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Naomi Watts made a fashionable appearance at the star-studded Salt premiere last night with two gorgeous additions– partner Liev Schreiber, and a brand new hair cut! Naomi's new stick-straight hair was draped over her collarbone and styled with long side-swept bangs. "It was quite a change for Naomi," said her hairstylist, Robert Vetica, who created a look that referenced 60's British pop and a soft, natural, Studio 54 vibe. The stylist cut off two inches but left Naomi's locks longer in the front and higher in the back. "They were first cut long and blunt, then razored and texturized to about the bridge of the nose so they looked lighter around the face," says Vetica, who achieved Naomi's silky smooth finish with Argan oil-infused Moroccanoil Light. Although we often see the striking blonde star pushing a stroller through Soho in sneakers and a casual ponytail, the actress proved she certainly knows how to glam it up on the red carpet, pairing her new do with a metallic strapless Gucci mini dress and a black-and-white Neil Lane diamond cuff and ring.–Jessie Goldberg


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Versace Essence Emotional Perfume by Versace, Launched by the design house of versace in 2000, versace emotional is classified as a sharp, gentle, floral fragrance . This feminine scent possesses a blend of fresh fruits and flowers, with lower notes of amber and aromatic woods. It is recommended for casual wear. All products are original, authentic name brands. We do not sell knockoffs or imitations. ... Read More
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History and background of Versace. Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy, on December 2, 1946. After an apprenticeship at his mother's dressmaking business, he began working as a freelance designer. At age 25, Versace was creating prêt-à-porter collections for top fashion houses of the time, including Genny, Complice and Callaghan. Read more about Versace
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It wasn't easy, but we've selected four new columnists for the editorial page.
The field of entries for North State Voices was slightly smaller this year, but the quality was outstanding. That made it tough on the 11-person selection panel. Of the 30 people who entered the competition by submitting two sample columns, 18 received at least one vote. (Each judge gets four votes.)
The winners:
* Julie Anderson-Nilsson, a Chico State University graduate and mother of three who has taught and coordinated programs in elementary schools for 24 years.
* Gil Davies, who is 82 and says he has lived "an adventurous life." He is retired from the U.S. Forest Service, has visited more than 20 countries and has spent time traveling in a motor home.
* LaDawn Hall, a Chico native who has left a few times, "but I always manage to find my way back." She has a credential to teach English and works for a marketing company doing writing and editing.
* Joanna O'Hanlon, who was raised in Oroville and moved back there after completing college a little more than a year ago. She works for a local church. She notes that in the past five years, she has lived in four cities on two continents, moved 11 times and visited 18 countries. She has a few stories to tell.
You'll get to know them better starting in January. North State Voices appears on the editorial page each Thursday.
I need to thank the other 10 who spent many hours judging the entries. They included current community columnists Eric Miller and Lily Loughlin; readers Jennifer Callas, Jill Resk, Sid Leube and Dave Kilbourne; and newsroom employees Leila Rodriguez, Tang Lor, Ashley Gebb and Mary Nugent.
And thanks especially to the 30 people who entered. There were so many thoughtful submissions this year. All of the judges mentioned how difficult it was to choose only four. I encourage everyone who entered to try again next year. Many were close, and we'd like those voices to get heard, too.
** *
As our new contributors will discover, the life of a columnist can be glamorous — but not nearly as glamorous as the life of a newspaper editor. Let me offer a brief illustration.
The storm last weekend killed our computer system, so I went down to the office to provide CPR. With help from our resident propeller-head, Ray Kirk, most of the important things started working again — except for the computerized weather station.
Ray headed home to watch the end of his beloved 49ers game. (Odd, but I think he was a Raiders fan till the 49ers started winning again.) Since I don't care about football, on account of being a Chargers fan, I stayed behind to fix the weather station.
It showed the daily rainfall total to be 0.05 inches, and I knew darn well that more than an inch had fallen. So I grabbed a ladder and headed to the back forty, where our weather station sits in a grass field, surrounded by a locked fence. The field was now a lake.
First my boots, then my socks, soaked through before I even reached the rain gauge. The gauge is about 10 feet up in the air and resembles a little birdbath with a hole at the bottom. The basin catches the rain and funnels it into the gauge. When I climbed up, I found it was indeed a birdbath — because the basin was full of water. The hole at the bottom was clogged with bird poop. Apparently, little tweetie birds would sit on the side of the gauge on a sunny day, look around and poop.
So there I was, on a cold Sunday, at the office, with drenched socks, scooping bird poop out of the rain gauge so that our rainfall totals in the newspaper would be correct.
Glamorous indeed.
That explains why the rainfall totals were off for a few days. We adjusted by using National Weather Service totals from a nearby gauge for the first two days of December. It's correct now in the newspaper. And as soon as I can convince the computer to change the monthly rainfall total, it will be correct online.
The computer thinks it is smarter than me, but I will prevail.
David Little is editor of the Enterprise-Record and Oroville Mercury-Register. His column appears each Sunday. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow him on Twitter, @ER_DavidLittle.


text: OverviewBack to top Tera's Whey - Whey Protein rBGH Free Wolfberry - 1 oz. Item# :103209UPC# :850628002241 Brand:Tera's Whey Size/Form:1 oz. Servings:1 Dosage:1 Packet Flavor:Wolfberry Teras Whey - Whey Protein rBGH Free Wolfberry - 1 oz. Packet (30 g.) change your life : change the World. Tera's Whey uses REAL Wolfberries - also known as Goji berries - which have been a staple of traditional chinese medicine for thousands of years. Carefully cultivated in inner Mongolia. Armed with nutrients and antioxidants. Small berry, big taste, impressive superfruit power. Tera's Whey Products: Contain ingredients that are sourced from sustainable family dairy farms and from stewards of endangered ecosystems around the world. Contain 20 grams of protein per serving - the recommended serving by MDs and nutritionists for people with health and recovery issues as well as for optimal post-excercise recovery. 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We make teraswhey from raw whey from small local cheese plants in Wisconsin that get their milk from small family farms. Some of our owners are farmers, some of our cheese plants are small cooperatives owned by farmers. This means we always know where our raw whey is coming from and so do you. How we ManufactureWe built the only plant in the US that batch processes, which is what makes it possible for us to be the ONLY plant in the country that makes organic cow, r-bgh free cow, and goat whey proteins for use in nutritional supplements. In fact, as far as I know, we're the only plant in the world that does what we do. We take in different types of whey, keep them segregated, use a cool temperature ultra filtration process to separate the whey protein from the other components in raw whey, then concentrate and dry the protein. Certifications Doing it ourselves means we have complete control over our production process. We don't just say we use a cool process to preserve the quality of the protein, we actually do it, each and every day. While other supplement companies are resisting new industry regulations that will require them to be FDA inspected, we are routinely inspected by the FDA, USDA, DATCP, MOSA (our Organic Certifier), and Rabbinical certifiers. We are a certified supplier to an infant formula company, a private certification process that requires the most rigorous quality control standards of any certifier by far. All of this means that you can feel completely confident that the protein in teraswhey has not been denatured and is always the highest quality possible. Why 80% Protein Concentrate Not 90% Protein Isolate When we designed our plant, we made a conscious decision to minimize the amount of processing we would subject our raw whey to when making our product. More processing of whey has the benefit of increasing the amount of protein from 80% to 90%, and for some applications, that additional 10% protein is critical. However, in order to consistently add the additional 10% protein to meet the isolate standard, it is necessary to subject the protein to additional washing or to a process called ion exchange. Both approaches take out more of the beneficial companion products that are an important part of the health benefits of whey, things like lactoferrins and immunoglobulins. Because we wanted to make our products naturally holistically healthy, we decided to focus our process and our products on whey protein concentrates. What's in Tera's Whey and What's Not There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings about what whey protein is, what's in it naturally, what's not in it naturally. Then there is the added complication of what different companies add to their whey proteins to achieve different functionality. The result is that the average whey protein consumer has a hard time sorting things out and people ask a million questions. The diagram below represents what happens to the various components in milk as it becomes whey protein. Tera's Whey contains: Complete branch chain amino acids in a very bio-available form. Trace minerals and beneficial companion products such as lactoferrins and immunoglobulins. teraswhey contains more of these naturally occurring compounds to preserve more of the holistic healthy properties of whey. No casein. Casein is the milk protein in cheese. Any trace amounts that remain in the raw whey are removed in our microfiltration process. No butterfat- It's in the cheese. We remove any remaining fat in our process. Trace amounts of lactose. All whey proteins, even isolates, have trace amounts of lactose remaining in them. Typically the amount found in isolates and 80% whey protein concentrate products are so small that they are tolerated by people with lactose intolerances. teraswhey contains 1g per serving. People who are lactose intolerant should not use cows milk to hydrate teraswhey. No gluten. Gluten comes from