three sacks and 11 tackles for loss as a sophomore. Self added 389 rushing yards and 486 receiving yards in 2013 and had 324 yards on the ground and 476 receiving yards as a junior for the Purple Tigers. He is the son of Donnie and Christine Self.
Thomas played for coach Sam Harp at Lebanon High School and was named the team's Defensive Lineman of the Year as a senior. He is the son of Terry Thomas and Karen Baker.
Eli Ironside hails from Hillgrove High School in Powder Springs, Ga., where he was a First Team All-County and All-State selection for coach Phil Ironside, former Middle Tennessee quarterback. He was named the 6A Offensive Player of the Year by the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association and the Marietta Daily Journal Offensive Player of the Year. Ironside posted a 22-3 mark as a starting quarterback, amassing 2,600 passing yards and 41 touchdowns for the Hawks. He is the son of Phil and Latashia Ironside.
Florence, Ala., native Drake Tyler started 20 consecutive games at Florence High School for coach Jamey Dubose and the Falcons, earning Most Improved Offensive Player as a senior. He also lettered in track and field during his career at FHS.
Jalen Jackson lettered his senior year for coach Matt Daniel at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., earning All-Region accolades. He also participated in the D.L. Scott Coalition East-West All-Star Game and has lettered one year in baseball for the Patriots. He is the son of Delois and Jeffrey Jackson.
Chandler Peeples, another Heritage product, lettered three years at HHS, garnering All-Region and All-Area honors. He played in the D.L. Scott Coalition East-West All-Star Game and the Florida-Georgia All-Star Game and was a Georgia High School Assocation Preseason Academic selection and a four-year scholar-athlete. He is the son of Molly Peeples and Gene Peeples.
Donovan Norfleet also was a three-year letterwinner for coach Daniel at Heritage, earning All-Area and All-Region accolades for the Patriots. He participated in the D.L. Scott Coalition East-West All-Star Game and was a two-year school-athlete as well. He is the son of Kevin and Antoinette Norfleet.
Newman, Ga., native Weylin Orr was a three-year letterwinner for coach Ahmand Tinker at East Coweta High School in Sharpsburg, Ga. He rushed for 1,164 yards and 14 touchdowns and collected 10 receptions for 64 yards while garnering All-Region accolades for the Indians. He is also a four-year letterwinner in track and field at ECHS.
Ladarius Rodgers earned All-Region honors for coach Nick Nester at Lake Cormorant High School in Lake Cormorant, Miss. He also lettered in track at LCHS and is the son of Kelvin and Regina Jackson.
Winter Haven, Fla., native Deveonte Mackey was a three-year letterwinner for coach Dan Talbot at Lakeland Senior High School in Lakeland, Fla., garnering Honorable Mention All-Region honors for the Mighty Dreadnaughts. He is the son of Dennis and Gloretha Mackey.
Brendan Lodrigue was a football letterwinner for coach Tim Driscoll at Munford High School in Munford, Tenn., and is the son of John and Samantha Lodrigue.
White House native Wyatt Bailey was an All-District and All-County selection for coach Jeff Porter at White House High School. He also lettered in wrestling for the Blue Devils and is the son of Bill and Laura Moore.


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Prosperity 101: Education equity
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Ever since the National Academy of Engineering released its watershed report on globalization, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," in 2005, conventional wisdom has held that there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, and that American students are falling behind in math and science.
Ever since the National Academy of Engineering released its watershed report on globalization, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm," in 2005, conventional wisdom has held that there is a shortage of U.S. engineers, and that American students are falling behind in math and science.
A new study published by the Washington-based Urban Institute challenges those assumptions, arguing that U.S. math and science test scores are in fact better than previously thought. Its most controversial finding, however, is that there are plenty of U.S. engineering graduates but too few jobs. That assertion was challenged during a recent debate on the report's conclusions, held at the Urban Institute.
