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I'm not completely sure of this but whoever said that good things come in small packages or that beauty is skin-deep may have been referencing Braven's latest portable speaker. The Utah-based audio company has just announced their 570 model, a Bluetooth-ready device that packs high-fidelity audio in a tiny, yet vibrant little aluminum package, worthy of rocking out just about anywhere.
Equipped with a bonus, the built-in USB jack charges your smartphone or any USB-ready device unobstructed from kicking out the jams. Perfect in a group setting or for a little solo relaxation time, Braven 570 is handy and dandy — especially with it's current $109.96 featured price on QVC; hurry though, it goes back to its retail pricing at $156 on the 18th of December.
"We designed the 570 to appeal to a different audience than we've ever reached before," explains BRAVEN CEO Warren Osborn. " With the bright, colorful options and new exterior, the 570 is an important part of expanding our line to offer a high-quality BRAVEN Bluetooth speaker that match any style, need, or cost."
Appealing is a perfect word for the travel-sizer. The 570 works wirelessly from up to 33 feet away, offering ten hours of sound on a full charge. A noise-canceling microphone is built in so that the 570 can also be utilized during phone conferences, interactive video games or just simply having a wireless chat on the phone.
The Braven 570 model is available right now from QVC in the following colors : Lunar Black, Arctic White, Fiji Green, Rio Purple, Monaco Blue and Sahara Red. Order a 570 by Decemeber 20th and receive it by Christmas!


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by dekanski
Foggy morning, the roundabout in front of the Imperial Palace* in Sremska Mitrovica. In the foreground is a monument to Mangulitsa** and Pulin*** (you can only see the tail)
*The palace-circus architectural complex is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Sremska Mitrovica. It was built at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century in the southeast, elite section of the city, along the Sava river. A new city defensive wall protected this part of the city.
**Swallow-bellied Mangulitsa (Srem Black Lasa) - The breed of swallow-bellied mangulitsa was grown in the south of Hungary and Croatia by mixing blond mangulitsa and Srem pig. The back and the sides are covered with black hair and the lower part of the body, the belly, the internal parts of legs and the end of the snout are yellow or silver-grey.
*** One of the oldest breeds in the world, the Pulin has existed in the Balkans since ancient times and remained unchanged for at least 2000 years, although some fanciers believe it to be even older. A number of theories about the breed's origin exist, from it being a variety of Russian Laikas to it belonging in the Alopekis group of Greek dogs. Some trace its ancestry to the spitz dogs and black wolves of Asia, while others claim that its roots are firmly tied to the Balkans, especially the Pannonian plains, as evidenced by many archaelogical findings and old folklore references to the Pulin in the region. The Voivodina Pulin is the ancestor of many similar breeds of Europe, with the Hungarian Mudi and Croatian Sheepdog being its direct descendants, while various other breeds were shaped by introducing this remarkable working dog into their bloodlines, such as some strains of Austrian and German herders, as well as other small sheepdogs of Europe. Initially a distinct variety of the original Pannonian Herder population, the Pulin has existed in its pure form since the early 9th century, when its versatility, intelligence and resilience made it a herding, hunting and watchdog breed of choice for many Serbs, but also other ethnic groups of the region, with the largest population of these dogs traditionally being found in the territories presently divided between Serbia, Hungary, Romania and Slavonia, now the eastern part of modern Croatia.
by dekanski
Edited by: dekanski (6337)
Just another POV
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subset: commoncrawl


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A Friday hearing, largely in the judge's chambers, for Ray Nutting outlined possible dates for jury selection for the District 2 county supervisor's trial jury selection.
Two days, plus an afternoon after normal court is held, will be used for jury selection starting Feb. 11, continuing Feb. 13 and 14.
Defense attorney David Weiner noted that he received a large amount of discovery earlier that day, in part from Cal Fire and two other fire agencies.
Weiner requested a conference hearing be set for Jan. 24 at 1:30 p.m. in Department 2.
Nutting has been charged by both the District Attorney's Office and a Grand Jury with filing false documents, perjury by declaration and failure to recuse himself from Board of Supervisors votes that could be a conflict of interest. The charges stem from an investigation into Nutting's participation in a state brush removal program. A second case, misdemeanors concerning Nutting allegedly obtaining loans for bail from fellow county employees and contractors, was merged during the hearing with the case of felonies.


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The Pondmaster Pond Skimmer Clarifier & UV Sterilizer allows you to enhance any pond skimmer with UV protection. This compact UV system adapts to virtually every pond setup, fitting into even the smallest skimmers. This kit provides compact, effective UV clarification, and includes fittings to adapt to virtually any pond skimmer configuration.
The included diverter valve regulates water flow through the UV chamber. Included in the kit are 2 couplings, a rotating union and O-rings. The amount of water that flows though a UV light determines the light's clarifying effectiveness.


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Customer Reviews
What You'll Get
Though many women feel they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, few realize the unbearable heaviness is due to wearing their bras backward. Feel the weight of the world lifted with today's Groupon: for $25, you get $50 worth of designer lingerie at Chrysi's Bra Boutique in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
For more than 25 years, Chrysi's Bra Boutique's certified bra-fitters have helped women and Valentine's Day gift-givers to navigate a vast selection of designer lingerie and form-fitting garments, including more than 10,000 bras ranging in size from 32AA to 48F. The staff harnesses ample experience measuring bust lines and placing underpinnings on nude mannequins to determine each customer's flawless fit before suggesting complementary styles. With correct measurements in hand, clients sift through high-end bra brands including Chantelle, Simone Perele, Le Mystère, Prima Donna, and Betsey Johnson ($38–$99). Chrysi's collection of special-occasion bras is crafted to support any elegant dress, such as a bridal gown or a friend-of-the-assailant frock, and a spread of strapless contraptions can hold chests up to a size 48F in place. Lingerie seekers can also peruse the wide range of panties ($18 for Hanky Panky) or test out the body-smoothing effects of Spanx ($26+).
The Fine Print
Promotional value expires May 9, 2012. Amount paid never expires. Limit 1 per person, may buy 2 additional as gifts. Limit 1 per visit. In-store only. Not valid for sale items. Merchant is solely responsible to purchasers for the care and quality of the advertised goods and services.