wheat and could only appear in a dairy product like whey protein powder through environmental contamination. We lab test our whey proteins to make sure that they remain gluten free. No MSG. Monosodium glutamate is a flavor additive that can be covered up on a product label by calling it a "natural flavor". Our products do not contain MSG, nor is it a naturally occurring substance in whey protein. There are no guidelines for labeling products MSG free. No added sugar. No fillers. No artificial flavors or colors. No hormones, steroids, or any other additives. Why the interest in whey?An Italian expression, popular around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "Allevato con la scotta il dottore e in bancarotta" meaning "If everyone were raised on whey, doctors would be bankrupt"! After reading about the health benefits of whey described here, you will see that these Italians were definitely on to something! What is whey?Little Miss Muffet was likely our first introduction to whey. Aside from that, what do we really know about whey? This is important to know because it helps us to understand its health benefits. Whey is the pale yellow liquid that remains once the major milk protein, casein, and cream are removed from milk. Once the water is removed from the whey liquid, what remains is largely composed of protein and minerals. It is this composition of protein and minerals that make whey such a valuable food source. The most common forms seen in dietary supplementation are whey protein concentrate and isolate. Whey protein isolate contains ninety percent or more protein and little to no fat or lactose. Why include whey and food lore? As our society becomes more health conscious and aware of the importance of lifestyle factors contributing to our own personal well-being, the idea that what we eat influences not only how we look but how we feel and even how resilient we are to disease is becoming more and more mainstream. Whey protein as a food supplement and health aid goes way back, beyond its use of increasing muscle mass in body builder's in the last few decades, back to the proliferation of "Whey houses" in Western Europe during the 1800s which drew in patients with a wide range of illness from intestinal ailments to arthritis. People in Turkey and Russia valued the whey beverage as a health elixir. Nowadays, people are looking to incorporate so-called "Super Foods" into their diet for a variety of reasons including better health, vitality and longevity. Whey protein is considered one of those super foods. Whey is valued for its high protein content, immune system strengthening properties, weight management properties and diabetes control properties, cardiovascular health effects and soothing effects on the gastrointestinal system or your gut. Below I will describe how whey is able to accomplish these improvements and why different animal sources of whey may be more suitable for some people. Source of Protein Necessary for all Body Function:As a source of protein, whey is one of the best forms available because it contains all of the essential amino acids (protein building blocks), which makes it a complete protein. Athletes do well with this type of protein because it allows them to put on muscle more quickly than other forms of protein. More specifically, whey protein is a rich source of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), containing the highest known levels of any natural food source. BCAAs are important for athletes since unlike the other essential amino acids; they are metabolized directly into muscle tissue and are the first ones used during periods of exercise and resistance training. Whey protein provides the body with BCAAs to replenish depleted levels and start repairing and rebuilding lean muscle tissue. Whey is also a good source of protein for people who wish to decrease their meat consumption because of its cholesterol and fat content or vegetarians who wish to eliminate meat from their diet. The fact that it contains little to no lactose makes it tolerable to most people that are lactose-intolerant. Most people with allergies to dairy protein (typically casein) are not usually allergic to whey protein (remember the casein has been removed). Additionally, children, picky eaters or people who may not be getting adequate amounts of protein in their daily diet have aa easy way to get protein with whey protein powder since it can easily be mixed into smoothies or other food items. Immune Enhancement:Immune system functioning is improved by eating whey protein because it is high in a particular amino acid called cysteine that is involved in producing glutathione in the body. Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant and is very important to the immune system. Glutathione is used to treat toxicity, acne, cancer, HIV, allergies, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, hepatitis, liver dysfunction and more. Obesity and Diabetes Control: People looking to lose weight and balance their blood sugar do well by adding whey protein to their diets. Whey protein contains higher levels of the amino acid leucine than milk, egg or soy protein. Leucine serves to preserve lean muscle tissue and promote fat loss. In addition, whey protein makes us feel full and satisfied because it releases two hormones, cholecystokinin and GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide)-1, which tells our body that we have eaten enough. Research has shown that whey proteins have an insulin promoting effect (via GIP) so people looking to control their diabetes through dietary changes may do well to incorporate this protein in their diet. Balances Body Chemistry for Optimal Functioning:Whey protein contains high levels of two very valuable minerals and electrolytes, bio-organic (food potassium) potassium and bio-organic (food sodium). Electrolytes are required to keep our bodies pH balance nearly constant. Sodium and potassium are the primary electrolytes responsible for maintaining a specific pH. Second only to breathing and keeping a heart rhythm, the most important metabolic function our bodies perform is maintaining its acid/alkaline balance. Potassium aids in muscle integrity, protein metabolism, kidney function, water retention, heart irregularity and calcium deposition. Research has shown that potassium may help lower blood pressure. The role of bio-organic sodium is described next. Improved Digestive Function: Chronic indigestion, intestinal inflammation and irritation, constipation, ulcers and other stomach and/or intestinal disorders are often signs that bio-organic sodium (food sodium as opposed to table salt which is highly processed) is deficient in the body. How does this work? Well, reserve supplies of sodium are stored in joints, ligaments, and lymph fluid, but principally in the walls of the stomach and small intestine. This makes the tissues of the stomach highly alkaline which is absolutely critical because it must withstand the hydrochloric acid normally produced in the stomach. If not for the presence of sodium in the tissue, the acid would eat up the stomach wall. Acids are produced in the body by eating certain foods, stress and mental strain. Increased acid in the body requires sodium to be taken from the sites mentioned above (stomach wall, joints, ligaments and lymph fluid) to neutralize this increased acid contribution. The body will draw from the sodium reserve in the stomach and if necessary the joints and ligaments as well. In this way, whey protein has more buffering capacity than over-the-counter antacids! Cognitive Function:Whey is high in the amino acid L-tryptophan, (think turkey and sleepiness) which may be helpful with improving cognitive function in stressed individuals and has been shown to help with sleep disturbances. Bone Density:Whey protein improves the body's ability to absorb calcium (known as bioavailability) and is helpful in the prevention of osteoporosis. The health benefits of whey protein are many. We are offering different animal sources of whey protein which may be indicated for certain individuals. Read about the health benefits of other sources like goat to see if you may want to incorporate other types of whey into your diet!


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January 10, 2013
On the Beat
A Change in the Process
The result of this year's Hall of Fame voting was a disappointment to so many people on so many levels. It was a disappointment to the fans, especially those of such players as Craig Biggio and Jack Morris, who both seemed to stand a good chance of receiving the minimum 75 percent of the vote needed to gain election. It was such a disappointment to people inside that game that both Commissioner Bud Selig and Players Association Executive Director Michael Weiner were compelled to release statements. It certainly had to be a disappointment to the merchants and residents of Cooperstown, who count on the induction ceremony to generate a large amount of revenue for the village. And, despite putting up a brave front, it had to be a disappointment to Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson because induction weekend plays a large part in supporting the non-profit foundation.
Being one of the 569 people who took part in the Hall of Fame voting this year, I feel kind of guilty to have let so many people down. However, not to pass the buck, it is guilt by association rather than anything I did wrong. I checked nine names on my ballot, more than in any of the other 14 elections that I participated in, and did not shy away from players who have been tied to PEDS, such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
Despite the uproar over the voting results that were announced Wednesday—I was afraid the great Casey Stern was going to have a stroke live and on the air on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM—I still believe the Baseball Writers Association of America should continue to be the solo proprietors of the Hall of Fame voting. However, I also believe it is time for the BBWAA and Hall of Fame to reform the process.
The requirements to be eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame are that someone must either be, or had been, a member of BBWAA for 10 continuous years. There is nothing wrong with that on the surface, but there is a problem once you dig deeper and find that a number of 10-year members haven't written about baseball regularly for years. Furthermore, some haven't stepped foot in a ballpark in years and others don't even follow the game anymore. They continue to vote because they see receiving a ballot every December as a status symbol.
The BBWAA has spent a great deal of time in the last year in examining its rolls in an effort to weed out those who it feels no longer meet the guidelines for admission to the association. With that in mind, it is time for the BBWAA to begin weeding out the list of Hall of Fame voters. The association needs to figure out a way to make sure the right people are voting on the highest individual honor that a baseball player can ever receive.
