text:
As the High Park Fire continues to spread through Larimer County, Congressman Cory Gardner (R-CO) is asking the United States Forest Service (USFS) for additional resources and assistance.
"We cannot stress enough the high concern for this fire - emergency personnel believe the High Park Fire is a perfect storm of conditions and location. There is no time for delay. In particular, the need for air resources is dire," Gardner wrote in a letter to USFS Chief Tom Tidwell.
Gardner emphasizes in his letter that the state's recent drought conditions, steep terrain and beetle-killed trees are all factors adding fuel to the fire. The Congressman will be attending the 8pm briefing at the fire command center in Laporte and has made his staff available to the USFS should they have any questions or need assistance regarding his request for more resources.
The letter was signed by all members of Colorado's U.S. House delegation.
Source: http://gardner.house.gov/press-release/gardner-calls-forest-service-send-more-resources-fight-high-park-fire


text:
|One click away from ridiculousness.
I remember the thrill of waking up on Christmas morning. The magic of a big man in a sleigh, sneaking into your house at night (in a non-threatening way, of course!), bringing good will and joy. And toys, can't forget the toys. There always seemed to be a strange lingering magic dust in the air, a smoke screen of wonder blurring the blinking Christmas tree lights.
When you're young, it's by far the best part of Christmas. No matter what anyone tells you.
But as a child, when I began to question the whole Santa Claus thing ("But…how can Santa be at this mall, when he's at Steve's Shoe Shack at the same time?"), realizing the absolute impossibility of it all, a part of my childhood went into hibernation. It didn't die, just crawled into a cave for a long nap.
My parents were hardcore about the myth of Santa Claus. Even kept it up while I was in college. No one was fooling anyone and we all knew it. But the dumber you played, the longer you indulged in the game, the more likely you'd get cool gifts. One year, my brother and I found the "secret Santa stash" in the basement, unwrapped the presents, oohed and ahhed over them. Sealed the presents shut again. Okay, fine, not very magical, but we were know-it-all, "worldly" kids (or so we thought).
Finally, we let the cat out of the bag, let my parents off the hook. Told them to cut it out. There is no Santa Claus. Hard to believe, but my mother looked sad at our revelation. And that's when socks and underwear became the norm as gifts.
I suppose I don't blame my mom, not really. Once your own childhood thrill is gone, you live vicariously through your children's excitement. The circle of life.
Seeing Christmas through the eyes of my young daughter reawakened my hibernating inner child.
I lived a double life: Dad and Santa. And I thrived on it. I loved watching my daughter sit next to the tree amidst an avalanche of colorfully wrapped gifts. Her eyes lit up as she opened her presents, wondering how the Big Man in Red knew what she wanted. (And this particular "Big Man in Red" went to a lot of effort searching for what my daughter asked for. Always the hottest, hardest to find toys. Always. I have lots of war-torn Christmas stories. But that's a tale for another time.).
It was all worth it.
But all good things come to an end (a rather cynical saying my mother used to tell me).
One day, while pushing my daughter on the back-yard swing set (the same swing set we had the dreaded sex talk on a year or so later), she said, "Dad?"
"Is Santa real? Or is he, like, parents making him up and stuff? You know, sneaking around and putting gifts under the tree. Pretending."
A quandary. I always taught her not to lie. Yet…I wanted to keep the mythology alive; if not for her, than for me. I hemmed and hawed, finally said, "Do you believe he's real?"
"I guess." Not really.
"Well, if you believe he's real, then he is. Merry Christmas!" I ran quick interference, shouting, over-zealously hugging, cheek-kissing. The works. Anything to avoid telling her the truth.
Yet, I could tell, just by the way she forlornly nodded, she didn't buy into my non-answer. The magic had dissipated, the Santa dust drifting away into an invisible cloud.
We played the game for a few more years. But we both knew the jig was up. Knowing winks were shared; smart-alecky comments were dropped whenever the mythical Man in Red came up.
A sad time, a rite of passage. Not only for children, but also for parents.
Last year, my youngest niece quit believing in Santa. Over Christmas dinner, I asked her why.
"I mean, the whole thing was kinda weird," she explained. "How Santa could hit all the houses in the world in one night. Yeah, right." (Her examination of the impossibilities of the Easter Bunny was even better.)
Laughter ensued. But it foretold the end of Santa magic for our family.
But my now grown daughter brought me back in.
"Do you believe in Santa?"
I hugged her. "You know I do."
Bring on the next generation!
Happy holidays, everyone!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
725 Fallsway, Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
Our Daily Bread Employment Center
The Our Daily Bread Employment Center helps people in need with a daily hot meal, case management, job training and employment counseling.
Baltimore's poverty rate has increased 20%, reaching a staggering 25.6% (U.S. Census Bureau). With one in four Baltimoreans living in poverty, the demand for services at Our Daily Bread Employment Center (ODBEC) has risen sharply. ODBEC is a safety net that helps to keep the thousands of people served each year from hunger, homelessness, and unemployment. It is the place people turn to for help and hope.
The Our Daily Bread Employment Center is a lifeline for those in need. We
- serve meals to Maryland's hungry
- assist homeless men to make the transition to employment, stable housing, and self-sufficiency through the Christopher Place Employment Academy
- train people for job readiness
- offer job placement assistance
We serve men and women in need in Baltimore City, Maryland. To learn the specific details about who is eligible for service at any particular program, please click on that program page link at the left or come join us at the Center for the daily meal, served every day (beginning at 10:30 am), without a single interruption, since 1981.
Phone: (443) 986-9000
On October 26, 2016, Catholic Charities hosted a forum on poverty and the need for a response grounded in social justice. The forum was part of the commemoration of the 35th anniversary of Our Daily Bread Employment Center. The Keynote Speakers were Dr. Kathryn Edin, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and Sr. Patricia Chappell, SNDdeN, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and the executive director of Pax Christi USA.