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Teams building with top-flight arms trios
Teams building with top-flight arms trios
Consider that Lackey, Josh Beckett and Jon Lester have all won the clinching game of a World Series, and they've all been counted on multiple times to pitch the opening game of a postseason series.
So while the massive audience that makes up Red Sox Nation pleaded for another big bat this offseason, it says something that general manager Theo Epstein's big move was for a top-flight arm.
"I think it's going to make us all a lot smarter," said Red Sox manager Terry Francona. "Every time Theo asked me a question during the Winter Meetings, I would always say 'a pitcher.' And now we have a chance to run out a really solid pitcher every day. It's very exciting. And again, it's on paper right now, but it'll be our responsibility to go down to Spring Training and make it all work. But it's very exciting."
For three out of every five games, the Red Sox will trot out a pitcher who creates that belief from his teammates that they will find a way to win that night.
Over the course of a 162-game season, and perhaps even more in the month of October, that type of mentality that permeates a team -- and also demoralizes the opposition -- can be invaluable.
And that's why teams like the Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies, Cardinals, D-backs and Giants, to name a few, feel so good about their chances in 2010. They have formidable trios at the top of their rotations.
A side benefit of teams that have three front-line starters is that a friendly competition typically develops from within.
Beckett, Lester and Lackey share a common thread with many of the other top starters in the game -- their competitive fire is part of what sets them apart.
"I would've worked hard regardless of who's here," said Lackey. "But when you have other good starting pitchers in your rotation, there can be a friendly, competitive thing going on in a rotation that can do nothing but improve you and make you better."
The other top trios
For proof of how invaluable a strong front three can be, look no further than the most recent World Series champions.
How good a trio were CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte last fall? Yankees manager Joe Girardi got through the entire postseason starting nobody else. Of course, Sabathia's ability to pitch on three days' rest played a big role in that, but it was still a reminder of how three strong front men can cover up lack of depth lower in the rotation.
With that three back in two for another season, and Javier Vazquez added to the mix, the Yankees will vie with the Red Sox to have the best starting pitching in the American League East, and perhaps all of baseball.
Sabathia is a horse worthy of any plaudit he is given. Pettitte has more postseason wins than anyone else. Burnett, even if he remains an enigma at times, has electric stuff and is capable of a dominant start on any given night.
The team the Yankees beat in the World Series -- the Philadelphia Phillies -- subtracted their standout performer from October. But if you are going to trade Cliff Lee, you might as well do so in exchange for Roy Halladay, who has the durability and talent to carry a team through a postseason like Sabathia did last year. And if Cole Hamels can regain his 2008 form, either Joe Blanton or the emerging J.A. Happ could give the Phillies that prime front three that any top contender needs.
In the category of most improved big three, the winner is probably the D-backs. The biggest key to that is simply the return of ace Brandon Webb, the 2006 NL Cy Young Award winner, from a shoulder injury that limited him to one start last year. They still have the ever-solid Dan Haren, who has quietly won 14 games or more in each of the last five seasons. Then, there is the key new acquisition in the form of Edwin Jackson, whom general manager Josh Byrnes pried loose from the Tigers in the three-way Curtis Granderson deal. Jackson, 26, has come into his own the last two years, winning an aggregate 27 games.
"Obviously the starting rotation has been a priority for us the last several years and we've invested quite a bit of our resources in it," said Byrnes.
But the D-backs don't have the only trio that could stick out in the National League West. Don't forget about the Giants, who have as good a tandem as any team in the game in Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. The key, however, is Barry Zito. Though the lefty has struggled in large spurts since signing his big deal in San Francisco three years ago, he is coming off a strong second half when he posted a 2.83 ERA over his final 15 starts. Only once over that span did Zito allow more than three earned runs.
Though the biggest move the Cardinals made this offseason was retaining slugger Matt Holliday, they also landed a starting pitcher with pretty good upside in Brad Penny. Before his shoulder problems of 2008, Penny posted back-to-back 16-win seasons in Los Angeles. Last year, he was regaining his strength and his mechanics and struggled in Boston, but gave the Giants a lift down the stretch. And it's not like Penny -- who sits in the mid to upper 90s -- needs to be an ace in St. Louis. You want a pair of aces? The Cards have Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright.
"You saw those guys can pitch last year," Penny said. "I'm excited to be a part of it. I know they work hard. From everyone I've talked to, they told me they're dedicated. And you've got a great catcher [Yadier Molina] behind the plate. That's going to make it a lot of fun for me."
The Cubs are the one team in the NL Central that can compete with St. Louis from an upper-rotation standpoint. Carlos Zambrano, Ted Lilly and Ryan Dempster is a three that can dominate. But they need to stay healthy. Zambrano and Lilly both spent time in the disabled list last season.
Of course, the Mariners have two studs at the top of their rotation in Felix Hernandez and Lee. If they are in contention, don't be surprised if general manager Jack Zduriencik goes out and gets another big-time starter, which would put Seattle in the category of elite rotation trios.
In just adding Lee, however, the Mariners have made themselves players.
"You're always looking for pitching. In this case, a left-hander, in this ballpark with our defense and what he's accomplished ... it was exciting to be able to acquire him," said Zduriencik.
Which rotation could surprise the most? Perhaps the Braves, who have two emerging young starters in Jair Jurrens and Tommy Hanson, not to mention a hero of postseasons past in Derek Lowe.
Rotation trios can have rings attached
Several of the World Series champions of the last decade have been lifted by the upper portion of the rotation. In 2008, Hamels took his game to another level, and the Phillies reaped the benefits. Jamie Moyer and Brett Myers also played key roles. The 2007 Red Sox had two accomplished big-game pitchers in Beckett and Curt Schilling, and Daisuke Matsuzaka won 15 games as a rookie.
In 2005, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen was stacked in the first four spots, getting big efforts from Mark Buehrle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras en route to the franchise's first title in 88 years. A year before, it was the Red Sox who ended more than eight decades without a championship and it also started with the starters, led by a pair of potential Hall of Famers in Schilling and Pedro Martinez, and rounded out by Derek Lowe, who won all three postseason clinchers.
The 2003 Marlins? They were very much about their arms during that World Series upset over the Yankees, getting big performances from Beckett, Penny and Carl Pavano. In 2001, Schilling and Randy Johnson were so dominant for the Diamondbacks that they all but willed that team to glory. And a solid third starter emerged during that year's postseason in Miguel Batista.
Of course, a big similarity the 2009 Yankees shared with the 2000 team that opened the decade with a championship was the horses up front. Back then, manager Joe Torre had Roger Clemens, Pettitte and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.
This time of year, rotations can only be stacked up on paper and not reality. Does Epstein think this is the best rotation he's had during his tenure with the Red Sox?
"Unfortunately there's sometimes a disconnect between how things look on paper and how they play out in reality," Epstein said. "Those grand pronouncements are always better made in hindsight I think, or retrospectively. We'll wait on that. I will say that it's good to be operating from a position of strength in the rotation."
The other teams that share that trait will inevitably be the ones that vie with the Red Sox to be baseball's next World Series champion.
Ian Browne is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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Our laboratory has been investigating the immunobiology of the Neisserial porin PorB for the last two decades. We first began by investigating the use of this protein as a potential anti-Neisserial candidate, but through this work we found that this protein had unique immune stimulatory abilities above and beyond its own potential use as a vaccine. We found that PorB can be used as an immune adjuvant for vaccines and that this ability was directly related to its ability to stimulate antigen presenting cells (APC) and increase expression of the costimulatory molecule CD86 and class II MHC. Moreover, we found that the ability of PorB to stimulate and activate antigen presenting cells was directly due to an interaction with the pattern recognition receptor, TOLL-like Receptor 2 (TLR2) and requires the TLR adaptor protein MyD88. We have further shown, as described in the preliminary data section and in that TLR2 needs to heterodimerize with TLR1 (and not TLR6) in order for PorB to stimulate these APCs. Utilizing this body of information, the next logical step for studying the immune stimulating adjuvant activity of PorB is to compare this activity to other known vaccine adjuvants. This will allow for the better use of PorB as adjuvant, by understanding what type of immune response it induces as compared to these other adjuvants. Moreover, we believe it is essential to continue to investigate the adjuvant potential of PorB, as it is currently the only TLR2 ligand being investigated as a vaccine adjuvant. We shall compare the immune stimulation by PorB to panel of other adjuvants, including the only licensed adjuvant, Alum (inflammasomes mediated immune activation, other TLR ligands, including CpG DNA (TLR9), and monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL)(TLR4), and QS-21. We shall examine the ability of these adjuvants to induce immune responses to a test antigen, ovalbumin, which we have used previously as described in the Preliminary Data section. We shall measure antibody levels induced, isotypes and IgG subtypes induced, antibody affinity, CD4 T cell response and ability to induce APC migration and lymph node specific T cell stimulation. Moreover, we shall compare the ability of these different adjuvants to protect mice from infection with Listeria which secretes OVA. This is a well characterized model and has been used previously to demonstrate that the presence of OVA specific CD4 and CD8 T cells are necessary for protection of mice from infection with this pathogen when it is constructed to secrete OVA. We shall obtain this strain from Dr. Darren Higgins in the Dept. of Microbiology at the Harvard Medical School, who has significant expertise in this model and will act as a consultant on this proposal. Even though the protection induced by most licensed vaccines are due to the induction of neutralizing or functional antibodies, we feel it would extremely important to begin to definitively compare the ability of these adjuvants, including PorB, to not only induce functional antibodies, but to potentially induce a protective CD8 CTL response.
We have shown that the Neisserial porin, PorB, is a potent immune adjuvant and works via recognition by TLR2 and induction of antigen presenting cell activation. This proposal will examine the adjuvant activity of PorB and compare this activity to other currently investigated adjuvants (including Alum, CpG DNA, MPL and QS-21). We shall examine induction of both humoral responses and CD8 T cell responses and the ability of the vaccines to prevent Listeria infection in mice. Moreover, we shall further examine the mechanism of PorB adjuvant activity via the use of MyD88 floxed mice bred with mice expressing cell specific cre recombinase.
|Toussi, Deana N; Wetzler, Lee M; Liu, Xiuping et al. (2016) Neisseriae internalization by epithelial cells is enhanced by TLR2 stimulation. Microbes Infect 18:627-638
|Kattner, Christof; Pfennig, Sabrina; Massari, Paola et al. (2015) One-step purification and porin transport activity of the major outer membrane proteins P2 from Haemophilus influenzae, FomA from Fusobacterium nucleatum and PorB from Neisseria meningitidis. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 175:2907-15
|Kattner, Christof; Toussi, Deana N; Zaucha, Jan et al. (2014) Crystallographic analysis of Neisseria meningitidis PorB extracellular loops potentially implicated in TLR2 recognition. J Struct Biol 185:440-7
|Platt, Andrew; MacLeod, Heather; Massari, Paola et al. (2013) In vivo and in vitro characterization of the immune stimulating activity of the Neisserial porin PorB. PLoS One 8:e82171
|Massari, Paola; Wetzler, Lee M (2012) Analysis of parameters associated with prevention of cellular apoptosis by pathogenic Neisseriae and purified porins. Methods Mol Biol 799:319-41
|Arjunaraja, Swadhinya; Massari, Paola; Wetzler, Lee M et al. (2012) The nature of an in vivo anti-capsular polysaccharide response is markedly influenced by the composition and/or architecture of the bacterial subcapsular domain. J Immunol 188:569-77
|Toussi, Deana N; Carraway, Margaretha; Wetzler, Lee M et al. (2012) The amino acid sequence of Neisseria lactamica PorB surface-exposed loops influences Toll-like receptor 2-dependent cell activation. Infect Immun 80:3417-28
|Massari, Paola; Gunawardana, Jay; Liu, Xiuping et al. (2010) Meningococcal porin PorB prevents cellular apoptosis in a toll-like receptor 2- and NF-kappaB-independent manner. Infect Immun 78:994-1003
|Wetzler, Lee M (2010) Innate immune function of the neisserial porins and the relationship to vaccine adjuvant activity. Future Microbiol 5:749-58
|Liu, Xiuping; Wetzler, Lee M; Nascimento, Laura Oliveira et al. (2010) Human airway epithelial cell responses to Neisseria lactamica and purified porin via Toll-like receptor 2-dependent signaling. Infect Immun 78:5314-23
Showing the most recent 10 out of 22 publications


text:
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- Add land line numbers and addresses to cell phone contact data.
Don't wait. Begin your FREE Demo and discover for yourself why Contact Center Compliance is the number one compliance resource in the industry.