Secondly, the BBWAA and the Hall of Fame need to change the rule in which members of the electorate can vote for no more than 10 candidates in a given year. The 10-man limit was never an issue for me before but it was this year. While I stopped at nine, there were 15 players to whom I gave strong consideration. The ballot will become even more crowded next season when Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent, Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina, and Frank Thomas become eligible for election for the first time. The limit should be raised to at least 12 players, and perhaps 15.
To say the Hall of Fame voting process is broken is too strong of a statement. However, it is need of some repairs, which can be made with a little bit of willingness to change a system that has been in place since 1936.
Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez is scheduled to have left hip surgery next Wednesday, which is a rather unique way for A-Rod to celebrate my birthday. It will be the second time Rodriguez has had hip surgery, as he had the right one repaired during spring training in 2009. Rodriguez returned to action in May that season but won't be back until after the All-Star break this time because of the torque placed on the left hip when he rotates it during his swing.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has downplayed the idea that Rodriguez's career could go into further decline following this surgery. Perhaps that is wishful thinking, since Rodriguez has five years and $114 million left on his 10-year, $270-million contract and the Yankees have been acting like a small-market team in their quest to reduce their payroll to under the $189-million luxury tax threshold by 2014.
One American League scouts says he doesn't see the Yankees getting much of a return on the rest of their investment in Rodriguez. The numbers certainly support that idea, as Rodriguez's WARP has gone down every season since 2007, from 8.3 to 6.7 to 5.0 to 4.9 to 2.8 to a career-low 1.2 in 2012.
"He hasn't been a superstar for four years now," the scout said. "He's still an above-average third baseman, but that is mainly because it's a weak position throughout the industry. To think he's going to come back and be the A-Rod of his prime after having major surgery is ludicrous. The Yankees, if they really admit it, will be happy if he is still just a decent player for a few more years."
The Nationals won their stare down with Adam LaRoche, re-signing the first baseman to a two-year, $24-million contact with a club option after he had held out for two months in hopes of three guaranteed years. La Roche had a career-high 3.6 WARP last year and a .303 Total Average.
LaRoche is one of the "victims" of the new free-agent compensation system that is part of the latest collective bargaining agreement. Any other team signing LaRoche would have been required to give up a draft pick after he declined the Nationals' $13.3-million qualifying offer. One AL front-office type from a team that "kicked the tires" on LaRoche believes the Nationals made a good deal with the 33-year-old.
"He's a reliable run producer in the middle of the lineup who plays good defense," the FOT said. "I think two years is just the right amount for length of contract. You go beyond two years and I'd worry that he would be a drag on the payroll."
The re-signing of LaRoche leaves Michael Morse without a spot in the lineup, and the Nationals are trying to trade the first baseman/outfielder for a left-handed reliever after failing to retain Sean Burnett as a free agent. However, one NL scout says it is buyer beware for anyone trying to trade for Morse, who can become a free agent at the end of the season.
"He's a heckuva hitter, but he can't play defense and he's become very fragile, so you can only pencil him in for about 120 games a year," the scout said. "Considering you're only going to have him one year, I wouldn't give up a frontline player or a top prospect for him. I think the best thing the Nats can hope for is an OK lefty reliever and some salary relief, which would give them some more money to play with if they need to make a move sometime during the season."
That the Rangers guaranteed Lance Berkman $11 million on a one-year contract with a club option raised many eyebrows inside the game. Berkman will be 37 on Opening Day and is coming off a season with the Cardinals in which he had 97 plate appearances and two knee surgeries. While it's tough convincing front-office types or scouts that the price is right, a surprising number of them do believe Berkman can have a very good 2013 for the Rangers.
"They are doing the right thing by DHing him," an NL scout said. "They shouldn't play him in the field at all with the shape his knees are in. If they keep him at DH and make sure he's rested, he could do very well. He's always been a good hitter, and the ballpark in Texas will only help him. I don't know if he'll have the kind of year he had with the Cardinals (in 2011), but I could see him having a good year … but $11 million is a lot of money to risk."
Berkman had a .341 TAv and produced 4.0 WARP two years ago, though his Fielding Runs Above Average was an ugly -10.9 when the Cardinals won the World Series. His career TAv is .317.
The Indians are going to see if they can resurrect left-hander Scott Kazmir's career after signing him as a free agent. The two-time All-Star will be given the chance to win a spot in the rotation even though he pitched just 1 1/3 innings in the major leagues in 2011 with the Angels, then spent last year in the independent Atlantic League with the Sugar Land Skeeters. (He was a rotation mate with sideshow act Roger Clemens late in the season for a franchise that brought back the bullpen cart.)
While it's a little hard to believe because he seems to have been around forever, Kazmir will turn just 29 on Jan. 24. However, that is not enough to give hope to an AL scout who watched Kazmir pitch three times last summer.
"He doesn't have anything left," the scout said. "He's just one of those guys who peaked very early in his career and flamed out. He hasn't been a good pitcher since 2007."
John Perrotto is an author of Baseball Prospectus.
44 comments have been left for this article.
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The way to fix the backlog of players is not allow more voters to vote for more than ten players, it's to vote in the players who are vastly overqualified, by any measure, to be voted in.
Jan 10, 2013 02:15 AM
Right I agree totally. The closest is Biggio and even he needs like 40 more votes, He might pick up a handful but I doubt that there are 40 voters who had him #11 on their list.
Jan 10, 2013 09:29 AM
He's going to lose a bunch of votes too, presumably some voters had him at #9 or #10 on their ballots and will vote in Maddux and perhaps Thomas. And some may also have omitted Bonds/Clemens/Piazza as part of some sort of protest/preservation of "first ballot hall of famer" as a thing, and will be adding them to their ballots in future years.
Jan 10, 2013 09:34 AM
The value of adding to the ballot is that it allows those that don't see PEDs as a disqualification to keep more players alive. Otherwise we're going to risk having many some guys drop off due to the 5% rule (Palmerio, McGwire, and Sosa all are at risk). Of course, this only matters if they will eventually get in which accepts the claim of many voters that they just need more time to get perspective on the steriod era.
Jan 10, 2013 12:31 PM
John, with all due respect, it is the BBWAA that created this mess. The fact, as you pointed out, that voting for the HOF is viewed as a status symbol is a symptom af the rot and decay of a process that has not changed with the times. In the 1930's newspapers were the information platform that informed most of the population. There was no TV, no Internet, and commercial radio was in its infancy and a radio was a luxury not every household could afford. Newspapers printed two editions a day and the cost was purposely low so that it was the medium of information to the overwhelming literate populous. I can understand why Baseball writers were entrusted with the task in the 1930s. In the past 80 years the delivery of information as been revolutionized and in baseball, it the coverage has never been more plentiful and detailed. It seems ludicrous to me that a group ( 10 year BBWAA) that has created this mess through witch hunts, turf battles, indifference, obstinance, and in some cases a complete lack of understanding of the game and its history, now want to protect their turf and their own status as a voter. The HOF is a risk of being marginalized by its own gatekeepers. The number crunch is not a result of PEDs or a deep ballot. The number crunch is a result of hypocritical behavior ( journalists who missed or ignored the most significant story now punishing those who they protected) & personal agendas (no 1st ballot players, no on bad interviews or bad " guys", yes to nice players, or favorite sons, empty ballots). They were entrusted to vote in the best players, the BBWAA have made the process about themselves instead of the game and the players. Now you are asking to be saved from yourselves, but you still want to retain the status and exclusivity that is the root cause of the problems.
Jan 10, 2013 04:23 AM
And so what do we do? Make it a nationwide vote? There has to be some criteria for voting, in which case you can't even avoid the "status symbol" issue. What John is saying is that you hav to eliminate the extent to which voting is ONLY that, such as people who no longer follow or cover baseball. Of course this is not a perfect system either, and you'll always have obstinate and close minded folks involved in the voting. But it's not like the BBWAA is somehow overfull of ignorant or stupid people. I think your assessments are generally correct, but that changing certain elements of the process could quite well change the mentality, so that people will feel like it's a privilege yet still maintain voting rights within a (relatively) educated and informed group.
Jan 10, 2013 11:01 AM
Would love to have John explain why he believes the BBWAA should be the "solo proprietors of the Hall of Fame voting". Makes no sense that broadcasters and internet writers have virtually no voice in this process. For God's sake, Vin Scully not being able to vote is a travesty when you have voters submitting blank ballots in "protest". The BBWAA is a joke, and many members are self-righteous, self-serving, self-promoting hypocrites.
