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By Kevin O'Brien
RotoWire Writer
Despite the disappointing early-round exit, the Magic only made a few small changes to their roster. Carlos Arroyo and Keyon Dooling moved on to Israel and the Nets, respectively, while Mickael Pietrus, Anthony Johnson, Courtney Lee, and Michael Wilks were added to stabilize the backcourt.
With the core of the team returning, next season looks to be a promising one in Orlando. Dwight Howard has grown into one of the top big man in the league and will only continue to improve as his offensive arsenal evolves. Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu combine with Howard to give Orlando one of the top frontcourts in the entire league. Though Miami has to be better and the Wizards should have Gilbert Arenas back in December, Orlando should still have little trouble taking the Southeast Division again. If Jameer Nelson can grow into a consistent point guard and one of the shooting guards can seize the starting role, don't be surprised to see Orlando challenge Detroit and Boston for the Eastern Conference crown.
Rashard Lewis and Hedo Tukoglu will start at the forward positions and each will play about 40 minutes per game this season. Brian Cook will be the first forward off the bench and could see an increase to about 15 minutes per game.
Jameer Nelson will again be the starting point guard, and should play around 30 minutes each game. Anthony Johnson will probably play about 15 minutes per game as the backup point guard; but if Nelson falters again like he did last season, Johnson could steal some of the starter's minuets away. Mike Wilks will likely only see garbage time minutes as the third option.
The shooting guard position will be the most volatile for the Magic this season. Mickael Pietrus will likely start at the beginning of the season and should see around 25 minutes per game, but Keith Bogans was one of Orlando's most-important players last season and could jump into the starting lineup. Bogans will see about 25 minutes per game, either off the bench or as a starter later in the year. Rookie Courtney Lee is a scorer, but like fellow shooting guard J.J. Redick, he will have to prove he can play defense before seeing consistent time in the rotation.
Tony Battie: Battie missed the entire 2007-2008 season due with a torn rotator cuff. A two-year starter, Battie will likely be shifted to the bench following last season's emergence of Hedo Turkoglu. Battie is a nice complementary player for the Magic, but he won't do much for your fantasy team.
Adonal Foyle: Foyle will again be a veteran presence off the bench for the Magic. He'll come in and do the dirty work, but could lose some playing time to both the returning Battie and the younger Gortat.
Marcin Gortat: Gortat saw action in nearly every playoff game last year, a sign that he could be in line for more time on the floor this season. The other backup centers are better defensively and have more experience, but Gortat could see more playing time if his athleticism wins out.
Hedo Turkoglu: With several younger players on the roster and the addition of Rashard Lewis, Turkoglu stood to be the odd man out in the fight for playing time last season. Wrong. Turkoglu responded by posting career highs in nearly every offensive category and becoming the team's go-to scorer in the clutch. He also played in all 82 games for the first time in his career. Turkoglu was one of last season's best fantasy players, but be careful about drafting him too high in your draft. With teams putting more focus on him this season, don't be surprised to see Rashard Lewis get a few more shots while Turkoglu's numbers take a slight hit.
Brian Cook: Cook is Orlando's most-athletic big man off the bench and shoots well from downtown. Still, with Orlando's best players manning the three front court positions, don't expect Cook to be a consistent fantasy performer this season.
Mickael Pietrus: Pietrus signed with the Magic this off-season after spending the first five seasons of his career with Golden State. His playing time diminished last season, so it's not surprising that he moved on to a new opportunity. Pietrus will begin the season as the starting shooting guard, but he'll still be fighting for minutes with Keith Bogans and several younger players. Pietrus put up decent numbers two seasons ago with the Warriors and has the potential to average double-digits in points; but as Orlando's fifth offensive option, he likely won't be more than a role player.
J.J. Redick: Redick just can't seem to find a way off Orlando's bench, mainly because Van Gundy has said that Redick won't see playing time until his defense improves. Orlando's other shooting guards are better defensively than Redick, so don't expect him to play much.
Courtney Lee: Lee was a consistent scorer his senior season at Western Kentucky. He was a first-round pick, but it remains to be seen if he can get his shot off against players at the top level. Lee's career path and size are similar to that of Detroit's Rodney Stuckey, who found himself receiving extended playing time at the end of last season. There are a lot of combo guard-forwards on this roster, but if Lee can develop the way Stuckey did last year, he could force his way into the rotation by the second half of the season.
Anthony Johnson: After spending last season with Atlanta and Sacramento, the veteran point guard is back for his second stint with the Magic. He was signed to be the backup to Nelson, but the Magic have high expectations this season and don't be surprised to see Stan Van Gundy turn to Johnson if Jameer Nelson struggles.
Keith Bogans: Bogans was the starting shooting guard for the first half of last season and despite a January move to the bench, Bogans still saw regular playing time as Orlando's best perimeter defender and played in all 82 games. He also proved to be an effective outide shooter, knocking down 148 shots from behind the arc. Bogans will begin this season backing up Mickael Pietrus, but expect him to see consistent playing time and even start a few games for Magic this year. Bogans won't put up huge numbers, but he doesn't turn the ball over and should be a good source of threes again this season.
Mike Wilks: Wilks will be the team's third point guard. He has been around the league a while but really hasn't contributed too much up to this point in his career. With other experienced and more talented players ahead of him, Wilks isn't likely to see much time on the floor.


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One day after Schaeffer Cox blamed a government informant for the murder conspiracy he's accused of perpetrating, federal prosecutors spent much of the day Wednesday trying to show Cox invented the excuse purely to help himself at trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Yvonne Lamoureux wove through stacks of transcripts, audio and video recordings and evidence gathered from Cox's iPhone to show that in all of his communications, in all of his dealings with members of his Alaska Peacemakers Militia, Cox never showed any fear of informant Bill Fulton, who Cox claims was pushing him to act. He spoke openly and often about a so-called federal hit squad that he thought was working surreptitiously to bring him down. But in the nearly year-long span Cox was under scrutiny, he never mentioned Fulton's name as someone he worried would harm him.
"In all of the public speeches that you've ever made, you've never mentioned your fear that Bill Fulton was going to kill you? In more than 100 hours of recordings you never said Bill Fulton was going to kill you? In your seven-hour interview with (FBI) Agent Sutherland you never said that Bill Fulton was going to kill you," Lamoureux said during her cross examination of Cox.
Cox stuck with his story, claiming that Fulton, an Anchorage weapons dealer who had begun to show more interest in Cox and his much-hyped militia, was the very person he was speaking about when he made statements to judges, troopers and others that there were people in the community he couldn't control, people who were out for blood and who wouldn't hesitate to launch a violent conflict in defense of Cox and other militia members.
Competing portraits
For jurors, it was yet another day spent absorbing competing portraits of Cox. There is the man prosecutors see, an anti-government extremist who rejected the laws of Alaska and the United States and served as the commander in chief of a separate government group modeled after the U.S. government. A man the government believes was plotting violence and had convinced others to join him.
Then there is the man the defense sees -- an enthusiastic, grassroots liberty activist with a penchant for provocation styled after Glenn Beck and Howard Stern. A Christian man who believes in natural law and delights in celebrity and intellectual inquiry. Taking up arms and killing people is something that would only happen in the defense of family. In exploring other violent scenarios, Cox was merely on a philosophical journey, extrapolating cause and effect to their extremes. His bizarre paperwork that flooded the court system and the trials his followers and acquaintances held at a Fairbanks Denny's restaurant were simply ways to get people's attention, heighten curiosity and encourage others to delve into the rabbit-hole of legal theories Cox wanted them to explore.
Jurors will be asked to weigh Cox's words on the stand against the circumstantial evidence prosecutors say paints a different picture. One example is a machine gun and silencer Cox is accused of possessing. On the stand Cox admitted he had made and still owned a machine gun and a homemade pistol silencer. Cox's attorney made sure to get Cox to reiterate that he never intended to use either item to kill people, that the silencer was to quiet shots he'd taken from his house to deal with a fox invading the chicken coop. The machine gun was only for show. Yet prosecutors, in their last line of questioning, reminded Cox that loaded magazines for the machine gun had been found during the arrest-day raids, something Cox owned up to. And they had lingering questions about how "homemade" the machine gun really was. A serial number on the weapon's body suggested otherwise.
Cox has gotten a lot of mileage out of his story about how federal agents had been dispatched to arrest or kill him. On Wednesday, he finally got the chance to explain how he came up with the theory and the curious string of events he said have given him pause.
Secret manila envelope
First, he'd had a run in with the Office of Children's Services. He couldn't figure out why the agency was intent on interviewing his 18-month-old son, who wasn't speaking yet. Suspicious vehicles were driving by his house. Out of the blue, an airport police officer pulled him over, not to make a traffic stop but to hand Cox a manila envelope containing Cox's domestic-terrorist profile. The officer never acknowledged what he'd handed to Cox, saying only, "Hang in there, buddy. There's a lot of us pulling for you."
For months, Cox believed a six-man team from Aurora, Colo., had been sent to Alaska to kill him. According to Cox, he now knows he was wrong about it. He'd misinterpreted short hand notes on the supposed domestic terrorist file. A "Squad 6" in the paperwork wasn't a six-person hit team, but a reference to "squad #6" -- a unit within the FBI. The report had been generated in Aurora, but Cox was convinced that was the hometown of the imaginary agents he thought had been dispatched to deal with him.
He also claims that around the same time, the summer of 2010, someone from the electric company that services his home called to warn him that the FBI had asked the company to flag Cox's residence as a danger zone and to prevent workers from going on the defendant's property. A pastor at Bible Baptist Church also spoke to Cox about visits from FBI agents who asked "all kinds of questions" about the defendant.
And the stories kept coming. Cox claimed he'd heard from a military police officer on Fort Wainwright that U.S. Marshals had stopped in and were talking about a plan to use Cox's son as a way to provoke Cox to act violently, giving them an excuse to shoot him and get rid of the "Schaeffer Cox problem." And finally, Cox heard rumors that a Fairbanks FBI agent had been overheard at church discussing his dislike of Cox.
"These things just keep adding up. I just kept not believing, but there becomes a time when you have to," Cox told the jury. "It was enough to make us scared."
The trial against Cox and two other militia members -- Coleman Barney and Lonnie Vernon -- is expected to wrap up by the end of next week. Barney, the second defendant to take the stand in his own defense, has begun to distance himself from the extreme statements Cox made in the months leading up the arrests.
Editor's Note: This article was updated June 6, 2012. An earlier version incorrectly identified Bill Fulton as a member of Schaeffer Cox's Alaska Peacemakers Militia. We regret the error.
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com