Regardless of the debate's outcome, the Urban Institute's study will likely serve as a lightning rod, as policy makers decide how to implement legislation to maintain U.S. competitiveness, a subject EE Times explores in-depth this week (see page 1).
If nothing else, the latest research on math and science education raises vital issues about the current state of U.S. engineering education, and where and how to commit limited budget resources.
A growing part of the U.S. education debate is about equity. Some observers believe that too much attention has been paid to students at the tip of the education pyramid, and not nearly enough to those in the middle or at the bottom. The issue of equity must be addressed so that the widening gap between the poor, the uneducated and the more privileged American students can be closed.
Not only must America's education gap be closed, but today's workers must be retrained. Life-long learning is likely the only way many of us will be able to hang onto our jobs and prosper in our careers. Proposals to establish "life-long learning accounts" designed to help fund retraining efforts should be an integral part of the implementation of the America Competes Act enacted by Congress and signed into law by President George Bush.
Education is the key to innovation, and innovation will generate wealth that will keep the U.S. economy strong and competitive. The issue of equity in education must therefore be resolved in the ongoing debate over the state of American engineering education. The failure to do so could mean the end of America's unprecedented post-War prosperity.
As one Chinese-born engineering professor now teaching at George Washington University told last week's conference at the Urban Institute: "In 50 years, I don't worry about China. I worry about the United States."


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In this section, you may find new materials that have been published on the topic of The water we eat since the date of the event. We continually select major new publications and articles that add up to the policy points discussed in the briefing.
– IWMI Release Research on Agricultural Water Use and Adaptation in Africa
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), 23 March 2014
Working with national partners in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, WorldFish, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the University of Osnabruck have released the results of an examination of climate change adaptation in food production in the Chinyanja Triangle. After project completion at the end of 2013, researchers have presented their results to stakeholders in the region, recommending improved water allocation and management strategies.
According to WorldFish, the research project, titled 'Enhancing Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change Impacts through Well Managed Water Use for Aquaculture Integrated with Small Scale Irrigation in the Chinyanja Triangle in Africa,' aimed to equip farmers with skills and knowledge they needed to improve water management.
The project has identified a number of shifts in agricultural practices in response to climate-related changes. As weather becomes less predictable, local communities have embraced fish farming and small-scale irrigation. In response to reduced rainfall, farmers are increasing water storage and not draining their ponds for longer periods of time. Communities endowed with more land have also begun to trade with communities with more water resources.
– EU Foreign ministers promote 'water diplomacy'
EurActiv.com, 23 July 2013
At the EU foreign Affairs Council held on 22 July in Brussels, foreign ministers from members states underscored that tensions over access to water are likely to rise in the next decade and could endanger stability in many parts of the world. Especially climate change and demographic developments were seen as aggravating the situation.
– IWMI Evaluates Agricultural Water Storage in Africa
International Water Mangement Institute (IWMI), 19 July 2013
Agricultural water storage is expected to contribute to climate change adaptation in Africa by mitigating climate variability, according to an International Water Management Institute (IWMI) research report. The report proposes a diagnostic tool for evaluating the need and effectiveness of water storage options, including aquifers, large reservoirs, natural wetlands, ponds, soil moisture and tanks.
The report, titled 'Agricultural Water Storage in an Era of Climate Change: Assessing Need and Effectiveness in Africa,' outlines the results of applying this diagnostic tool to sub-Saharan Africa, in particular the Ethiopian portion of the Nile and Ghana's Volta Basin.
– 'Green' Approaches to Water Gaining Ground Around World
Inter Press Service, 21 January 2013
After Hurricane Sandy swept through the northeast of the United States late October 2012, millions of New Yorkers were left for days without electricity. But they still had access to drinking water, thanks to New York City's reliance on protected watershed areas for potable water.
– Dossier on the right to water
Youphile.com, March 2012
Several articles related to the subject- "right to water access"


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fab is a software build utility for Linux/Unix systems featuring integrated dependency discovery. Its goal is to provide reliable builds, optimally organized for parallel and incremental execution, with a minimal set of dependencies provided by the programmer.