Jan 10, 2013 06:18 AM
Would writers even use the extra votes? From a lot of the published ballots I've seen, the majority of the ballots contained 4-7 names. They've said the average ballot contains about 6 names, and that hasn't really changed over time. Giving those writers 12/15 votes instead of 10 doesn't necessarily mean they'll use them. I'd have to think that the writers who used all 10 votes this year, and would use more if they were able to, are in the vast minority.
Jan 10, 2013 06:25 AM
Right -- I don't think anyone was kept out because there wasn't enough room on somebody's ballot. They were kept out because of the ridiculous 75% rule and the disgusting sanctimoniousness of too many of the writers.
Jan 10, 2013 06:41 AM
But it will become an increasing problem. All the guys who used seven or eight or nine slots this year, will presumably also want to vote for Greg Maddux and some of the others joining the ballot next year.
Jan 10, 2013 09:31 AM
This is an archaic process that needs to be completely revamped.
Jan 10, 2013 09:35 AM
I'm not sure I see why "retired" baseball writers no longer have the wisdom or ability to decide who should be in a hall of fame for "retired" baseball players.
Jan 10, 2013 09:44 AM
amen to the previous post from a retired sportswriter...the whole hall thing is sanctimony at its worst; how about a vote for rooms in the hall?
Jan 10, 2013 09:46 AM
I truly believe BBWAA will destroy the Hall. Hey just ask the merchants in Cooperstown. Theyve suffered loses two years running and now no one
Jan 10, 2013 10:02 AM
Considering that the character clause had been virtually ignored up to this point, I think it's only reasonable that it be removed moving forward so that today's players are not being held to a different standard.
Jan 10, 2013 10:33 AM
I have never understood why the process allows players to be on the ballot for 15 years. Five years is certainly enough time for everyone to get past any emotional bias (for example, grief over Thurman Munson's untimely death).
Jan 10, 2013 10:45 AM
Still, the 15 year rule allows for changing mindsets not to become impotent. Think about Bert Blyleven, who would not be in given a 5 year rule and who I believe is undoubtedly deserving. Also, the 15 year rule means that the recent popularity and prevalence of sabermetrics was able to influence voting on players who played at times when this analysis wasn't practiced. I think that's a good thing, as well possible future revelations that could reconfigure how we analyze baseball value.
Jan 10, 2013 11:05 AM
Then I will go back to my default position:
Jan 11, 2013 04:46 AM
But in what way? 15 years is no good, neither is 5, so we just throw our hands up? There's never going to be a flawless voting system, or at least one that suits the needs of everyone, voter or fan or player. Trying to set up the system so that others will be forced to vote as you might or would doesn't really fix anything, it just adds another layer of complication. And shortening the total number of possible ballots only hurts the players, who are the ones least deserving. If you want to shake up the system I'm not in disagreement but remember that it's the Hall of Fame itself that allows the BBWAA to vote and determines the specifics. The problem isn't just "stupid" or "obstinate" writers.
Jan 11, 2013 08:54 AM
Five years wasn't enough time to get past the emotional bias of the steroid era.
Jan 10, 2013 14:57 PM
I'm a bit scared 15 won't be either.
Jan 10, 2013 15:01 PM
I'll just be selfish and say I'm glad Andre Dawson got in before this mess began.
Jan 10, 2013 19:31 PM
Has the BBWAA ever received more attention than in the last three months, between Cabrera/Trout and yesterday's voting?
Jan 10, 2013 11:22 AM
Three modest proposals to help fix the Hall of Fame.
Jan 10, 2013 14:39 PM
I'd add some provision for announcers/other media types to be added under some conditions. As was noted above, not taking advantage of Vin Scully's experience is a shame. (In fact if you came to me with a plan where Vin was to be the *only* voter, I might have to think about it...).
Jan 10, 2013 16:10 PM
Here's the change in the process that is needed ....
Jan 10, 2013 14:53 PM
The HOF procedure has never been about logic or consistency.
Jan 10, 2013 17:39 PM
Isn't Gaylord Perry in the Hall of Fame?
Jan 11, 2013 04:55 AM
Dave Holgado
Here's my $0.02 on a ballot rule change. Rather than simply increasinf the max number allowed a ballot, why not make it so that once a particular BBWAA member votes for a player, two things happen: (1) that vote becomes "locked in" and counts for all remaining years that the player is HoF eligible and that BBWAA member is entitled to vote; and (2) the member need not count that vote against his 10 (or change it to 5, or 3?) max ballot in future voting years. A player should never get squeezed off of a writer's ballot simply because other players become HoF eligible who that writer deems even more hallworthy. If you're over the bar, you're over the bar.
Jan 10, 2013 18:45 PM
Doug Thorburn
BP staff
This is a great idea, Dave, and the first I've heard of it.
Jan 11, 2013 02:06 AM
Locking a vote sounds neat, but I can picture it causing problems. Let's say I voted for a guy the first year he was eligible and, a few years down, it's revealed he took steroids or beat his wife or something. I wouldn't be able to change my vote?
Jan 11, 2013 03:18 AM
"...beat his wife or something."
Jan 11, 2013 05:22 AM
Don't confuse my perceptions with the perceptions of the members of the BBWAA. I'm saying, if the writers vote on character and their vote is "locked in", then there's a chance they may feel wronged if something leaks out later. Note that a lot of the argument for Kirby Puckett had to do with his character.
Jan 11, 2013 10:43 AM
Does it have to be a one-way door? Let the vote be locked, giving the voter ballot-size-relief for future votes, but allow the vote to be rescinded if later information warrants it. Making the user take a positive action to rescind the vote (rather than passively just failing to re-vote for the player each year) will tone down gratuitous fickleness. If need be move it beyond checking a box or writing in a name to be removed and actually require a comment be filled in. (I see no reason to require the reason be judged, just require the box to be filled in, and with actual relevant text instead of random characters)
Jan 11, 2013 09:31 AM
I'm surprised at the silence over Mike Piazza's poor showing.
Jan 10, 2013 19:04 PM
Murray Chass said he used steroids. Case closed.
Jan 10, 2013 20:02 PM
Did Murray Chass say this while Piazza was playing in New York and Chass was the star baseball writer for the New York Times, or is thisa recent accusation by the blogger Murray Chass? If it walks, talks, and quacks like a hypocrite...
Jan 11, 2013 02:17 AM
No one seems to be noticing this. All these writers who are so upset and so judgmental now somehow never noticed any of this at the time it was happening. And now they're pushing this "we have to assume it was everyone, everywhere, the whole time". Well shouldn't you know? You were in the clubhouse, you talked to them, what's the deal? I have to believe that there are two other motivators: 1) they saw, they knew, but didn't want to say, and now they're using that knowledge without wanting to implicate themselves; and 2) they didn't know and never knew and are angry and resentful that they could have been duped, and now are trying to "get back" at the players who managed to hide this from them. Both are equally pathetic for different reasons.
Jan 11, 2013 09:02 AM
I agree with you whole-heartedly.
Jan 11, 2013 05:36 AM
John Douglass
You BBWAA guys don't need more than 10 votes. You need to use the 10 you have properly. There's no logjam if Bagwell is elected in either of his first two go-rounds. There's no logjam if you elect Raines any time in the last half-decade. There's no logjam if you elect Curt Schilling this year instead of piling up support for Jack Morris. Since, y'know, Schilling is so demonstrably better than Morris that not even the most old-school yahoo could make a case for Morris.
Jan 11, 2013 09:22 AM
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text:
28 December 2015
SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Pushed Up In Dull Trading
Posted by Jesse at 4:23 PM
"There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action. All gentle souls must admire and respect one another, saying: 'Let us each proceed along our path to the same goal, united in purpose, and by the means of God's plan which, in its great variety, is in us all." Jean-Pierre de Caussade
|This content is not yet available over encrypted connections.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.
"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves.
The moneyed interests and their aspirants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and career and social coercion."