subset: commoncrawl


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4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
¼ cup sea salt
¼ cup cane sugar
Black pepper
Olive oil
2 tablespoons white miso
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon tamari
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons peanut or toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted and crushed
1 scallion, sliced thin
10 cups salad mix, washed and cut into bite size pieces
• Pound the chicken breasts so they are evenly ½ inch thick.
• Combine the salt, sugar, and pepper with 1 quart water in a large pyrex baking dish. Add the chicken and brine in the fridge about 30 minutes. You may want to turn it once.
• Pat dry. Heat a large skillet, add some oil and sauté the chicken until golden brown, about 4-5 minutes per side. Alternately brush chicken with the oil and cook on a grill, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.
• Whisk the miso, honey, tamari and water together. Gradually whisk in the oil. Stir in the sesame seeds and the scallion.
• Cut the chicken crosswise into ½ inch wide strips. In a serving bowl, toss with 2 tablespoons of the dressing.
• Add the salad mix and remaining dressing. Toss to combine.


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The Sterling Ensemble 42 in. x 34 in. x 75-3/4 in. Shower Kit in White is made of solid Vikrell material and includes a four-piece modular alcove shower with frameless clear-glass shower door and installation kit for one-stop shopping. The shower stall features tongue-and-grove interlocking joints for a seamless appearance and simplified installation. While the simulated tile walls features a high-gloss finish for a stylish look, the shelves add storage for soap, shampoo and the other products.
- The Ensemble 42 in. shower features convenient shelving on the back wall to hold those bathing essential
- The kit includes a white 72111100 base, 72212100 back wall, 72205100 end wall, a 6305 nickel frameless clear glass door, and SDK-01 drain kit with caulk
- Made of Vikrell, a solid nonporous composite material that is both stain and scratch resistant
- Vikrell is color molded throughout so there are no layers to chip or peel
- Curve wall with smooth look and feel, high gloss finish is easy to clean
- Includes caulkless 2 in. shower drain and with drain cover plate to match the shower door finish
- The four piece modular design with caulkless seams and unique tongue-and-groove snap together design allows for easy installation


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A New Jersey man drove at least 20 hours earlier this month to see "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson, arguably one of television's most popular reality stars. But that's not the story. The story is why he made the lengthy journey: to have the Robertson family member baptize him.
Brian Richards made the long trek from his home to White's Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., where Robertson introduced him to the church on March 2, before publicly baptizing him.
"From New Jersey, I can count on one hand the people I met from New Jersey," Robertson quipped, before telling the congregation about Richards' long journey to the house of worship.
Watch the video of this introduction below:
A second clip shows Robertson and Richards in the church's baptismal pool. The "Duck Dynasty" star explains the Christian salvation message and describes the significance of baptism before dunking Richards under the water.
"You are now going to die to sin," Robertson told Richards beforehand. "You're going to be buried — the old you — and the new one will come forth. God will seal you with his spirit and you will be guaranteed to be raised from the dead one day and live forever. Good news, you know?"
Watch the baptism below:
(H/T: Breathe Cast)
Featured image via Brian Richards' YouTube Account


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Brewengineer: If all species are evolving then what aboot dogs? I'm waiting for them to be able to talk and be able to drive a car. That would be so choice, dudes. I get a dog, who's just cool as hell, and he can drive me around. I'd finally be able to hunt people down from this site and do some sexual assaulting like a real European.
Me and my dog riding around
Huntin' bad people in the Albemarle Sound
Me and my dog getting high
Chosing which people live or die
That verse goes out to Sergant Rick Hunter and Sergant Deede McCall of the Los Angeles Police Department
Oh Wayne, I went to church last night...hallejujah........and we got a new priest. You guys ever see Reno 911.........and Trudy Wielgel's boyfriend, Craig - The Truckee River Killer - well he looks and talks just like him. No wonder that alter boy looked so nervous. I often look at alter boys and wonder how many times he got got. Ya know what it is that I be sayin' ?
Results 51 to 60 of 226
Hey Wayne, nice article. It's sweet when people are recognized for doing something good for the youth in their community. Maybe it will encourage people to do something for others in their own sphere of influence. Keep up the good work.
Oct 28, 2013, 04:32 PM #53Senior Member
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Singer Island
- Posts
- 4,663
This flatspell (prolonged knee to thigh boat wakes) is pissing me off, because if there were waves I would not have wasted my time reading this drivel. Now I have added to it: Most of you guys and gals are going straight to hell for not wearing rash guards and showing way too much butt crack. Crack kills! Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. I love you Wayne. You asshole!
Oct 28, 2013, 04:33 PM #54
Why doesn't everyone who hates Jesus just not post in this thread? All the kikes can have their own thread, along with fat hippy Buddhists, arrogant atheists, towel-heads, Dot-heads, whatever you happen to be. Then we talk about surfing in all the other threads.
Oct 28, 2013, 04:35 PM #55
for all those cheering Wayne on, how do you not see the parallels between a madmad on the beach proselytizing and telling people to cover up and a madman in the middle eastern desert saying the same thing?
Wayne is a the taliban in sheep's clothing. If Wayne had his way, wed all believe what he believes and he believes in an ancient myth that is balls to the walls lunacy....F*ck science and engineering, we have FAITH. and abstinence seems to work ALMOST all the time, eh Mary?
time to grow up and be an adult, there is no savior, you(we) need to solve your (our) own problems.
Oct 28, 2013, 04:38 PM #56
Oct 28, 2013, 04:52 PM #57
Oct 28, 2013, 05:04 PM #58
Oct 28, 2013, 05:31 PM #59
Maybe I am, it's nobody's business here, but I back helping disadvantaged youths from that area, because I know how it is there. Nobody's methods are foolproof, nor totally selfless. Even if he does some self-aggrandizing, so be it. If some kids are helped along the way then I see no harm. I also don't see many atheist groups getting out into the community and helping people, but I see a ton of Christian groups doing it. I'll leave it at that.
Oct 28, 2013, 05:47 PM #60


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Juan Diego students, faculty gather to pray for injured student
SS MiddleofNowhere, UtahOct. 27, 2012 1:45 p.m.
Prayers for this kid and his family. It's great that students in America can still come together in a setting like this and support and pray for others, at least in private schools. It's too bad that this kind of thing can't take place in a public school setting.


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Mike Higuera
Fri, 03/02/2012
Enviropreneurship and land conservation.
Mike Higuera
Mon, 09/12/2011
Mike Higuera
Tue, 07/05/2011
by Michael H. Higuera
Fri, 08/01/1997
The Natural Resource Defense Council and economist Clark Wiseman go head to head over the environmental costs of recycling.
Mike Higuera
One fellow at PERC's 2011 Enviropreneur Institute explored ways to create incentives for oil companies to work with conservation organizations like TNC to plan their projects to avoid sensitive areas and minimize impacts.


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I have a macro that I wrote which I use as an add-in to Word
97/Word 2000. It presents a dialog with a control that allows
you to enter any Unicode value, in hex representation, and the
corresponding character is inserted. It's not a quick way to
type, but for occasional use, it's convenient if you know the
Unicode value. I guess this boils down to whether you find it
easier to look these up in the book, or in the dialog that
Insert/Symbol provides.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:51 EDT


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Animals used in traveling shows and menageries are often subjected to severe abuse in order to force them to provide "entertainment", especially at county and state fairs.
Rigorous training methods involving electric shocks, beatings, and food deprivation are used to force animals to perform acts that are unnatural and meaningless to them. Some trainers starve animals or surgically remove their teeth and claws.
Traveling zoos and petting zoos are bad news for animals and humans. They subject animals to the stress of transport, alien environments, irregular feeding and watering, mishandling, and crowds of strangers. Countless people have been sickened—and some have died—after contracting diseases from animals in petting zoos. Animals used in traveling zoos suffer both behind the scenes and when they are on display.
For example, The Zoo, a traveling animal exhibit, has been repeatedly cited by the USDA for inadequate animal care practices, including failure to provide proper diets, veterinary care, or environmental enrichment.
This needs to be stopped! Animals should have proper rights to a healthy habitat and a decent meal.
A little story for you all,
I went into an animal rights expo, and to my surprise they had a petting zoo. To my disgust I walked by and looked down at all of these poor animals more scared then they have been in their entire lives. Children so young grabbing them, and hurting them. I don't ever think my heart had broken so hard in my life. There was a miniature pony with his head buried under hay shaking. I couldn't stay in the building without getting sick to my stomach. The amount of restraint it took me to walk away was unbearable. Everyone please find that part in your heart to understand what these animal petting zoos do. These people should be punished and sued for absolute ANIMAL CRUILTY!
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ABI Research sees fast transition to 802.11ac
1 Comment
Following small shipment volumes in 2012 and a significant increase in shipments in 2013, IEEE 802.11ac will emerge as the dominant Wi-Fi protocol by 2014, according to ABI Research. Only a niche subset of 802.11ac will be single-band 802.11ac, using solely the five GHz band. Most will be 802.11n/802.11ac dual-band chipsets.
Established Wi-Fi chipset vendors such as Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm Atheros, and Texas Instruments will attempt to maintain or grow their share of the market by transitioning as fast as possible. The smaller vendors will attempt to grow their market share during the transition by quickly shipping chipsets with competitive protocol, band, and MIMO combinations.
While 802.11ad products will make an early debut, with a Qualcomm Atheros and Wilocity partnership leading the way, 802.11ad will not reach the 50 percent mark until 2016. It will be used in dual- and tri-band chipsets. Because of their lower cost, 802.11n and 802.11ac chipsets with 1X1 will remain dominant until 2015, when they will be surpassed by both 2X2 and 3X3 chipsets. 2X2 chipsets for mobile devices that can fall back to 1X1 will be indispensable to enabling this transition.
"With the exception of a small and dwindling number of 802.11g chipsets, everything has already shifted to 802.11n, and it has happened faster than most people expected. This is a clear indication of what will happen with 802.11ac," explains Philip Solis, research director, mobile networks. "The 1x1 version of 802.11n replaced 802.11g. A rapid transition will occur with 802.11ac, but without the messy politics that slowed down the standardization of 802.11n in the past."
ABI Research's latest report, "Wi-Fi Chipset Evolution: From 802.11n to 802.11ac and 802.11ad," covers the Wi-Fi chipset market's transition from 802.11n to 802.11ac and 802.11ad. Forecasts include protocol, band, and MIMO configurations for various product categories. A table of current and upcoming 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ad chipset vendors, products, protocols, bands, and MIMO configurations is included.
This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.