text:
MetLife research found that advisers expect annuity rates will fall further as providers pull out of the market while stock market volatility will increase the risks of a fall in the value of investments as the UK prepares to negotiate its exit from the European Union.
Around 72% of the 102 advisers surveyed believe annuity income will continue to slide, while 73% are concerned about the impact of investment market volatility on drawdown as a result of Brexit.
Limit options
MetLife believes that the need for advisers to focus on flexible guaranteed drawdown solutions as an alternative is highlighted by data from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association which shows 53% of savers considering a drawdown think it guarantees an income.
Most at risk are savers who are five years from retirement – with more than a quarter of advisers (27%) recommending they need guarantees to protect their funds. The number of annuity providers offering guaranteed options, however, has fallen to an all-time low of 11.
Threat to pension freedoms success
Simon Massey, wealth management director at MetLife UK, said: "Lack of consumer choice and understanding is a real threat to the success of pension freedoms as savers who want guaranteed income are being driven into traditional drawdown without understanding the risks.
"One thing is certain – with today's low interest rates and ongoing investment market volatility, the need for a guaranteed income has never been more important."
"Pension freedoms have been a major success story so far but there needs to be more innovation to provide a wider choice of options to ensure savers can benefit from flexibility while retaining certainty over their income. One thing is certain – with today's low interest rates and ongoing investment market volatility, the need for a guaranteed income has never been more important."


text:
How much fun are these? This couple definitely has a sense of humor and we had a blast working on the design. The best part is that most of their family and friends are avid tabloid readers (even the bride's 92 year old grandma is a regular subscriber!) so these fit the bill perfectly. Yes, that is the bride and groom in costume.
My favorite detail is that when mailing, the bride and groom addressed most with the guests' names and the "or current resident". How awesome is that?
[image from Brown Sugar Design]


text:
AutoComplete is a feature that enables the browser to remember what you enter in the address bar or on a webpage. As you're typing an address, AutoComplete will suggest possible matches. It's like your best friend who finishes your sentences! This is convenient when you visit certain websites frequently, but it can also pose a security risk if you're using a shared computer. Disabling the AutoComplete feature helps alleviate this risk.
To disable AutoComplete in Internet Explorer and Firefox, visit our online help article Disable the AutoComplete feature. To learn how to disable AutoComplete in the AOL software, please read below.
To disable the AutoComplete feature in the AOL software:
1. Close all open webpages.
2. Go to AOL Keyword: Toolbar Settings.
3. Clear the Auto-complete AOL keywords and Web Addresses using My History Trail or Auto-complete keyword and web address entries check box.
4. Click Save.


text:
Clark County Genealogy
Search criteria: Clark County
What can you do here?
Search online databases for your ancestors:*
* Subscription may be required. Free trial available in some cases.
Washington Military & Historical Records - Fold3
Find related genealogy web sites:
Web sites 1 through 4 of 4
1. Gilhousen Family Association
3. Clark County, Washington: County Farm (Marble Mount) Cemetery
4. WASHINGTON, Clark County. LaCenter HS, 1967 Yearbook, LaCenter
Share your research with others:
Narrow your search:


text:
The investigation continues into the midair collision of a Beechcraft Bonanza and a Piper PA-28 that took the lives of two people on May 28. The collision took place over Summerduck, Va., 45 minutes southwest of downtown Washington.
Dr. James Duncan, pilot of the Bonanza, and his passenger, Paul Gardella, were killed in the crash, while the pilot and only occupant of the Piper, Thomas Proven, was injured. After the midair, the Bonanza broke into at least two pieces and caught fire before impact. Proven managed to fly his damaged PA-28-140 safely to a survivable landing in a grassy field. Duncan was employed by the NTSB, while Proven was employed as an accident inspector with the FAA.
In an unprecedented action, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman asked the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada for investigatory assistance to avoid any conflict of interest because U.S. government employees were involved in the crash. For more information about the accident, go to the TSB's website.


text:
Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> writes: > In indexes we currently get away with a reduced header which has few > of the 6 bytes of info bits. However the only reason we can do is > because we impose arbitrary limitations that work for indexes but > wouldn't be reasonable for tables. Such as a lower maximum number of > columns, inability to add new columns or drop columns later, etc. Wait a second, which idea are we currently talking about? No heap at all, or just the ability to check visibility without visiting the heap? If it's a genuine IOT (ie no separate heap), then you are not going to be able to get away without a full heap tuple header. We've sweated blood to get that struct down to where it is; there's no way to make it smaller without giving up some really fundamental things, for example the ability to do UPDATE :-( If you just want to avoid a heap visit for visibility checks, I think you'd only need to add xmin/xmax/cmin plus the hint bits for same. This is going to end up costing 16 bytes in practice --- you might think you could squeeze into 12 but on 64-bit machines (MAXALIGN 8) you'll save nothing. So that's effectively a doubling of index size for common cases such as a single int4 or int8 index column. The other problem is the extra write load created by needing to update the index's copies of the hint bits; not to mention extra writes to freeze the xids when they get old enough. regards, tom lane
Next: From: Erik Rijkers Date: 2010-02-25 21:26:33 Subject: Re: Streaming replication and pg_xlogfile_name() Previous: From: Greg Stark Date: 2010-02-25 21:08:26 Subject: Re: A thought on Index Organized Tables