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But at least track and field is trying to face its problem head-on. Racing does not appear to be doing the same thing. CHRB staff will take great exception to these comments and talk about all the great strides they have taken. But the people of the backstretch have spoken, and they're not buying the party line anymore. For example, many California horsemen suspect the illegal milkshaking of horses is an ongoing problem, but the CHRB has elected not to take advantage of a pre-race test used at Woodbine in Canada and in some U.S. jurisdictions for harness racing. "Why not?" one trainer said. "Because they're afraid they'll get too many positives." Increased surveillance would help deter some illegal activities, but it is an expensive undertaking. So, too, is state-of-the-art drug testing. For that matter, a detention barn won't be cheap, and it won't stop all cheating, since many performance-enhancing drugs do not have to be administered within 24 hours of a race. But what price is unreasonable if the result is increased integrity of the sport? The bottom line is California's racing board must do something. It has lost all credibility with many trainers who have agreed that the best thing for racing may not be best for their own horses.
Trainers don't like detention barns. Horses are creatures of habit, they will tell you, and putting one in an unfamiliar barn and stall will upset many of them, causing them to race poorly. Other trainers will say detention barns can lead to increased exposure to viruses, leading to sickness in the horse population. The distaste trainers have for detention barns is one of the certainties in a game full of uncertainty. That's why it is so shocking to hear what is currently going on in the California horsemen's community. A petition is making the rounds among trainers asking the California Horse Racing Board to build a detention barn to house horses up to 24 hours prior to racing. The petition drive was launched by trainers who are increasingly frustrated over what they see as unchecked cheating by a number of their peers, who they believe are giving performance-enhancing drugs to their horses and winning at unusually high percentages. More than a handful of trainers have signed the petition, a source said. The number is believed to be closing in on 100. Be sure that nearly every person who signed the petition would probably not have to resort to a detention barn if they believed there was a better way to control the cheaters. The surprising support is merely a barometer measuring the level of frustration so many trainers are now feeling. Incidentally, let's not downplay the power of a movement started by petition. It is, after all, what led to the downfall of Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's governor. That so many trainers would ask for something they really do not want should be taken by the California Horse Racing Board as a cry for help in fighting the backstretch's war against drugs. In truth, to have a war, you first must have two sides engaged, and that may not be the case. Many view this situation as one-sided, with the cheaters feeling little to no resistance, especially from the California Horse Racing Board, whose job it is in part to maintain the integrity of the sport. That sad situation, if true, should be an embarrassment to the members of the CHRB. Racing isn't alone in having a drug problem. Track and field is going through a major upheaval following development of a test for the steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG. There's no telling how much fallout that sport will have from a banned drug that certainly found its way into other sports. (In horse racing, anabolic steroids are looked upon as therapeutic medication and are not banned in most North American jurisdictions, but that's a subject for discussion on another day.)


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Your entire life, it seems, runs on a need-to-know basis.
Unfortunately, you're always the last who needs to know.
Something exciting happens in your family, and you don't find out until it's over. Some big event is scheduled, and you miss it. Everything's a surprise because nobody tells you anything.
Maybe nobody is telling you anything because they don't know either. Case in point: the new book Dead Strange by Matt Lamy, where you'll read about 50 gigantic unknowns.
You're already aware that there are a lot of weird things going on in the world. You might wonder if vampires are real, if Bigfoot exists, or if there's really a monster beneath Loch Ness. What's the truth?
Is it possible, for instance, to turn common metals into gold? Lamy says no, but that doesn't stop modern science from trying alchemy of another sort.
What about creatures from outer space? Do aliens exist? A number of folks claim they do – including some U.S. government officials. There are a lot of secretive things going on near Roswell and Area 51. There are people who say they've been abducted by aliens or have seen spaceship crashes, and then there's the myth of Men in Black, which might not be a myth.
The jury's still out on whether Anna Anderson was really the daughter of Czar Nicholas of Russia. Dowsing is doubtful, too; in fact, there's a million-dollar bounty for definitive proof that it works. El Dorado might or might not have been discovered by Conquistadors. Jack the Ripper was real, but nobody knows his true identity.
There's more than what meets the eye on those massive Easter Island statues. Crop circles still make scientists scratch their heads. And Ouija boards? Leave them alone. It's "best to be careful with things you know little about."
Sometimes, you just need a bit of weirdness in your life. And you can't get any weirder than the things you'll find in Dead Strange.
From unknowns in pop culture to holes in historical knowledge and real scientific mysteries, Lamy pokes around to find solutions to 50 conundrums that have, for centuries, confounded amateurs and experts alike.
The interesting thing about Dead Strange is that, despite its subtitle and a wish for answers, there is little "truth" here, only conjecture and clues. That makes what you'll find in these pages even more intriguing, which makes this book irresistible.
Though this book is meant primarily for conspiracy theorists, believers, and doubters ages 13-and-up, I think there's also plenty of appeal here for grown-ups who want a quick overview on mysterious topics.


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Dollar stores are the safest investment havens since people continue to shop at these stores during economic downturns because of their lower prices. In fact, these stores registered great growth after the recessionary period since people were trying to save each penny of their hard earned money. Such stores continue to perform well even now, giving investors an opportunity to boost their portfolio.
For instance, Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) reported its first quarter numbers recently which beat the Street's estimates, sending its share price higher. Let us take a closer look at it.
Snapshot of the Quarter
Revenue for the quarter rose 7% to $2 billion, over last year, just managing to meet the estimate. This top-line growth was driven by the addition of 94 new stores which added to the revenue base. However, it was not only the new stores, but also the increase in sales at the existing stores which drove sales higher. Same store sales during the quarter climbed 2%.
- Warning! GuruFocus has detected 6 Warning Signs with DLTR. Click here to check it out.
- DLTR 30-Year Financial Data
- The intrinsic value of DLTR
- Peter Lynch Chart of DLTR
Despite lower mall traffic, because of unexpected harsh weather conditions, the retailer managed to register higher demand for its products. In fact, not only did the company witness higher sales of products in the consumables category, but also in discretionary items which have a higher margin and are expensive.
One of the key strengths of dollar store retailers is they sell products for $1 or less. This attracts customer interests, resulting in higher sales. However, products such as the ones at the checkout counter, stationery and candy sold well during the Easter holiday and the Valentine's Day.
Earnings too jumped to $0.67 per share from $0.59 per share as the company witnessed higher sales and managed its costs well.
A Host of Plans to Strengthen Its Business Further
Dollar Tree is making a number of moves to expand as well as strengthen its business. Let's explore each of them. First, the company plans to grow its online business which will attract more customers. Also, its Dollar Tree Direct offers more than 2,500 products, without having to have a physical store. In fact, the company registered a sales increase of 19% in its online sales, during the quarter.
Also, the company plans to enhance its frozen and refrigerated product category. Dollar Tree should also benefit from the improvement in weather as spring season is setting in. In fact, the company already experienced growing sales in the month of April where change in weather led to higher store traffic, making sales move north.
The dollar store operator plans to expand its business by opening more stores. It will be adding a total of 375 new stores in fiscal 2014. This expansion in footprint should boost the company's sales. Additionally, it has been making in-store promotions in order to lure customers. It has re-launched programs such as "stretch your dollar" campaign and "see what $20 buys." Therefore, this company is set to grow further.
Moreover, the company's outlook was decent enough with total sales expected to be in the range of $8.37 billion to $8.54 billion. Also, earnings are estimated to be between $2.94 and $3.12.
Bottom Line
Dollar Tree's performance has been quite interesting. Moreover, its strategic moves look good to go and are expected to be helpful in its growth. Hence, one should not ignore this dollar store company.