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Five Albums You Should Be Listening to Right Now: All North Carolina Edition
The finest new indie music from our favorite Southern state.
Each week, titans of the mediasphere give Nerve their music recommendations. This week: Bryan Reed, contributing editor of the N.C.-based ShuffleMagazine, and a freelance contributor to Carolinas-based publications, including IndependentWeekly, and CharlotteViewpoint.org.
1. Mount Moriah, Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah is the sound of the New South. This is a band molded from classic rock, traditional country, and Protestant hymnals; their songs reflect both Southern pride and Southern shame. The album centers on frontwoman Heather McEntire coming to terms with a restrictive religious upbringing whose traditions could be beautiful and comforting, but whose doctrine excludes her. But as captivating and redemptive as her stories are, her musical partner, Jenks Miller, says just as much by twisting the twang of country-rock guitar leads into deliberate, sinewy melodies.
Listen: "Lament"
2. Phil Cook & His Feat, Hungry Mother Blues
For Phil Cook, there is no downtime. Between tours with his adventurous folk-rock band Megafaun, Cook recorded this first proper release with His Feat (actually his feet) at home in Durham, N.C., during a thunderstorm. With a soft kick drum keeping time, Cook casually explores Piedmont blues finger-picking, resonant slide-guitar, and nimbly woven knots of banjo. Megafaun's self-titled fourth album, due next month, is a decidedly more rock-focused affair than its predecessors, but fans of that band's front-porch twang will find a surplus in his unassuming solo vehicle.
Listen: "Ballad of a Hungry Mother"
3. Floating Action, Desert Etiquette
Like fellow lo-fi popsmiths Dr. Dog (labelmates) and The Love Language (fellow Tar Heels), Floating Action honors the traditional pop and rock influences: Beatles, Stones, Phil Spector, et al. But Floating Action doesn't stop there; the Asheville band draws from a much deeper well. Here the deep grooves and gospel influence of Stax soul bleed into Eastern-inspired psych rock and spaced-out dub. Floating Action might well be North Carolina's most underrated band.
Listen: "Eye of a Needle"
4. Last Year's Men, Sunny Down Snuff
Diving headlong into '50s rockabilly, '60s soul, and '90s garage rock proved fruitful for Last Year's Men, a scrappy upstart quartet with a teen-idol-on-speed sound. When the band debuted late last year with Sunny Down Snuff, its potential was immediately apparent. That hasn't made the band's rapid ascent any less exciting, though. 2011 finds the band touring through the East Coast and into the Midwest, releasing a split single with their idols, Reigning Sound, and gathering attention from cool-hunting corporate sponsors like Scion and Vitaminwater.
Listen: "Paralyzed"
5. Horseback, The Invisible Mountain & The Gorgon Tongue
With Horseback, Jenks Miller (also of Mount Moriah) shows off his experimental-music bona fides. The double-disc Gorgon Tongue collects and reissues 2007's Impale Golden Horn and last year's Forbidden Planet, but neither quite trumps the achievement of 2010's The Invisible Mountain, which sets twangy, pensive melodies against dramatic post-rock grandiosity and abrasive black metal.
Listen: "Invokation"


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Spine and spinal cord injury, imaging of spine and disc biomechanics
Unfortunately, this opportunity is currently unavailable. Please check back at a later date.
Current projects include:
3D dynamic imaging of spine and disc biomechanics
This project develops non-invasive, dynamic imaging techniques to track vertebral and disc motion in 3D in vivo.
Spine and spinal cord injury in children and the elderly
This project aims to understand the unique risks and mechanisms of spinal injury in children or the elderly and how this can be prevented or reduced in these vulnerable populations.
Thoracic strength and injury biomechanics
This project aims to improve our knowledge of thoracic biomechanics and injury tolerance in the elderly.
Research Location
North Shore - Kolling Institute of Medical Research
Program Type
3D dynamic imaging of spine and disc biomechanics
Classical biomechanics studies of the spine have either been performed in vitro on cadaver or animal tissue, using 2D or static imaging methods, or have used skin-mounted markers to track bone position. This project uses newly developed dynamic MRI methods to track spinal and disc motion in vivo in 3D. This method will have a range of clinical and experimental applications including evaluation of spinal disorders and spinal implants, research in back pain and studies of human paediatric spinal biomechanics.
Spine and spinal cord injury in children and the elderly
Spinal cord injury is rare and more severe in children compared to adults, and is more common in the elderly than younger adults. The main risk factors and mechanisms of spinal cord injury are also different across these age groups. This project aims to understand the unique risks and mechanisms of injury in children or the elderly and how this can be prevented or reduced in these vulnerable populations. There are options to include mechanical testing of spinal tissues, biomechanics testing of spinal joints, cadaver tissue testing, medical image analysis (CT / MRI), computational modelling, spinal tissue histology and neuropathology in this project, and there is potential for international collaboration.
Thoracic strength and injury biomechanics
Rib fractures are common in elderly occupants of motor vehicle collisions. The stiffness and strength of the thoracic region in the elderly is not well characterised and models used in simulations to study injury reduction and prevention are not well developed for the elderly. This project will characterise the stiffness, flexibility (range of motion) and strength of the cadaver thorax over a range of ages to improve thoracic injury tolerance data for the elderly. There is scope to extend this project to include development and validation of non-invasive biomechanics methods to measure thoracic stiffness, or computational modelling to investigate the effects of changes in vehicle design to reduce or prevent rib fracture in elderly occupants of motor vehicle collisions.
Additional Information
Interested students are asked to apply for all available scholarships, with assistance from the potential supervisor. The Murray Maxwell Biomechanics Lab (MMBL) is part of the Bone and Joint Research Group at the Kolling Institute. Our research combines engineering and biomechanics and we regularly collaborate with surgeons, physiotherapists, medical imaging specialists, medical scientists, tissue engineers and engineering industry. Our general research areas are development of non-invasive biomechanics methods (e.g. MRI, ultrasound), spine and spinal cord biomechanics, and injury mechanisms and prevention. Other topics or smaller volunteer research projects may be considered (e.g. summer projects or Honours projects). The Kolling Institute is an excellent academic environment for students and has an active student group PReSS.
Want to find out more?
Contact us to find out what's involved in applying for a PhD. Domestic students and International students
Browse for other opportunities within the North Shore - Kolling Institute of Medical Research .
Engineering, Biomechanics, spine, spinal cord, injury, Medical Imaging, MRI, mechanical testing, histology, neuropathology, child, Paediatrics, age, thoracic, motor vehicle, computer modelling, Orthopaedics, kinematics, back pain, spinal implant
Opportunity ID
The opportunity ID for this research opportunity is: 1512


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How to Save Money in College
Posted Tuesday, Sep 2, 2008 by
Here are tips on how to save money while in college:
Develop a budget.
If you're not on a budget, you need to create one. A budget can help you track all your monthly expenses so you know exactly what you will be spending each month. This will help you forecast how much money you will need each month, which will help you when big bills are due (like insurance, rent, etc.). This is one of the best ways to save money.
Track every dime you spend.
By simply jotting down your daily expenses, you can begin analyzing where you're spending the most money. You might even be surprised how much money you're spending on food and entertainment. Start a list of your expenses and divide into various categories; like housing, food, entertainment, tuition, etc. Once you see your spending habits, you can begin decreasing certain expenses that are not necessary.
Clip coupons every Sunday.
You can save a lot of money by clipping coupons out of Sunday's newspaper. The key to saving money with coupons is to only clip items you need. Don't cut out coupons for things you don't need.
Make your own meals.
You might be shocked how much money you could save by refraining from buying food at restaurants. Try to make your meals at home — and bringing the food with you to school and work. Save time by making big meals that you can divide up for later in the week. This can save you potentially hundreds of dollars per month.
Use cash.
Force yourself to pay everything in cash. If you can avoid using credit cards, you can prevent yourself from overspending — and needing to pay high interest rates on your credit cards.
Lower your credit card interest rates by simply asking.
Call up your credit card companies and request that they lower your credit card interest rates. Depending on how much money you have on credit cards, you could save quite a bit of money by getting a reduction on your rates. You'll never know until you ask.
Postpone big purchases.
Next time you're ready to make a big purchase. Hold back. Give yourself a week or two to think about it some more. By simply waiting, you'll have more money in your pocket that you might need later. And you may realize after a week that you don't need that pricey item anyway.