text:
Cefepime Pharmacokinetics in Liver Transplant Recipients in an Intensive Care Unit
This study has been completed.
University of Pittsburgh
Information provided by (Responsible Party):
University of Pittsburgh
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
First received: September 13, 2005
Last updated: December 16, 2015
Last verified: December 2015
- Full Text View
- Tabular View
- No Study Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
Biospecimen Retention: Samples Without DNA
Detailed Description:
The purposes of this study are to:
I. Characterize the plasma concentration-time profile of cefepime in liver transplant patients to determine the pharmacokinetic parameters in this patient population.
II. Perform stochastic modeling using the population pharmacokinetic parameters obtained in Specific Aim I to determine the ideal dose and dosing regimen of cefepime required to attain predetermined therapeutic targets in liver transplant patients.
|Evidence of Liver Transplantation
|Study Type:
|Study Design:
|Observational Model: Cohort
Time Perspective: Prospective
|Official Title:
|Cefepime Pharmacokinetics in Liver Transplant Recipients in an Intensive Care Unit
Resource links provided by NLM:
MedlinePlus related topics: Liver Transplantation
Drug Information available for: Cefepime Cefepime hydrochlorideU.S. FDA Resources
Further study details as provided by University of Pittsburgh:
Primary Outcome Measures:
- dead or alive post treatment [ Time Frame: December 2009 ]
Biospecimen Retention: Samples Without DNA
All biologic samples will be under the control of the principal investigator of this research project. To protect confidentiality, all personal identifiers will be removed and replaced with a specific code number. The information linking these code numbers to the corresponding subjects' identities will be kept in a separate, secure location. The investigators on this study will keep the samples indefinitely. All samples will be provided to investigators not associated with the study without any identifiers and only contain a code number. If a subject withdraws samples collected and not already processed will be destroyed.
|Study Start Date:
|March 2005
|Study Completion Date:
|December 2009
|Primary Completion Date:
|December 2009 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure)
|liver transplant patients in ICU
Detailed Description:
The use of cefepime in liver transplant patients at conventional doses used for other patient populations leads to non-optimal drug exposure among liver transplant patients. Furthermore, using serum creatinine as a method of estimating creatinine clearance is not the optimal way to determine the best cefepime dose. The consequence of this non-optimal exposure is the unattainability of therapeutic targets. These therapeutic targets are correlated with positive microbiologic outcome and clinical cure.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years and older (Adult, Senior)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
|Sampling Method:
|Non-Probability Sample
Study Population
Liver transplant patients in the ICU
Inclusion Criteria:
- Women and members of minority groups will be included in this study. However, as this study seeks to generate pilot data, there will be no specific statistical analysis comparing differences based on gender or race.
- Subjects receiving drugs known to induce or inhibit hepatic enzymes are not excluded from this study as cefepime is renally eliminated and not significantly metabolized by the liver.
- All liver transplant subjects are eligible for enrollment in this study, including subjects who have undergone a living related liver transplant.
- The pharmacokinetics of cefepime in children are significantly different from those of adults. For the purposes of this study only adults (aged > 18 years old) will be able to participate.
Exclusion Criteria:
- Subjects will be excluded if they are anemic (hemoglobin < 7 mg/dl), or are patients with severe gastrointestinal bleeding who are receiving packed red blood cells.
- Subjects who are receiving hemodialysis or other forms of renal replacement therapy (such as continuous veno-venous hemofiltration), or patients with a calculated creatinine clearance of < 10 ml/min will be excluded from the study.
Contacts and Locations
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the Contacts provided below. For general information, see Learn About Clinical Studies.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00177931
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00177931
|United States, Pennsylvania
|University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
|Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 15213
Sponsors and Collaborators
University of Pittsburgh
|Principal Investigator:
|Brian Potoski, PharmD
|University of Pittsburgh
More Information
Keywords provided by University of Pittsburgh:
Additional relevant MeSH terms:
ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on September 21, 2017
|Responsible Party:
|University of Pittsburgh
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT00177931 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
|Study First Received:
|September 13, 2005
|Last Updated:
|December 16, 2015
Keywords provided by University of Pittsburgh:
Liver transplant
Additional relevant MeSH terms:
Anti-Bacterial Agents
Anti-Infective Agents
ClinicalTrials.gov processed this record on September 21, 2017


text:
He was born and raised on Long Island, NY in an environment of a loving extended family. Yet with all the visual love surrounding him as a youngster, there lied a pain and darkness he shared with no one. It was the constant nagging symptoms that his family would come to learn as Tourette's Syndrome (TS).
As a child he felt helpless, constantly being prescribed various medications to subside the symptoms. None seemed to work and even then, Frank Tortorici often thought there had to be a better way.
At the age of 15, Frank Tortorici had entered an all natural body building contest. He quickly discovered that working-out had an incredible calming effect on his body. The impact immediately triggered an understanding and belief in him that healing can be brought to the human body. He began to exercise regularly and it had its benefits. However, the 'bad tic' days, begin to bring about obsessive thoughts. His body physically and mind mentally felt like they had simultaneously run for hours.
Frank was later introduced to a gluten-free way of living as an alternative supplement which he started to see results fast, as it helped to eliminate yeast growth in the intestines. He began researching and learned how to treat Tourette's holistically; and that Candida- (a yeast-like fungal organism) is caused by such things as sugar, antibiotics and alcohol, which were attributing to 'his' symptoms. For the next few years Frank began to eat vegetarian, raw/vegan and conscious carnivorous.
Frank Tortorici now lives in Los Angeles, CA and has a satellite office in Newark, New Jersey, along with a facility in North, Hollywood Los Angeles, CA where he offers a multitude of services both publicly and privately. Certified through the American Council of Exercise, Crossfit Kettlebell and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition he gives his clients; some with neurological disorders an alternative — even if only it offers a healthier way of supplementing their living condition(s).
The Tourette's Syndrome Association (TSA) recently referred to Frank Tortorici a "Renaissance Man" in their recent newsletter. He travels nationwide sharing his story and offering advice and services to many of those who are usually overlooked due their poverty circumstances and urban stricken area(s).
Frank is also pleased to announce his partnership with KUR ORGANIC SUPERFOOD BITES!
– Raw Vegan
-No Agave
-Date Sweetened
– Certified Organic,Gluten Free, Non GMO, Feingold,Kosher,Paleo,
-No Soy
-Grain Free
To purchase please copy and paste the link below:
Frank's currently working on a host of edible delights under his 'Yowser' brand. Expect his incomparable taco; with its 'meat' being a blend of organic sunflower seeds, sundried tomatoes and other ingredients, to his signature 'Superfood Chocolate Mousse' that is also diabetic friendly. He has a book forthcoming, along with a few other projects; associated with eager corporations, that are all excited about taking part in champion the cause of Frank Tortorici which is to educate people about fitness, food and faith


text:
The Central Texas Business Resource Center talked social media and Internet guidance to several Killeen area entrepreneurs at a recurring breakfast.
Social media breakfasts are local networking and personal forums for business owners and entrepreneurs that are taking place nationwide, said Marcus Carr, the resource center's director. The breakfasts provide a time where participating individuals can discuss what they have been doing to achieve success on the new media platforms.
"It is all about dragging people from behind the computers and out in the public," Carr said.
Planned for the third Thursday of every month, the group that met Thursday at SJR Donuts in Killeen discussed search engine optimization — the importance of being on the first page of queried results.
"Only 64 percent who research on the Internet go to the next page (of search results)," said Joey Peters, with Townsquare Media. "And 64 percent of your Google ranking is based on your Twitter and Facebook pages."
Peters was the guest speaker and led the informal discussion on search engine optimization.
Having a website is important to be successful and being found quickly in the vast majority of content out there is even more so, he said.
"Small businesses need to have a big (online) presence," Peters said.
Peters said there are a lot of companies out there, such as his own, to help businesses reach a top search spot, but it is important that businesses use a company they can trust and rely on.
Aimeé Nesse, a resource center business counselor, said there are free guides for people to use themselves, such as a Google's handbook, but learning and implementing them take time.
The social media breakfasts have been helpful for learning about different Internet trends and topics, said Anthony Petit, who owns a photography business.
"I sit down and talk and learn," Petit said.
The social media breakfasts have been going for about four years, but they were on a 10-month break as the resource center reorganized them, Carr said.
With about 20 people showing up at December's and January's meetings, Carr hopes the breakfasts grow in popularity, as there is certainly a need.
Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising a business can hope for, but social media follows the same concepts, Peters said.
"What social media does is it takes word of mouth and puts it on steroids," he said. The online platforms allow people to share things with their friends and family faster, which they can immediately share with others.


