text:
Last year was the warmest on record for the United States, with readings pushed over higher than normal by the unusual and unseasonably warm weather during the last half of December.
WASHINGTON -- Last year was the warmest on record for the United States, with readings pushed over higher than normal by the unusual and unseasonably warm weather during the last half of December.
Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center listed the average temperature for the 48 contiguous states last year as 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 2.2 degrees warmer than average and 0.07 degree warmer than 1998, the previous warmest year on record.
Worldwide, the agency said, it was the sixth warmest year on record.
In December the Center had predicted that 2006 would be the United States' third warmest year, but unusual readings later that month pushed the year into first place.
The Center said it is not clear how much of the warming is a result of greenhouse-gas induced climate change and how much resulted from the current El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean.
El Nino conditions occur every few years in the Pacific and can affect climate around the world, including producing warmer conditions in the United States.
The average U.S. and global temperature are both about 1 degree warmer than at the start of the 20th century, a change many scientists attribute to gases released into the atmosphere by industrial processes.
The temperature data was collected from a network of more than 1,200 stations across the country.
The climate center said the unusual warmth in early winter reduced residential energy needs by 13.5 percent compared to average conditions for the season.
While December started cold, spring-like conditions reigned in the eastern states during the last half of the month, making it the nation's fourth warmest December. Five states had their warmest December on record __ Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire. No state was colder than average in December.
Source: Associated Press
Contact Info:


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From Fedora Project Wiki
Creating and editing pages in the wiki
- Help: Wiki structure describes page naming guidelines, namespace usage, and categories.
- Help:Categories provides more details about using categories
- Help:Editing describes headers, sections, syntax, and markup.
- Fedora Project:User pages defines the proper location for user pages.
- Help:Talk describes the usage of Talk or Discussion pages.
Additional help pages can be found in the Media Wiki Help <math>Insert formula here</math>
Other resources
- Communicating and getting help describes additional resources for users of Fedora.
- Join describes the many ways to get involved with Fedora Project.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Dear Abby
DEAR ABBY: I have been married for 18 years to a man I have a good relationship with. My problem is he has always been extremely rude to my parents. They aren't critical or judgmental of him, and they try hard to be friendly and accommodating, perhaps thinking it might lessen the rudeness he continually shows them.
Example: If my mom asks him how his parents are doing, without looking up from his cellphone he'll grunt and say, "They're fine" -- nothing more. When we go out to dinner, he usually doesn't join in the conversation. Instead, he just sits there with a dismissive, bored look on his face.
I have told him I don't want him to come with me when I visit them. It only takes a few times before he asks if he can come again and promises to try to behave. But after a few visits, he reverts back to his old, rude ways. It has reached a point that it's affecting our marriage. Can you offer any suggestions for how this issue can be resolved? -- TIRED OF IT IN TORONTO
DEAR TIRED OF IT: It would be helpful to know WHY your husband behaves this way. Does he dislike your folks? Does he have so little in common with them he doesn't know how to participate in a conversation with them? Is he this way with any other people?
Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if he saw them with you less often, say, 30 percent to 50 percent of the time. And before he does, make sure he is up to the task of being social because, as it stands, I agree his behavior is rude.
He's not a teenager with his nose buried in a cellphone; he's an adult who should know better. If he finds your parents' company less than stimulating, he should be a better actor.
DEAR ABBY: Last year my darling mother lost her battle with cancer. Aside from grief and loss, a bigger issue looms over my life. It concerns my stepdad.
Before Mom was diagnosed, my stepfather was a selfish, self-centered man. At times he was mean to her to the point that I wanted her to leave him. In fairness, once Mom was diagnosed, he stepped up to the plate and took excellent care of her until her death.
I have other issues with my stepfather. He was inappropriate with me, sharing things he should have kept to himself. It caused my mother great heartache and made me lose respect for him. I am still uncomfortable around him. Mom knew how I felt and understood.
Now that she is gone, do I have any obligation to him? He has a strained relationship with his only child. My sibling thinks I'm too hard on him, but doesn't understand the major problems our stepdad caused. I don't want to continue pretending I like him. Please help, Abby. -- SEARCHING FOR GUIDANCE
DEAR SEARCHING: You are entitled to your feelings and, no, you do not have any obligation to your stepfather. If your sibling wants to see him, that's his/her choice. Explain to your sibling your reasons for feeling the way you do -- and if you encounter your stepfather during family gatherings, be polite and don't linger. That isn't pretending to like the man; it is good manners.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.


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Salamander provides businesses, organizations, and emergency management with the tools they need to manage small and large events as well as day-to day activity. Our INTELLIGENT ACCOUNTABILITY™ suite offers unrivaled situational awareness, painting a common operational picture for everyone involved to manage the situation at hand.
Salamander leads the pack by combining three key functions into one integrated solution: TAG, TRACK, & REPORT. These real-time resources can be made available at the scene from anywhere in the world. Salamander links physical with digital, providing information to assure everyone goes home at the end of the day.
TAG is the foundation of INTELLIGENT ACCOUNTABILITY. Quickly create interoperable IDs through SalamanderLive™ or create event-specific badges to identify people and resources in the field with our RAPID TAG solutions. The TAG solutions enable Salamander users to instantly TRACK identified resources (people & equipment) throughout events.
TRACK solutions increase situational awareness by providing a real-time and cohesive view of activity. With TRACK, Salamander users have a complete and true operational picture. Through SalamanderLive, effectively manage activities by identifying resources enroute and on scene, their current location, and assignment.
REPORT provides Salamander users timely data collected from the TRACK solutions during and after an event. Elements include resource usage, personnel times, patient activity, and much more. Detailed reports with to-the-second accuracy can be run for audits and reimbursements.
Salamander has the ability to integrate with Computer-Aided Dispatch Systems (CAD) to affirm accountability begins from the moment of dispatch through the entire event until the call is completed. With Salamander being your conduit between CAD and reporting, it assures you that tracking occurs immediately and fluidly. We comprehensively track resources for the purpose of interoperable communications, accountability and incident command.


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NYC Mayor Bloomberg hasn't given up on assault weapons ban
(CNN) -- A national ban on assault weapons may have met all-but-certain death in the Senate this week, but one of the measure's proponents - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg - said Sunday his fight wasn't over.
"I don't think there's ever been an issue where the public has spoken so clearly, where Congress hasn't eventually understood and done the right thing," Bloomberg said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid left off the ban on assault weapons when he introduced gun control legislation in the upper chamber. The measure would expand background checks, improve school safety and restrict gun trafficking.
The assault weapons ban, which was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, will be voted on as an amendment to the larger gun control bill. It's not expected to gain approval in the full Senate.
But despite the ban's demise, Bloomberg said part of his goal - having the Senate vote on the measure - will be met.
"We demanded a plan and then we demanded a vote. We have the plan. We're going to get the vote. It's incumbent on us to make our voices heard," Bloomberg said, adding he thought eventually a ban would succeed in Congress.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us. I don't think we should give up on the assault weapons ban. But clearly it is a more difficult issue for a lot of people," he said.
On Saturday, Bloomberg's anti-gun violence group announced it was spending another $12 million to air ads putting pressure on Republican and Democratic lawmakers to vote for tighter gun control laws. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, had already spent tens of millions on previous ads.
The television push amounts to Bloomberg trying "to impose his will on the American public," according to Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
"They don't want him in their restaurants, they don't want him in their homes, they don't want him telling what food to eat. They sure don't want him telling what self-defense firearms to own. He can't buy America," LaPierre said, also on NBC.


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Erythema Nodosum
Pronounced: AIR-uh-THEE-ma no-DOSE-um
Erythema nodosum is the name given to tender lumps on the legs and sometimes the arms. They are caused by inflammation of the fat or connective tissue beneath the skin.
Copyright © Nucleus Medical Media, Inc.
Erythema nodosum is thought to be a type of autoimmune reaction. It may be caused by:
from a:
- Virus
- Bacteria, especially strep throat
- Fungus
- Inflammatory conditions:
- Sulfa drugs and some other antibiotics
- Iodides
- Bromides
- Birth control pills
- Leukotriene modifiers
- Proton pump inhibitors
Certain types of cancer:
- Lymphoma
- Leukemia
Sometimes the cause of erythema nodosum is not known.
Risk Factors
This condition is rare. It is more common in females and young adults aged 20-30 years old.
Having any of the causes listed above will only slightly increase your risk of the disorder.
Symptoms include:
Very tender, deep lumps, like bruises,
that change color in the same way, from pink to blue to brown:
- Usually located on your shins
- May also appear on the forearms, trunk, neck, and head
- May be associated joint pain and fever and redness around the eyes
You will be asked about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done, which may diagnose the problem based on a visual exam. You may be referred to a doctor that focuses on skin problems or infectious diseases.
Your bodily fluids and cells may be tested to look for a cause. This can be done with:
- Blood and urine samples
- Cultures or a throat swab for strep
- PPD skin test for tuberculosis
- Biopsy of a lesion
Images may be taken of your bodily structures. This can be done with a chest x-ray and other imaging tests.
If a cause can be identified, it will be treated. For the nodules themselves, pain relief is all that is needed. They tend to resolve on their own in about 6 weeks. They will not cause scarring. Treatment options include the following:
Pain Relief
Pain relief includes:
- Bed rest and elevation of legs
- Wet compresses
- Aspirin, except in children
- Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
- Potassium iodide
Other Treatment
Other medications such as steroids, may be necessary in severe cases.
Some of the infectious causes can be avoided by practicing good hygiene, which includes:
- Washing your hands often
- Not sharing food, drinks, or utensils
American Academy of Dermatology
Family Doctor—American Academy of Family Physicians
Canadian Dermatology Association
Health Canada
Erythema nodosum. EBSCO DynaMed Plus website. Available at:http://www.dynamed.com/topics/dmp~AN~T116219/Erythema-nodosumUpdated February 23, 2016. Accessed August 18, 2017.
Erythema nodosum. DermNet New Zealand website. Available at: https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/erythema-nodosum. Accessed August 18, 2017.
Erythema nodosum. Better Health Channel website. Available at: https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/erythema-nodosum. Updated April 2016. Accessed August 18, 2017.
Requena L, Yus ES. Erythema nodosum. Dermatol Clin. 2008;26(4):425-438.
Last reviewed September 2018 by EBSCO Medical Review Board Michael Woods, MD, FAAP Last Updated: 8/7/2015