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|Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:
|Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web:
|Tom Warren / The Verge:
|Matt Richtel / New York Times:
|Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:
|Bryan Bishop / The Verge:
|Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
|Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
|Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:
|Mat Honan / Wired:
|John Walker / Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
|Amol Sharma / Wall Street Journal:
|Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:05 AM ET, October 20, 2012.
The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.
|Alex Williams / TechCrunch:
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JMU Planetarium Re-Opens Sept 6!
Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:30 PM - Sat, 6 Sep 2014 2:00 PM
The John C. Wells Planetarium at James Madison University, a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art, hybrid facitlity, will resume its FREE Satuday public shows beginning September 6.
Due to high demand, a new family show has been added at 11 a.m.! For September, the Family shows at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. will feature Sesame Street's One World One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure. Our Family shows at 2:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. will be In Search of Our Cosmic Origins. Following each full dome video presentation, we will raise our incredible Goto Chronos starball and highlight the Valley sky! We will discuss the planets, stars and constellations you can see at this time of the year in your backyard at night! Weather permitting, our solar telescopes will be set-up outside near the JMU Sundial to provide visitors with incredible views of our star, the Sun!
All shows are FREE! No tickets, no reservations, all seats are first-come, first-seated! Please join us!


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Figure 6:
Delivery of miRNAs into the substantia nigra with systemic injections of tyrosine-mutant AAV9/3 vectors. (a) Illustration of the vector construct. The double-stranded pre-miRNA sequence for aromatic
-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) was placed between the GFP and SV40 poly(A) sequences. ITR: inverted terminal repeat; SynI: synapsin I promoter. (b) A coronal mouse brain section showing a high concentration of GFP-immunoreactive cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc, circled area). (c) An enlarged image of the SNc subjected to double immunostaining shows colocalization of GFP-positive cells (green) and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH-) positive cells (red). ((d)–(g)) Selective inhibition of AADC expression in SNc neurons. AADC immunoreactivity (red) was not detected in the cells that were positive for both GFP (green) and TH (blue) (arrows). TH-positive cells that were GFP-negative displayed AADC immunoreactivity (arrowheads). Scale bars: (b) 2 mm; (c) 100
m; ((d)–(g)) 20


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(3 quotes found)
"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."
Buddhist Proverb
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"
"When the student is ready, the master appears. ~"
Quotes Daddy offers a number of tools for developers and bloggers to integrate quotes into their site including customizable widgets, embeddable quotes and API.
Over 1,000,000 famous quotes and user quotes that you can save to your favorites, share with friends and add to your site, blog or social network.


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I'd appreciate help in identifying the spider in the attached photographs - I think it's a false widow but would welcome any other opinions.
It was one of 2 or 3 in my conservatory where they're living in the rafters (plus at least one on the outside). I'm not too concerned about them in the conservatory (all though we may stop storing our shoes out there) but would appreciate any advice on whether they're likely to come inside - we may have one living in my 3 year olds window frame which is open at the moment because of the heat and we'd rather not have her room invaded.
Thanks in advance.
Definitely a noble false widow (Steatoda nobilis) and the location you've found them in is very typical of them. They can give a bite if provoked (often said to be akin to a bee sting) but not as dangerous as the press too often makes them out to be. For more information about the false widows see:
If you are concerned, it wouldn't do any harm to remove (with care!) the one in your 3 year olds window and put it at the bottom of the garden/somewhere else outside. Also a good idea to let them know that they should treat these spiders with the same respect as they would a bee or wasp.


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Day of Decision
The fourth annual Day of Decision will be conducted today during National Hospice Month by Community Hospice of Northeast Florida.
The public is invited to pick up a copy of the Five Wishes living will at participating libraries, Publix Super Markets, hospitals and senior centers throughout the area.
This document is designed to help people express, in writing, their desires about treatment should they become seriously ill or unable to care for themselves.
© 2017. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us


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Fox TV
Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 | 7:41 p.m.
Add Islands Fine Burgers & Drinks in Beverly Hills to the list of Kats Reports bureaus. Been in the area for a day and a half, getting away with it all. I mean, from it all.
Heading back to VegasVille in a few hours, but not before checking in with some literary stuffing on a quick trip that has been busy and very cool.
Garrett, Seacrest teaming up
Brad Garrett and Ryan Seacrest are co-producing a children's-centered show based on the Bill Cosby show (based on a series by Art Linkletter), "Kids Say the Darndest Things." Garrett says, "This is because my show is sokid-friendly." The working title is "That Kids Show" and it is set to run for six episodes on TLC in early 2011.
Meanwhile, Garrett says business at the Brad Garrett Comedy Club is up about 60 percent from a month ago, to 150-160 per show. "I attribute most of that to people coming back for refunds!" Garrett says. That line, and the one about his act being kid-friendly, are jokes.
Garrett is back this week, Wednesday and Thursday, and again Oct. 20-21.
Showcase moving on
You can always count on Vita Corimbi to set the mood to music. "We might be jammin' on the strip, or a dive in downtown! All we want's a place that can support our sound!"
The "Menopause" cast member and frequent performer with Killian's Angels helped cap a spirited if melancholy closing of the freewheeling Composers Showcase performances at Liberace Museum's cabaret showroom. The monthly showcases have been held at the museum for three years after debuted at the since-closed Suede restaurant in April 2005. The Showcase will outlast the museum, set to close on Oct. 17.
"Jersey Boys" music director Keith Thompson, who helped organize the monthly showcases back-when, says the showcases will continue but a location has not been decided. The shows might barnstorm for a while, testing out new venues on the Strip and downtown (and elsewhere) to find the right feel. But the 100-seat (at its largest capacity) cabaret theater will close and the mirror-plated Baldwin will fall silent after the museum closes Oct. 17.
The showcases have been a personal favorite ever since I attended one of the earliest shows at Suede. Over the years the list of the composers, musicians and vocalists to appear represents some of the greatest talent the city has seen. From the Composers Showcase website, we list: Corimbi, Michael Brennan, Travis Cloer, Amos Glick, Wayne Green, Susan Haller, Danny Wright, Jamie Karen, Richard Oberacker (who helped start the series with Thompson), Matt Taylor, Tyler Williams, Matt Taylor, Mackenzie Bell, Kristen Hertzenberg, Christine Hudman, Patrick Leveque, Johnny Miles, Andrew Ragone, Brandon Singleton, Tina Walsh, Danielle White, Tish Diaz, Dan Falcone, Philip Fortenberry, Derek Jones, Mark Pardy, Kevin Stout and Eric Tewalt. I'll add Ali Spuck and her husband, Kristofer McNeeley; Erich Bergen and Kissy Simmons, Tracy Hammon-Hodge and her husband, Corwyn Hodge; and (in that first show) Brent Barrett.
At the moment, all that can be said for the October Composers Showcase is "TBA." The remarkable Fortenberry plays his final "Liberace & Me" performance at the museum on Oct. 13, and fittingly he and Thompson closed Thursday's showcase with Thompson's "The Memory." Thompson hugged Anna Nateece, Liberace's longtime costume designer, and that moment closed a great era of Vegas entertainment.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.


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Oak Hills to pack food for needy
Feed My Starving Children is conducting a Mobile Packing Event from 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, March 27 and from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, March 28, on the campus of Oak Hills Christian College, 1600 Oak Hills Road S.W., Bemidji. A celebration benefit concert will be held from 7-10 p.m. Saturday, in the Fellowship Center Chapel at Oak Hills.
Feed my Starving Children is a non-profit Christian organization committed to feeding starving children. Their approach is simple: volunteers hand-pack meals formulated especially for starving children and FMSC ships the meals to more than 60 countries around the world including Haiti. In 2008, they sent 25.5 million meals to Haiti.
Volunteers are needed in order to make this event a success. Teams of 4-6 volunteers will pack meals for a two-hour time slot. Adults, teens and children in third grade or higher are welcome to volunteer
Donations will also be accepted to pay for the 100,000 meals that will be packed. Donations can be made payable to FMSC, add MP 1003-29 to the memo line and sent to Oak Hills Christian College, 1600 Oak Hills Road S.W., Bemidji, MN 56601. To donate online visit the Web site fmsc.org/mobilepack/donate and enter 1003-29 as the event number. For every dollar contributed, 94 percent goes directly toward the food program.
For more information on volunteering, call 218-751-8670 ext. 1213 and leave a message or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.


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The CEO of Google is still complaining that we have to drive our own cars. Humans, I mean. Clearly, cars should have the ability to drive themselves and we should just sit there:
"Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense. It's a bug that cars were invented before computers."
Sure would change NASCAR. This is the second time in the last few months that Schmidt has presented this idea.
Follow John Moe at @johnmoe.


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Yes an AR has less recoil than an AK.Neither are very heavy in recoil though.
Hey all,
I have a couple of AK and SKS variants that I love, but I also have a wife and daughters who are petrified to shoot them because of the recoil. I know pretty much nothing about AR's other than they are supposed to be a little more accurate, and someone mentioned that they might have lighter recoil. Could anyone comment on this? If you have both an AK and an AR, does the AR have noticeably less recoil? I need a new caliber like a hole in the head, but it may be worth looking into. Thoughts?
Yes an AR has less recoil than an AK.Neither are very heavy in recoil though.
Fired both, The AK is a bit more...but if you're scared of the AK recoil, I'd say you're still going to be scared of the AR's recoil.
AR doesn't really have any perceivable recoil- not that I've felt, at least.
One of the reasons I sold my AK was that the recoil is more than my AR. The original AK with wood stock is also heavier than the AR which makes it more intimidating for some women.
"Don't forget, incoming fire has the right of way."
ARs have recoil???
Never noticed, of course I also shoot a shortened Nagant with HOT handloads.
Yes, I'm a Mosin junkie too but my wife won't even touch it. I just think that when the Mosin smacks your shoulder like a mack truck it's the Mosin's way of telling you it loves you. See, who says men can't be emotional?
Also, work with your wife and daughter on the issue. An AK will not HURT either of them because of recoil. It might scare them to try it, but if you work with them on weapons with less recoil (.22s), then it should build their confidence to try the AK. It should/will eventually get to the point that they are not afraid of the weapon, and want to shoot it. Just go about it professionally with respect to their feelings, and work with them. I think buying the AR would just be an expensive way to not fix the root of the problem.
My handloads are .003 of the lands, using a 168gr Nosler Ballistic Tip(Green Tip) in front of IM 4198.
Barrel has been shortened to 22" and recrowned with a FAL flash supressor, I have a 1" pad on the back of a Monte Carlo stock and it still kicks like a 12ga with 3" magnums.
ARs have some recoil but not much. I own both an AK and a couple ARs. I shoot the ARs much more often for varying reasons. I like my AK, in parts due to the looks and I love shooting it. I can't make a direct comparision as to recoil but I wouldn't think the AR recoil is manageable for your wife. My wife 5.2, 100lbs shoots it and has no problems controlling it. She won't touch a 12 Gauge SG or my K98 wiht a 10 foot pool due to the kick. If you're in the Lafayette area drop me a pm and I'd gladly let you shoot you one of mine to get a feel for it. The AR platform also has the advantage that you can get a 22lr kit for less than 200 mag included and shoot cheap ammo.