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I have found that putting in a destination to navigate to will change your event radius to totally wacky values, or change it to show events within the radius you selected of your destination.
But if you cancel navigation, it appears that events within the maximum radius will be displayed.
I see this happen on the iPhone 18.104.22.168, and would like to get confirmation from anyone and any platform for Waze before I submit it as a bug.
EDIT: Here is a video on YouTube showing this happening. It happens even if routing is beyond the 200-mile limit and you get a routing server error, as shown in the video.
Or, you can tell me why you think this is a desired feature, because I don't believe it is.


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HRI Accepting 2008 Grant Applications
The Horticultural Research Institute (HRI) and its Endowment Fund, the research division of the American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA), announced it is now accepting applications for its 2008 competitive research grants program.
HRI aims to fund research that benefits green-industry-related issues. Its supported projects focus on significant problems, regulatory issues or emerging opportunities in the nursery and landscape industry; encourage environmentally responsible management practices; increase nursery crop producers' business or financial expertise; or improve and expand the market for plant material.
For full details and to apply for a research grant, visit the HRI Web site at www.anla.org/research/grants/index.htm. All applications must be submitted by May 15, 2007.


text: Ok, I have found a reasonably priced airhead engine and a willing mechanic (who worked with scooter Bob when he was in business ). Now only for an worn out CJ750. I am currently looking at a number of Changs Stateside right now and a few of them have engine problems or well on their way for mechanical failure. Even with that fact the price for them has been at very least an expensive proposition, less the fact for a musical university student . For these less than stellar bikes in both physically and mechanically what do you think is a good price to haggle down too? BTW: they all have titles


text:
Originally published Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 3:00 PM
Branded by a pimp, sex-trafficking victim speaks out
When pimps brand the women and girls they control, it's a reminder that these women are victims rather than criminals, writes Nicholas D. Kristof. That consciousness is spreading, and we are finally seeing considerable progress in tackling domestic sex trafficking.
Syndicated columnist
NEW YORK — We think of branding as something ranchers do to their cattle. But it's also what pimps do to women and girls they control across America.
Taz, a 16-year-old girl here in New York City, told me that her pimp had branded three other girls with tattoos bearing his name. When she refused the tattoo, she said, he held her down and carved his name on her back with a safety pin.
More about Taz in a moment. That kind of branding isn't universal, but it's very common. An alleged pimp indicted last month in Manhattan is accused of tattooing his street name on a prostitute's neck, along with a bar code. He allegedly tattooed another prostitute with a symbol of his name on her pubic area, along with a dollar sign. In each case, the message was clear: They were his property, and they were for sale.
Such branding is a reminder that women being sold on the streets in America are — not always, but often — victims rather than criminals. That consciousness is spreading, and we are finally seeing considerable progress in tackling domestic sex trafficking.
So far, in 2012, states have passed more than 40 laws relating to human trafficking, according to Megan Fowler of Polaris Project, an anti-trafficking organization.
Prosecutors and police are increasingly targeting pimps and johns, and not just the women and girls who are their victims. In Manhattan, the district attorney's office recently started a sex-trafficking program and just secured its most comprehensive indictments for sex trafficking. Likewise, a federal prosecutor in Virginia brought sex-trafficking charges last month against a man accused of selling a 14-year-old girl in several states.
Now President Barack Obama is said to be planning an initiative on human trafficking. I'm hoping that he will direct the attorney general to make sex trafficking a higher federal priority and call on states to pass "safe harbor" laws that treat prostituted teenage girls as victims rather than criminals.
The other important shift is growing pressure on Backpage.com, a classified advertising website that dominates the sex trafficking industry. Calls for Village Voice Media, which owns Backpage, to end its links to sex trafficking have come from attorneys general from 48 states, dozens of mayors from around the country, and some 240,000 Americans who have signed a petition on Change.org.
Resolutions are pending in the Senate and House calling on Village Voice Media to get out of this trade. At least 34 advertisers have dropped Village Voice Media publications, including the flagship, Village Voice in New York City.
In its defense, Village Voice Media notes that it screens ads and cooperates with the police. That's true, but Taz — the 16-year-old with her former pimp's name carved into her back — told me that three-quarters of her "dates" had come from Backpage.
I met Taz at Gateways, a treatment center outside New York City. She told me that she ran away from home in New York City at the age of 14 and eventually ended up in the hands of a violent 20-year-old pimp who peddled her on Backpage.
Skeptics mostly believe that prostitutes sell sex voluntarily, while anti-trafficking advocates sometimes suggest that they are almost all forced into the trade. The truth is more complicated.
Taz wasn't locked up, and, at times, she felt a romantic bond with her pimp. She distrusted the police — with reason, for when officers found her in December, they arrested her and locked her up for four months in juvenile detention.
Yet Taz wasn't exactly selling sex by choice, either. She said her pimp issued his four girls a daily quota of money to earn; if they didn't, he would beat them. They could never leave, either, Taz said, and she explained what happened when her pimp caught her trying to run away:
"I got drowned," she recalled. "He choked me, put me in the tub, and when I woke up, I was drowning. He said he'd kill me if I left."
Another time, Taz says, she tried to call 911. "He hit me over the head with a glass bottle," she recalls. Then he ordered another of his girls to sweep up the broken glass.
I bet the police looked at Taz and saw an angry, defiant prostitute who hated them and didn't want to be rescued. There was an element of truth to that. But there's another side as well, now visible, and it underscores the importance of helping these girls rather than giving up on them. Taz is emerging as a smart, ambitious girl with dazzling potential. She loves reading and writing, and when I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up, she smiled a bit self-consciously.
"I'd like to be a pediatrician," she said.
Nicholas D. Kristof is a regular columnist for The New York Times.


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Can Anyone Give A list Of Tapes Or Information On Freeze Drying ?
Return to Tanning Category Menu
I had a tough time finding any information on freeze-drying.
The only video I could find comes from Freeze Drying Specialties. www.freezedry .com (I believe) they are in the suppliers listing. Archie Phillips also has a book out; it is a little older but does help.
I am fairly new at freeze-drying but the machine has not been empty for the last year and I have some great and unusual mount. If you have any questions drop a line I'll try to help.
If you find any other videos I would be interested Don


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A fire caused by a hash oil lab displaced several residents at the Suncrest Villas apartment complex in North Park Sunday afternoon.
Firefighters were called to the complex on Suncrest Drive near Boundary Street about 6:15 p.m. after residents reported an explosion, said Lee Swanson, spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
No one was injured in the blaze, which was knocked down in about 20 minutes, but it scorched one third-floor apartment, Swanson said. Several second- and third-story apartments were damaged by smoke.
The fire caused about $100,000 in damage to the building and $50,000 to its contents, Swanson said.
Firefighters rescued one resident from a third-floor balcony after the person had difficulty leaving due to smoke, Swanson said.
He said displaced residents would receive help from the Red Cross.
One resident was booked into jail on charges of manufacturing a controlled substance and recklessly starting a fire in an inhabited dwelling, San Diego police said. Another was also arrested in connection with the incident.


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SAN DIEGO - The discovery of a suspicious-looking object that turned out to be harmless forced the full closure of a stretch of Tierrasanta-area freeway today while a bomb squad destroyed the object, authorities reported.
A passer-by reported finding the roughly 10-inch-long rectangular item on a connector ramp at northbound Interstate 15 and Clairemont Mesa Boulevard about 7:30 a.m., according to the San Diego Fire Department.
The California Highway Patrol shut down the exit, then all lanes of the expressway in the area while personnel with an SDFD ordinance disposal team detonated the object just before 10:30 a.m., officials said.
Several minutes later, they again set off charges next to the device to make sure that any explosives inside it were rendered harmless.
Investigators subsequently determined that the object apparently had contained only sand, probably to provide weight to anchor construction materials in a truck, according to police.
The California Highway Patrol reopened the freeway about 10:45 a.m., a dispatcher said.