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Selcuk is accesible by trains from Izmir or Denizli (Pamukkale). Modern trains are operating between İzmir – Izmir Airport – Selcuk – Denizli. Its a comfortable and cheap way to travel on this route. For more information about the trains schedules to Selcuk, please visit the following link:
Izmir, Izmir Airport - Selcuk Town (Ephesus) Train Schedules
Recommended hotels to stay in Selcuk
(booking.com links) :
On certain dates we offer %20 discount. To see these dates please click here.
* If you do not have a rental car and staying in Selcuk or coming to Selcuk with train. We offer private walking tours of Basilica of St. John, Temple of Artemis and Ancient City of Ephesus. For more information, please contact us.
Suggested Tour Programs from Selcuk are as follows:
SELCUK - No:1
HalfDay (4 hours) Temple of Artemis + Ephesus + House of Mary
After meeting your guide drive through the fertile lands. Your first stop will be the Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Afterwards proceed to the mountain where Virgin Mary is believed to spent her 9 years. The house is approximately 1000 feet above sea level and running as an active chapel. Roman Catholics believe that Virgin Mary came to Ephesus with Saint. John 5 years after the crucification. At the age of 63 she is assumed to heaven. Altough there is no fact that Virgin Mary lived here approximately 1.5 million people visit the site each year. After 30 minutes visit to the House of Mary, drive to ancient city of Ephesus. You will be dropped at the upper gate of Ephesus with your tour guide. Start exploring the city. You will be walking down the hill approximately 1.5hrs. You will see the Odeon, the basilica, domitian square, fountain of Trajan, Celcus library, Terrace Houses (optional), Marble street, the Grand Theater of Ephesus and the Harbour Street. You will be endng your tour at the bottom gate. Your tour guide will take you to another site or drop you at the desired location.
SELCUK - No:2
Fullday (6 hours) Tour of Ephesus - Christian Ephesus
Meet with your guide in Selcuk. Drive to the country. Your first stop on this fascinating tour is at the HOUSE OF VIRGIN MARY. Then, you will continue on to visit ancient EPHESUS, one of the most magnificent and best-preserved ancient sites in the world. See the Odeion, the Market Basilica, Curetes Street, Bath,Celsus Library, Marble Street and the Great Theater with a seating capacity of 25,000 people. Afterwards visit the BASILICA OF ST. JOHNand see the TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS, one of the wonders of the ancient world.
SELCUK - No:3
Fullday (7 hours) Ephesus & Villages
Meet with your guide in Selcuk. Drive to one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world:TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS. After seeing Temple of Artemis drive to the magnificent ancient site of EPHESUS. Ephesus is the best preserved of the Greek/Roman cities in Anatolia and while you are visiting the ancient ruins of this magnificent site, your tour guide will bring them alive. You will see the beautiful Celsus Library, restored and reconstructed according to its original form by the architect Friedmund Hueber in the 1970's. The most spectacular building of Ephesus is the Grand Theater, built during the Hellenistic age to hold 25,000 spectators. It is there that St. Paul preached. Opposite theTemple of Hadrian are the Terrace Houses, homes of Ephesus' wealthy citizens. The city was also the hometown of great philosopher Heraclitus. After a visit to Ephesus Antique Site, you will arrive at SIRINCE VILLAGE. This old Orthodox Village, 10 km from Selcuk, was once "Cirkince"(ugly). Indeed its inhabitants gave this name on the purpose as they did not want to be bothered by foreigners nor to share the beauty of their village. Still after years, visitors understood that the village was not ugly and called it "Sirince" (pretty). Today the village is a perfect synthesis of Turkish-Greek culture as of the 1920's; after the Turkish Independence War, people exchange between Greek and Turks has occurred and all those typical Greek houses, though they kept their original outside characteristics, have received the local layout inside. At Sirince Village you will have chance of seeing the local life at a village and purchasing some small local souvenirs and handicrafts. The village is also famous for its local grape and other fruit wines. Your last stop will be the visit to the ISA BEY MOSQUE, a delicate masterpiece of Turkish architecture from the fourteenth century.
SELCUK- No:4
Fullday (7 hours) Temple of Artemis + Ephesus + Kirazli Village
Your first stop will be the Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Continue to Ephesus where you start at the Magnesia Gate and walk downhill through the city.Your tour guide will point out the sights, bringing the history of Ephesus to life as you pause at the Odeon, Upper Agora, Town Hall, Fountain of Trajan, Temple of Hadrian and Domitianus, Memmius Memorial, Roman Baths,Terrace Houses and the extraordinary Library of Celsus. At the end of the marble street leading from the library, gaze up at the impressive theater, built to seat 24.000 people. Here St. Paul preached to Ephesians. Afterwards proceed to the quaint Village of Kirazli. Meet with locals, witness the unspoiled local life. See real Turkey !
For more information, contact us.
* For travellers who will be staying at hotels in Basmane district in Izmir, we recommend them to take the 9.00am train from Basmane train station which will arrive to Selcuk at 10.15am. Our tour guide and vehicle can meet you at Selcuk train startion. After the tour you will be dropped back to Selcuk train station for your return journey. Return train will leave Selcuk at 6.06pm and arrive Izmir Basmane Train station at 7.15pm.


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Mac & Bumble is the leading site for beautiful babe photos and videos of the most sexy women and models! These hotties are always entirely naked & love sharing their nudity with you.
Mac & Bumble is simply put one of the best glamour babe sites on the Net! Not only do they offer you with loads of extremely professional content, but they also have a ton of member bonuses that would literally take you several weeks to browse through. I really enjoyed visiting this site and would certainly recommend it. Care to join?


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Do you truly realize the importance of prayer, or do you think that you can be wise without a deep and consistent prayer life? Take some time to consider the importance of prayer and how you can make it a ...Read More
In the book of Proverbs, we find many themes addressed including the importance of the fear of God, the respectability of work, the need to be industrious in our labors, the folly of sexual immorality, and the raising of a ...Read More
The Final Word
In the church today, we observe many who claim to have received revelation directly from God. Consider the emphasis the author of Hebrews places upon the superiority of Christ and His revelation to us. Praise God that He has revealed ...Read More
The Writer of Hebrews
The writer of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus Christ is supreme over all things. He writes, "in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control" (2:8). The writer points to Christ as the Sustainer of all ...Read More
The Lord Saves Israel
Saul gives the appearance of "having a form of godliness but denying its power" (2 Tim. 3:5). He gives more heed to rituals than to the God behind them. Rituals are good so long as they bring us closer to ...Read More
Questioning God's Lot
Ephraim and Manasseh find much of their land occupied by enemies. Other tribes seem to receive much more peaceful territories. So God guided the lot, and so He does in the lives of His people today. Some struggle more than ...Read More
Claiming a Share
Zelophehad's daughters came boldly before Joshua because God had promised them an inheritance. How much more should we come before God to claim what has been promised to us? The Word of God encourages us to come boldly (Heb. 4:16) ...Read More
The Sons of Joseph
Ephraim did not obey God's command to drive the Canaanites out. That meant that idolworshiping pagans lived in their midst, and their hearts were soon led astray. We often cannot foresee the negative consequences of disobedience and unbelief in God's ...Read More
Cities of Judah's Land
Have you ever tried to catalog your blessings? Why not do so? Actually write down the good things God has given to you, as many as you can think of: your spouse, your children, good friends, lessons you've learned, great ...Read More
Caleb's Successes
Caleb was not concerned solely with his own interests. Clearing his own land of the giants, he pressed on to retake Debir. By so doing, he helped his tribe and brought glory to God. Do you take risks for the ...Read More


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Explore the videos below to watch different Koshland Science Museum visitors describe their answers to the following six questions:
- What was the happiest moment of your life?
- What are the most important lessons you've learned in life?
- What is your earliest memory? How old were you?
- Are there any words of wisdom you'd like to pass along?
- How has your life been different from what you imagined?
- What does your future hold?