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A little routine maintenance… 6 hours later
When I received the email the other day from my hosting service, Surpass Hosting, saying that they were installing a new power source but it shouldn't affect their service, I thought to myself, "yeah, right." I did resolve to make a post on Saturday saying that my site might be down today but I never got around to it.
The possible momentary interruption lasted for six hours today. And from what I can see, they are still having problems.
The good news is my site is back up. It came back up shortly after I started making fun of the problem on Facebook. I don't know if that had an effect, but it made me feel better.
The bad news is that they are supposed to be doing more maintenance on Saturday, 2 AM – 4 AM EST. So for you night owl readers, the site might be down for five minutes… or hours.
In the meantime, I am open to suggestions. Surpass was cheap and I got what I paid for. I am now to the point where my desire to switch has overcome my laziness. However, I'm still looking for cheap.
So if you have any suggestions for a hosting service, I'm all ears.


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Presenting the finalists for the 3rd annual Showroom of the Year Awards, sponsored by Residential Lighting and the Dallas Market Center. Join us at the Dallas Intl. Lighting Market on June 21 as we announce the winners.
After 25 years as a building contractor, Illuminations owner Gustavo Garcia knows how to make builders happy. In every way it can, the showroom tries to exceed customers' expectations. The overriding goal is to prevent or minimize problems that would further complicate the already complicated job of building a new home.
Located at the southernmost tip of Texas, just 12 miles from the Mexican border, Illuminations does business in one of the country's poorest regions. San Antonio, the closest big city, is 225 miles away. The influx of Mexican nationals keeps business flowing, but requires the staff to cater to two cultures.
Taking care of builders has proven to the backbone of the company. A significant percentage of sales is from repeat builder business. Pros return because they are confident there won't be hassles or snags along the way. The staff is ready to help them stay abreast of the latest innovations in lighting — knowledge that helps them help their own clients choose a lighting package.


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U.S. Open
Looking for your favorite
Full Sail Brewing
has been named Craft Brewer of the Year by Beverage World Magazine for
their 26 years of sustainable stewardship, quality, consistency and
operational ingenuity. More than a quarter century after its founding, Full
Sails beers continue to garner acclaim on worldwide stage, having collected
more than 300 awards, including 130 Gold medals.
Its a great honor to receive this recognition from Beverage World, said
Irene Firmat, Full Sails Founder and CEO. When we founded Full Sail in
1987 there were only a handful of small breweries in the country and we were
fortunate to be one of those early, pioneering brewers. We were inspired by
the idea of bringing a fresh perspective to American beer culture by
emphasizing complexity, creativity, and sophistication. We believe that one
of lifes greatest joys is in celebrating moments big and small with
friends, family, good food, and of course, good beer. The craft beer
industry has grown and changed tremendously over these 26 years, as there
are now over 3,000 breweries nationwide. Within this intensely competitive
framework, we are thrilled that Full Sail has been named Craft Brewer of the
Year. It is with a sense of pride and deep appreciation that we acknowledge
this accolade from Beverage World.
Our focus and vision for our brewery has always been to provide world class,
elegant beers with impeccable, consistent quality. Over the years, the hundreds
of medals we have received in national and international awards reflect this
dedication. As the first brewery in the small community of Hood River, Oregon,
we understood the impact we have to both our community and our environment. To
be named Craft Brewer of the Year means that not only do we take brewing
seriously, but also our responsibility to our employee-owners, our community,
and the beauty of our environment. This award is indeed one of lifes moments
worth celebrating. Cheers to Beverage World and all our beer fans and friends
for your ongoing support all these years, added Firmat.
Full Sail Brewing Company:
Founded in 1987, the independent and employee-owned Full Sail Brewery is perched
on a bluff in Hood River, Oregon, overlooking the most epic wind and kite
surfing spot in the world. Over the last 26 years, Full Sail has collected more
than 300 national and international awards for their beers and sustainable
practices, including 130 Gold medals. Among the companys most popular brews are
Full Sail Amber, IPA, Limited Lager Series, Pub Ale Series, Session Premium,
Session Black, and Session Fest lagers. At this very moment their specialists in
the liquid refreshment arts are crafting barley and hops into your next beer.
The Full Sail Brew Pub is open seven days a week. Swing by for a pint, grab a
bite, tour the brewery, or just soak up the view.
Starting a Craft
Brewery - Brewers Library
America's Best LLC
America's Best
Odd Inns
Welcome Fisherman
Electric and Hybrid Cars
Panacea USA - Alternative Energy
Ranger - Guide to US National Parks
Top 10
Ales & Lagers
in the USA
Golden Ale
Blonde Ale
English Summer Ale
English Pale Ale
English IPA
Imperial IPA
Imperial Red Ale
English Mild Ale
English Brown
American Stout
Oatmeal Stout
Imperial Stout
Old Ale
Barley Wine
Scottish Ale
Strong Scottish
Irish Red Ale
American Amber
American Pale Ale
American IPA
American Brown Ale
German Alt
German Kolsch
German Wheat
Belgian Saison
Belgian Ale
Belgian Abbey Ale
Belgian Lambic
Belgian Witbier
American Light
American Pilsner
Premium Lager
Amber Lagers
Bohemian Pilsner
German Pilsner
Munchner Helles
Munchner Dunkel
Vienna Lager
American Cream Ale
American Wheat
American specialty wheat
Fruit/Vegetable beer
Pumpkin beer
Herb and Spice beer
Chocolate Beer
Coffee beer
Rye/Roggen Beer
Wood / Barrel
Aged beer
Aged strong beer
Wood/Barrel Stout
Smoked/Rauch beer
Specialty Ales/Lagers