A tool for securing DNS communications between a client and a DNS resolver.
A polyhedral extraction tool (PET).


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Home > Mercy News > Mercy Medical Center earns Chest Pain Center re-accreditation
Published on February 22, 2012
Mercy Medical Center is pleased to announce it has earned full Chest Pain Center Accreditation with PCI from The Society of Chest Pain Centers (SCPC), an international not-for-profit organization committed to improving timely, quality care for cardiac patients. The PCI designation stands for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, which means not only did Mercy meet the standards of a chest pain center but has also succeeded in meeting additional quality measures and volume of patients that needed to have a stent inserted emergently because of a heart attack.
Mercy was the first hospital in Cedar Rapids to earn Chest Pain Center Accreditation, in 2008, and is one of just six hospitals in the state to attain this most recent distinction.
To earn the re-accreditation, Mercy had to meet or exceed a wide set of stringent criteria and complete an on-site evaluation with SCPC. Mercy's re-accreditation means the hospital has achieved a higher level of expertise in dealing with patients who arrive with symptoms of a heart attack.
"Earning the Chest Pain Center re-accreditation recognizes Mercy's commitment to quality, standardized and evidence-based care. While it is an exciting accomplishment to earn re-accreditation, the real beneficiaries are our patients," says Dr. Matthew Aucutt, Medical Director of Mercy's Emergency Department.
To become an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Mercy engaged in rigorous evaluation by SCPC for its ability to assess, diagnose, and treat patients who may be experiencing a heart attack. This means that processes are in place at Mercy that meet strict criteria aimed at:
"People tend to wait when they think they might be having a heart attack, and that's a mistake," says Dr. Cam Campbell, Medical Director of Mercy's Cardiovascular Services. "The average patient arrives in the emergency department more than two hours after the onset of symptoms, but what they may not realize is that the sooner a heart attack is treated, the less damage to the heart and the better the outcome for the patient."
Mercy's state-of-the-art healthcare encompasses the entire continuum of care for heart patients and includes such focal points as dispatch, Emergency Medical System, emergency department, cath lab, quality assurance plan, and community outreach programs. By once again becoming an Accredited Chest Pain Center, Mercy has enhanced the quality of care for cardiac patients and has demonstrated its commitment to higher standards.
Heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the United States, with about 600,000 people dying annually of heart disease. More than five million Americans visit hospitals each year with chest pain.


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Tools -> Prefernces -> Database
You can set your login.sql here.
Now, when SQL*Plus starts up, it looks for a global login script called glogin.sql in the $ORACLE_HOME/sqlplus/admin directory. If found, this script will be executed.
Thereafter, SQL*Plus will try to find a local login script called login.sql in the directory where you start sqlplus from, alternatively the directories listed in the SQLPATH environment variable. When found, sqlplus will execute it. Here's my login.sql for SQL*Plus
define gname=idle
column global_name new_value gname
select lower(user) || '@' || substr( global_name, 1, decode( dot, 0, length(global_name), dot-1) ) global_name
from (select global_name, instr(global_name,'.') dot from global_name );
set sqlprompt '&gname> '
and when I login to sqlplus, I get this.
SQL*Plus: Release 126.96.36.199.0 Beta on Mon Nov 21 11:05:58 2011
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Release 22.214.171.124.0 - Beta
Obviously, in SQLDeveloper, this won't mean anything as prompts are not there, however, the variables you set and the column formats, titles, pagesizes etc, will be preserved.
For example, in our login2.sql list in the preferences above, we set a couple of column settings and for fun, lets set the prompt variable too.
As shown above, we now have a login.sql defined in the preferences. When we make a connection, the login.sql will be run and any settings will be applied to the database. We will also hold onto any SQL*Plus variables defined so they can be used in any worksheet that is started using this connection.