text: Job Discussion Forums :: View topic - DIRT? FEARS? Muhammadiyah Uni Purworejo (central Java) Get TEFL Certified & Start Your Adventure Today! Job Discussion Forums"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!" FAQ Search Memberlist Usergroups Register Profile Log in to check your private messages Log in DIRT? FEARS? Muhammadiyah Uni Purworejo (central Java) Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Indonesia View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message CubismJoined: 04 Jul 2008Posts: 283Location: US Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 5:13 am Post subject: DIRT? FEARS? Muhammadiyah Uni Purworejo (central Java) DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS PLACE OR THIS GROUP? HORRORS, PRAISE, ANYTHING. I've taught in China, India, Nepal, Thailand never even been to Indonesia. For all I know folks in Central Java file their teeth and plot against, secretly despise the ft. It's set up for March tHANK you Back to top bradleycooperJoined: 12 Apr 2013Posts: 310 Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 5:53 pm Post subject: How fast can you run in the other direction? This is an ultra-conservative Islamist organization which is imposing Saudi Arabian norms on Indonesian society. They have also been caught in the past channeling funds to Hamas and Hezbollah. I don't suppose they are going to be asking up to teach Koranic recitals, but this sounds like a real worry to me. Not somewhere I'd dream of working. Back to top jaybet3Joined: 15 Dec 2010Posts: 140Location: Indonesia Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 12:17 pm Post subject: Details Cubism, I'm curious how you got in contact with this group? Did they post on the eslcafe? Seems strange a radical group (according to BC) would look for an English teacher. BTW: How much were they paying? LOL!!! Back to top CubismJoined: 04 Jul 2008Posts: 283Location: US Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:15 pm Post subject: Oh my...Islam uni, central Java Hello, and thanks. Simply teaching in central Java is dicey to me. Frankly they seem less bizarre than most places I taught in China. I found them from another ft who's in his 70's. It's a legit place, odd to say. 'the group sound pretty heavy despite that they build hospitals, unis, etc.The largest or 2nd largest in Indonesia. My impression is, from reading the students' papers, that the sts are village types, not terribly educated in English. It's a real uni with an English dept. etc. The pay is quite low because I drove a deal (I'm 65 & the world economy scares the willies out of me), but they provide Everything. More? Back to top CubismJoined: 04 Jul 2008Posts: 283Location: US Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 12:25 am Post subject: No dice All other issues aside, the big problems are the remoteness of this place and working without a contract. They've been honorable to my colleague in the past, but I swore I'd never work with either of those things again. (I got mugged in another country last year, far from civilization.) Thanks again. Back to top TazzJoined: 26 Sep 2013Posts: 512Location: Jakarta Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 4:47 am Post subject: Cubism-I don't quite understand, you describe the place as 'legit' and then go on to say there was no contract! If so. how was a kitas obtained? Back to top jaybet3Joined: 15 Dec 2010Posts: 140Location: Indonesia Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 12:03 pm Post subject: Cubism, Since you said the pay is "quite low", forget about the place. You already have doubts and why take a chance. There are better opportunities that pay more money. Your age might be a factor at chain schools, but if you PM me I can give you the name of a school that outsources teachers in Jakarta and other places where you might find work. The remoteness would drive you crazy. No contract would give you no security. Working with narrow-minded, conservatives would be a huge negative. Back to top CubismJoined: 04 Jul 2008Posts: 283Location: US Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:30 am Post subject: LAVA FACTOR, DIDN'T GO, THEIR DEFENSE Hi, I didn't go to teach there, & told them about the 'rumors' I'd heard. This is their reply. I appreciate your honesty. but then i need to clarify some things. 1. we're Muhammadiyah university under Muhammadiyah Foundation and there are a lot of schools, universities, hospitals, etc in Indonesia even in other countries, you can check it through internet but we have no relation at all with Saudi Arabia or other islamic conflict countries (iran, iraq or other). 2. we're one of the biggest private university in Central Java and we are concern much to the education as Islam as the foundation/basic but we're not kind of radical, teach about individualism, we are very tolerate to other believes. even some of the universities, they have accepted many international students and non islam students,not using veil, just like University of Muhammadiyah Malang. My family was worried about ongoing volcanic stuff as well as any ties we don't know about. C Back to top plumpy nutJoined: 12 Mar 2011Posts: 1652 Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:23 pm Post subject: Without a work permit that would allow you to legally stay in the country - through out your teaching term - your expenses would be considerable. If you're on a tourist visa you have to leave the country every 2 months and that means flying to Singapore then flying back, and on arrival giving presents to immigration officials. Go figure the cost on that and decide if a job that is not providing a work permit is paying you enough. Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Indonesia All times are GMT Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Where to Begin----------------General DiscussionNewbie ForumCurrent Events ForumTechnology ForumOnline Teaching Forum Africa Forums----------------General Africa Forum Asia Forums----------------CambodiaChina (Job-related Posts Only)China (Off-Topic)Hong KongIndiaIndonesiaJapanMalaysiaPhilippinesSingaporeTaiwanThailandGeneral Asia ForumVietnam Caribbean Forums----------------General Caribbean Forum Europe Forums----------------Czech RepublicFranceGermanyGreeceItalyMacedonia and the BalkansPolandRomaniaRussia & C.I.S.SpainTurkeyUkraineUnited KingdomGeneral Europe Forum Latin America Forums----------------ArgentinaBrazilChileColombiaCosta RicaMexicoMexico (off-topic)PeruGeneral Latin America Forum The Middle East Forums----------------BahrainEgyptIsraelKuwaitOmanQatarSaudi ArabiaUnited Arab EmiratesGeneral Middle East Forum North America Forums----------------General North America Forum Oceania----------------Australia/New Zealand You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling. Contact Dave's ESL Cafe Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved. Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group Teaching Jobs in China


text:
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Filters: Author is Ian Foster [Clear All Filters]
Tech Report
The GrADS Project: Software Support for High-Level Grid Application Development," Technical Report, February 2000. (347.41 KB)"
A Collection of White Papers from the BDEC2 Workshop in Bloomington, IN," Innovative Computing Laboratory Technical Report, no. ICL-UT-18-15: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, November 2018. (9.26 MB)"
A Collection of Presentations from the BDEC2 Workshop in Kobe, Japan," Innovative Computing Laboratory Technical Report, no. ICL-UT-19-09: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, February 2019. (58.85 MB)"
Journal Article
Scheduling in the Grid Application Development Software Project," Resource Management in the Grid: Kluwer Publishers, March 2003. (375.92 KB)"
The GrADS Project: Software Support for High-Level Grid Application Development," International Journal of High Performance Applications and Supercomputing, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 327-344, January 2001. (271.52 KB)"
Conference Proceedings
Toward a Framework for Preparing and Executing Adaptive Grid Programs," International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium: IPDPS 2002 Workshops, Fort Lauderdale, FL, pp. 0171, April 2002. (64.5 KB)"