text:
International Edition
September 21, 2017
About Us
Contact Us
Government should provide equal respect for all media
The China Post news staff Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 12:03 am TWN
Following the heat of recent urban renewal issues, an article about a side-line story, "The Pride and Prejudice of News Reporters" (記者的傲慢與偏見), written by Taiwan Public Television Service News Network (PNN, 公視新聞議題中心) reporter Chung Sheng-hsiung (鍾勝雄), was widely circulated on the Internet.
In the article, Chung outlined what happened in the press conference held by the Taiwan Alliance for Victims of Urban Renewal for the Wang family on April 3, when the alliance accused the Taipei City Government of not following its standard procedure to issue a demolition permit before the destruction of the Wang family homes.
Chung stated that after the press conference held by the victims' alliance, when reporters asked Taipei City Government spokesman Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) for their reply, he was unwilling to respond. Indeed, after the press conference held by the victims' alliance, reporters went to the room next door to make a phone call to the Taipei City Government. With microphones placed beside the telephone machine, Chang, who received the phone call, hung up the phone in front of every news camera.
Later, a press conference was held by the Taipei City Construction Management Office. Chang only showed up for less than 10 minutes, answered about three questions from a China Television Co. (中視) reporter and then left.
When reporters from PNN, Lihpao daily (立報), Coolloud (苦勞網), and a reporter from The China Post tried to ask further questions, the unified response the Post received from Chang was that "the press conference is over!" When the China Television reporter and Chinese Television System (華視) reporter asked their questions, Chang was at least willing to provide an official statement.
Only when the news of the victims' alliance's press conference was published in The China Post on the following day did The China Post receive a clarification statement from the Taipei City Government.


text:
Key Resources
The Earth is undoubtedly warming. What's the cause, what are the impacts, and what can we do about it?
Scientists and analysts at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) review the climate science basics and answer your frequently asked questions.
Below is a list of resources to learn more about the impacts of climate change, what individuals can do to help, and which policies can make a big difference
What are the Impacts of Climate Change?
The Earth is warming and will continue to do so if we keep releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This warming brings an increased risk of more frequent and intense heat waves, higher sea levels, and more severe droughts, wildfires, and downpours. To learn more:
What can you do to help?
C2ES works to help individuals learn how they can save energy at work, school, and home. Learn some of the steps you can take to make an impact:
What would make a huge difference?
Sensible policies can spur demand for clean energy and technologies and reduce carbon emissions cost-effectively. Learn about some of the options:


text:
Wire Light LED Strand - 12 Cool White LEDs + Coin Cell Holder
Add sparkle to your project with these lovely silver wire LED strands
|from 1 to 4
|from 5 to 9
|from 10 to 19
|from 20 to 49
|from 50 to +
|5,95 €
|5,83 €
|5,65 €
|5,47 €
|5,44 €
Adafruit TSL2561...
A TSL2561 Digital Luminosity/Lux/Light Sensor Breakout
6,15 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
AI2C Barometric Pressure/Temperature Sensor based on MPL115A2
8,15 € View
i2c / SPI character...
i2c / SPI character LCD backpack to use LCD with only 4 pins
12,00 € View
12-Channel 16-bit PWM...
12-Channel 16-bit PWM LED Driver - SPI Interface
7,65 € View
Adafruit "Music Maker"...
Adafruit "Music Maker" MP3 Shield for Arduino (MP3/Ogg/WAV...)
35,00 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
Adafruit "Music Maker"...
Adafruit "Music Maker" MP3 Shield for Arduino (MP3/Ogg/WAV...) with 3W amplifier
38,00 € View
Adafruit Bicolor LED...
Adafruit Bicolor LED Square Pixel Matrix with I2C Backpack
16,40 € View
MCX Jack to BNC RF...
MCX Jack to BNC RF Cable Adapter
6,20 € View
Adafruit Stereo FM...
Stereo FM Transmitter with RDS/RBDS Breakout - Si4713
20,65 € View
Flat 20 wires 30cm -...
4,30 € View
Flat 20 wires 15cm -...
4,10 € View
Flat 20 wires 7 cm -...
4,00 € View
Flat 20 wires 7 cm -...
4,00 € View
Adafruit 16-Channel...
Adafruit 16-Channel PWM / Servo HAT for Raspberry Pi - Mini Kit
21,00 € View
Adafruit Capacitive...
Adafruit Capacitive Touch HAT for Raspberry Pi - Mini Kit - MPR121
19,80 € View
CAP1188 - 8-Key...
9,60 € View
Kit LCD RGB 2x16...
15,60 € View
Out of stock
1.8" Color TFT LCD...
A 1.8" LCD Breakout for breadboard or panel mount
24,00 € View
Adafruit 9-DOF...
A compact and easy to use 9 DOF IMU on a breakout
42,00 € View
Thermal paper roll -...
Thermal paper roll - 50' (15m) long, 2.25" (57mm) wide
4,00 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
Mini Thermal Receipt...
62,00 € View
starter kit Mini...
Starter kit Mini Thermal Receipt Printer
75,50 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
Rugged metal On/Off...
Rugged metal On/Off switch with blue LED, 16mm.
6,20 € View
Rugged metal On/Off...
Rugged metal On/Off switch with red LED, 16mm.
6,20 € View
Rugged metal On/Off...
Rugged metal On/Off switch with green LED, 16mm.
6,20 € View
Rugged metal...
Rugged metal pushbutton with white LED, 16mm.
6,20 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
Adafruit 12 x...
This touch-able add on shield for Arduinos will inspire your next interactive project with 12 capacitive touch sensors.
15,00 € View
The Brain Machine Kit
Relax and rejuvenate as your brain synchronizes to a wonderful meditative state, and enjoy as you hallucinate beautiful colors and...
30,00 € View
Out of stock Available within 10 days
Adafruit - Speaker
Add some extra boom to your audio project with these powered loudspeakers.
12,00 € View
Pro Trinket - 5V 16MHz
It's like an Arduino Pro Mini with more pins and USB tossed in, so delicious.
12,00 € View
Ajouter de l'éclat à vos projets
Add sparkle to your project with these lovely silver wire LED strands. These strands are very interesting, they use two silver wires that are coated so they don't short if they touch, then tiny 1000mcd LEDs are bonded onto the wires and coated with epoxy. The result is a very flexible silver wire with sparkly "fairy" lights that are much less visible than normal LEDs. They're still just LEDs, but in a fun new form-factor! They're even waterproof - you can dunk these or have them outdoors, just be sure to protect the battery holder.
Each strand comes with 12 LEDs, approximately 5cm/2 inches apart for a 2 foot long strand of wire. At one end of the magnet wire, a double stranded-core wire is soldered on and heat-shrinked to protect it. A 2 x CR2032 coin cell holder with on/off switch is on the other side. Of course, if you want you can just cut the coin cell holder off and solder on a 3xAAA battery holder or 3xAA battery holder. To solder to the magnet wire, scrape off the coating first.
Requires 2 x CR2032 batteries to run. Does not come with batteries, CR2032 batteries if you want to use them as is. Runs for about 8 hours continuously on two CR2032's.
Please note: There are no series resistor installed in the strand, if you want to use another supply you will need to calculate and solder in a resistor. The reason that two 3V coin cells can be used to drive LEDs with a forward voltage of about 3.2V is that coin cells have an internal resistance that makes up for the lack of a choke resistor. If you want to drive these via a 6V power supply, you'll want to put in a 20-220 ohm (or larger) resistor in series to avoid burning out the LEDs. If you want to use a 4.5V power supply, use 10-100 ohms (or larger).
- LED strand is 26 inches (660mm) long, LEDs are spaced 5cm/2" apart
- 1000mcd brightness per LED, Forward voltage of 3.2-3.4V @ 20mA
- Connecting wire is 8 inches (203mm) long
- Battery holder is 2" x 0.9" x 0.22" (51mm x 23mm x 5.6mm)
- Weight without batteries: 6.44g
- Weight with batteries: 12.44g
More informations here
Like all our products, this kit is RoHS.
No customer comments for the moment.
Only registered users can post a new comment.