text: Out of respect and courtesy - and a growing need for fresh muscle in their organization - fellow inmates Avon Barksdale and Wee-Bey Brice wanted to reach out to this old school soldier before his parole. They gave him a number to call once he hit the street and sure enough, the organization offered him a small package of vials, ready for sale, as a coming-home present. Cutty's legend preceded him. He had once wounded a rival at a Pennsylvania Avenue booth, then dialed 9-1-1 to declare, "I just shot a nigger. Come get him," before walking away - an act of bravado that had his name ringing out for years. But returning to a neighborhood and a drug culture that had evolved during his 14-years in prison, Cutty felt at odds with his previous life. After a short stint as Barksdale muscle, Cutty realized the game hadn't changed, but he had. Sensing Cutty's sincerity, Avon - himself paroled at that point - allows him to department and later, when Cutty approaches him for a handout to open a boxing gym, Avon hands the aging soldier the start-up money. Barely ekeing out a living doing landscaping with shape-up crews of Mexican workers, Cutty's heart and soul has become his gym program for young Westside boxers. He tries to engage Michael Lee and keep him from succumbing to life on the Corner but ends up shot in the leg on the night Michael makes his choice. Recuperating in the hospital, Cutty is able to help Colvin rescue Namond Brice from a similar fate, by helping Colvin talk to Wee-Bay about taking in his son.


text:
By Taqi Mohiuddin, firstname.lastname@example.com
The stakes are rising in retailing.
E-commerce radically changed the business and now mobile technology is altering the environment of the brick and mortar storefront. Mobile devices have become comparison-shopping tools for consumers and competitive chess pieces for online retailers. Mobile browsing and an increasing number of apps now allow consumers to buy in the virtual world while browsing stores in the physical world. In effect, e-commerce companies have created their own omni-channel strategy by co-opting their competitors' investments in physical space.
With the ubiquity of mobile devices, they can outflank brick and mortar stores on price while using the physical storefront space as their own virtual showroom. The mobile-equipped shopper does the rest. This competitive dynamic comes on top of other issues presented by the omni-channel shopper. For instance, according to a Motorola Solutions' Retail Survey in May, 2012, 89% of retailers are unable to connect shoppers' online activities with their actions in the physical storefront. Retailers can find themselves at a significant disadvantage in servicing the omni-channel shopper.
The next technology evolution, though, is already happening. Brick and mortar retailers can level the playing field with online competitors. Retailers can now offer shoppers on-premise digital experiences through access to their in-store networks. That customer convenience can then be combined with a powerful analytics engine that captures data from shopper activity.
It is important to remember that shopping is still a social experience. The combination of network access and intelligence empowers storefront retailers to drive differentiation over their online rivals. Omni-channel strategies can go well beyond QR codes and shopping lists stored in the cloud.
Many stores today are outfitted with WiFi networks for store operations and increasingly to support bring your own device (BYOD) access for managers. Guest access strategies increase the usefulness of the network for both customers and store management. Shoppers have a built-in incentive to use WiFi for two fundamental reasons: 1) to reduce the usage of the cellular network amid the shifting landscape of data packages for advanced mobile devices; and 2) to increase the signal quality inside buildings. For the shopper, guest access is a customer convenience. For the retailer, guest access analytics augments that convenience with a powerful tool to understand shoppers, offer incentives to close the sale in the store and gain valuable insight to consumer behavior.
The in-store network can offer a shopping portal to the consumer. A simple click and consumers can accept terms of use. A brief survey can collect basic information. With those steps completed once, customers can be automatically logged onto the network for future visits. Making it easy for shoppers to access the in-store WiFi encourages guest access and also helps ensure that omni-channel strategies will be effective and deliver a positive experience. Guest access offers consumers the convenience of gaining more information on merchandise and store policies while offloading their browsing from the cellular network.
Guest access analytics enables retailers to change a familiar scenario. Consumers wandering the floor consult their mobile devices for information on merchandise. Often, they will ultimately comparison shop and buy an item online at a lower price. Guest access analytics allows store management to change that outcome. By offering the store's WiFi network for connectivity, the analytics engine can go to work on the data stream. Analytics engines can provide data on:
• Search terms used;
• Sites visited;
• Devices used; and
• Time spent online and frequency of browsing.
At the base level, analytics can be a tactical tool. At an opportune moment, a coupon for a specific item can be pushed to the consumer's device. This potentially creates a win-win proposition in which the retailer closes sales that might have gone to an e-commerce competitor and the consumer receives the advantage of taking a desired item home right away and avoiding shipping costs. Store management can also gain valuable real-time insight into customer preferences in a given location. Perhaps clothing items are not stocked in the colors or in the brands frequently searched for by consumers. Managers might never gain that fine-tuned insight through direct interaction with consumers.
Beyond this immediate creation of sales opportunities, guest access analytics opens up more strategic business opportunities. By aggregating data from across a region or an entire chain, management can spy larger trends driving the business or more easily see the effectiveness of promotions and, of course, gain competitive intelligence. To whom are consumers turning for certain items? Perhaps a competitor has arisen that is not yet on the radar screen. Maybe a new brand is gaining momentum in a hot category, and management has an opportunity to lay in inventory before pricing soars. This analytical insight can also guide a technology-driven customer engagement strategy through avenues such as app development. Analytics can also be geared to gauge the effectiveness of marketing efforts, whether online tools or traditional advertising. Guest access analytics offers a way to check on those investments and others to make sure they pay off with increased traffic, awareness and sales. More advanced analytics implementations can also incorporate location services to hail loyal customers when they are in the storefront's vicinity. Analytics are key to furthering new forms of customer engagement.
Multichannel shoppers are the new normal, and brick-and-mortar retailers can welcome them rather than worrying that others are benefiting from their investment in physical space and inventory. Once this infrastructure is in place, retailers can meld their online and in-store environments while building a new extended relationship with loyal customers. Guest access and analytics levels the playing field by enhancing the inherent advantages of providing a physical storefront for shoppers.
Taqi Mohiuddin is senior manager, solutions marketing, and leads product and solutions marketing activities for the enterprise networking and communications products at Motorola Solutions. Taqi has more than 15 years of experience in product management and marketing in the wireless, networking, and semiconductor markets. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Crosswalk lights, signs represent 1st phase of pedestrian safety plan
DAVID TAFFET | Staff Writer
City crews have begun implementing a three-part plan to make Cedar Springs safer for pedestrians with the installation of new signs and crosswalks. The short-term plan should be completed over the next few weeks.
Then, engineering studies will be conducted in February to determine whether additional traffic signals are needed and whether a turn lane should be removed. If warranted, that work will be done in June.
A long-term study will include the possibility of adding a center island with trees and wider sidewalks, and reducing traffic to two lanes.
On Wednesday, Jan. 25, the Cedar Springs Merchant Association discussed the safety improvements during its first monthly meeting of the year, which was attended by Paula Blackmon, Mayor Mike Rawlings' chief of staff.
In response to four traffic accidents involving pedestrians that included two fatalities within two months, the city has been working to find solutions to improve safety in the entertainment district, which the Merchant Association now refers to as The Strip on Cedar Springs.
"We want to see The Strip become the international destination that it should be," said ilume developer Luke Crosland. He said ilume 2, to be built on property diagonally across from ilume, could break ground within the next few weeks. Crosland favors the two-lane approach to make the area more pedestrian friendly and more attractive.
He mentioned that The Strip does $30 million in alcohol sales annually and he's about to invest $55 million in construction there — and he expressed frustration with the city for not paying closer attention to an important economic engine.
The short-term solution for traffic and pedestrian safety is almost complete. That plan began with the installation of additional street lighting early in January.
New crosswalks have been painted at Knight Street, with eye-level yellow warning flashers added at Knight and Reagan streets. For the first 30 days, the lights will flash constantly to warn drivers of pedestrians in the area. After that, they'll be activated by buttons.
"No pedestrian crossing" signs were installed in the middle of the block in front of Kroger and ilume. Additional police enforcement has also begun. On Thursday morning, police cars were patrolling Cedar Springs Road after Buli owner Robert Clauson and others at the meeting asked for additional patrols.
Also this week, a push to educate pedestrians got under way. The effort includes fliers distributed by Cedar Springs merchants to explain the pedestrian crossing lights and encourage everyone to cross only in marked places.
The last item on the first phase of the plan is the lighted crosswalk near the Round-Up Saloon, which will be raised 6 inches to slow traffic. Yield bars will be painted in the street in advance of the crosswalk to distance vehicles from pedestrians.
In February, a study will be conducted to determine whether traffic signals are needed at Knight Street and Reagan Street. The study is expected to show that a signal is needed at Knight Street. The signal has already been paid for and would be installed in June.
The study is also expected to call for the removal of the island and turn lane on the southeast corner of Cedar Springs and Douglas.