text:
The Human Factor
Lucasta Miller
Copied from the newspaper The Guardian
In 1995, in the early days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the literary scholar and cultural theorist, Stephen Greenblatt, had a momentary encounter with Bill Clinton at a White House reception. Clinton recalled being made to learn Macbeth at school. "Don't you think," said Greenblatt, "it's a play about someone compelled to do the morally disastrous?" "No," said Clinton, "it's a play about someone whose immense ambition has an ethically inadequate object." This insight, captured in such a "marvellous phrase", dazzled Greenblatt into thinking the president had missed his vocation as an English professor, especially when Clinton went on to quote reams of Macbeth by heart. Some time later, though, watching the TV news, he heard Clinton praise the late King Hussein of Jordan as a man "whose immense ambition had an ethically adequate object". Clinton's marvellous phrase, it turned out, was no more than multi-purpose rhetoric. "It suddenly occurred to me," Greenblatt recalls, "that although the phrase was marvellous, it was also somehow off. No one with immense ambition has an ethically adequate object. I realised that Clinton had chosen the right vocation after all!"
It seems natural to open a profile of Greenblatt with an anecdote. His own critical writings on the Renaissance often start this way, with a microscopic analysis of a social encounter, which can reveal much about the ideology of the period. The seminal Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980), for example, begins with a fly-on-the-wall account of a dinner party at Cardinal Wolsey's. Had it occurred in the 16th century, a literary reception at the White House would be exactly the sort of event to appeal to Greenblatt, who is fascinated by fugitive but telling moments in history at which power and culture collide.
Greenblatt's latest book Will in the World , a biography of Shakespeare, makes much use of his trademark technique of juxtaposing historical events with literary texts - say, the treason trial of Elizabeth I's Jewish doctor with The Merchant of Venice - to illuminate the mindset of the age. Although written chronologically, the book is couched more as a series of essays than as an exhaustive linear narrative, covering its subject in selective, heuristic moments. It also offers some virtuoso literary analysis, showing, for example, the technical process whereby Shakespeare developed the soliloquy as a means to represent a character's inwardness. In America, where it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks, it has sold more than 150,000 copies and been nominated, alongside The 9/11 Commission Report , for the National Book Award. And it has found a keenly appreciative audience among writers such as the New Yorker's critic Adam Gopnik, who found it "startlingly good", and admired Greenblatt for "mak[ing] exquisitely sensitive and persuasive connections between what the eloquent poetry says and what the fragmentary life suggests".
Until last year, Greenblatt's fame was largely confined to academia, where he has long had star status as the progenitor of "new historicism", a phrase he first used in 1982 in The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms. According to Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, this approach has been "the most influential strand of criticism over the last 25 years, with its view that literary creations are cultural formations shaped by 'the circulation of social energy'." In the rather more world-weary caricature supplied by literary scholar John Carey, all new historicism did was to revert to "the well-tried technique of putting literature into its historical context". Yet what may now seem to Carey an obvious orthodoxy was excitingly radical in the early 1980s.
To understand the significance of the eruption of history into English studies in terms of Greenblatt's own intellectual development, one has to go back to his student days at Yale. He has described, with delicate irony, the discomfort he felt at graduate seminars there. Presided over by the authoritarian figure of William K Wimsatt, these took place in a gentleman's club. The grand old man would discourse on poetics while his acolytes nibbled on cucumber sandwiches proffered by a black servant in a starched white jacket. Central to the august professor's credo was the "intentional fallacy", the belief that the critic should have no more interest in the author of a text than the eater of a pudding in the cook. Faced with the professor's absolutist belief in his own aesthetic theory, Greenblatt could feel nothing but doubt. Two Fulbright years in Cambridge had brought him into the orbit of the Marxist critic Raymond Williams. History, which Wimsatt so stridently excluded from the study of literature, had entered Greenblatt's imagination. Having previously focused on the 20th century - his precocious undergraduate dissertation on Waugh, Orwell and Huxley had been published - Greenblatt turned to the Elizabethans for his PhD. In choosing Sir Walter Raleigh, a character whose works were so obviously embedded in their historical moment, he made a decision that would affect the rest of his career. Not only did he remain in that period, he continued, in all his subsequent work, to be motivated by the almost necromantic desire, in his now famous phrase, "to speak with the dead".
In Will in the World, Greenblatt imagines the joy the child Shakespeare must have taken in words, his "inexhaustible craving for language". His own childhood was marked by a similarly visceral love of reading. Born in 1943 in Boston, the son of a lawyer and a housewife, he escaped from his typically humdrum 1950s suburban childhood into "mind travel". It was not a bookish household. "I remember my parents saying 'Stevie, don't strain your eyes reading, come and watch TV'." But the young Greenblatt remained addicted to feeding his imagination with The Arabian Nights or popular travelogues.
Although his parents weren't great readers, at some deep, atavistic level, Greenblatt's early love of books did connect him with his family heritage, which stretches back to the Jewish communities of Lithuania, where his mother's grandfather was a scholar "who sat in a back room studying the Talmud". The two sides of Greenblatt's bookishness - the analytical interpreter of texts and the seeker after foreign adventure - have fed into the next generation. One of his two sons from his first marriage to Ellen Schmidt is now a lawyer; the other works in Mali. Greenblatt is reticent about his first marriage. But the family ties connecting past and present have been on his mind. Three-and-a-half years ago, his second wife and "soulmate", literary critic Ramie Targoff, gave birth to a son, Harry. The fact that this child was born 104 years after Greenblatt's father, his namesake, brought into focus "how breathtakingly close we are to lives that at first sight seem so far away".
In his academic writings, Greenblatt has never felt the need "to adopt the fiction of a neutral, impersonal voice". The result is that the prefaces and introductions to many of his books contain autobiographical musings. Hamlet in Purgatory (2001) brings to life the author's sense of his Jewish past, offering an eloquent, self-exposing account, half wry, half tender, of death in his own family. Greenblatt records how surprised he was to discover that his father, who died in 1983, had left money to an organisation that would say the kaddish (Jewish prayer for the dead) for him. "Evidently my father did not trust either my elder brother or me to recite [it] for him. The effect the bequest had on me, perhaps perversely, was to impel me to do so, as if in a blend of love and spite." So this secular Jew, "who scarcely knew how to pray", found himself performing, "with a lightly ironic piety", a rite historically connected to the medieval Christian theology with which his scholarly work was concerned.
If Greenblatt's interest in history was first focused during in Cambridge, it was also given a radical edge by Raymond Williams's Marxism. His move, as a young professor, to Berkeley, cemented this radicalism. He has described the campus there in the late 1960s and early 70s as a place of Vietnam protests and tear gas. All power structures, including those within the university, seemed "provisional". Boundaries, especially those between academic disciplines, were there to be broken. The image of boundary-breaking continues to be a leitmotif with Greenblatt. He looks back on that early Berkeley period like the young Wordsworth, blissful in that dawn to be alive, recalling the French revolution. "It was," he has written, "in its way sublime."
Intellectually, the arrival of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, whose seminars Greenblatt attended in California, gave a new edge to his critical consciousness, a more focused concern with the cultural forms of power. Foucault's prickly personality and political pessimism - power is everywhere, and resistance is only possible at the margins - were in sharp contrast to Greenblatt's generous American appetite and optimism. "I was too much a child of the 60s to want to sit at anyone's feet and be a disciple," he says. Yet Foucault was "compelling and strange" and his charisma infectious.
By now, Greenblatt was fashioning himself into (in academic Terry Eagleton's description) an "enfant terrible" with charisma of his own. His electrifying effect on the British academic imagination is implied by his immortalisation in David Lodge's classic 1975 novel, Changing Places , as the energetic young Californian professor Sy Gootblatt. Coming not from the traditional centre but from the avant garde, he had, by the time he launched "new historicism" in the early 80s, achieved guru-like status among students as an anti-establishment figure. His friend Lisa Jardine remembers his impact on Cambridge. "I was putting together some lectures in the early 80s," she recalls, "and I suggested Greenblatt to the faculty. No one had heard of him. But when he and I arrived at the lecture room we were greeted by a grumpy porter who complained that the event was a fire hazard. The audience was hanging from the rafters. That was Stephen Greenblatt. The faculty hadn't heard of him, but the students were in there."
By 1988, when Greenblatt delivered the Clarendon lectures in Oxford, the British mainstream could no longer ignore him. The historian Sir Keith Thomas remembers being unable to force his way in to the crowded hall. Subsequently published as Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (1991), the topic of the lectures was Renaissance colonialism. Those who managed to get a seat recall his glamour on the podium: his flamboyant rhetoric, his energy and focus, even his elegant suit added up to something far removed from the tweedy understatement of the average Oxford don.
Eagleton recalls how new historicism, in its early days, "seemed, from a British perspective, to be about radicals in California". Its intellectual project was pleasingly of a piece with the fact that it was perceived to have been born at the margins. Its study of the past eschewed mainstream grand narratives and instead focused on out-of-the-way anecdotes, which were regarded not as mere colourful footnotes but as epiphanic "disturbances" in the surface of things capable of inspiring unexpected insights into a culture. In keeping with this, new historicism's form was usually the essay rather than the monolithic monograph. When it approached canonical works, it did so from unexpected tangents, juxtaposing, say, Twelfth Night with a journal entry by Montaigne about cross-dressing Swiss peasant women, as Greenblatt did in Shakespearean Negotiations (1988).
Greenblatt's success came at a time when English faculties were flooded by a generalised influx of postmodern "theory", which lambasted the delusive trap of "liberal humanist" assumption and spurned the idea of subjecting literary works to aesthetic "value judgments". Its practitioners tended to talk of texts and cultural constructs rather than of books and people. But what strikes the reader today is the enormous stylistic gulf between Greenblatt's writing and that of some of his imitators. Where they employ dull, tautological abstractions - "the textuality of history and the history of textuality" for example - Greenblatt's own prose style is sinuous and lively.
Bate suggests not one of them has been able to match his talent as a writer: "The influence Greenblatt has had is in a curious way at odds with what he really is himself. He's been followed by second-rate Marxists offering a crude model of literature being in the service of ideology. Greenblatt is interested in the diversity and oddity of historical forces. He's a clever critic with enormous panache, and he writes beautifully. His imitators don't have his nimbleness."
Indeed, listening to him talk about his work now, he seems to write less in the spirit of a dry scholar or theoretician than in the fine frenzy of a Romantic poet. "If it's working for me I feel I could run up and down these shelves" - we're sitting in a book-lined room in the London Library - "and open books at random and things would jump out at me. I don't want to exaggerate it, because it almost sounds like I'm a lunatic, but I've always worked that way, feeling controlled serendipity. If something is working, almost anything I touch can swim into sharp focus and I can use it."
Eagleton describes him as a "warm-blooded scholar. He has a gargantuan investigative appetite, full of richness, dynamism and vivacity."
As far back as his undergraduate days, Greenblatt remembers the "sheer delight" he felt at "fashioning sentences". He has an odd sort of modesty about designating himself a "writer", as if it would sound pretentious. Yet despite the intellectual pyrotechnics of which he is so capable, he seems at heart to be driven by the simple need to tell stories and to give himself and others pleasure in doing so. Recently, the creative writer inside him has had a chance to emerge in a play, Cardenio (the title comes from a lost drama by Shakespeare), co-written with playwright Charles Mee, which had a reading by professional actors at the Lincoln Center in New York. It is easy to imagine him turning his hand to other genres, such as memoir or travel-writing, in future.
In the words of New York Times critic Rachel Donadio, "Done well, a new historicist analysis can illuminate dimensions of a work of literature difficult for the untrained eye to see. Done badly, it can be rather like looking at marginalia through a magnifying glass while ignoring the main text." The consensus about Greenblatt is that nobody does new historicism better than he does. Looked at from today's post-theory perspective, it looks less a dogma to which any disciple can sign up, more like a free-flowing method intimately identified with one man's idiosyncratic imagination.
He says he is surprised by his own influence, and remembers being in Lon don once when a friend rang from Berkeley telling him that he'd seen several American university jobs advertised for experts in new historicism. "I said, 'You've got to be kidding. You know it was just something we made up!' I began to see there were institutional consequences to what seemed like a not particularly deeply thought-out term."
Commentators have been noticing a divergence between what has come to be seen as the stereotype of new historicism, with its sub-Marxist ideology, and Greenblatt's more recent work. In a TLS review of Hamlet in Purgatory , Katherine Duncan-Jones suggested that "the author now appears to be moving towards the Old Historicist side ... Yet ... Greenblatt is by no means prepared as yet to confess that his former humours have been purged."
Certainly, this nuanced and scholarly book uses Greenblatt's signature tangential technique. Its core - an analysis of the ghost scenes in Shakespeare - is approached through the theology of the afterlife and the Reformation repudiation of the doctrine of purgatory. Yet in Duncan-Jones's view, the book's value system is close to liberal humanism, and she says it "will offer comfort to those old-fashioned literary aesthetes who are suspicious of new historicism; for Greenblatt pleads strongly for the reinstatement, or re-acknowledgement, of 'literary power' ... as 'the whole reason anyone bothers with the enterprise in the first place'".
Although Will in the World shares much with Greenblatt's earlier work in terms of its anecdotal technique, its author has been perceived by some as turning away from the radical margins into the innocuous mainstream, for the simple fact that he has chosen to write a popular biography of the most canonical writer ever. Since its publication in the US, there has been a critical backlash, predominantly from British academics, who have attacked it on two fronts in increasingly intemperate language. First, its status as documentary fact has been questioned. On issues such as Shakespeare's relationship with his father - was the latter a drunk? Or a Catholic? - Greenblatt is happy to speculate on the basis of very little evidence. Some have taken exception to his use of "might have been" scenarios in which he paints Shakespeare as a living, breathing human being. "This kind of biographical fiction," wrote Colin Burrows in the London Review of Books, "might seem an extraordinary thing for a critic as intelligent as Greenblatt to have attempted." In a full-frontal attack in the TLS, Alastair Fowler alleged that the book made factual errors and said it revealed "a mind quite innocent of English history", prompting a counter-attack from Greenblatt in last week's letters column.
Greenblatt counters the more general accusation that his biography is too speculative by arguing that even when comparatively rich material in the form of a subject's letters and diaries exists, there will always have to be an imaginative leap on the part of the biographer; you could never amass enough material to avoid speculation entirely. Since what remains of Shakespeare is so skeletal, it would seem self-evident that any attempt to write a humanly convincing life will require some act of the imagination.
The other angle of attack concerns Greenblatt's relationship to the culture of academic theory. It has been suggested that he has undergone a sort of apostasy, jettisoning his new historicist principles and reverting to a traditionalist agenda. John Carey, who hails Will in the World as "probably the best one-volume life of Shakespeare yet", suggests with a chuckle that it "would seem, to any self-respecting 1980s new historicist, so old-fashioned as to be feeble-minded".
"It is," wrote Colin MacCabe in the Independent, "a curiosity of intellectual history that three decades of theory in the American university could result in this." Bate sees more continuity in Greenblatt's interest in human stories: "It is as if he has always been winking at the reader with the thought: you and I really know that books aren't really written by social forces, but by human beings." Certainly, as long ago as 1990 Greenblatt was passionately asserting humane values, writing unselfconsciously and individualistically about his own "inner life", denying that he was motivated in his work by "theoretical and programmatic considerations", and arguing for the universality of human emotion in the face of fashionable relativism.
Yet the battle between the theorists, scholars and humanists isn't the only way to read the controversy over Will in the World. From one perspective, biography may look like an old-fashioned genre, but from another it seems like a rebellion against academic orthodoxy. "It's OK," Greenblatt explains, "to talk about the presence of lives in a work of anthropology, but there is still academic prejudice against literary biography. I wanted to break out of those boundaries."
Perhaps the real issue for Greenblatt is the perennial problem of what happens to young turks when they become the old guard. American universities, Eagleton points out, are happy to reward talent even when it is heterodox, and as a result Greenblatt has been propelled up the professional ladder until he now finds himself in the position of importance that Wimsatt occupied at Yale in the early 60s. The university power structures that seemed so provisional in the 60s have remained intact, and within them few have been as successful as Greenblatt.
Now John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, Greenblatt has a CV that must be the envy of many colleagues. (Indeed, academic jealousy has been cited in the press as a possible cause of the backlash against Will in the World , in light of the six-figure advance he was reputedly paid.) Greenblatt has held numerous visiting professorships worldwide. He has been president of the prestigious Modern Languages Association and has control over undergraduates' textbooks as general editor of the Norton Shakespeare and Norton Anthology of English Literature. But he is not perceived to have been motivated by careerism: "Unlike some," says Bate, "he's not interested in power and patronage or in the Machiavellian aspect of academic life." He responds with discomfort to the idea that many might now see him as an august figure. "I don't see myself like that," he says.
Greenblatt has a slightly detached relationship to the idea of ambition in his own life. He explains it sociologically, pointing to his parents' need, as second-generation immigrants, to condition their children to try to do well. "They used a Yiddish term ' yiches '. I once read an anthropological work on the east European shtetl and was flabbergasted to see that the word actually existed, as in my childhood it had seemed to me a peculiarly vulgar and embarrassing family word. It means 'honour', the honour that's acquired from achievement in the world."
This background, possibly, contributed unconsciously to Greenblatt's sympathetic understanding of Shakespeare's upward mobility, though when questioned he says he hadn't made the connection. In terms of his own life, though, worldly success always seemed to be something that belonged to his parents. "I've never felt very good at metabolising that part of things because I always felt it was for my mother and father, basically. They were the ones who ate that food; I provided it."
Perhaps it is not surprising that someone who has spent his life studying such men as Sir Thomas More and Raleigh should have an ambivalent attitude towards worldly power and ambition. This certainly comes across when Greenblatt tells his story about meeting Clinton. Perhaps part of him would still like to be an idealistic radical rather than the sort of establishment grandee who gets invited to the White House.
Stephen Jay Greenblatt
Born: Boston 1943
Education: 1961-64 BA Yale; '64-66 MA Pembroke College, Cambridge; '66-69 PhD Yale.
Marriage: 1969-96 Ellen Schmidt, two sons; 1998 Ramie Targoff, one son.
Career: 1969-97 English department University of Berkeley California; '97-2000 Harry Levin prof of literature; 2000- John Cogan prof of humanities, Harvard.
Some books: 1980 Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare; '88 Shakespearean Negotiations: the Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England; '90 Learning to curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; '91 Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; 2001 Hamlet in Purgatory; '04 Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare.
Some awards: 2002 Mellon Distinguished Humanist Award; Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
· Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt is published by Jonathan Cape price £20.