Now, we are connected, any worksheet created on that connection will have the context of the original script.
Lastly, you can also set your worksheet name to be a substitution variable as well
set worksheetname &gname
which will swap you default worksheet name to your connection credentials shown above.


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First timer - which ship to choose
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Candice R
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Syracuse NY
Posts: 148
I have to agree with Jim... For husband and I ship is the "excursion" for us. We are planning a cruise on Freedom in December 2012 (1st sun of Dec.) To be quiet honest I can NOT remember where we are going.. Look at cruise ticker..we are going there again(if it shows). We did a 4 night cruise through Disney. It was great but for your 1st cruise I would recommend min. Of a week. Pretty much all ships are pretty big and 4 days may not be long enough to do everything that is offered on ship (activities for kids and adults, and places to eat). We have only done Freedom through RCCL so I am no help when it comes to other ships.
What we do before every cruise(next year will be our 3rd) is we do a park before hand..RCCL works with Universal Studios. All transportation will be taken care of. And for us our RCCL reservation # was our reservation # for universal. just thought I would throw that out there for the kids ( and for those adults who are still kids, like us).
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Pizza Inn (PZZI) is an old pizza chain that operates more than 310 restaurants domestically and internationally. In June 2011, Pizza Inn opened a new quick serve pizza concept called Pie Five Pizza which has breathed new life into the company and the stock price.
Pie Five introduced the concept of quick serve pizza to the pizza market. A customer gets to choose a 9" thin or classic pan pizza, a sauce, and a variety of toppings. The pizza then goes through a small conveyor oven and is ready in less than five minutes. This fast casual concept for a pizza received one of the "Hot Concept" awards from the Nation's Restaurant News.
This concept has recently attracted attention of some restaurant industry veterans. In March the co-founder of Stonewood Grill & Tavern entered into a franchise agreement for 10 locations in Florida, and in April the former CEO of Applebee's entered into a franchise agreement for 10 locations in the Kansas City area. Since these agreements were announced, the stock price has almost tripled. I think this provides an excellent opportunity to short the stock if you can find shares available to short.
The fast casual concept works great for Chipotle (NYSE:CMG) but there is a lot more competition for pizza than there is for fast casual tacos/burritos. You can get a much larger Pizza from Dominos (NYSE:DPZ), Papa John's (NASDAQ:PZZA), or Pizza Hut (NYSE:YUM) for just a few dollars more than the $6.49 price for Pie Five's pizza. There are also buffet alternatives like CiCi's pizza and other regional buffet chains that offer all you can eat pizza for the same price as Pie Five. In addition, all four of the pizza chains mentioned have much larger advertising budgets than Pizza Inn and have been offering very competitive pricing for the last several years. I don't see any competitive advantage that Pie Five has over these chains.
This can be seen in Pizza Inn's financial results. In the last three quarters, Pizza Inn has reported flat revenue growth (Q3: 10.65 million, Q4: 10.87 million, and Q1: 10.55 million). Gross profit margin has declined each quarter (Q3: 20.28%, Q4: 16.28%, and Q1: 15.83%) and net income has declined each quarter (Q3: +0.05 million, Q4: -0.10 million, Q1: -0.12 million). Pizza Inn's financial results have been getting worse since Pie Five has come online.
Pizza Inn is set to report Q2 results in the next few days and unless they report stellar results, I expect a sharp correction, especially considering the stock price has tripled in just a couple of months. In addition, Pizza Inn recently filed a shelf registration to sell up to 3 million dollars worth of common stock. This is less than 5 percent of its current market cap but stock dilutions are usually priced at substantial discounts to the current market price and the stock price usually falls to the offering price or below in a short amount of time.
Pizza Inn has developed an interesting concept in Pie Five but awards and franchise agreements do not correlate to profitability. I think the 300% gain since the franchise agreements have been announced provide a perfect opportunity to short the stock. Subpar Q2 results and the shelf offering should bring the stock price back down to earth.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.