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Up the Down Staircase
A thin wall separates the defense minister's office from Shimon Peres' abandoned office on the cabinet floor of the Knesset. On Monday afternoon, one defense minister sat on either side of the wall, as incoming minister Ehud Barak took over Peres' office and outgoing minister Amir Peretz remained in his. Slowly, Peretz was stripped of the symbols of authority. The staff of aides and spokespeople miraculously fell away; the number of security guards dropped from three to one. But several hours before the Knesset voted on Barak's appointment, Peretz was still defense minister. He was in charge. He looked for the ministry's chief of staff, Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Michael Herzog.
"Mike!," Peretz called, "Mike!" Mike didn't answer. Peretz went out to the hallway. "Where's Mike?" he asked. With Barak, he was told.
"What's going on here?" Peretz asked, an insulted expression crossing his face. "I'm still the defense minister. Call him."
Herzog was summoned. Later, Peretz gave a farewell speech to the Knesset plenum. It was a long one. "He thinks he's Fidel Castro," Likud back-benchers complained. In a departure from common practice, nearly all Labor MKs were present; Peretz's party colleagues previously tended to leave him to face the opposition's scorn on his own. This time the Laborites came to hear Peretz eulogize himself and to make sure he was really leaving.
The Knesset has seen a lot of turnover. Ministers come and go endlessly, but such a prominent contrast between a minister and his replacement is rare. A collective sigh of relief issued from the Knesset when Barak's appointment was confirmed; even those who voted against it rushed to shake his hand afterward. It is true that he poses a political threat to two large parties; Kadima and Likud; and that many people do not really like him (not even his party colleagues), but everyone realizes how crucial his appointment is at this time. There will be time for political account-settling later. Indeed, the first signs of it could be seen last Monday in the Knesset, when the first sentence Barak uttered in the overcrowded Labor chambers was: "I hope that soon we will take over the larger room; that of Kadima."
Kadima MKs were insulted. They had awaited the arrival of Barak the savior for months, and before he even takes his seat at the cabinet table he is informing them that he wants to take over. Barak's comment touched the most sensitive nerves of the Kadima MKs. They realize that by bringing Barak into the cabinet, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is buying himself some political quiet, for at least six months or a year. But while Olmert is thinking about short-term survival, they are already thinking about the next term. The more successful Barak is, the worse off they are, since swing voters will switch to Labor. If Barak fails and the government topples, however, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu will be the winner. Either way, Kadima loses. Kadima MKs feel like the class runt who gets teased and hit all the time. The bullies take his sandwich and threaten to take his lunch money the next day.
MK Avigdor Yitzhaki, Olmert's most vocal opponent within Kadima, expressed this week what quite a few of his fellow Kadima MKs say about their party leader off the record. "It's clear that Kadima isn't important to Olmert," Yitzhaki said. "What's important to him is Ehud Olmert and how long he will retain his seat. Olmert could appoint MK Marina Solodkin to the cabinet now, but he will not because he doesn?t care about the Russian sector. If in another few months he sees that he has no chance of being reelected in Kadima, he'll do what Barak wants: merge Kadima and the Pensioners with the Labor Party and give Barak his own place, while asking to be his No. 2."
One could dismiss Yitzhaki's comments as not being objective, but his remarks echo those made last week by a Kadima minister who is not thought to holding any grudge against Olmert. "If there's a situation where the polls say that Barak would bring a united Kadima-Labor bloc unequivocal victory over Netanyahu and that Olmert wouldn't, I don't rule out a scenario in which Labor and Kadima merge," the minister said in a dry, informative tone. "Four or five of our people go to Likud, four or five go home, Barak is our candidate for prime minister and Olmert and Barak reach an agreement that Olmert becomes finance or foreign minister after the elections."
Give me peaceFormer prime minister Ariel Sharon used to say that "the most important thing is quiet." And that's precisely what both Olmert and Barak want right now. Olmert wants to enjoy the brief grace period his second government will grant him. Barak needs this time to put a positive stamp on the military establishment while carrying the Labor Party and preparing it for general elections.
As of last week, Olmert is in a unique position: He appears to be the only prime minister in a Western democratic country two of whose senior ministers have publicly called on him to resign. So they said it, so what? The foreign minister said it and stayed on, and the defense minister said it and joined his cabinet.
Perhaps it was no coincidence that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rushed to invite Barak to her office on Tuesday morning, about two hours after he was sworn in at the Defense Ministry, "to update him on the political matters that are on the agenda."
"What's the rush?" Olmert's people wanted to know. Maybe Tzipi wants to claim Barak for herself, they speculated. Maybe she realizes that in her dismal situation it is worth joining up with him in a partnership that, when the day comes, will work to topple Olmert.
The frenzy that took hold of the political system did not skip over Netanyahu. Until the moment Olmert and Barak reached a deal on the latter?s appointment, Netanyahu's aides still hoped for a hitch that would cause Olmert to offer the defense portfolio to Netanyahu instead. The Likud leader would unequivocally have accepted such an offer. After all, there is no shortage of excuses, such as the Iranian threat. But Netanyahu would have joined the cabinet primarily to block his main rival, Barak, and keep him in the opposition desert knowing that because the Labor chairman is not an MK, he could not even be opposition leader. But the offer never came, the dream vanished, and Netanyahu went off to the United States with a sour taste in his mouth.
What a tangled web is being weaved around Barak. The man who had been so ostracized and reviled turned overnight into someone everyone wants to get close to. A Labor Party initiative is underway to cancel the party chairmanship race scheduled to take place a few months before the general elections, which would be a heaven-sent gift for Barak. While he would get to enjoy a quiet time within the party and establish himself in the Defense Ministry, the Likud is getting ready for an out-and-out race between Netanyahu and Silvan Shalom and wallow in mudslinging for months, and Kadima is in deep trouble, saddled with an unpopular prime minister who is haunted by a war probe and criminal investigations. For Barak, it seems that glad tidings, like troubles, come in threes."It's impossible to have a primary every year," said MK Ophir Pines-Paz, who raised the idea of canceling the next race during a Labor MK meeting. "You have to let the chairman work while knowing that he is our candidate for prime minister."
Pines-Paz, a Barak supporter whom the Labor leader has designated as justice minister in a future Barak government, said he did not raise the proposal at Barak's behest.
"This is my well-known position, which I stated during my campaign as well," said Pines-Paz, who was one of several candidates who had run against Barak as party chairman. Pines-Paz said the proposal was well-received among the Labor ranks.
Although the idea met with a stentorian silence from MK Ami Ayalon, who faced off against Barak in the primary runoffs, Ayalon met with Pines-Paz the day after the faction meeting to tell him he would support the initiative. Peretz has yet to indicate his position on the matter.
Perhaps he's waiting to see what he'll get from the two Ehuds this week.Barak's advisers are split on whom to invite to the inner circle; should they ask Ayalon or Peretz to fill Eitan Cabel's seat in the cabinet, which he quit after the preliminary Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War came out? Giving Peretz a social-welfare portfolio would give Barak some of the quiet he hopes for within his party. Ayalon has no real political power, and his being outside of the cabinet is unlikely to hurt Barak. On the other hand, Ayalon did get 48 percent of the votes in the party primary, and letting Peretz in while leaving Ayalon on the outside would be a slap in the face to his voters.
"The pendulum is swinging toward Peretz," a source close to Barak said last week. ?He wants to get in and wants to stay, and he clearly hinted to Barak that if he is taken care of nicely, he won't place obstacles before the new chairman.? But another Barak aides took the opposite stance.
"The pendulum is swinging toward Ami," he said. "Not because we don't understand the advantage of having Amir join, but because of another reason altogether: Making Amir a 'social' minister will be a declaration of war on Histadrut [labor federation] Chairman Ofer Eini. Eini helped us out and fought for us, and it could be that without him we wouldn't have won. His people have told us explicitly: Leave Amir outside! We can't ignore them."
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«surely what a pussy i wish i was there to fuck this lady»
Duration: 3min 50sec Views: 56 203 Submitted: 3 years ago Submitted by:
Description: I love Capri Cavanni. This girl is drop dead fucking gorgeous. Beautiful face, amazing body and some of the best tits I've ever seen. Don't even get me started on her ASS. We took a nice long look at her before mike dug is tongue in her ass. She loved getting her asshole tongued, but she loves sucking dick even more, and shes a goddamn pro at it. She uses a ton of spit and you can tell she really enjoys slobbing on that knob. Mike fucked her silly until he busted a big ass load in her mouth, and she swallowed every drop.
Pornstars: Capri Cavanni


text: Our friends where at Disney last week and met with a DVC Salesperson. They weren't sure if they are ready to buy or how many points they wanted, so did not jump on purchasing through them. I mentioned a resale, which is how we got our OKW DVC. We also had owned through Disney at BCV, but sold this. Our friend said the salespersons from Disney told him that if they bought a resale, they could only use their points at that specific resort and could not stay anywhere else. The salesperson said this was a new rule. I have never heard or read anything stating this. I told him I would post something on this forum. I think the salesperson just didn't want to loose the sale so gave him false information. Am I correct or has anyone else read or heard of such new rules?


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Some of the best high school football players and the top college football prospects in the nation are in Arlington this week.
They will showcase their talents during the All-American Offense-Defense Bowl and football tournament.
Nearly 2,000 players ranging from seventh-graders to high school underclassmen -- including 88 All-Americans -- will take the field at Cowboys Stadium.
The annual event is meant to showcase the top high school prospects in the nation to college scouts, who'll also be on hand throughout the week.
The nearly 2,000 athletes, family members who came to watch them and college recruiters and coaches are expected to have a significant economic impact on Arlington.
"The bed nights that we've gotten here and generated has been tremendous, especially when you consider the time of year," said Rick Whittier, president of Offense-Defense Sports. "This is normally a very quiet time of year for Arlington."
It is the first year the event has been at Cowboys Stadium, and event organizers say they're impressed.
"In one word: Wow. We started this thing ... at the Orange Bowl down in Miami, and that was pretty exciting for all the kids, but this is just a new dimension," Whittier said. "This thing, this event, this chance to travel to Arlington and participate in this stadium -- the Taj Mahal of football houses -- is just something special."
Events at Cowboys Stadium kick off on Wednesday and run through Friday. The main event -- the All-American Bowl -- is on Thursday. Tickets are available to the public.


text:
So close and yet so far… Long story short: after assembling everything and fixing a whole host of firmware problems, ACRIS boards are about 0.002″ away from being done. Yup, one of the hole sizes is wrong, but other than that, the boards are perfect!
Buuuuut ignoring that, I'm very happy with the results. Take a look:
So what you have there is, among other things, 12-bit resolution! That's right; the new firmware finally supports the full 4096 levels of brightness of the LED drivers instead of 256.
The new firmware supports a couple of commands: low res setting (8-bit like before) and high res setting (12-bit). For each of these, there is a subcommand to set either all LEDs on the board to be the same color or each LED separately.
The protocol is not very complicated: [cci]SYNC CMD ARG0 ARG1 … ARGn[/cci]
[cci]SYNC[/cci] is now [cci]0x55[/cci] instead of [cci]0xAA[/cci]. I made this revision backwards compatible by making the command the old [cci]SYNC[/cci] command. That way, as long as you send the new [cci]SYNC[/cci] command before that (which would just get ignored by the old firmware), you can still control both firmwares at the same time. This is probably entirely unnecessary, but whatever. I thought it was cute.
I describe how the commands work in detail in the firmware README.
The high res commands pack 12-bit values into a series of bytes and then those values are unpacked in the firmware. The code is not super fast, but it's not horrible either. I wish I could do some kind of hashing thing to speed up the unpacking process, but the memory requirements there would be ginormous.
The new command system isn't the only thing that I added. One common failure mode in the past was that the voltage would sag causing the micro to stop running and then the LED drivers would go full brightness. The problem was that when you plugged the board back in, they would retain that state and it would happen all over again. I thought the fix was to just add a pull-up to the blank pin which is usually just controlled by the micro. This would prevent the pin from floating when the micro was browning out and would therefore shut the drivers off. However after I tested this fix out (BTW I forgot to solder one of the resistor pads down so I was very confused for a while why it wasn't pulling up at all) the failure changed to just continually resetting the micro followed by a brief draw of high current and voltage sagging.
The problem turned out to be that I completely forgot to clear out the LED driver shift registers BEFORE starting them… just a totally stupid error on my part that's been since fixed.
After I finished writing this new firmware, I used a little pre-processor magic to handle the hardware differences between the two board revisions. So, making with [cci]BRDREV=1[/cci] makes the project for the first revision and [cci]BRDREV=2[/cci] makes it for the second version. This allows me to have unified firmware.
I want to do a few more things with the firmware. E.g. I want to add some commands that would allow me to read the status of a board back on the bus. The hardware is now all there to do this and it would be good to know when the board is overheating. I could also add firmware-side brightness limiting when overheating occurs. I also need to finish the bootloader at some point — it still lacks a mechanism for verification.
After getting everything running, I finally was able to solve the question that had been bothering me the most: would my board be able to sustain 5.4A, the maximum current for all channels?
For this test, I hooked up separate 5V for the logic and started the LED power voltage out low. I then told the LED controllers to output full brightness and started ramping up the voltage. Small problem: the resistive loss on the wire was sizable as the current draw grew. I had to get up to around 11V output to hit the correct voltage drop for the LEDs on the other side. Things got a little melty but I sustained this for almost a minute before turning it back down as I wasn't heatsinking the drivers at all. The point is that the board itself could handle that kind of current… I feel like I actually designed something correctly for once. 🙂
Here is a list of the things that the new board revision fixes:
- screw terminal option for LED outputs
- if you don't want to do that, then you can twist and solder the wires to the board securely
- data direction pins on the RS485 chips have pull-ups on them to prevent multiple devices from trying to drive the bus on system startup
- blank pin on the LED drivers has a pull-up on it to prevent the drivers from trying to drive the LEDs before the system has started sending data to them
- power connectors have the right pin ordering
- power planes reduce noise and can handle the full current rating of the drivers
- error pins of the tlc are brought back to the micro in order to read thermal errors
- cleaner routing
- board fits within iteadstudio's 10cm x 10cm $35 color soldermask option
I'm planning on doing one minor revision to the board to address these problems:
- power connector + slot is too small
- soldermask accidentally applied over the back terminals
- some silkscreening is illegible
I probably won't ever order that revision unless I somehow need more LED controllers for something. Maybe an externally-funded project? Hopefully?