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Louis Theroux: Law and Disorder in Lagos, ABC2, 8.30pm
LOUIS Theroux has made it his business to explore places that don't appear in glossy holiday brochures. They're often ugly, messy and volatile, and they rarely offer postcard vistas. Here he's in the Nigerian city of Lagos ''finding out how this dynamic and somewhat chaotic city polices itself''. What he discovers is an urban centre ruled by gang lords who use bands of thugs to enforce their will and extort business owners. The local authorities, the KAI (Kick Against Indiscipline), appear both brutal and comical in their efforts to impose order, demolishing unauthorised stalls and sternly supervising environmental clean-up days as corruption runs riot. Theroux is a polite traveller, and it's difficult to disagree with his conclusion that Lagos is ''a city of extremes, in which order and chaos are sometimes hard to tell apart''.
Motorway Patrol, Channel Seven, 7.30pm
LIKE blowflies at the beach, the appearance of this long-running New Zealand-made documentary series is one of the reliable signs of summer. It's used as a filler, to plug holes in the silly-season schedule, as if in admission it's too dull to screen while the main ratings game is on. Its beat is the roads and highways of Auckland, where vigilant police search for dangerous drivers and all manner of suspicious activity. Clearly recognising the frequently low level of drama, the producers use narration to liven up the proceedings, and it's peppered with lame stabs at wit. ''This young man is no stranger to cuffs. It also seems he's taken some puffs,'' is one description offered of a miscreant driver. In this typically banal episode, a car lands in a swimming pool and is extracted by a tow truck as the owner of the house mourns the damage to her rose bushes.
SCU: Serious Crash Unit, Channel Seven, 8pm
ANOTHER cheapie New Zealand-made series that's become a summer staple, SCU also documents police work, following the activities of investigators who come in after accidents and chronicling how they reconstruct the events that caused the crash. In ''Pinewoods'', they receive an emergency call after a Peugeot veers off the road at a campsite and plunges off a 27-metre cliff, killing the passenger in the car. Working against an incoming tide, which could destroy evidence as well as washing toxins out to sea, the team members examine a range of possible factors: the speed the car was travelling, the blood alcohol level of the driver, the possibility of mechanical failure. The work these officers do is important, and their reconstruction of the puzzle of this tragedy is admirable, but it's a long way from must-see TV.
Ben and Kate, Channel Ten, 8pm
THIS brother-and-sister comedy from writer-producer Dana Fox (a producer on New Girl), based on her own experiences, is likeable but uneven. The set-up is a good-natured domestic battle between the boyishly happy-go-lucky and frequently irresponsible Ben (Nat Faxon) and his overly cautious older sister Kate (Dakota Johnson), a single mum to moppet Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Ben stays home to babysit as Kate works in a bar and frets constantly about the safety of her daughter while she's in her brother's care. The show has a bouncy pace and an appealing cast, especially Lucy Punch as sassy British cocktail waitress BJ. But it's excessively cute and overstated, weighed down by silly padding that slows the plot and blunts the edges. We get it: as soon as Ben announces, ''Everybody can relax, I've got everything under control,'' things are poised to go pear-shaped.
Big Rich Texas , Monday, Style, 9.30pm
JUST when you think you've seen the most atrocious behaviour, unfunny crassness and oblivious self-debasement of which wealthy middle-aged women are capable, the cable disgorges something even more appalling. It's scarcely an exaggeration to say Big Rich Texas, a semi-scripted ''reality'' series about Dallas country club women and their daughters, makes The Real Housewives of New Jersey look like Downton Abbey. The format is pure cookie-cutter and the women exhibit the mandatory preoccupation with money, shopping and plastic surgery, but the nastiness has been dialled up to 11. You can't just call another woman a bitch; you have to tell her: ''Take your camel toe and get the f--- out of here.'' You can't just throw a drink in another woman's face; you also have to smash the glass at her feet. The fact it's all staged for entertainment purposes merely reflects the program makers' desire to produce an uglier kind of trash. Strangely, while the show doesn't get within a Texas longhorn's roar of ''so bad it's good'' territory, it is, at least, bad enough to be watchable. Which puts it streets ahead of any of the soporific Real Housewives franchises. The most morbidly fascinating of the cast is one of the daughters, 24-year-old Whitney, whose body is increasingly covered in exceedingly tacky tattoos. The most noticeable are the pair of pink ribbon bows beneath her collarbones, but there's also the C-word tattooed in big, black, blocky letters on her foot, a weird crayon swirl on one shoulder, and the word ''mayhem'' in tall Gothic script across her midriff. It's surely one of the worst collections of ink ever accumulated by a woman of her socio-economic background and level of education (she's apparently a pre-med student), but probably nothing to do with her past as a child-pageant princess. Whitney is dating a heavily tattooed body-piercer named Booger, who she ''met on the side of a highway''. Booger seems like a sensible guy - at least he thinks Whitney shouldn't get any new tatts for a while. The other daughters are indistinguishable at first, being similar pitches of whining in similar shades of peroxide. The mothers, at least, distinguish themselves from each other by the degree to which they commit to talking about sex in the most cringe-inducing manner. Take DeAynni, her arms in bandages after having her ''bat wings'' taken off: ''After I do the legs, maybe a vajayjay reconstruct. That's the new thing.'' All class, all the time.
Inside Cricket , Monday, Fox Sports 2, 8.30pm
BRENDON Julian and the team have been in fine form again this summer. Julian and his rotating roster of panellists - Allan Border, Greg Blewett, Damien Fleming, Mark Waugh and cricket journo Robert Craddock - continue to provide entertaining and incisive analysis of what's happening on the pitch, as well as enlightening interviews with past greats and those in the know. They go to air live so they're right up to date, and they're pretty plugged in, too - even before the second Test against South Africa they were talking about the likelihood of Mitchell Johnson being recalled. They have frank and interesting conversations with good guests (recently Kepler Wessels and Stuart Clark), and although the the panellists and guests enjoy ribbing each other, it never gets too blokey or boofheaded. There are also well-produced feature items that cover stories of importance to cricket tragics (such as whether new coach Justin Langer can improve the culture and performance of the West Australian team), soliciting multiple points of view to provide a rounded perspective. Not all of the stories are stop-the-presses stuff - the fluffy piece on the filming of this year's Twenty20 ad would have been better suited to Inside Marketing (There's no such show? Well there you go). As if all that weren't enough, there are also highlights from first-class and one-day games from across the country and around the world, and you can contribute your own two cents' worth to proceedings via Twitter. Compulsory viewing for the serious cricket fan.
My Dog Ate What? Nat Geo Wild, 5.30pm
Vets and owners tell the stories of dogs that ate underwear, skewered corn cobs and large amounts of cash, and how the items were removed.
Project Runway Australia, Arena, 8.30pm
Christina joins Leah, Tristan and Jamie in the series finale.
Machete Maidens Unleashed! Studio, 9.30pm
Documentary about Filipino films of the 1970s and '80s.
Ransom (1996), GO!, 9.30pm
FOR movie stars, the public's perception is everything. Whatever the qualities of his character may be, there was a time when Mel Gibson was an unimpeachable leading man who could run and gun in the Lethal Weapon movies and then banter with Helen Hunt in What Women Want. In many ways Gibson was a throwback to the 1940s, a handsome leading man whose masculine vigour insured him against the pathos of sometimes emotionally devout roles. In this hugely successful Ron Howard thriller, updated from the 1956 original with typical New York street-level grit by novelist and screenwriter Richard Price (Sea of Love, The Wire), Gibson plays a millionaire businessman who turns the tables on his son's kidnappers and the FBI agents advising him by publicly posting the ransom money as a bounty on their heads. It is a movie star's role: passionate, headstrong, obsessive; and nowadays no one would buy the tainted Gibson in the part for even a second.
The Girl By the Lake (2007), SBS Two, 11.30pm
TONI Servillo (Il Divo) plays the Italian police detective called to a small northern village to investigate the discovery of a body, who uncovers evidence of further crimes.