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You did not expect to tear up about a couple of elephants this morning, but if you haven't seen this video yet, that's exactly what's about to happen.
A couple weeks ago, the folks at Amboseli Trust for Elephants at Amboseli National Park in Kenya got a report that there was a baby elephant stuck in a well. This is what happened when they went out to save her…
(via BuzzFeed)
Read more: http://twentytwowords.com/baby-elephant-rescued-from-a-well-and-reunited-with-her-mom/


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Skip to comments.DUmmie FUnnies 12-31-12 (Know-it-all Nadin robbed, then Robbed!)
Posted on 12/31/2012 11:52:00 AM PST by Charles Henrickson
As you know, our friends over at Conservative Cave conduct the annual polling to determine the winner of the much-coveted "DUmmie of the Year" (DOTY) award. Last year's winner, and deservedly so, was DUmmie nadinbrzezinski, affectionately known in these parts as Know-it-all Nadin. Nads blew the competition AWAY with her countless, unintentionally hilarious posts, filled with malaprops, misspellings, all-knowingness, and general condescension, on subjects as far-ranging as Fukushima gas clouds, trend-spotting and tipping points, her own coverage as a "journalist" of the Occupy movement and the auto show, and consigning the bullies that hound her on DU to her "iggy" list.
Now Nadin had another strong showing in 2012--maybe not quite the breakthrough that 2011 was, but then who could ever top that? Therefore many of us were expecting that Our Gal would take home the DOTY again this year. So imagine my surprise--no, imagine my SHOCK--when Cave-dweller-in-Chief franksolich announced that Nadin came in SECOND in the DOTY voting! A TIE for second, at that! And she missed out--so it was claimed--she missed out on DUmmie of the Year by A SINGLE VOTE! I was gobsmacked! I was stuned!! This was my dismayed reaction over at Conservative Cave:
NO! NO! NO! NO! I DEMAND A RECOUNT! She's been jobed! She's been hossed! She's been disenfrenchfried! The BULLIES are behind this, I tell you! I'm going to get my riffle and the good rig and go hop on the trolly and go dylsexic! This is the typing point! The Rubio has been crossed! I'm going to the GA and we're going to OCUPPY CC!! Oh, and frank--welcome to the iggy list.
And so I told Nadin, and I tell her again now:
Nadin, you will always be #1 in my book, sweetcakes.
Well, perhaps in an attempt to make amends for this gross travesty of justice, the next award announced was "the Rob" (named after somebody named Robyn), given to the DUmmie "whose utter stupidity made one laugh and laugh and laugh all year long." Well, there could be no denying Nadin THIS award! Even Diebold couldn't steal this one away! So Nadin was given the Rob. But small consolation it was, when compared to missing out on the DOTY.
So what are we going to do about this? Are we going to sit here and take it? NO! In the name of the Late Lamented Red Round One, I think we need to take up Nadin's cause and POLITICIZE HER PLIGHT! VOTER-VERIFIED DOTY BALLOTS! DU IT FOR ANDY!! If you can't tell, I'm steamed. This voting was RIGGED--and I'm not talking about the good rig, either.
But Nadin is not giving up! Oh no, not our Nadin! Trouper that she is, she is aiming to recapture her DOTY title in 2013. She is already off to a strong start, even in these waning days of 2012. So let us now take a brief sample of the wonder that is Nadin, in Baldshevik Red, while the commentary of your humble guest correspondent, Charles Henrickson, on behalf of PJ-Comix and Li'l Beaver wishing all of our readers a Happy DU Year, is in the [brackets]:
Here, after some DUmmie posts a photo that appeared in the New York Daily News, taken by a photographer that the DUmmie knows, Nadin--herself a pro, of course--offers this comment:
An extremely good photo. Tell him hi from a fellow photog...
[I'm sure that will mean a LOT to that New York Daily News photographer, coming from you, Nadin! Oh, and if you'll look at the name under the photo, you'll see that the first name is "Lauren," a "her" not a "him." Sigh. . . .]
Here Nadin shares her medical expertise on news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been admitted to the hospital for a blood clot:
Standard, not surprising. ICU, just from the kind of monitoring required for at least a few hours.
[Whew! THANK you, Nadin, for sharing your expert knowledge! The rest of us were TOTALLY SURPRISED that Secretary of State Clinton would GO TO THE HOSPITAL for a blood clot! But now that you'd told us that such a thing is "standard" (I'm guessing that's the technical term), we can all rest easy.]
Here Nadin tells us to get our marching boots ready:
It's time. For some kind of action DC will listen to. Nope, voting ain't enough. Perhaps a national strike is in order. The ruling elites won't listen otherwise, am afraid.
[OK, people! You've heard it straight from Nadin! It's TIME! GENERAL STRIKE! MIC CHECK! OCCUPY EVERYWHERE! They won't listen to us otherwise, Nadin informs us. She WISHES she didn't know this stuff, but she does!]
And then here is a Nadin THREAD from last night:
PSA to San Diego County residents
[Nadin is authorized to issue Public Service Announcements, I don't know if you knew that.]
Going to Julian, chains required at Sunrise Valley Rd and 79 per CHP. Driving east bound? Pine Valley EB -8, reports of icy conditions, and wheee! Vehicle spin outs.
They are sending sand trucks. So driving to Az, be aware. Palomar mountain, snow down to 3500 foot level. Winter weather advisory in the back country has been lifted. Oh and it will be a cold night. Hey, I can put this here in one post, instead of the twitter feed...whee!!!!
On the bright side, there should be some snow still on the ground in the morning.
[Let's hope.]
[Thank you, Nadin, for alerting all San Diego motorists by posting this PSA on DU in the middle of the night.]
[Now, whenever Nadin posts something in DUmmieland, one or more of The Bullies--SidDithers, zappaman, or pintobean--will be sure to show up. So the first response to appear this time--in fact, the only response Nadin got on this thread--is from the ever-reliable zappaman . . .]
Thanks for the info! What are you drinking? I am enjoying some Pyrat rum so I am a little tipsy too! Wheee!
[WHEEE! Hee! Hee!]
Well, all good things must come to an end, and so, on this final day of 2012, Nadin's reign as DUmmie of the Year draws to a close. But before she hands off the sash and the crown to . . . BanTheGOP??? . . . we'll ask Queen Nadin to take one last walk down the runway, as we all stand and salute her by singing . . .
Tune: "There She Is, Miss America"
Here she is, our Miss DUmmieland
Here she is, our Nadin
The dream of a million posts that she typed out by hand
Now comes true here on Skins's Island
For she has turned out to be
The queen of gross stupidity!
Here she is, our Miss DUmmieland
Here she is, our Nadin
With so many DUzies she took the DUmp by storm
With her condescending need to inform
And here she is
Miss Blogosphere, she is
DUmmie of the Year, she is
Our Miss DUmmieland!
From ECM EARNS 11 AWARDS AT SAN DIEGO PRESS CLUB CEREMONY:
"Nadin Abbott, a citizen journalist trained by ECM, picked up a second place in the health and medicine category for San Diegos high suicide ratesand how to get help."
"Citizen journalist"! Add it to the résumé!
Anybody that has been jobed and hossed this year needs special attention. Nadin 2013!
I thought that was Skinner in the pic.
What a lucky man Mr. Abbott must be. Uh...Nadin is the one on the right, correct?
Please add me to the ping list! ROFLMAO!!!
PJ-Comix is the maintainer of the list. PJ, please add a new pingee, OCCASparky.
PD is wasting their time, serious. Or mostly going through the motions due to some idiots.
The company he works for has on staff lawyers, who regularly file entertainment exceptions with every city where they film murder mysteries and all that.
They have on staff gun wranglers, who are just off stage and handle these props, they hold multiple licenses, both state and federal.
So you think a company that has an entertaining division did not know this? You serious?
What you are doing is quite frankly taking the bait and getting distracted.
This is why they win...look, shiny!!!
I think his bear hunting skills may be lacking. Starbucks is his FRiend.
Whaaaa??? Nadin didn't win? I suspect voter fraud or worse. I want this taken to the Fla Supreme Court. I want a recount. I want to see hanging chads, pregnant chads and Chads and Jeremys for months until this travesty is corrected!
I'm glad she didn't win. She was off her game in '12 and didn't live down to her own reputation. IMO she's got a lot of work to do in '13 to have a shot at top DUmmie. Adding to her resume would be a good start.
An extremely good photo. Tell him hi from a fellow photog...Arrrrggghhh!!! Right from the start this witch gets me going -- 'a photog'!?!? WTF is a %$#*ing 'photog' Nadin? No PHOTOGRAPHER would call themselves that you phony runt!
I'll bet she wouldn't know what a GD f-Stop is. Or what the difference was between Daylight and Tungsten film and what you used where and why. Or what 'pushing' meant and what you had to do to when 'pushing' -- which applied to print and 'slides' -- or the actual name for 'slides'.
Or how your shutter speed, ASA/ISO, and f-stop settings are all interdependent for achieving the desired results of the F***ING PHOTOGRAPH you want to take! Hell, I'll bet she doesn't know what SLR means!!
I've been taking PHOTOGRAPHS since I got my first camera on Armed Forces Day in 1955 and practically grew up in a darkroom. So if she's taken anything more than fricking SNAPSHOTS with a 'Point and Shoot' (insert crappy brand name here ______) camera or her modern cell phone camera I'll eat all my Nikons and smash all my lenses!! [but I ain't touching my Pentax Spotmatic II ;-)]
Sorry for the very tardy response. It's been a couple hectic days here :-)
Welcome aboard PINGEE #1061.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.