text:
A kid in Boston, Robbie, took just over 3000 digital photos in three days documenting his life in and around the city, and then compiled them into the animated film below. The life he documents is hardly extraordinary (lots and lots of public transport), and yet the film manages to evoke an emotional reaction by offering an intimate glimpse into one guy's personal life. If not necessarily an original idea, it's still a well done experimental film.
Given your recent post on the slippery slope of 'animated' features, I'm surprised that you felt this suitable for posting. Is all timelapse photography 'animation'? I can't help feeling the difference between this and a norman mclaren timelapse piece is the amount of direction/control over the subject matter – to me this is a document of what's infront of the kid using timelapse photography, not frame by frame manipulation of the subject to create animation.
Chuck R.
Matt, I agree that this is an off-topic post and not particularly noteworthy, and I'm beginning to wonder lately where the brewmasters are taking this "animation" blog and why.
I don't know if this is an experimental film with a particularly fetching soundtrack, or intended as a music video, but (with the exception of the poorly timed ending) it functions as a video better than any of the animated ones Amid has posted in the past several months, (which I'm sad to admit.)
The juxtaposition of music and timelapse footage creates the impression of commentary or meaning, but since there's no credit for the music I'm going to guess he just lifted it (if not, I'll stand corrected) to prop the whole thing up. The music is doing most of the work here.
If you take out the music it seems much less an intimate glimpse and more like random timelapse footage.
How did this get on an animation blog?
Films like that were done a lot in the 80's – on Super8. Since the medium is nearly forgotten, nobody remembers the films.
Guess all live-action films must be animation too, since they're all just a bunch of snapshots as well, just caught on 16mm/35mm film.
I do not think these are photographs.
This is edited video footage, or retimed video footage.
Nothing animated here…
As an aside I didn't have sound when I viewed it earlier, hence the maybe harsh initial reaction. He obviously has gone to some lengths to synchronise the images with the music at points. Though I find myself agreeing with robcat2075 here, the music is the main driving force for the emotional response, I didn't feel anything when viewing it silent.
Not as dull as it could have been, not as good as I hoped.
Such a piece illuminates a truism of life -isn't that what we expect from art?
Animation is for suckers anyway.
If you want to talk about music propping up a film, watch "Happy Feet."
"but since there's no credit for the music I'm going to guess he just lifted it"
From the vimeo page:
Lightspeed Champion – Dry Lips
These days, it's hard to get students to avoid lifting music. They've seen so many music videos. It's too easy to take a nice piece of music and drop it over their image – voila! Everything is done!
Sort of like when experimental animation layers on a track of fast bee-bop jazz.
Not a horrible piece visualy, but it feels like I'm watching the morning rushes. The question is, what is he going to do with this now? There's more work to be done. It's too easy to distribute something, what with these internets, and animation risks becoming the equivalent of snapshots.
This guy needs to see Jonathan Hodgson's "Feeling My Way" – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5tIWZ17YqA
Welcome to Cartoon Brew the blog that constantly shits on people. This is not a life shattering video/animation/film, but it hit me on a personal level as I grew up and went to school in Boston. I was able to find some emotional nostalgia in it…isn't that the point of art. I'm glad someone young is making this type of art even if it's been done before. At least he's making something. Stop being bitter just because a 17- year-old kid was featured on this blog. BAH!
>Robcat2075 & Matt Morris
Thanks for the note about the importance of sound in this piece. I typically have the sound off, so when I saw this short I couldn't have been more disinterested. I'll give it another go with the sound on. ;-)
Liked it better with the sound off.
Addendum: Ok, the music does help a bit. Though it kind of reminds me of those HP adverts.
>Elliot Cowan
I think that's a reasonable observation, but the frame by frame does seem to indicate this was done with a camera. However, I will say the content makes it look like 1) he just got this new toy and is having at it with the multi-exposure feature and 2) he's had a bit too much caffeine.
Tom Pope
Yeah, someone kind of beat me to the punch. At times this blog feels free to slam pretty hard the results of the effort of hundreds of talented animation professionals, then turn around and prop up a(nicely done and sincere, if not overly original) student/independent short. Appreciation of independence is great; I hope I get a little of that for a project I'm currently working on. But noone with ties to this business can deny the work by and personal involvement of the people who make the big name films. So how about some even-handedness. Or at least the appearance of such.
Oh You guys are so stucked up.
Students CANT Afford to license Music. Stock Music or CC are ok but not always the best.
You guys are so butthurt this got featured FROM A STUDENT… I mean, for christ's sake, a STUDENT. Its not Meant to be Professional or Complete or PERFECT FEATURE FILM QUALITY… Its a nice thing to share this…
Now, You all arent CRITICS here… You are just plain ol' BASHERS and TROLLS. If this isnt animated or DRAWN you will NOT TAKE IT. Pfft, bunch of art teachers we have here.
Stop misinterpreting to YOUR OWN Taste, Take it and experience… be FREE from your own opinionated minds. And Remember… YOU ALL WHERE STUDENTS ONCE. Someones where better other where not so good, some had Money, other had what they could find… As a STUDENT you have DEADLINES… Think of what matters to the art student, a Great Piece Turned Late or an Ok, Good Piece Turned in on Time?
Nice! That's a lot of pictures!
I like Robbie's video- it's neat to see glimpses into other people's lives like this. I didn't watch it with sound, though.
I did a similar experiment myself, but over a year- I took about 13,000 pictures in 2007 and compiled them into a 15 minute film, displaying 15 pictures per second. It was part of a show at Atlanta's MINT gallery called "The Face Show" (http://thoughtmarker.blogspot.com/2008/03/face-show-flyers.html), since I particularly love to take pictures of myself with friends (hence, lots of faces!).
For me, my little 2007 video was fascinating- it's interesting to see the last year of your life compressed in this way! A few seconds would fly by and I'd think, "ah yes, that's the time I visited NYC for a few days", or, "there goes the Atlanta Underground Film Festival", you know. You could see the weather change, as well…
I was really happy with how other people reacted to it, too- most people said it was mesmerizing, and their brains seem to be attuned to their own faces, because they'd often be able to catch themselves. "There I was!" they'd say. Or "I was at that art event/concert/party too!"
I didn't take pictures nearly as often as Robbie (he beats me by like 30x), nor did I add music.
I didn't start off my picture-taking in 2007 with the intention of making the video- I got a cheap camera early in the year and developed the habit of taking a lot of pictures. People would notice and ask me, "What are you going to do with all these pictures?" and now I tell them about the video :)
It was fun- I'm planning on making another when 2008 ends, and it will include pictures from when the 2007 video was shown, haha!
if that was in fact just a really snazzy camera and those were all individual photo's his right index finger must be built by now.
I'd hate to get poked in the eye with that finger.
Looks like my personal version of hell…
Those were pictures? It looks like he just dropped the framerate on some random videos he took.
Matt, this is not character animation, but animation none the less. Motion graphics and photo animation is a hot industry at the moment. As a freelance animator my corporate cash cow is in motion graphics, not character animation. That's because it's more relevant to clients needs.
Wow, I'm amazed by all the negative comments. From the first frame you can tell that this is a STUDENT experiment. It's not a finished film just an experiment. If you didn't connect with it I don't understand taking the time to write up a review and a critique. I went to school in Boston so like Dave I got some nostalgia out of it.
I realise licensing commercial music is expensive but that fact doesn't make the video better. There's something out of whack when the major merit of a student work is not work the student did.
If we watched the video without the music and heard the music without the video which would we regard as the more substantial piece of art?
As a student experiment in editing something to someone else's music it's a valid exercise, but there have got to be a hundred student animators out there who's work would be more fitting to highlight on this venue.
Hate to sound like I'm hatin' on the 'Brew' – but categorizing this video as anything but ordinary, sophomoric art school fodder is a stretch. Cute? Maybe. But not animation – and I'm making the presumption that it should be animation to garner any notice here. I think that last clip a few posts back of the cel-shaded live action piece had more to do with animation than this work.
William Ferry
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach gym.
And those who feel better beating on someone else who actually tried and DID something are called critics.
In the words of WANTED, "What the @$#%* have you done lately?)
I though it was marvelous. I hope the other positive commments he's gotten here and elsewhere encourage him to do more.
Gerard de Souza
" it's still a well done experimental film"
Agree. Robbie may not have invented the approach but he's discovered it for himself…..and who knows what else he can come with. Good first film I think.
I think it says alot about the kid if it looks like an HP commercial. I wonder what HP's budget was? Gee…one kid with a digital camera!
Amid – Thanks for posting the film – I really enjoyed it and probably wouldn't have discovered it otherwise.
Paul N
"Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach"
Man, am I sick of this attitude. It's the biggest load of cow flop ever. How the hell did any of us learn to animate well enough to get jobs if the people we learned from were in the "can't" category.
I know that wasn't the point of the post, but still…
"Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach"
Yeah what does Richard Williams know anyway?
William Ferry
Some reactions to Paul N. and Jim's reactions…
"Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach"
Man, am I sick of this attitude. It's the biggest load of cow flop ever. How the hell did any of us learn to animate well enough to get jobs if the people we learned from were in the "can't" category.
I know that wasn't the point of the post, but still…"
(Well, if it wasn't the point of the post—and obviously it wasn't—why did you bring it up?)
"Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach"
Yeah what does Richard Williams know anyway?"
(I bow to your clever retort. Again—obviously—my remarks did NOT apply the accomplished individuals who share their expertise for the next generation of animators.)
For the benefit of those of you who "didn't get it"…this is called humor; please look into it. I don't want to start a flame war, but I guess I need to explain my point. I was very irritated by the negative comments Robbie got for his hard work. A figure of speech is not intended as a blanket condemnation, and I'd appreciate it if you'd take that into consideration before jumping all over me. I'm a big animation fan, and I genuinely appreciate people who have talent and know what they're doing.