Cedar Springs Merchant Association Executive Director Scott Whittall said the study may determine that from Reagan Street onto Cedar Springs would be safer as a right turn only from either direction.
The plan also calls for looking for "opportunities to install trees or other vegetation to calm traffic."
CSMA formed two committees. One will be to create a long-term traffic plan for The Strip. The second is to create a plan for where taxis can stop to pick up fares along Cedar Springs Road.
Whittall announced upcoming events on Cedar Springs including the March Wine Walk and Easter in the Park. The Merchant Association took over that event last year with just a few weeks notice when its longtime sponsor, the Turtle Creek Association, pulled out.
Whittall said that word-of-mouth about last year's reintroduction of Razzle Dazzle Dallas was strong. He expected twice as many people to attend this year's main event on June 9. An announcement about entertainment will be made soon.
He also announced a new marketing campaign. He said that the entertainment district's Facebook page was taken down and will be reintroduced in March after a new logo is chosen from a contest the merchants are holding.
The group is marketing the area as The Strip on Cedar Springs, which is how it is now most commonly known. Since Crossroads Market closed, few continue to refer to the area as The Crossroads.
Whittall compared The Strip's Facebook fan page to that of Bishop Arts District. BAD has more than 17,000 fans, while Cedar Springs had just a few thousand. He said that was because the page was called the Cedar Springs Merchant Association, which sounded like it was a trade group rather than an entertainment district.
The logo contest-winner will be named at Easter in the Park and the new The Strip on Cedar Springs Facebook page will be launched then.
The Cedar Springs Merchant Association is running a contest to design a new logo. For more info or to enter, go to TinyUrl.com/8yb7uj8.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 27, 2012.


text:
If you have CULA installed, please try out our gputools R package with gpuFastICA. We especially encourage feedback from users. Did the package install correctly? Did the gpuFastICA routine work as expected? Tested on a subset of GSE6306, non-GPU enabled fastICA took over four hours while gpuFastICA took just 80 seconds!
R is the most popular open source statistical environment in the biomedical research community. However, most of the popular R function implementations involve no parallelism and they can only be executed as separate instances on multicore or cluster hardware for large data-parallel analysis tasks. The arrival of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) with user friendly programming tools, such as Nvidia's CUDA toolkit (http://www.nvidia.com/cuda), provides a possibility of increasing the computational efficiency of many common tasks by more than one order of magnitude (http://gpgpu.org/). However, most R users are not trained to program a GPU, a key obstacle for the widespread adoption of GPUs in biomedical research.
To overcome this obstacle, we decided to devote efforts for moving frequently used R functions in our work to the GPU using CUDA. In the ideal solution, if a CUDA compatible GPU and driver is present on a user's machine, the user may only need to prefix "gpu" to the original function name to take advantage of the GPU implementation of the corresponding R function. We take achieving this ideal as one of our primary goals so that any biomedical researcher can harness the computational power of a GPU using a familiar tool. Since our code is open source, researchers may customize the R interfaces to their particular needs. In addition, because CUDA uses shared libraries and unobtrusive extensions to the C programming language, any experienced C programmer can easily customize the underlying code.
Using the CUDA extension to C and the shared linear algebra library CUBLAS, we have implemented a variety of statistical analysis functions with R interfaces that execute with different degrees of parallelism on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). If an algorithm is comprised of common vector or matrix operations each performed once, we involve the GPU by implementing those operations with calls to CUBLAS. If an algorithm involves computing the elements of a large matrix, we can often merely assign each thread executing on the GPU a portion of a row and/or column. Algorithms for which we have implemented GPU enabled versions include the calculations of distances between sets of points (R dist function), hierarchical clustering (R hclust function). Pearson and Kendall correlation coefficients (similar to R cor function), and the Granger test ('granger.test' in the R MSBVAR package).
We are committed to implement more R GPU functions, and we hope to contribute packages to the open source community via our project's website. The initial package is hosted by CRAN as gputools a source package for UNIX and Linux systems. Install the package in the usual R manner. If there is any trouble with the installation, please see this set of notes included in the source distribution as the file INSTALL. We welcome contributions to the R-GPGPU effort and encourage any comments or suggestions.
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Figure 1 provides performance comparisons between original R functions assuming a four thread data parallel solution on Intel Core i7 920 and our GPU enabled R functions for a GTX 295 GPU. The speedup test consisted of testing each of three algorithms with five randomly generated data sets. The Granger causality algorithm was tested with a lag of 2 for 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 random variables with 10 observations each. Complete hierarchical clustering was tested with 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, and 8000 points. Calculation of Kendall's correlation coefficient was tested with 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 random variables with 10000 observations each.
Figure 2 provides a performance comparison between the function 'granger.test' from the package 'MSBVAR' and our gpuGranger function. We use a single CPU thread on Intel Core i7 920 and a GTX 260 GPU. The Granger causality algorithm was tested with a lag of 2 for 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1000 random variables with 10 observations each.
Figure 3 provides a performance comparison between the function 'hclust' and our gpuHclust function. We use a single CPU thread on Intel Core i7 920 and a GTX 260 GPU. Complete hierarchical clustering was tested with 1000, 2000, 4000, 6000, and 8000 points.
Figure 4 provides a performance comparison between the function 'cor' and our gpuCor function with 'method' set to 'kendall'. We use a single CPU thread on Intel Core i7 920 and a GTX 260 GPU. Calculation of Kendall's correlation coefficient was tested with 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 random variables with 10000 observations each.
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The gputools R package is free for academic use. For commercial use, please contact brainarray admin
Download the gputools source package from the CRAN gputools page. Send questions, comments and bugs to Josh Buckner. This text file may be helpful during installation of the source package. It appears as INSTALL in the package itself.
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In case you are curious, here is a table listing the compute capability of various Nvidia products. This table comes from the CUDA Programming Guide. The CUDA Programming Guide is a free pdf that comes with the CUDA toolkit under the doc directory. The function gpuCor and the SVM functions require double precision arithmetic on the device. So devices with compute capability less than 1.3 may give unsatisfactory results when using those functions. The rest of the package should work fine for cards with compute capability less than 1.3.
|Device name
|Compute capability
|GeForce GTX 295
|GeForce GTX 285, GTX 280
|GeForce GTX 260
|GeForce 9800 GX2
|GeForce GTS 250, GTS 150, 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, 8800 GTS 512
|GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX
|GeForce 9800 GT, 8800 GT, 9800M GTX
|GeForce GT 130, 9600 GSO, 8800 GS, 8800M GTX, 9800M GT
|GeForce 8800 GTS
|GeForce 9600 GT, 8800M GTS, 9800M GTS
|GeForce 9700M GT
|GeForce GT 120, 9500 GT, 8600 GTS, 8600 GT, 9700M GT, 9650M GS, 9600M GT, 9600M GS, 9500M GS, 8700M GT, 8600M GT, 8600M GS
|GeForce G100, 8500 GT, 8400 GS, 8400M GT, 9500M G, 9300M G, 8400M GS, 9400 mGPU, 9300 mGPU, 8300 mGPU, 8200 mGPU, 8100 mGPU
|GeForce 9300M GS, 9200M GS, 9100M G, 8400M G
|Tesla S1070
|Tesla C1060
|Tesla S870
|Tesla D870
|Tesla C870
|Quadro Plex 2200 D2
|Quadro Plex 2100 D4
|Quadro Plex 2100 Model S4
|Quadro Plex 1000 Model IV
|Quadro FX 5800
|Quadro FX 4800
|Quadro FX 4700 X2
|Quadro FX 3700M
|Quadro FX 5600
|Quadro FX 3700
|Quadro FX 3600M
|Quadro FX 4600
|Quadro FX 2700M
|Quadro FX 1700, FX 570, NVS 320M, FX 1700M, FX 1600M, FX 770M, FX 570M
|Quadro FX 370, NVS 290, NVS 140M, NVS 135M, FX 360M
|Quadro FX 370M, NVS 130M
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text:
Hibbert ..This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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Hibbert ..
God job guys.
Not calling the technical paid off for the refs who for some reason want an overtime.
True or False: Frank Vogel doesn't get the respect from referees that he deserves.
I'd prefer 2/2 here but I'll take the 1/2.
Just guard the 3 point line, please.
I expect a play call for Cousins and him throwing it away.
West, he really has been playing at a All-Star level. Hill has been great, maybe our MVP, but stat wize he has little chance. We'll have to have a really good record for either to make the all star game though.
"Just look at the flowers ........ BANG"
Good job, guys.