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St. Michael's Playhouse Presents FOREVER PLAID, Now thru 8/11
Saint Michael's Playhouse stages FOREVER PLAID, tonight, August 1 through August 11. A "sensational Off-Broadway musical," FOREVER PLAID, created by Stuart Ross, staged by Saint Michael's Playhouse, McCarthy Arts Center, is one of the most popular musicals in recent history.
Now in its 65th season of professional summer theater, Saint Michael's Playhouse has been named "One of the best regional theater companies in America" by The Drama League of New York City, and hailed by Yankee Magazine as "The Best of New England."
The CAST in their own words:
KEITH ANDREWS (Director/Choreographer) is so amazingly excited to be back at Saint Michael's to direct and choreograph both Nunsense and Forever Plaid. Previously at The Playhouse, Keith directed last year's The Drowsy Chaperone and The Marvelous Wonderettes, as well as the productions of Spelling Bee, Always Patsy Cline, Dames at Sea, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Barnum, Pump Boys and Dinettes, Suds, My Way, The Pirates of Penzance and Big River. Keith has directed the National Tours of The Full Monty and Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh and other recent directing/choreography credits include: Avenue Q, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (starring Joe Piscopo), The Wedding Singer, Cold as Ice (starring Oksana Baiul), Urinetown, Happy Days, the Musical, Little Shop of Horrors, and Forever Plaid, to name just a few. As a choreographer, Keith has recently worked on the world premiere of Love, Incorporated and has received a New York Innovative Theater Award for Best Production of a Musical and nomination for Best Choreography for his work on the new show, Like You Like It. On the ice, Keith has directed and choreographed Home for the Holidays- a Celebration on Ice, starring 2010 Olympic Gold Medalist, Evan Lysacek, and Silver Medalists, Charlie White and Meryl Davis, as well as two productions of Stars, Stripes and Skates, the yearly benefit to help survivors and families of the 9/11 tragedy. In educational theater, Keith directs and choreographs student industry showcases at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in NYC.
Keith Andrews directed the smash-hit opening show of The Playhouse season NUNSENSE.
Tom Cleary (Musical Director) has long-term performing associations with artists including Ray Vega, Ellen Powell and recently, bassist Mike Gordon. He has been featured as a pianist on recordings by trombonist Rick Davies (Salsa Norteña) and vocalist Hillary Capps (A Perfect Dozen and Playlist), and as an arranger on the album Hey Sadie by singer/songwriter Amber deLaurentis (all available on iTunes). As a composer he was recently commissioned by the group Social Band (his piece ?Three Seasons? will be included on their forthcoming third CD). As a musical director he has worked on many productions at Saint Michael's Playhouse, including Into the Woods and The Drowsy Chaperone, as well as many productions by the theater department at UVM, where he is also on the faculty of the Music Department?s Jazz Studies program.
Wade Dooley (Sparkey) is excited to be making his Saint Michael's Playhouse debut! As a performer, some favorite credits include: The Radio City Christmas Spectacular (Tour); Scott Alan's Monday Night New Voices (NYC) along with regional productions of Grease, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Forever Plaid, CATS, and Crazy for You. As a writer, you can find his web series, Pzazz 101, on YouTube directed by Isaac Klein. Also, Wade is the creator and book writer of a new musical, Sunset City, with lyrics by Brett Teresa and music by Bobby Cronin.
Andrew Pandaleon (Franky) is thrilled to be making his Saint Michael's Playhouse debut! NY Theater: The City Club (Chaz Davenport), The History Of War. Regional: Sunset Blvd (Artie), Happy Days (Richie) at The Gateway, Romeo & Juliet (Paris), Laughter on The 23rd Floor (Brian), History Boys (Scripps) at Northern Stage, Play It Cool (Will) at the Celebration Theater. Andrew is a graduate of UCLA.
Joel Pellini (Smudge) is thrilled to be a "Plaid" at Saint Michael's Playhouse. Joel has been seen at regional theatres around the country, including the White Plains Performing Arts Center, Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Repertory, Cortland Repertory, and the Thin Air Theatre.
HERNANDO UMANA (Jinx) is so happy to be part of the Plaids once again. Some previous credits include Rocky Horror, The Full Monty, A Year with Frog and Toad and many new projects in NYC.
Tickets available on line and at the box office in McCarthy Arts Center. Single tickets from $28 - $38. For more information, go to www.saintmichaelsplayhouse.org
Playhouse background:
From its beginnings in 1947, Saint Michael's Playhouse has blossomed into an award-winning, highly-regarded equity theater company. The Playhouse features talent from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theaters nationwide, presented right here in Vermont. Housed in the Saint Michael's College McCarthy Arts Center, one of the finest theater facilities in the state, The Playhouse attracts approximately 16,000 theatergoers each season.
Saint Michael's Playhouse is a professional theater company operating as an auxiliary enterprise of Saint Michael's College. The Playhouse is Greater Burlington's only actors' equity resident theater company and as such operates under contract with Actors' Equity Association in New York City. At the same time, Saint Michael's College students have the opportunity to learn from the pros through internships in technical theater, costuming, lighting, set construction, and publicity.
Photo credit: Buff Lindau