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Nine* new Otsego County residential home listings were added to inventory the past week, including Gaylord.
Some of these new opportunities:
- Custom-built builder's home. 9.89 acres adjacent to 280 acres of state forest-land yet only 2 mi. from Meijer. Nice set-back from road with paved asphalt drive. Large easy to maintain lawn. Ample clean storage for vehicles and toys. Home features lots of oak including floors and foyer. Smart access from garage to kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom. Luxurious master bedroom suite with large walk-in closet, jet-tub, and lots of tile. Wood burning and venting system delivers wood or propane-fired hot water through forced-air ductwork. Large sunroom, big hot-tub stays.
- 3/2.5 Bdr/Bth Logmark at Otsego Club on their Classic Golf Course. Resort living just outside town. These are some of the best-built, laid-out condos in all of Northern Michigan.
- 54 acre horse ranch
- 1 new listing for under $50,000
- 3 new listings for less than $100,000
- 2 new listings with acreage
- 1 new listing with lake frontage
- 1 new listing with golf frontage
Link is valid until 9/24/11 when it expires.
Michael E. Heath
Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors – Realtor Associate
700 W. Main St.
Gaylord, MI 49735
Mobile: 989-619-0400
*Ths count can grow beyond the original publication date of this blog post. That's because new listings whose start date is effective within the noted time-frame may be published and released several days after their start date.