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Zero Waste
Zero Waste of Resources is an idea that is catching on throughout the country. King County adopted a policy to work toward Zero Waste by 2030, meaning that materials of value, whether for reuse, resale, or recycling, won't be put in the garbage and end up in the landfill.
Studies done at the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill show that 75% of the "stuff" we throw away each year isn't really waste. The majority of these items could be recycled, composted, or reused.
As a planning tool for solid waste management, the county is interested in keeping paper, wood, scrap metal, glass, plastic and food out of the landfill. When those items don't go in, there is room for real garbage, that is, materials that currently have no other use.
Zero Waste of Resources does not mean zero garbage! There will always be some garbage that needs to be managed, but with an effort to develop the Zero Waste of Resources 2030 policy, these items will be recycled or reused.
Why is Zero Waste important?
Our consumption and disposal practices have a cumulative impact on the health of the planet. In King County over 800,000 tons of garbage is handled each year. Keeping materials with reuse or recycling value out of the landfill allows room for "true" garbage and allows the landfill to function longer. Reaching for a Zero Waste of Resources future is the responsible thing to do in the face of limited natural resources, ever expanding population growth and economic potential with remanufacture
What is a wasted resource?
A wasted resource is something thrown away that could have been used again either in its original form (like a chair, article of clothing, toy or book) or remanufactured into new product (like a newspaper, a cardboard box, a bottle, a fleece blanket or jacket, an aluminum can, plastic lumber, or a soil amendment like compost).
Innovation and technology create new products all the time with products we are done with. Even old CDs and DVDs can be made into such things as building insulation, packaging foam and coat hangers! Remember the old saying "one man's trash is another's treasure."
Examples of Zero Waste Activities
Electronics and Fluorescents
Food scraps
How can you help?
Rethink and reduce your purchases and practices, reuse materials recycle the things that are recyclable.
What Happens to Recyclables?
See What Happens to Your Recyclables in this 10 minute video. Please choose your preferred video format:
Updated: Jan. 13, 2015


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|55. Five or 5,000, each dies his own death. Thus, the one is no less, here, than the five. So: No.
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text: 50% off Biltmore tickets with any 3 night stay. Use your cash for gas, or a wonderful dinner - our Biltmore Estate tickets are valid for 2 consecutive days - just in case you want to take your time to enjoy the estate grounds, winery, and gardens in addition to the home. Note: You must ask for the "Stay 3 Special" when making your reservation. 1 ticket per person, max 2 free tickets per room. Not valid for reservations September 30- November 12. Cannot be combined with other specials