However, if I want to be completely honest that was a pretty bad take by Thornton.
I guess we are not the only ones that suck at calling last second plays
Is that El Pacero "unmasked"?
Geez....it's like living in Gotham City and finding out that Bruce Wayne is Batman.
Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.
that was a truly horrible shot by thornton
27 assists
P George 2-11
Lance 0-3
Green 1-5
3-19 from those guys. That is really pathetic. Thank god for West and Hill. West made some incredibly tough shots.
Good thing they missed that shot because the foul before the inbounds miss was horrible. I was going to throw a big fit if we had to go into overtime.
"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better." - Albert Camus
"Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well." - Voltaire
"Everyone's values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others." - William Greider
1 TO in the second half
Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.
True. But it was Young who gave us something totally unexpected tonight.
Good win but a team that's supposed to be a contender should not be this close to a team as bad as Sacramento without their best player, I still want to see the Pacers against a good team to see how they do.
Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.
A max deal? What's that like 20mil? I hope they don't do that.@1070Bruno: Is it too early to wonder if Pacers plan to give West a max deal next July? Or to wonder what will happen if they don't?


text:
After leading the U.S. women's soccer team to two Olympic gold medals and its first spot in a World Cup final in more than a decade, coach Pia Sundhage is stepping down.
UPDATE: Sundhage to coach Sweden's national team
Saturday's announcement came just a few hours before the Americans kicked off their "victory tour" to celebrate their gold medal at the London Olympics, where the Americans beat Japan 2-1 in a rematch of last year's World Cup final.
On Saturday, the U.S. overwhelmed Costa Rica 8-0 in Rochester, N.Y.
The Americans are 89-6-10 since Sundhage, 52, took over in 2007, and made the final of all three major tournaments during her tenure.
U.S. Soccer said it will begin searching for a new coach immediately but has no timetable for naming a successor.
"After the Olympics, we had discussions and early in the process it became clear that Pia was very interested in returning home to Sweden," U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati said in a statement. "It certainly wasn't an easy decision for U.S. Soccer or Pia.
"She deserves a tremendous amount of credit for the amazing success the U.S. Women's national team had during the past five years. On behalf of U.S. Soccer, we sincerely appreciate Pia's hard work, dedication and commitment to the organization. We wish her all the best in the future."
The news does not come as a total surprise. There is no major tournament until the Women's World Cup in 2015, and Sundhage has expressed a desire to coach in her native Sweden.
"It was an honor to be able to coach these players for five years and I learned a tremendous amount from them," Sundhage said. "I want to thank all the players and all of my assistant coaches for making me better. Before I took this job, I always admired the spirit and character of the U.S. team, but to experience that first-hand on the training field and from the bench as their coach was truly special and something I will treasure for the rest of my life."
Sundhage is expected to stay with the Americans for at least the next two games of their victory tour, a pair of exhibitions against Australia on Sept. 16 in Carson, Calif., and Sept. 19 in Commerce City, Colo. The U.S. then plays two-time World Cup champion Germany on Oct. 20 in Bridgeview, Ill., and Oct. 23 in East Hartford, Conn.
"I have to admit, I've been away from my home for five years," Sundhage said. "The fact that Sweden is hosting the European championship (in 2013), that's a big thing of course. ... I want to do the right thing with U.S. Soccer and start with talking with them and see if I can give another four years. And that's a key, because this team, they deserve somebody that's committed 110 percent."
Sundhage had little head coaching experience when she took over in November 2007. But her calm demeanor and relentlessly positive attitude were exactly what was needed for a U.S. team still wounded and raw from the debacle of the 2007 World Cup in China.
The Americans went to China favored to win their third title, and carried a 51-game unbeaten streak into the semifinals against Brazil. But then-coach Greg Ryan made the surprise decision to start Briana Scurry against Brazil instead of Hope Solo, who had a shutout streak of nearly 300 minutes going and had started all but four of the Americans' 19 games that season. The move was a disaster; a 4-0 loss that was the worst defeat in U.S. history.
Afterward, Solo ripped Ryan's move, saying, "It was the wrong decision, and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that."
Ryan dismissed Solo from the team, not allowing her on the bench for the third-place game. She even had to fly home from China on her own. The Americans managed to win the bronze medal, but the damage was done. A month later, Ryan was essentially fired when he was told his contract would not be renewed when it expired in December.
Sundhage did not force her players to be nice to each other — that's not her way. But she asked questions and listened to the answers, not judging one way or the other. That air of civility extended to practices and team meetings, where Sundhage refused to be negative or harsh, choosing instead to focus on what her team was doing well.
"I don't expect them to forget what happened — and I got different kinds of stories of what happened — but I expect them to forgive," Sundhage said last year.
She set the tone from her very first team meeting, when she pulled out her guitar and began playing Bob Dylan's classic, "The Times They Are A-Changin."
"When I came, I said, 'We need goalkeepers.' So we had three goalkeepers," Sundhage said. "Then we said, 'I want to win, do you want to win? Yes. Then you have to do this together. It will be impossible if you have something in the group that's not 100 percent. You have to do it together and be respectful.' We moved on."
Just eight months after Sundhage took over, the Americans beat Brazil for the Olympic title — with Solo coming up with one big save after another.
"I don't know if I could have made it back in '08 without her," Solo said last year. "Every day after training, Pia would walk up to me and she'd be like, 'Hope, how you doing today?' I faked it. I was like, 'I'm fine.' Next day, same thing, 'I'm fine.' I remember one breakthrough day, I was like, 'I'm OK Pia.' She was like, 'It's kind of tough, huh? Hang in there.'"
"I knew she asked me every day because she saw I was struggling," Solo said. "She wasn't pushing me to talk. But she put her hand out and was ready to help me through it when I was ready. It was nice. I needed somebody with that patience."
Following their Beijing victory, Sundhage began remaking the U.S. team.
For years, the Americans had relied on a physical, forward-based attack that took advantage of their size, speed and depth. But with teams around the world improving, Sundhage felt they needed to adopt a more European, possession-oriented game where plays are created through the midfield to stay ahead. She brought in young players like Alex Morgan, Kelley O'Hara and Sydney Leroux, who will be mainstays of the U.S. team for years to come.
The transition has not always been easy. After going more than two years without a loss, the Americans dropped three games in a five-month span, beginning with a shocking loss to Mexico in November 2010 in World Cup qualifying.
Even in London, Sundhage occasionally fretted about the way the Americans played.
"It doesn't matter if it's 2-0, 3-0 or whatever, because I know how we can play," she said.
But now that will be someone else's concern.
"Joy," Sundhage said Friday when she asked what she wanted to see during the tour. "I would think that is the most important thing."
Learn more
— David Whitley: Women rule London Games
— Carli Lloyd delivers in Olympic championship game
— What's next for America's golden women?
— Alex Morgan adds spice to women's team
— Two exhibitions vs. mighty Germany ahead


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ByWSJ Staff
Leaders and trendsetters around Asia weigh in on the gifts they're giving — and the ones they wouldn't mind receiving. See more
MARTIN CUBBON, Chief executive Swire Properties
What I'm giving: A one-way air ticket to anywhere in the world and an ice axe for my 17-year-old son, who graduates in May. Having been at home for 17 years, he is desperately keen to get away from his overbearing parents. He is a keen climber, so the ice axe will come in useful, and if it is one-way, it will encourage him to save money to pay for the return trip. (rei.com, $74.95 and up. One-way air ticket not included.)
What I want: A white dinner jacket. I am too boring and conservative to buy one, but if someone bought me one, I would feel compelled to wear it. It is just the coolest look if you can carry it off. (ascotchang.com, from $2,800)


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The story of the 2008 election was the coming of age of online politics. Hundreds of millions of dollars raised. Unprecedented macro and micro-organizing. Citizen empowerment. Humongous email lists that we were told would deluge politicians who stood in the way of the Obama Internet juggernaut.
Of course, it hasn't turned out that way.
The story of the 2010 elections is the triumph of the rightwing noise machine, a lumbering, well-greased behemoth created and honed over the course of three decades. Anchored by Fox News and talk radio, amplified by blogs and chain emails and juiced by the Drudge Report, this machine cranks out think-tank crafted soundbites that dominate the national discourse. Perennial terms like "big government," "socialized medicine," "judicial activism," and "tax and spend," are imbibed, regurgitated, magnified and proliferated, shaping perceptions and inflaming passions.