text:
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I've been making music (un-pro) for about 4 years. i worked wit hgarageband for about a month, got sick of it mooved to logic express 7 for a year then got the best of the best... Logic pro 8. still to come for me is logic 9 which is still in the budget.
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Finally have my guitar hooked into logic! more choons on the way!


text: On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 04:32:41AM -0400, Edward Kmett wrote: > I would be strongly against naming it 'swap'. Lots of people in the > community do not subscribe to the philosophy that all things should be > imported qualified. > > 'byteSwap' or even 'byteswap' would be closer to the traditional 'bswap' > name in spirit. I thought about byteswap too, and i think it's a fine choice (although my preference still goes on bswap for now). If a majority prefer byteswap to bswap, i'm happy to change it. -- Vincent


text:
Sam Richards/Staff
Running for education
Some 627 runners and walkers turned out to support education at the 10th annual Shell/Martinez Education Foundation Run-Walk on Oct. 7, in downtown Martinez. All proceeds from the race — about $51,000 — is going to the MEF to benefit Martinez Unified School District schools. In the first-ever 10K, Kevin Searls took the men's title, with Kevin Selby repeating as the 5K winner. Noreen Searls came in first in the women's 5K, with Lori Rogers winning the 10K. The Alhambra High School Band was on hand to provide entertainment, and a pre-race pasta feed the night before by the Martinez Kiwanis and Rotary clubs was held at the Martinez Senior Center.


text:
Daily Archives: October 16, 2008
Episode 02 – Write Back Soon – English Phrasal Verbs
In this second episode, you'll meet Duncan's girlfriend, Lisa, who is currently studying in Canada. Verbs included in this episode are ask for, ask after, ask around and ask in. Download episode | Subscribe in iTunes | RSS Feed
Lesson 03 – One Minute French
In Lesson 3, you'll learn how to say that you can speak a little French. Download episode | Subscribe in iTunes | RSS Feed | Bonus Materials


text:
Ministers Complain Over Luxury Car Tax - Get a NIS 2,000 Raise
Hefty after-taxes raise for ministers comes at a time when other segments of the public are being asked to show economic restraint.
Cabinet ministers' net salaries will evidently be growing by about NIS 2,000 a month soon. The reason: Several of them are demanding a reduction in the tax they pay on their luxury cars.
As a result of the pressure, the Knesset Finance Committee will be asked next week to amend the relevant regulations so that the state pays a greater share of the taxes on the ministers' state-provided luxury rides.
This translates into a hefty after-taxes raise for ministers, at a time when other segments of the public are being asked to show economic restraint.
Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman recently asked Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism ) to discuss the issue in the community. Neeman, by the way, uses his own Lexus rather than a government car.
Neeman heads an ethics committee that is responsible for determining certain benefits enjoyed by cabinet ministers. Their salaries, however, are set by the Finance Committee.
The nitty-gritty
The problem started on January 1, when new regulations regarding the taxation of vehicles provided to employees by their employers - including cabinet ministers - went into effect. The ministers, whose salaries were cut by 5% in July to demonstrate solidarity with government cutbacks, began complaining that the changes will force them to pay thousands of shekels a month in taxes on their official cars.
Ministers receive a gross monthly salary of NIS 35,245, which translates into a take-home salary of between NIS 16,000 and NIS 17,000.
Most ministers are given either an Audi 6 or a Skoda Superb. A few, mainly those with large families, are given Chrysler minivans instead. The prime minister, defense minister, foreign minister, Knesset speaker and opposition head all are provided with larger, armored vehicles.
The catch is the tax. Anyone who gets a company car, including cabinet ministers and Knesset member, pay tax on the benefit of using the car, the so-called usage value, which since the beginning of 2010 is based on the vehicle's value. The more expensive the car, the more tax they pay, up to a maximum car value of NIS 467,160.
That means that ministers with more expensive cars pay more tax than their colleagues with cheaper ones. A number of ministers have told the Finance Ministry that they would like to to trade down in order to save money, but the state vehicle administration has refused.
The list price for the Skoda is NIS 285,000, and for the Audi it's NIS 438,000.
The value of the car is taxed as if it were additional income, which for the priciest ministerial vehicles comes to an additional NIS 8,620 a month in taxable income. This works out to about NIS 4,000 a month in taxes for the car.
The explanation
A number of ministers claim that because security procedures dictate that they be accompanied by a bodyguard on all trips there often is not even enough room in their cars for their entire families. In addition, the ministers claim they use their their vehicles for very little private driving, and therefore should get a break. Others say they never even drive their official cars for anything but official business, as the ministers never drive themselves and the car remains with their drivers when not in use.
The proposed change is simply to lower the fictitious amount of income added for using the car. For example, instead of paying tax on NIS 8,300 a month for the Skoda, ministers would be "charged" only NIS 4,000-5,000. This would save them about NIS 2,000 in tax. Taxes on the Audis would still be more, but ministers would still save about NIS 1,000.
If the committee approves the changes, the governor of the Bank of Israel and the state comptroller would also benefit. But many MKs fear that such a break would then also have to be given the president, judges, chief rabbis, mayors and of course MKs - as well as other senior government officials who can claim they also use their vehicles mostly for work.
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text:
You don't have to look too far to find someone talking about 1994 right now.
Thank the schedulers in the NHL for this walk down memory lane. They are the ones who put Game Six and Game Seven of the Eastern Conference Finals on the same days that the Devils and Rangers played a pair of classics.
Most of the Times' sports section on Friday is devoted to remembrances of May 25, 1994 and the paper has also been doing an entertaining series of interviews with participants on both sides of that epic series. The Daily News posted a story from the day before Game Six when a member of the Rangers made a proclamation that has resonated through the ages.
"We're going to go in and win Game Six."
Nine short words from Mark Messier that have become as big a part of Rangers lore as "Potvin Sucks!", retired sweaters and bad ice at Madison Square Garden. There were no such guarantees from any Rangers on Thursday, although John Tortorella did guarantee Henrik Lundqvist and Brad Richards would play well.
Richards has some experience in this kind of spot. The Lightning trailed the Flames 3-2 heading into Game Six of the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals and Richards came up with two goals and an assist on the double overtime winner by Martin St. Louis.
There wasn't any guarantee from Richards before that game and that's the hidden secret to all of the celebration of Messier's gutsy proclamation. The guarantee was the easy part, but the hard part was the hat trick (plus an assist) that he came up with on the Meadowlands ice 18 years ago Friday night.
Whether it is Richards, Marian Gaborik, Ryan Callahan or someone else, the Rangers need a performance like that to bring them back across the river on Sunday night for Game Seven. It wouldn't hurt if Lundqvist channeled Mike Richter, the forgotten hero of that night, but winning this game is going to take a little heroism from one of the guys up front.
The lesson of 1994 isn't that you need to call your shot. It's that you need to play like you did.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.


text:
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Humidifiers are of great help to people living in dry, cold regions. They add the much needed humidity in a room. In the absence of moisture, your home can become dry, cracks may develop in paint and wallpaper may start peeling off. Besides, the occupants in house may also suffer from medical conditions such as dry, itchy nose, irritable throat, dry eyes etc. A humidifier can prevent these problems by releasing moisture in the air. You can control the amount of moisture entering your room through a humidifier. However, cleaning an ultrasonic humidifier is a must to keep it in best working condition as well as to alleviate problems due to dirty moisture dispensing from a humidifier. Know how to clean an ultrasonic humidifier through the information presented below.
Ultrasonic Humidifier Cleaning Instructions
An ultrasonic humidifier is a cool mist humidifier consisting of a metal diaphragm which vibrates with a programmed frequency to convert water into minute water droplets. These little droplets are released in the air in the form of cool mist. Humidifier comprises of a reservoir tank, in which you fill water, an ultrasonic unit and nebulizer which dispenses the cold mist. Ultrasonic humidifiers work very quietly which is a plus point of its kind. However, if the moisture in a room exceeds normal limit, it may lead to microbial growth such as dust mites, mold, mildew etc. Besides, if the water in reservoir is not clean, then bacteria from may ride the mist and may get dispersed throughout the house. Also, there is an added risk of spraying minerals, from the hard water, all over the house. Minerals may form a whitish layer on everything inside a house. Hence, it is a must that you clean your device on a regular basis to enjoy benefits of a humidifier. Given below is a detailed procedure on how to clean an ultrasonic humidifier.
Dismantle the Unit
Disconnect the power of humidifier by unplugging it. Dismantle its various components such as reservoir, tank, nebulizer etc."
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