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Deep Silver has defended the CGI trailer which catapulted zombie survival title Dead Island to worldwide success, telling VideoGamer.com that labelling the marketing tool as misleading would be "ridiculous".
"We did many gameplay trailers with in-game footage before the release, so labelling the CGI misleading would be ridiculous," said Deep Silver's creative director Guido Eickmeyer. "We never pretended to be something different.
"In addition, Dead Island was the biggest and most intense cooperative multiplayer experience in 2011 and I believe playing with your friends or strangers next to each other through a horrifying zombie apocalypse is an emotional experience."
He added: "I truly hope that at some point, even the last people in our industry will understand that games live by user stories, not pre-defined narratives. For watching a scripted experience, I still prefer a good movie."
Eickmeyer was talking to VideoGamer.com ahead of Dead Island: Riptide's planned April 26 release date.


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How many syllables are in hardhats? 2 syllables
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When Mark Twain's obituary was published prematurely, the great American writer sent a cable from London saying the "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." In a similar spirit, last week two Brookings Institution scholars, in an article in Foreign Policy magazine, made the case that America has been wrongly written off over the past three years.
Brookings fellows Bruce Jones and Thomas Wright's thesis is that "the financial crisis has created a two-speed West," with four large countries—Germany, the United States, Turkey and South Korea—actually having increased their international influence. The BRICS of the developing world should make way for a new acronym—the GUTS of the rising West, the authors say.
The authors name South Korea, though an Asian country, part of the West by dint of being "one of America's oldest and most reliable allies." They call Turkey a "bridge from the West" to the Arab world.
Bard College professor and foreign policy blogger Walter Russell Mead was among those who enthusiastically embraced Jones and Wright's gutsy idea. Mead contrasts the GUTS with BRIC linchpins India and China, which "have much more significant internal problems than the GUTS." (Brazil and Russia make up the first half of the acronym).
And indeed, much of Jones and Wright's argument is similarly based on the idea that the GUTS countries are not as pathetically weak as the rest of the world. ("The United States has significantly outperformed the eurozone and has better prospects for growth than most other Western states," they write, which isn't saying much.)
But they also make some baffling assertions of GUTS countries' (non-relative) strength that are unconvincing. For example, Jones and Wright say "U.S. influence in Asia has risen at a rapid clip since 2008, driven largely by regional anxiety about Chinese assertiveness." But U.S. power in that region has always rested on the strength of the U.S. Navy, whose stressed fleet has shrunk by 15% since 1998 even as China builds new warships.
The Brookings analysts crow about U.S. diplomatic triumphs, citing the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, in March, as an example. But that event provided a forum for photo-ops and stern-sounding speeches, while the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran has only gained pace in the past several years.
While America's obituary is indeed premature, this week has provided fresh evidence that it may also be too early to disconnect the patient from life support. Manufacturing indexes released Thursday show that the heavily stimulated U.S. expansion is slowing again. And a fresh Congressional Budget Office report released Tuesday serves as a reminder that the U.S. has little room to maneuver between the short-term need for fiscal support and the long-term damage that continued propping up will do.
Jones and Wright argue in similar fashion about the other GUTS: That "Germany stands apart as a rising power amidst a weakened Europe" is a relative statement. Closer to the mark is their statement that "for better or worse, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has won argument after argument about the future direction of the E.U.," which implies that that leadership has not always been to good effect. Might they have in mind Merkel's austerity prescription, which has made the sick men of Europe even sicker? Germany may enjoy relative strength, but being captain of a sinking ship is not much to brag about.
Of South Korea, the Brookings fellows write that "it has become a powerhouse of high-end manufacturing and is on course to become richer than Japan in per capita terms within the next five years." Nothing to argue with there. But they overstate its "robust" response to North Korean aggression through its alliance with the U.S., since Pyongyang has only strengthened, and brazenly so, its actual nuclear program while Seoul has engaged in feckless diplomacy.
Regarding Turkey, Jones and Wright say the country's "economy has more than tripled" under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's watch, without noting that the Islamist leader built that prosperity on a credit binge that is well on its way to cataclysmic collapse. They also praise Turkey for its constructive pro-Western diplomatic role, which would be news to Greece, Cyprus and Israel.
The West needs Greece to develop its maritime economic resources, but Turkey refuses to recognize the exclusive economic zones to which it (and Cyprus) are entitled under international law, and has threatened reprisals against foreign oil companies. Turkey's sending "peace activists" with metal pipes to Israel's Gaza coast in 2010 was just the most theatrical of its menacing foreign policy initiatives vis-a-vis Israel.
The Brookings scholars conclude that "the rising West is a force to be reckoned with," but it more closely resembles a house of cards that cannot withstand a lot more pressure before falling.
With its economy dangerously hanging over a "fiscal cliff," a military that is taxed to its limit yet faces an additional $600 billion in automatic defense cuts starting in January, and even promising areas of growth (Jones and Wright cite social media as one) seeming to flame out (per Facebook's disappointing IPO), the U.S. must be nursed back to a more robust state before it can truly rise anew.
If there are any "guts" around, it will be found among those who understand the inherent danger of a "too little, too late" approach to undertaking needed reforms. It is precisely the lack of guts among Western leaders today that has furthered economic decline and fomented geopolitical instability, and that is unworthy of the military heroes whose sacrifices enabled a more vigorous America and whose legacy we must sorely recall this Memorial Day.


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Andrology Clinic of Royan Institute is the major referral centre for male infertility problems in Iran. A part of our activities in this center for diagnosis of male factor infertility includes patients' history and clinical examinations such as scrotal sonography, hormone and semen analysis, and DNA damage analysis. This Clinic is set up for the evaluation and treatment of male infertility, male sexual problems, varicocele and vasectomy reversal.
Group Leader
Research Scientists
M Azizi, MD