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Do you believe in happy endings?
Ex-power couple Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake finally got together again, hugging it out to shill their wares at Sunday's premiere of Shrek the Third, the AP reports. The pair didn't talk on the green carpet in Hollywood, with Diaz arriving first and Timberlake just steps behind her. But come time for the cast photo, they were all smiles, sharing a hug and a kiss.
We'd tell you more, but since Cam and JT were mum on the reunion, reporters spent most of their time asking the celebs what they thought of Paris Hilton's sentence. The best was Cheri Oteri's advice to "stay home once in awhile." [Photo: AP]


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Royalty reduced to protect coal mining
Arch Coal will temporarily pay below-normal federal royalty rate reductions for some of its West Elk Mine operations near Somerset because of adverse geological conditions the company says had made certain mining less economical.
The Bureau of Land Management approved the request in September.
Gov. John Hickenlooper wrote the BLM a letter expressing the state's support for the reduction. The support comes despite a roughly $3 million projected annual drop in royalty payments that are split 52/48 percent between the federal government and Colorado, respectively.
Mike King, the state's Department of Natural Resources executive director, said Hickenlooper wants to keep North Fork Valley coal mines vibrant as employers.
"The governor wants to do everything he can to keep coal coming from those mines," he said.
The five-year reduction from the standard 8 percent underground mine rate to 5 percent applies to about 6,353 acres under two leases, and an estimated 31 million metric tons of produced coal. A metric ton is about 2,200 pounds.
Hickenlooper also sent letters of support in August for similar temporary reductions for the Colowyo Mine near Meeker and the McClane Canyon Mine north of Fruita.
In his letters, he estimates the reduction in annual revenue would amount to $1.63 million and $169,500, respectively, for the state, but he also notes that failure to produce the coal also would result in lost tax revenue and affect local employment.
The basis for, and status of, the Colowyo and McClane Canyon requests was not available from the BLM ON Friday.
The BLM considers such requests for a number of reasons, agency spokeswoman Vanessa Lacayo said.
Arch Coal, whose subsidiary Mountain Coal Co. runs the West Elk Mine, cited poor mining conditions and high ash content.
Gunnison County, where the mine is located, also supported the request.
County Manager Matthew Birnie said the mine is the county's biggest single taxpayer. The reduction doesn't affect its property taxes, but would indirectly affect its federal mineral lease and severance tax payments, he said.
"For us basically the calculus was a lower percentage of something is better than a larger percentage of nothing" if the mine otherwise doesn't operate in the difficult area, he said.
He said protecting jobs also is important, even though most of the mine's employees don't live in the county.
Arch Coal spokeswoman Kim Link said the reduction will help the company deal with challenging conditions and achieve greater resource recovery. She said even with the reduction, the mine expects to pay about $25 million in Colorado-originating, federal and state royalties and taxes next year.
Jeremy Nichols, with the conservation group WildEarth Guardians, said this isn't the first such request by the mine, and the process isn't entirely transparent, which leaves him suspicious about the reductions.
"It seems like this is more about giving Arch Coal a break and not considering whether it's in the public interest," he said.
In 2005, the company got a reduction because of the exceptionally high amount of methane it was having to vent from the mine.
Nichols said that was "utterly bizarre — you don't have to pay us as much money in order to waste more gas."
Nichols' group has been pushing to have mines capture and make use of such gas, or at least flare it to reduce its impact as a greenhouse gas.
He said he understands the idea of trying to make sure a mine keeps operating and the government continues to get some revenue, but at some point it simply may not be economical to continue mining.
"It's where do you draw the line?" he said.


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Altmar, NY -- A consultant has found that specialized light industrial, community services and outdoor recreation would be the best future uses for the closed Williamstown and Altmar elementary schools.
Peter Fairweather, of Fairweather Consulting in New Paltz, gave a presentation Wednesday night about possible uses for the two schools to a group of about 10 people at the Albion/Altmar Municipal Building in Altmar.
He said a number of uses were looked at, including retail and senior housing. But the study showed the best uses would be light industrial, community services and outdoor recreation.
"There is demand out there (for these buildings), it is just hard to realize it immediately," Fairweather said.
All three elementary schools in the Altmar-Parish-Williamstown school district are for sale because the district moved to a two-building campus on County Route 22. The elementary children now attend A-P-W Elementary, housed in the former middle school.
The A-P-W school board has accepted an offer from BioSpherix, a medical clean room manufacturer in Lacona, to buy Parish Elementary.
Fairweather said medical manufacturing was one of the possible uses mentioned for Parish Elementary and this use worked out. He said such a firm also could look at one of the other two schools.
While light manufacturing or community services would work at either school, Fairweather said Altmar Elementary also could be an outdoor recreation site since the prized Salmon River runs through the school property.
Three men from the state Bureau of Fisheries were at the meeting and said the state wants to obtain publish fishing right easements from the school district or whomever buys the school so the public still can access the 1,500 feet of river on the property for fishing.
"We hate to see that opportunity lost," said David Lemon, regional fisheries manager based in Cortland.
Fairweather said Altmar and Williamstown schools were checked by engineers and found to be in satisfactory condition. He said buyers would have to do very little on either building to begin operations.


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OverviewA faint animal path/climber's trail leads you up and over Union Peak to the summit of Jove Peak. The "trail" is good in places, but makes up for it in other places by being faint when visible at all. As long as you stay on the ridge line, getting lost shouldn't be an issue, and the views from the summit are well worth it.
Getting ThereSee the "Getting There" section on the Jove Peak main page.
Route Description
From the trailhead, ascend a faint "climber's trail" westbound along Nason Ridge towards Union Peak. Either side of the ridge is wooded with semi-dense underbrush, but the ridge itself is fairly easy to follow. Ironically, the first 20 minutes of the trail are the hardest to follow. If you're feeling lost, just stay and the ridge, and keep ascending.
After approximately 25- 30 minutes, reach a point where the "trail" at first glance apparently ends. Descend a short distance to climber's left (south), and bypass this cliffy section. This is the first area where you get a wide open view of Jove, Union, and all of the surrounding southern peaks. Be careful here, as a fall to the north (climber's right) will be fatal.
Ascend the rest of the way up Nason Ridge to Union Peak. Stop here and take in the views. Also take note of your intended path down to the Union/Jove saddle, and up to the summit of Jove. While fairly wooded, the summit of Union is a nice broad plateau, and good views are easy to be had.
From the summit of Union Peak, descend about 500 feet to the saddle between Union and Jove. The trail here is really pretty decent. Resist the temptation to drop too far to the east. It's steep, brushy, and you'll have some rocky cliffs to deal with. Instead, follow the old red blazes down to the saddle.
You'll notice a scant few random blazes prior to reaching the summit of Union Peak. As you descend towards the saddle, and then ascend towards the summit of Jove, you'll see a very well defined trail marked by red blazes. Follow these blazes to the summit. The ascent here is much easier if you follow the ridge as long as possible.
Resist the temptation to drop out of the woods too early. Follow the blazes as far as you can, once the southern slopes of Jove open up, pop out of the woods and ascend a steep, at times loose grass and rock slope to the summit. Lake Janus is visible to the west, Glacier Peak is visible to the north, and of course, you get a beautiful 360 degree view of the Cascades.
Trailhead elevation 4,600 ft
Union Peak/Jove Peak saddle elevation 5,200 ft
Jove Peak summit elevation 6,007 ft
Travel time required: approximately four hours round trip.