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Disillusioned with their missions in war, felt betrayed by the US government, and facing a dark future! These are what war resisters go through in their years of military experience and afterwards. Using exclusive interviews, this documentary pivots on three central characters who live in Ontario, Canada. Kimberly Rivera, now the mother of five kids, joined the US army in 2005 for financial reasons. While the US government had promised her that she would serve her duty in the US, they sent her to Iraq. Having her heart and soul hurt by the war scenes, she flees to Canada as the first female US military deserter. Jeremy Brockway flees with his wife, Ashley, and their two sons to Port Colborne, Ontario. Due to the adverse conditions of the war in Iraq, he now suffers from severe PTSD and has committed suicide so many times. Lee Zaslovsky, conscripted to the US army to fight in Vietnam, is the third individual who fled to Canada in 1969 as a sign of resistance to the war in Vietnam. In the end, we come to know about these characters' conditions in July 2014, after four years since the time of shooting the documentary.
SOUNDBITE [English], James Gilligan, War Veteran: "They fired again and again, and on the forth barrage, I was ready to turn in the road and we were pulling away to go for more secure position. I had reported back that they were, this target was out of range and I was unable to spot around anymore and I did not see any smoke or any more as impact. They continued to fire a fifth and sixth barrage into an Afghani village. Members of the scout sniper team were in a height up in the mountain and had been called down into the village to perform an emergency triage on numerous casualties. Later that night, they called me over to their tent and they asked me if I was qualified to call for a fire. I told them that I was not qualified. However I was asked and I gave the responses needed to quickly asses the danger and proceed forward with the mission."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "I don't have to go tomorrow!"
SOUNDBITE [English], Andrea Piunno, City News: "Dozens of supporters proudly welcomed war resisters with open arms. 26-year-old Kimberly Rivera is one of them. It's been an uphill battle for the former US soldier who faces deportation, tonight, she on the reprieve."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "This is a slight victory because I don't have to go home tomorrow. So I'm very very excited. You know I don't have to be handed over to the authorities so it gives me another day to fight."
SOUNDBITE [English], Andrea Piunno, City News: "It was an eleventh hour ruling by the federal court. Rivera was granted an emergency stay."
SOUNDBITE [English], Alyssa Manning, Lawyer: "And it is only a temporary stay so it is only potentially for a couple of weeks at the most maybe months."
SOUNDBITE [English], Andrea Piunno, City News: "People here tonight are signing this petition asking the government to stop the deportation of US was resisters like Kimberly. If she is ordered back to the states, she could likely face a jail time and be separated from her family including her 4-month-old daughter. After refusing to serve a second tour in Iraq, Rivera fled to Canada with her family in 2007. If she is ordered back to the US, she would face more than a year behind bars."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "I was fighting for your liberty. I was fighting for peace. I was fighting to keep my family safe, and you and your family. But in reality, I was fighting to destroy everything you know and love, and destroy the land to live on. The question stays and fighting will keep your silence. In my hiding, I can't be out of sight and out of the way so everything would go by and you could be taken. And the last part of reality I found I was becoming something that was not me. In my heart, everything I was fighting for wasn't great enough to give up any life. All of my battles are very true to me. I know from my heart and my change that I cannot fight what violence means for peace. My fight for peace is with my pen to say my thoughts without fear of being locked up in a dark place where no one can hear. Can the time hear? Can you take the time and a heart to understand what I'm now fighting for? With words not a gun. And I signed my name. And I wrote it July 11, 2008."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "My family was getting broken. So in order for me to keep it strong, I had to put aside a career, because at the time I had to do something more important. Is it the money? Is it the job? Is it the benefits? Why I'm keeping this or I can destroy my family. Or do I want to be humble and live a little lower in level to have my family? Which one is more important to me? So I chose of course my family. My loyalty is very strong. My will does not break very easy but you can only be loyal to one. You know? You see there? Strangers don't believe. "Give a damn about your family, or your mind or your feelings." They just say lock them up because it doesn't matter. To me, it matters."
SOUNDBITE [English], Mario Rivera, Kimberly's Husband: "The way that we decided to leave the US wasn't the decision that we made at first. Kimberly and I had sat down and talked. Talked about how she felt and how she wasn't okay with what was going on over there. Because the whole time she was over there she wasn't doing what she was told she was going to be doing. She was basically just in charge of padding people down and treating them like criminals. You know, padding women down and just, you know..."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "A lot of soldiers gave up a lot of their lives and to be a soldier. They gave up their families, their wives, their children. And I couldn't make that same sacrifice. So maybe it makes me smaller, maybe it makes me stronger, I don't know. All I know is for me it's not right and was not right."
SOUNDBITE [English], Mario Rivera, Kimberly's Husband: "She couldn't do it. In a situation where she would have to kill someone, she wouldn't be able to do it. It's not within our morals for that to happen and she wouldn't be able to do it so we talked and we were going to go back to the base at Fort Carson and tell them. That's what she had decided and worked it out with them."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "I was there for 3 months and I didn't go back after my 3 months. We'd already lost quite a few men in our infantry units and my unit, the only reason I know that they were going out and they support soldiers. They are not the infantry soldiers. They are just mechanics and cooks who they put on security positions because they don't have enough infantry men to go out and do the infantry jobs. That's how I know because the younger soldiers and our support company were killed in a road side bomb. And the road is now in an abyss. So I know that my company was in there doing the raids and the curfews and the patrols."
SOUNDBITE [English], Mario Rivera, Kimberly's Husband: "I had talked to their recruiter plenty of times about her being a mom and going to war and he assured me that her being a woman that she would never be sent to a combat zone. Basically, feeding me lies from the very beginning because as soon as she was sent to her base, we found out that right away basically - not even from her chain of command but we found out through TV - that she was going to Iraq."
SOUNDBITE [English], Bryan Casler, War Veteran: "In 2006, we were stationed in downtown Fallujah at the mayor's compound. We had a couple of marines that were being punished and one of their punishments was to remove all this paperwork from the top floor of the mayor's compound to bring it down into our dumpsters, while in full gear. This took hours for them to do and I think it might have extended across days actually. After all the paperwork was gone, I finally had a chance to sit down with my interpreter and just asked what all that paperwork was? Well, I came to find out we'd destroyed all the birth certificates of the city of Fallujah."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "Yes, this is my fatigue jacket from when I was in the army. This is my dog tag here which identifies me and it states my date of birth and social security number and it also states religion, none, no preference. And they give you 2 on a chain and they are used when you die, if you die in war. One of them goes in your mouth and one goes between your toes. So when they put you in the bag and they take you out of the bag again, they'd know who you are.I should wash the dishes. Oh, God! So when I was drafted, many of the people who were drafted were middle class guys who had been to university and so forth. In those days, the reason you went to university for many people was to stay out of the military, because you'd get deferment for as long as you stayed in university.Eventually, by December, I received orders to, you know, I'd completed my training and I received orders to go to Vietnam and I had a decision to make as to whether I would comply with that order. I was also given a few weeks to go home before they leave for overseas duty and I went home and I consulted with various people, lawyers and so forth whether there was any way that I could go to this base that I was assigned to, in state of Washington and refuse to go. I said okay, I'll refuse this order, punish me, and I'll be court marshaled. And they said we can't come to that. They can just as well put you in handcuffs and put you on a plane and send you to Vietnam anyway. So I decided that it wasn't worth taking that risk and so I decided to go to Canada. This is my undesirable discharges undesirable. So this allowed me to visit the United States. By getting this I could visit the United States or return there to live if I wanted, but I decided I didn't want to return to live there but I did want to be able to visit my family and so on. And the date is 21st of March 1975. This is another guy, Alonzo. He went back to the states and then he decided he wanted to come to Canada so I went down to the military base Fort Lewis and picked him up and bring him to Canada. I think the basic reason is that Canada decided rightly to stay apart from the Iraq war. This is follow-through on that decision. But what about people who agree with Canada on that and say will Canada reach out and offer me a chance, a life of peace and making a peaceful contribution? Of course Canada has a tradition of that. I'm a Vietnam War deserter who came up in 1970 and it was quite easy for me."
SOUNDBITE [English], Brockway's Familly: "Hello, my name is Ashley and this is Wesley, this is William and my husband Jeremy and we are the Brockways."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "He was sent to Iraq, where he became very distressed. When he came back from Iraq, he tried to get medical help for his mental condition which was he had been thinking of suicide and found it very difficult to relate to people and found that it was impossible for him to get that because they wouldn't believe that he was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome or anything else like that. He has made a refugee claim along with his wife and now with 2 children who have been born in Canada and his wife has a really tough job supporting him and also raising 2 small boys. He tried very hard to get access to veteran services for his condition but as I say, they tend to sort of blame a soldier."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "Because you had those symptoms and they didn't discharge you. So what happened between then and when you came back to the States?I started to go through the process of filing for medical board when I ended up being denied because my commanding officer wrote a non-medical assessment and said that my problems weren't affecting my job performance. Like I was basically the same still and I was still able to perform all my duties and so my medical board was rejected."
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "This is the combat training at the Marine Corps for the school of infantry. This recognizes that Jeremy making sacrifices. It's just certificate of appreciation. This is a scrap book that Jeremy's mom started for him. It starts off when he first told them that he'd joined the marines. They had gone out to dinner. It says it was June of 2005. And this is I believe as he was graduating. His parents were able to come and watch them and do some different things for the graduation."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "For me, the military seemed a pretty good option. I didn't have any money for school and the recruiter said that with the military experience that would actually count towards college credits and I would have money to go to college afterwards. Then that kind of seemed like a good thing to do for the experience and for patriotic duty. So patriotic duty, what was it that you wanted to do? Like defending our freedom. This is what I was thinking. Like making a difference."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "I understand that out of the 535 members of the US Congress, a grand total of one member has a child in the military! This is a very good indication that if you're doing well in American society or you're part of the elite, you don't send your kids to defend that society. The people who go to defend it are those who are not doing well and are not benefiting as much by that society, and I think that's grossly unfair. But I think for many poor kids, the idea is, "Look! This is the only way out" and for me to just sort of stay out of the military and work in Walmart and so on, this is what Kim ran into. She was working at Walmart and found that there was just no chance for her to get much above the minimum wage for a long, long time, if ever. And she figured, I've got to go back to the army. So she went back to the army."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "You do what you have to do mostly because the economy is not going good. There's no work. The only work is in the military or in Walmart maybe. Maybe if you are lucky and other places like that. And beneficially for a career if you need medical, dental, life insurance, if you need any of those things, they have it. So it is very easy for somebody to do that. To think that they are going to get a better life with the most soldiers don't live past 4 years. So if you ever think about it, those few years that you have some benefits are not even worth that."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jason Hurd, War Veteran: "I took my hands off of my weapon altogether and began jumping up and down, waving my hands back and forth, trying to get this car to stop and see me. The car kept coming and so I raised my weapon and the car kept coming. I pulled my selector switch off of Safe and the car kept coming. I was applying pressure to my trigger, getting ready to fire on the vehicle, and out of nowhere, a man came out of the side of the road, flagged the car down and got it to pull over. He walked around to the driver side door, opened it up, and out popped an eighty-year old woman. I came to find out this woman was a highly respected figure in the community and I don't have a clue what would have happened had I opened fire on this woman. I would imagine a riot. If a foreign occupying force came here to the United States and regardless of what they told us, whether they told us they were here to free us, to liberate us, and to give us democracy, do you not think that every person that owns a shotgun would not come out of their hills and fight for their right to self determinate them?"
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "By the time that my unit was deployed to Iraq, the government shifted their focus. They couldn't find any weapons of mass destruction, so they'd shifted our mission to gaining freedom for the Iraqis. And that was a little disillusioning for me because I thought that we were there to protect ourselves. And then they just shifted it to something else, because they were wrong."
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "The war affected me personally by taking away, I guess, what I thought our married life would be like and the way that our family would be and the things that we would enjoy and the opportunities we would have. We probably spent maybe a week together after we were married before he had to go back to the camp legion where he was stationed. Then I saw him 5 more days before he deployed and that was it. I'd become even more depressed because he was going like the man that I love left and we were only together such a short time after we were married and we didn't have that time to bond. I wasn't sure when I would talk to him again. I kind of expected that I wouldn't be able to talk to him at all. Well, he was there and so I thought I would try and just busy myself with everything and so I decided to take a college course. Then I got 2 jobs. I tried to spend a lot of time with his family because then, it would make me feel closer to him by being able to spend time with them. And then it ended up that the job that he had in the military, he could talk on the internet and email back and forth. So I would tell him my problems, but he would never talk about anything and he was going through a lot that he never told me."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "While we were there that to be kind of friends. One of them was an Iraqi policeman. He was in his police truck. Then one of the marines that were assigned to the guard duty shot up his police truck with him still inside. The marine had just lost it and he ended up being shot in the chest, the policeman. But we couldn't get the medical chopper to come in and pick him up because he was considered low priority, because he was Iraqi."
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "Jeremy had a post traumatic stress and anxiety and everything and it affects me and the children a lot because it isn't like a normal family situation. Often times it's more like I'm a single parent, because he doesn't hop a whole lot with the kids or hop around the house. He usually doesn't go out so he won't do like shopping or anything like that. Before, I used to provoke him, because before I understood that he had post traumatic stress and what that meant, I was also suffering from depression and I used to provoke him because I wanted him to help me in something and he never did. It seems like the only times that things happen is when he is alone and is night. He starts thinking about all of the things that he's experienced and had to be a part of and done himself. So he's never inflicted any harm on me or kids or anything like that."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "Being in a crowded area was a dangerous place to be. And there's a lot of trauma that I still have a hard time letting go of like with being in a crowded place like at the shopping mall. My mind doesn't really understand that it's not dangerous there. It's still kind of functioning like it was in Iraq. Like I start to do things that I would do in that situation. Like I'll take cover and try to find my gun. It is like that my mind is telling me that I need my gun but I don't have it, so I start to get a little panic that I'm under attack and I don't have my gun. My mind hasn't really realized that I'm not there anymore and it's not dangerous to do those things."
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "It was only for emergencies like if he took off, if he had a panic attack. That's all that it was for so, because it was only for emergencies. When Jeremy first came back from Iraq and was diagnosed with the post traumatic stress, they prescribed him drugs that were very harsh and he kind of lived in a dream state for a while. He was very angry and irritable. Sometimes he would do things with no recollection of doing them. He was falling down the stairs while on these drugs and he didn't know that, that had happened. And after a flashback, a dirty one, whether he was thinking that he was protecting himself I'm not sure exactly what happened. He also has tried to commit suicide and he's also cut his arms to harm himself."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "Before I started getting treatment, I couldn't deal with these problems on an emotional level, so I ended up cutting myself a lot to physicalize the pain, to make it something that I could deal with. But that didn't really help me really deal with the problems. It sort of just lightened the stress for a little while."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "Would you like to explain how you feel about riding the street car? For me I don't like to ride the public transport because a lot of times, that's very crowded and the more crowded it is, the more anxiety I start to feel, like I would start to have hyperventilation. Once I go pass hyperventilation, then sometimes I just pass out or I start freaking out and it's not pretty. Not at all! If I have to take the street car, I would just wait for however long it takes for it to not be busy. Then I'd get on like the least crowded bus or street car or subway, and I'll wait however long I need to. It's just how I can deal with it. The subway was so bad for me. I had to travel to work. I worked in a further place 3 years ago. I had to travel the subway to get there. For me, I had to take the very last train. Every time, the very last one I had to stand my back against the wall so I can see everything all the way to the end of the subway car, because one time I had a bad dream that one man just came through the doors that connect the trains together. He came through that door that you're not supposed to come through and he just shoots everybody. And for me it was a daymare meaning I saw this when I was awake not when I was asleep. It was a lot worse a couple of years ago. I couldn't even walk the street without thinking like there's somebody up at some window that was open, if the window was open, and begin walking next to the buildings in shade. I hate that. I still have to let people pass me by when you're walking on the sidewalk. I hate people walking on my heels. I look behind me. Just like, if you're going to take me, just do it! Don't like keep walking behind me. Freaking! Crap! That's the feeling, right?"
SOUNDBITE [English], Mario Rivera, Kimberly 'S Husband: "The thing that really broke her was 2 things. Like I said, she had a friend, couple of friends. They were Iraqi women that would go to the base once in a while because they worked there. One of them, her sister was hurt by the mortar attacks that they kept on attacking. So, seeing that happened, you know, innocent people was something that was affecting her as well as seeing the kids that would come in there crying all the time afraid of them, afraid of the soldiers and afraid of the whole situation. They're just crying and her wanting to hold them but not being able to because she is a soldier."
SOUNDBITE [English], Matthew Chailders, War Veteran: "The detainees wore flexicuffs by their wrists behind their back and they're vile for it. Marines were screaming at them to get up and then they tripped them down on their face. They couldn't break their fall because they're tied up and the marines were showing the Iraqis pornography which was strictly taboo in their religion and they made this very obvious to us. I saw a marine take the hat of an Iraqi. He shoved it down the back of his pants and wiped himself with it and then tried to feed it to the Iraqi who was vile for it and because they were, he was desperate for food, he actually tried to eat it."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "This is my friend Harry May and he is-- When did you buy this restaurant?"
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "One and half years ago."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "And before that, he worked in the center of the restaurant there. And that's where I made friends with him. And then you got married."
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "Yes."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "Then you decided to go with your wife to visit your parents in Vietnam. And you said you wanted me to go so you went there first and then I came and met you. I had a very nice time. Very nice! I only got sick once. The Sake!"
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "And last year you came back again."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "Yes. 2 more times."
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "Yes. So how do you feel about it? I mean if you had to go to war and you would be the one who"
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "That's why I didn't want to go. I didn't want to kill Vietnamese people. They never did me any harm."
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "But I don't like to go in the war when I was in the high school. When you finish high school, you have to go to the war. But I said no."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "Go to the army."
SOUNDBITE [English], Harry May, Lee's friend: "Yes army, but I said I don't want it. I want to come to Canada and study and work here. And that's where I became Cho."
SOUNDBITE [English], Lee Zaslovsky, Vietnam War Resister: "No doubt there are some people who fit well into the war environment and you know, psychologically strengthened by it. I would say that those people are very few in far between, although they talk a lot but the ones that are damaged by it tend to be quiet about it because they don't want to admit that they are weak, they don't want to compromise their self-image as competent, and of course there is always the problem that they have expressing it."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "I always kind of had in my mind I was kind of a little depressed. And I still needed to remind myself that God's with me. No matter how much darkness I feel, I come in and I can get out. The blue says how much I have been damaged and how my heart was torn up. Like it describes here, and the sun here represents how it binds everything together because it gives us life and energy to live. This one has too has a name. It has Iraqi sun. This one shows like it was during the winter so I made like snowmen, all of us are snowmen, my husband and me and the babies. That's how it supposed to be like our family supposed to be tight. I was trying to find a woman that I spoke with, to a group of women for Voice of Women in Canada. There's no way she doesn't know me because I know that she was in Iraq at the same time I was, so our stories tell both sides, the soldier and the citizen. And I just don't know how it comes to the next. When I first heard her talk, it made me cry always and still everytime I always cry. And I always tell her I'm so sorry because you know? I don't know how life is like for them. I know how it felt when I was seeing it and it hurt the same but that experience is different."
SOUNDBITE [English], Olivia Chow, FMR.CNP MP: "George W. Bush and Steven Harper sent soldiers to fight for democracy. Democracy means obeying the will of parliament here in Canada. Parliament has said, as the House of Commons have said very clearly, that war resisters should be allowed to stay in Canada. We are proud of them. We want them to be Canadian citizens. Therefore, there should be no deportations of Iraq war resisters if there is democracy in Canada".
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "I can't go back and see my dad. My kids have never seen my parents. My parents have never seen their grandchildren and as long as we are looking for refugee status, if I leave Canada for any reason, the case is automatically dismissed. So I'm not sure how long it'll take before there is a decision in that, but hopefully it won't be too much longer. I think that my children can go to the States. Then I think that I could go to the States, but I'm not certain about that, because I know that Jeremy would be arrested but I don't know if they would arrest me for being with him since he's considered a criminal."
SOUNDBITE [English], Mario Rivera, Kimberly 'S Husband: "Living like this is pretty hard. It's very depressing. I mean I've got a lot of health problems that I'm working on them and you see many doctors for. We don't get to see our families because they're in the United States and I was brought up as being very close to my family. The longest I was ever away from my family was maybe a week. I'm very close to my mother and my father and my brothers and my sister. So being away from them for so long and not being able to see them, they not being able to see their grandchildren, it's extremely hard. It's depressing. It's something we shouldn't have to go through just because we don't have the right to stand up for our beliefs."
SOUNDBITE [English], Kimberly Rivera, War Resister: "The lawyer can't help me because if I go back, there's going to be military versus me. My defence, he can only - in the guidelines of the military term - cannot defend for me even I have to basically guilt myself to them, like I'll probably have to do a plea bargain of some kind. When he tells me that in 95% of all the cases, the soldiers take a plea which would mean that the military prosecutor would say, "We'll reduce your amount of time and this and that, if you decide not to go public or if you decide to do this or this, we'll give you a less time." And it depends on that plea I guess what I would do."
SOUNDBITE [English], Ashlay Brockway, Jeremy's Wife: "If we end up having to go back to the States, I'm very concerned because we don't have any money of our own right now. I don't have a job. I have 2 kids. Jeremy would be in jail. So I don't know where we would live. We wouldn't have any health care and I would have to find, like the kids wouldn't have their dad anymore and they would have to go to day care so I could work. So they would hardly have me anymore and I don't know what that would be like for our whole family. I think that it would really stress Jeremy out, and just completely destroy him."
SOUNDBITE [English], Jeremy Brockway, War Resister: "My goal is to just be a normal person again, to do the things normal people do, go to the movies on Friday, have a regular job, take a vacation by the lake, just stuff like that."