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Download, Install, And Use The Latest And Greatest Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate Computer Operating System On Your Computer For Free, Any Time, Any Place. If You Happen To Still Be Using The Oldest And Original Copy Of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate And Want To Update And Upgrade To The Latest And Greatest Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate OS You've Come To The Right Place.
Here In This Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate Post I Review The Fastest And Most Popular Ways To Download Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate And Then How To Go About Installing And Using Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate On Just About Any Type Of Windows 7 Compatible Computer Capable Of Running Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate.
|Original Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate ISO Build 7601.
Not a lot, these ISO files are pretty much the same ones but they are accessible trough totally different channels. Whereas MSDN is for builders, Digitalriver on the other hand is for the end shoppers. You'll be able to try the Microsoft forums, most Moderators over there present windows 7 hyperlinks hosted on digitalriver. You might be proper, however i started this thread to share these windows 7 hyperlinks.
I didn't had any idea of this submit changing into too well-liked. Anyways your feedback will really help quite a lot of our viewers, thanks mate. I'll add your hyperlink to the put up. All these Windows 7 ISO's come with all the SP1 updates. I Cant say how much previous are these, since Microsoft would not provide that data. Relaxation assured you will have to download very few updates after you put in windows 7 from these ISO's.
It seems Microsoft has discontinued these Windows 7 ISO information. In the intervening time right here isn't any confirmation from Microsoft about this. It could possibly even be a brief drawback. In case Microsoft supplies updated Windows 7 ISO pictures, i'll add them here. It usually relies upon upon your web connection.
You appear to have a secure internet connection, but for individuals who don't have good web connection, a obtain supervisor would be a better possibility, since it might allow you to cease and resume the download anytime. Hello. I'm downloading it right now. I'm going to set up it on the new laptop I am shopping for tomorrow. Query is, can I download it now then save on a flash drive then install on the brand new computer?
If yes, how? Thanks! Thanks for posting and offering the data. I downloaded what I assumed was my acceptable model and after installation, I get caught in a bootload error loop. A number of the errors say there are registry errors. Some are saying there are missing startup parts. I am using the Windows 64 bit home premium in English and trying to put in this on a Samsung N150 plus notebook that had a Windows 7 Starter DOS however has since crashed.
Hi Boca, i wont advocate you putting in a 64 bit OS on your pocket book. I checked out the specs and plainly the 1GB of Ram on your pocket book would possibly hamper its efficiency. With my experience, i can point out the issue to be associated along with your arduous disk. You should head over to the Microsoft forums and discover out if anyone else has the identical problem as yours.
PC noob right here. so, after i obtain the model i had on my HP laptop computer, then placing it on a bootable usb flash drive, i should be able to install it on my mac using bootcamp? new to mac and was stunned to search out there isn't a place to install a cd on this thing. You should be using MacBook Air, proper? Well on MBAs you may solely set up Windows utilizing a bootable USB drive.
In the event you already created one, go to spotlight search and sort Boot Camp Assistant", and you can choose each Download the most recent Windows assist software from Apple" and Install Windows 7 or later model". You can then partition your drive and insert your USB drive, and also you're good to go.
I downloaded and installed the ISO after (ahem) a Motherboard substitute (improve Mo-bo/Chip system); but I want to register my Microsoft codes from my earlier motherboard COMPUTER and then set up my Ultimate Improve code later. However neither code lets me register. I had had to buy Ultimate Improve to get Windows in English as the Japanese Windows 7 PC did not have an English language possibility).
When I go to Register at Microsoft it tells me I can't do this and later provides me a quantity to name. However they might not register my genuine codes either (as a result of they were used on my ahem earlier motherboard), they usually said they would put me via to some technical support and the phone went dead at their finish.
You should be able to use your serial key to activate windows so long as you're using it on a single COMPUTER at a time. Since i'm not properly conscious of this problem, A better place to discover a answer to your drawback would be the Microsoft boards. This is solely half of the answer. I nonetheless must discover a authorized Windows 7 Professional source for Win7 KEYS. I am making an attempt to improve a home built system from XP, as well as a pair Virtual box VMs.
In fact, I might simply as simply inform my brother (who has the home built system) that he's going to have to maneuver to Linux, since MS would not need to promote a MSWin version that may run on his hardware (no NX bit within the CPU). I might don't have any downside eradicating MSWin from one other system. I was going to try Windows 7 Enterprise instead but Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate Was ultimately The Way I Decided To Roll.
I might all the time advise towards downloading windows 7 from Unlawful sites online. The primary purpose being most of these pirated copies of windows 7 are modified and have rootkits and spywares hidden in them, that are very much undetectable from most antivirus. Utilizing a pirated copy of windows 7 on your pc will compromise your personal information to cyber criminals and at the same time you won't be able to receive major updates for bug fixes and security.
Lovejeet, marv is true, it isn't about this is official content or not, MD5 or hash or any other checksum allows you to validate that you just downloaded the Windows 7 Home Premium file without dropping its integrity, so after you download the file you simply test the MD5 at Digital River server vs the MD5 of the file in your laptop, if they are not the identical then one thing went improper with yur obtain, and as I already mentioned, it doesnt have something to do with Digital River being official Microsoft associate…. Are these ISOs of win 8 or win 7?
I perceive that win 7 is the desired installed model however I was just curious if one is ready to create a previous set up cd from next model on win. I did not suppose that was possible and can be good data to know. Thank you Lovejeet. The Windows 7 Home Basic Windows 7 ISO put in completely as a VM on my Fedora Workstation utilizing gnome-containers.
My previous Windows 7 Starter Asus laptops activation key was in a position to successfully active the OS. I've a couple of dead laptops with outdated Windows 7 keys preinstalled on them. It is good to lastly have them back on-line, rebranded as digital machines at the least. And the digitalriver download was extraordinarily quick (a couple of minutes), at the very least for me over FiOS. No, you don't need to wipe something.
As quickly as your bootable USB flash drive is ready, you can connect the USB flash drive with you PC and then restart it. When your COMPUTER restarts, go to the bios and set the USB flash drive with first boot precedence, Save the settings and restart. When your LAPTOP boots up once more you can be prompted to press a key to start out the windows 7 set up. I've a brand new desk top COMPUTER that has windows 7 64 bit. Resulting from my software on my community I would like 32 bit.
I downloaded Windows 7 32 Bit X86 english, burn it to a DVD, and tried to put in it. It will not let me go back to a 32Bit. Does anybody know what I can do to get again to a 32 Bit system ? Any assist will probably be Significantly Appreciated ! After I go to Register at Microsoft it tells me I can not do that and later provides me a quantity to call. However they may not register my real codes both (as a result of they have been used on my ahem previous motherboard), and they said they'd put me through to some technical assist and the cellphone went useless at their finish.
Yeah, I have a 3 yr old Toshiba Satellite that had Win 7 on it, it had gotten so corrupt that it was blue screening. I had tried the Manufacturing facility restore (Toshiba doesn't embody a restore disk) several occasions and it did not fix the problem. So I wiped the exhausting drive clean and put in Linux Mint 16 on it and had been utilizing that for about 4 months without any problems, and it's a good system, however I've been wished to place Windows back on it, and wasn't sure if I must buy another licence for it.
So that is undoubtedly good news. Thanks. It is best to be able to use your serial key to activate windows so long as you're using it on a single LAPTOP at a time. Since i'm not properly conscious of this downside, A greater place to discover a resolution to your problem would be the Microsoft boards. It seems Microsoft has discontinued these Windows 7 ISO recordsdata. At the moment right here isn't any affirmation from Microsoft about this. It could possibly even be a temporary drawback.
In case Microsoft offers updated Windows 7 ISO photographs, i will add them here. Guys, I'm running Vista Home premium 32 bit for the time being. What is the best way to improve to Windows 7. Will these downloads do it for me, and what in regards to the activation key. Will it want one and the place do I get it from.
It usually depends upon your internet connection. You seem to have a stable internet connection, however for individuals who don't have good internet connection, a download manager would be a greater option, since it would assist you to cease and resume the download anytime. There are a selection of eventualities that require one to make use of the Phone Activation method to get their key to activate correctly.
These retail images work just nice with OEM keys, you just want activate the OS by way of the phone possibility. Its all automated, and painless. Are you certain this will work? I am to lazy too burn my windows 7 disc and create an iso file. So how can I be certain this is real windows 7 iso?? That is what I get everytime I try too install utilizing bootcamp.
Laptop noob right here. so, after i obtain the model i had on my HP laptop computer, then putting it on a bootable usb flash drive, i ought to be capable of install it on my mac utilizing bootcamp? new to mac and was surprised to search out there is no place to put in a cd on this factor. use any of the methods which appears to be simpler for you. As for the errors it seems to be an issue with your exhausting disk.
A quick Google search will show you how to discover out a solution for the errors. Hey dude, thanks for the reply. Tried the USB method, but my pc just hangs after the PUBLISH course of, proper before it's purported to boot. I've executed some googling, nevertheless it seems to be like I'm the one one having all these issues.
Therefor I have to deduce that the issue is someplace on my aspect. I will tinker a bit with these photographs, and report again when I discover the problem. I've discovered an original win 7 disk in the meantime, however that is bothering me why I cant get it to work. PS thanks for uploading these. you might be welcome casimk.
As for the windows 8 links, Microsoft shouldn't be providing windows eight and windows eight.1 ISO pictures for download to the public. The one method to obtain window eight ISO photos is by using an authentic product key. Thanks for this! I take advantage of VirtualBox lots for a couple of programs I'm taking for IT & networking, and I by accident deleted my present VB machine and did not have the stupid ISO on a flash drive and didn't really feel like occurring campus to get it.
It's going to be definitely worth the wait in download time simply to not go out in the chilly! haha. The label says Windows 7 Home Premium OA (not sure what the OA stands for), so I downloaded Win 7 Home Premium x64 and put in it, however the product key didn't work. Not sure why, but I reinstalled Linux Mint again. Not much, these ISO recordsdata are just about the identical ones however they are accessible trough different channels.
While MSDN is for developers, Digitalriver then again is for the top shoppers. You can check out the Microsoft boards, most Moderators over there present windows 7 links hosted on digitalriver. Thanks for posting and providing the information. I downloaded what I believed was my appropriate version and after installation, I get stuck in a bootload error loop. Some of the errors say there are registry errors.
Some are saying there are missing startup parts. I'm using the Windows 64 bit home premium in English and trying to put in this on a Samsung N150 plus notebook that had a Windows 7 Starter DOS however has since crashed. You are proper, but i began this thread to share these windows 7 links. i didn't had any thought of this submit turning into too widespread. Anyways your comments will really assist numerous our viewers, thank you mate.
I'll add your Windows 10 link to the put up. Hello I am utilizing this to install on a laptop that has XP. I downloaded the file on that COMPUTER after which created a bootable flash drive. I'm waiting for all of it to load onto the flash now my query is do I simply plug it in to the laptop as is with XP on it or do I've to do wipe it out first?? Please help me I have been messing with this machine for two 1/2 days now, thats why i decided to put windows 7 on it.
This is solely half of the answer. I nonetheless have to find a legal/official supply for Win7 KEYS. I am making an attempt to upgrade a homebuilt system from XP, in addition to a couple Virtualbox VMs. Of course, I may simply as simply inform my brother (who has the homebuilt system) that he will have to move to Linux, since MS would not want to sell a MSWin model that can run on his hardware (no NX bit within the CPU). I'd don't have any problem removing MSWin from another system.