A million reasons have been put forth about how and why Democrats squandered their singular moment in 2008, everything from the economy to badly timed health insurance reform, but one thing is indisputable: the 2010 midterms are a clear victory for the right's old-school messaging operation.
No one can argue that there weren't warnings about putting too much faith in the Internet. A year into the Obama presidency, Zephyr Teachout predicted that Organizing for America Will, and Should, Fail:
Organizing for America sent out a request for house parties today, asking people to watch a video about Obama's economic recovery plan, talk about it with their friends, and build support for it. While there will be tweaks, this is the kind of action we can anticipate from OFA. I predict that there will be perhaps a thousand of such parties, then hundreds, then dozens. I think OFA will fail in its mission to directly engage Obama supporters in supporting Obama's executive actions. And I think this is a very good thing.
It will fail because Obama–suiting a President–is not oppositional, conflict-driven, and not likely to pick out particular targets to be won over–all things that are likely to engage people. It will fail because it is from OFA, not from Obama. And it will fail because OFA cannot be a new democratic party, but will have a hard time defining what it is, and what kind of real power ought exist at every level of the organization.
During the health care debate, I posted The Health Reform Fiasco Is an 'Old' Media Triumph — and a Red Flag for Democrats:
Political and policy battles are primarily about messaging, about shaping public perceptions; despite widespread Internet triumphalism in the wake of the 2008 campaign, 'old' media mechanisms are not only relevant, but potent; Obama's victory was predominantly the result of a well-conceived and executed traditional campaign strategy (i.e. creating effective positive and negative message frames and adhering to them).
A striking fact about the current political environment is that despite the ground-breaking Democratic victory in November, the new administration is dealing with an oddly familiar political brew: the "liberal media" mantra is rekindled, conservative talk radio (i.e. anti-liberal radio) is resurgent, Rush Limbaugh is more relevant than ever, Ann Coulter is once again doing the network rounds, and if online commentary over the past month is any indication, many progressives still feel disconnected from the levers of power. The dynamics and tensions of the past decade remain firmly in play: rightwing noise machine (albeit denuded) versus progressive activists, old-school pundits and politicians versus online powerhouses, netroots versus DLC, frustrated outsiders versus back-scratching insiders, partisanship versus bi/post-partisanship, media versus bloggers, and so on. Democrats would do well to note how unpredictably the Conventional Wisdom Machine has operated (or how predictably for those who are less sanguine about the fungibility of a web-fueled grassroots campaign).
Setting aside strategic errors by the Democrats (and there have been several in this fight), just look at how reform opponents have outgunned the White House using town halls, cable news, newspaper editorials, Freepers, Drudge, talk radio and chain emails. If I close my eyes, I'm transported back to my days on the Kerry campaign and the summer of Swift Boats, Purple Heart Band-Aids and rightwing attack machine antics. It's as though a half decade of technological advances disappeared in the blink of an eye. Forget Facebook and Twitter, it's all about Fox and MSNBC and CNN replaying images of angry protesters at town hall meetings railing against 'government takeovers.' It's about Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh spreading fear and fury. It's about anonymous emails zipping across the country, distorting the facts and sowing confusion. It's about rightwing pundits setting the terms of the debate by foisting radical ideas on the public.
Paradoxically, the attempts by Democrats to counter all this by sending emails to Obama's list and creating campaign-style fact-checking websites seem almost quaint by comparison. When a woman at a town hall spoke about "awakening a sleeping giant," she may as well have been alluding to the old media tools and techniques that have been dismissed by pundits and tech evangelists as anachronistic in the Internet age. Simply put, despite volumes of cyber-ink about the left's online prowess, and despite Democrats controlling the White House and Congress, the right can apparently dominate the national conversation using the same outlets they relied on five and ten years ago.
That was a year and a half ago. The midterms further cement my view.
The beliefs that have shaped the 2010 midterms can be traced directly to the likes of Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. In a post titled The unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, I outlined the process by which rightwing soundbites transform conventional wisdom:
Anecdotal evidence continues to mount that the Tea Party is another manifestation of a rightwing phenomenon whereby carefully crafted talking points are force-fed to the public through Fox, talk radio, chain emails and other communication mechanisms, then regurgitated in the form of deeply-held convictions.
I say "force-fed" because if you tune in to these outlets, it's a relentless stream of indoctrination:
Liberals are worse than terrorists — Global warming is a hoax — Obama is a Kenyan socialist — Gays are trying to corrupt our children — "Big government" is oppressing us — All Muslims are bent on our destruction — "Activist judges" are trying to undermine the Constitution — The Constitution's two main tenets are that everyone should have the right to carry assault weapons and that America is a Christian nation.
A fundamental characteristic of Tea Partiers' views is the vehement embrace of ideas with little or no grounding in knowledge or comprehension and the parroting of Fox-style soundbites as though they were carefully considered positions.
At a candidate forum here last week, Representative Baron P. Hill, a threatened Democratic incumbent in a largely conservative southern Indiana district, was endeavoring to explain his unpopular vote for the House cap-and-trade energy bill. It will create jobs in Indiana, reduce foreign oil imports and address global warming, Mr. Hill said at a debate with Todd Young, a novice Republican candidate who is supported by an array of Indiana Tea Party groups and is a climate change skeptic. "Climate change is real, and man is causing it," Mr. Hill said, echoing most climate scientists. "That is indisputable. And we have to do something about it."
A rain of boos showered Mr. Hill, including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party. "It's a flat-out lie," Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. "I read my Bible," Mr. Dennison said. "He made this earth for us to utilize."
Skepticism and outright denial of global warming are among the articles of faith of the Tea Party movement, here in Indiana and across the country. For some, it is a matter of religious conviction; for others, it is driven by distrust of those they call the elites. And for others still, efforts to address climate change are seen as a conspiracy to impose world government and a sweeping redistribution of wealth. But all are wary of the Obama administration's plans to regulate carbon dioxide, a ubiquitous gas, which will require the expansion of government authority into nearly every corner of the economy.
"This so-called climate science is just ridiculous," said Kelly Khuri, founder of the Clark County Tea Party Patriots. "I think it's all cyclical." "Carbon regulation, cap and trade, it's all just a money-control avenue," Ms. Khuri added. "Some people say I'm extreme, but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too."
A new study by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University shows that most Americans who say they want more limited government also call Social Security and Medicare "very important." They want Washington to be involved in schools and to help reduce poverty. Nearly half want the government to maintain a role in regulating health care.
The study suggests that come January, politicians in both parties will confront a challenging and sometimes contradictory reality about what Americans really think about their government. Although Republicans, and many Democrats, have tried to demonize Washington, they must contend with the fact that most major government programs remain enormously popular, including some that politicians have singled out for stiff criticism.
The Tea Party movement has further sought to spruce up its historical bona fides by laying claim to the United States Constitution. Many Tea Party members subscribe to a literal reading of the national charter as a way of bolstering their opposition to deficit spending, bank bailouts and President Obama's health care plan. A Tea Party manifesto, called the Contract From America, even contains a rigid provision stipulating that all legislation passed by Congress should specify the precise clause in the Constitution giving Congress the power to pass such a law — an idea touted Thursday by the House Republican leadership.
But any movement that regularly summons the ghosts of the founders as a like-minded group of theorists ends up promoting an uncomfortably one-sided reading of history.
The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything. Never has the country produced a more brilliantly argumentative, individualistic or opinionated group of politicians. Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day. Right along with the rest of America, the Tea Party has inherited these open-ended feuds, which are profoundly embedded in our political culture.
No single group should ever presume to claim special ownership of the founding fathers or the Constitution they wrought with such skill and ingenuity. Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes. The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl once famously asserted that history was an argument without an end. Our contentious founders, who could agree on little else, would certainly have agreed on that.
The point is not to denigrate or minimize people's views, but to demonstrate that the views are often based on erroneous information, misinformation or outright lies delivered by cynical millionaires like Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
If you're going to 'defend' the Constitution or deny global warming or reject "big government", you might want to do your own research before taking the word of Constitutional scholars and climatologists like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Christine O'Donnell.
Or as I put it recently: Only in the Tea Party can you defend a Constitution you haven't read, deny climate change you're causing and slam government programs you support.
UPDATE: Further evidence of the disconnect between beliefs and facts:
A Bloomberg National Poll finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't be recovered.
The facts: The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters and expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks.
Said pollster Ann Selzer: "The public view of the economy is at odds with the facts, and the blame has to go to the Democrats. It does not matter much if you make change, if you do not communicate change."


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