text:
SAN ANTONIO -- The Utah Valley University men's golf team maintained its 11th-place position Tuesday after the second round of the Lone Star Invitational hosted by the University of Texas-San Antonio.
Mason Casper, who shot an opening-round 79 Monday, carded a 1-under-par 71, to move up into a tie for 34th, while Brayden Eriksen, who was in a tie for 11th after Day 1, shot a four-over par 76 and dropped into a tie for 21st.Comment on this story
"It was another rough day," UVU men's golf coach Chris Curran said. "Mason bounced back and played well. The other guys got off to rough starts, but they were able to battle back on the back nine."
Corey Eccles (76-78) and Joey Olson (76-78) are tied for 51st, while Stratton Schulz (82-82) is tied for 79th.
As a team, the Wolverines shot their second straight 303.
The University of North Texas, behind tournament leader Rodolfo Cazaubon (68-70), leads the tournament by three shots over the University of Denver (582) and six shots over Central Arkansas (585).
Utah Valley is at 606.
Final-round action gets underway at 7:30 a.m. MT Wednesday.
Jay Hinton is a sports information assistant at Utah Valley University.


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Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel
When she visits Miami for the first time in 1969, 26-year-old Frances Ellerby is forever changed. Introduced to a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in Biscayne Bay, she falls in love with the beauty of south Florida — and with Dennis DuVal.
Dennis is a law student who grew up spending summers at Stiltsville, and he and Frances quickly marry and have a daughter, building a life outside Miami among Dennis' parents, sister, and friends. It's a magical place to Frances, and there she and Dennis celebrate the joys of parenthood, marriage, and friendship, but also face the dangers of infidelity, unemployment, and the crime and fierce hurricanes that constantly threaten the region.
This first novel by Susanna Daniel, which was 10 years in the making, follows Frances from youth to maturity, elegantly using foreshadowing to create a gripping story of Frances as she moves through life as a wife, mother, and friend, and finally as she struggles to carve out an identity of her own.
Harper Perennial/HarperCollins; ISBN 978-0-06196-308-7; $14.99.
Stiltsville: Discussion Guide
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All quotes tagged Libraries
(384 quotes found)
"I join Dean Frances Coleman, the director of our campus library system, in thanking Mr. Barnes for this significant contribution. It will greatly enhance our collection."
"It seems like there is some flaky code in portions of the libraries that handle the WMF files. It wouldn't surprise me if we see more vulnerabilities emerge, which I am sure will be followed by more media coverage."
"It's a big job here. The director at our library does everything because we don't have departments."
"In the enterprise, you already have all these libraries, but a lot of midsized companies want smaller automated tape products. The PX500 series plays into that market -- the lower end."
"What displaced people desperately need it is knowledge and information, and that's what public libraries do."
"Most libraries don't go back that far (1818). You're going to have at least four generations there."
"It makes it convenient, because you don't have to come to the library. As long as you have a library card, you can have the library come to you."