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Shopworn Chess Books
5 Item(s)
Grid List
Finding Winning Moves
Learn Chess the Right Way is a five-volume chess puzzle book series aimed at the novice, beginner and intermediate level player, using the unique methods of the award-winning coach and former world champion Susan Polgar. It introduces the most important checkmate and material-winning tactics, as well as defensive techniques to the new chess player. Book 5 focuses on learning how to find the right continuation in critical positions of a chess game. In the first four books of this series, the reader was introduced to all the most important, basic elements of chess tactics to win material or to checkmate.
SHOPWORN - Learn Chess the Right Way - Book 5
Regular Price: $19.95
Special Price $9.98
Step-by-Step Instructions for Winning Chess the Polgar Way
The best-selling A World Champion's Guide to Chess is available again!! Winning Chess the Polgar Way! In A World Champion's Guide to Chess, Women's World Champion Susan Polgar's exclusive training methods will have you playing winning chess! Topics include Chess Essentials, Tactics, Strategy, Pattern Recognition, Endgames, Chess Etiquette, Advice for Parents & Coaches and much more!
SHOPWORN - A World Champion's Guide to Chess
Regular Price: $19.95
Special Price $9.98
A Classic Collection, Finally Available Again
Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam's gripping encounter with the legendary American recluse, a journalist's dream come true, is the worthy apotheosis of this unique collection of interviews which were first published in New In Chess between 1986 and 1992.
SHOPWORN - Finding Bobby Fischer
Regular Price: $27.95
Special Price $13.98
How To Deal With The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Over The Chess Board
John Watson and Eric Schiller provide club-players with solutions to a huge selection of these rarely-played or tricky chess openings. They concentrate upon ideas and strategy, with enough analysis to satisfy the needs of practical play.
SHOPWORN - Taming Wild Chess Opening
Regular Price: $29.95
Special Price $14.98
The Solid Rubinstein Variation
This book is an eye-opener, and even top grandmasters might find that they have underestimated Black's resources in important positions…The average tournament and online player will appreciate Langrock's straightforward, no-nonsense style. He keeps the complexity of the analysis within bounds, and highlights relevant details without drifting into obscure page-long analytical byways. General themes are clearly presented within the context of illustrative games…The result is a book that covers a broad swath of material in a modest number of pages. I'm sure that you will be well-rewarded for its study, and come out with a useful new weapon in your chess arsenal.'' From International Master John Watson's Foreword
SHOPWORN - French Defense
Regular Price: $24.95
Special Price $12.48
5 Item(s)
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Must Christians still observe the Sabbath?
Here are the notes from Thinking Matters Hamilton's latest worldview study. The path to the conclusion was pretty complex and intense, but I think where we ended was clear and well-supported:
There is ample biblical evidence that the Sabbath is strictly a sign of the Mosaic covenant. There is no biblical evidence that it should be observed by Christians, and a fair amount pointing the other way. It has been fulfilled in Jesus (see Matthew 11:28), and so we now live in an eternal, spiritual Sabbath, which the repeating, physical Sabbath pointed to. Thus, observing any kind of Sabbath day is purely a matter of conscience—we are free to do it or not, as our own convictions require.
Must Christians still observe the Sabbath?


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www.ipcmedia.com /tvtimes
Since 1955, TV Times has been at the very heart of British television. Every week TV Times talks to the biggest stars and goes behind the scenes of the nation's favourite shows. Exclusive shoots and interviews, the latest news, unrivalled soaps coverage, pages of film reviews, a daily spread of highlights - where the best shows are previewed and rated! - plus 42 pages of listings make TV Times an essential and comprehensive guide to the week's TV. TV Times also contributes to www.whatsontv.co.uk, and its Facebook page is abuzz day and night with what readers are watching and why - because, after more than five decades in the business, online or in print, TV Times is still Britain's best-loved TV magazine. To find out more about TVTimes click below to watch a video of Ian Abbott, editor of TV Times.


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Brian Cox's Wonders of Life Brings the Universe-Tromping Physicist Back to Earth
Mar 5, 2014 5:00 AM PT
Brian Cox's Wonders of Life by HarperCollins is an iOS app available in the iTunes App Store for US$4.99.
In my mind, there are three elements that bring a great nature documentary to life: first, you need great video footage; second, you need to infuse the content with a sense of time, scope, and wonder; and third, you need a cool narrator.
Brian Cox's Wonders of Life app delivers all three. I stumbled upon the app after Apple highlighted it as an Editor's Choice. This isn't Cox's first appearance in an app, however -- he was the physics professor star of Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe -- both an award-winning BBC television show and an app.
As for the new Wonders of Life app, Cox brings his thoughtful-yet-enthusiastic brand of British accent to describe more than 30 animals around the world. The app is structured around a 3D tour of Earth, letting you view our small planet from space and then navigate around it, zooming down into habitats to get a closer peek at life as we know it.
'Animals Being Awesome'
The video quality of the app is fantastic, bringing you short clips that dive into the lives of critters, sharing closeups of animals in action paired with narrative candy: Dragonflies, for instance, can pull 2G turns in flight, and scorpions essentially can "hear" the vibration made by the movement of a single grain of sand through their legs.
One user review, in particular, is well worth sharing: "If you have to be told why a well made app full of high def video of animals being awesome is worth the $ [then] this isn't for you," wrote Trent685838.
The Brian Cox's Wonders of Life app is designed to create an experience. While the video action is the main claim to fame -- nearly 2.5 hours of HD video -- the app boasts a contemplative soundtrack that really comes alive when you experience the app with a set of headphones. The soundtrack follows your movements through the app as you zoom into a an area of the world and choose an animal to explore.
In addition to videos and in-depth graphics and info-graphics, the app includes mini articles that you can read for deeper insight. While not exactly hard-core science reading, you can explore life, as well as the idea that life contains something we can't quite exactly yet explain through science -- such as a "soul," which is offered up more for lack of a better term.
The point of the app doesn't seem to be to offer up new research or even in-depth explorations into each animal, but rather to celebrate the secrets of life with moments of inspiring detail.
For instance, the Fowler's Toad has eyes that are structurally similar to human eyes, but they seem to ignore most everything that isn't a long and thin bug that moves horizontally. So, if a mealworm wanders near, the toad will leap into action.
Put another way, the app shows off an experiment that showed a thin rectangle scrap of paper moving horizontally around a toad, which caused the toad to try to eat it. When the paper was moved around the toad in a vertical orientation, however, the toad totally ignored it. Wild. And that's just a toad.
Minor Quibbles
The navigation scheme, complete with soundtrack (and a luscious use of a movable sort of wallpaper in each area of the world), helps create a sense of exploration and wonder that connects animals that are thousands of miles apart. Yet every now and then, I found the spinning and zooming in tedious. Initially, the navigation helps you become engaged with the content, but later seems to slow down your experience -- a Catch-22 of sorts.
If you're interested in taking the Brian Cox's Wonders of Life app plunge, just make sure you're running iOS 7. Even if you are, you might be more interested in watching the five-hour series as full-length videos based on the initial BBC production. At $13.99 for the HD version of the series, it's a viable option. The good news is that either way, you can't go wrong.


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Do you like deer hunting windy days? It can be extremely frustrating. It's harder to pick up movement on a windy day, and it's hard to hear a deer approaching also. They can't pick up your movement as well, or hear you as well either. I have decided not to hunt on windy days before. But if you are thinking you cant bag big bucks on windy days think again.
Hunting Windy Days
My father was deer hunting the first week of the season in 1997. He hunted that morning then went back to camp and decided to eat lunch and get back in the woods early. It was very windy to be deer hunting. But he was back out there early with hopes of seeing some big bucks. It was around 1:20pm and the wind was wiping. He was in a tripod stand that we called the rock stand. It sits on a hillside in some pines looking down to the most beautiful food plot beside a creek surrounded by a big hardwood ridge.
Suddenly some does rushed out in the food plot, followed by a very nice trophy buck. He knew it was a shooter immediately. He aimed and shot but missed. The buck didn't know which way the shot came from and ran closer to my father. His second shot didn't miss. It was his biggest buck ever and it came on a very windy day.
Wind as an Advantage
One morning one of my good friends and I went hunting at a club I was a member of in Walton county, in Georgia. That morning driving to the club we noticed how windy it was. But we didn't let that discourage us. I took my friend to a location in some mature pines close to a big hardwood ridge. Then I went to a stand about four hundred yards away. It was so windy, I thought I was going to get sea sick up in that pine tree. About 9:30am I had enough, I decided to get down and still hunt around the edge of a big clear-cut.
Then I heard my friend shoot. When I got over to him he was grinning like a mule eating briars. He had just taken his biggest buck ever, and it was on a very windy day. So if you are having second thoughts about hunting on a windy day, just remember you just might get that buck of a lifetime hunting windy days.
This is the Jasper county trophy my father took on October 27, 1997