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TAMPA — Eighteen months ago, the city's police and firefighter pension fund was valued at more than $1.7 billion.
Today, it's worth $1.2 billion.
The 30 percent loss isn't so unusual in this gloomy economy.
What's unusual is this: The massive portfolio is managed solely by one investor, Atlanta-based Bowen, Hanes Inc. The firm has been in charge of the city's police and firefighters pension fund for 34 years.
The significant losses in a fund led by a single manager has raised questions from City Council member Mary Mulhern, who heads the council's budget committee.
"I want to see more oversight," she said. "I don't know if the solution is to have more then one money manager or the solution is to have a board that pays more attention and is more involved."
Among Mulhern's questions: Why does the company's president, Jay Bowen, keep more than 60 percent of the fund in stocks, and why did he wait until recent months to alter that mix?
"When other people were backing off and putting stuff in cash and bonds, he wasn't," she said. "That's not good management."
Bowen, who speculates that Tampa's police and firefighter pension fund may be the only one of its type in the country to have just one manager, defends his performance.
He points out that the fund has had an annualized rate of return of 10 percent since 1985. Over 33 years, its common stocks had an average yearly earning of 14.2 percent. The S&P 500, a bellwether index of major U.S. stocks, averaged an 11.1 percent annual gain during that time. By comparison, the city's general employees' pension fund, which has 13 managers, has earned an average of 7.4 percent a year since 1985. Its value has declined 37 percent in the last 18 months.
Bowen also said a single manager costs less in fees. He expects to collect $2.9 million in this fiscal year, or about .24 percent of the portfolio's current value. Managers and consultants who oversee the general employees' fund will receive about $1.8 million this year — about 0.45 percent of the portfolio's value.
"Others that have divided it up, they've done it the other way. They have multiple managers, and they haven't done nearly as well. The question is: Why do they have multiple managers?" Bowen said. "Maybe everybody else is on the wrong model."
Patrick Lynch, a Tampa police officer who chairs the nine-member pension board, also defends Bowen.
"It's hard to argue with the results," he said.
Still, experts agree with Mulhern that large pension funds should have more than one manager.
Just as it's best to diversify a portfolio, it's also wise to have several managers in case one of them trips up, said Jeremy Gold, an actuarial consultant with a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
It also prevents fraud.
"Have you heard of Bernie Madoff?" he asks.
Madoff is in prison for masterminding perhaps the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.
After the Madoff scandal, Lynch said, the pension board hired an attorney to lead a workshop on securities litigation.
The board determined it had nothing to fear, partly because Wachovia Bank, not Bowen's firm, is custodian of the fund's stocks.
Bowen's firm has been in charge of the city's police and firefighters pension fund since 1975, with Jay Bowen III taking over for his father in the mid 1980s.
Tampa's police and firefighter fund largely supports Bowen's 11-person firm, making up about 75 percent of its entire portfolio. Another 100 or so clients account for the remaining 25 percent.
In the past 18 months, despite the fund's $500 million loss, the firm received more than $5 million in fees from taxpayers.
Bowen is a supporter of the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank that advocates for keeping government as small as possible and taxes low. In 2007, he appeared on Fox News and railed against the Democratic presidential primary candidates, calling them "anti-prosperity."
His most recent investment summaries to the pension board have called President Barack Obama's economic policies "excessively reckless," advised that the stimulus package will have a net effect of zero at best and warned against "government mandated cost increases" for health care and energy.
"I'm anti-tax in terms of I don't like what happens when you have relatively high tax rates on income and capital," Bowen said. "If you can put a tax system in place that encourages work and risk-taking and capital formation and job creation, that's what leads to prosperity, and that's what makes everybody better off."
In response to Mulhern's questions about investing nearly 65 percent of the city's fund in stocks, Bowen notes the strategy historically has been lucrative. That type of asset allocation is about average for public pension funds throughout Florida.
The approach is in line with conventional wisdom, Gold notes, then adds: "The conventional wisdom is wrong. When you're buying equities, you're just signing on to a roller coaster."
• • •
Across the country, governments are suing their actuaries and investment managers for not telling them the true cost of their benefits and risks of their investments, he said.
In Tampa, where benefits paid to retired police officers and firefighters have increased dramatically in recent years, both the city and current employees will have to increase their contributions to the fund to cover its payouts.
The city's contribution will increase from $6 million in 2009 to $8.4 million in 2010. Public safety workers will have to increase their contributions to the fund from 4.11 percent of pay in 2009 to 6.79 percent in 2010.
This year, public safety workers won't receive one of their benefits — a 13th monthly check -— that's paid out in years when the fund increases by at least 10 percent.
Most likely, the city and the fund's beneficiaries are getting off easy this year.
Contributions are calculated based on the fund's value at the end of each fiscal year, with this year's contributions based on the Oct. 1, 2008, value.
Since then, the fund has lost another $200 million. If it doesn't recover in the next four months, next year's contributions will be even higher.
Ray Wilson, who monitors public pension funds throughout the state, said he expects things to get worse before they get better.
"The public pension plans in Florida have yet to even reach that period of time when their assets and liabilities will officially recognize the meltdown," he said. "Everybody ought to be worried about the magnitude of these changes. And if you look at what's going on around us, everyone is."
Janet Zink can be reached at email@example.com or (813) 226-3401.


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Contained Places
Poquoson is an independent city located in the U.S. state of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 12,150. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Poquoson with surrounding York county for statistical purposes.
Poquoson is located on the Virginia Peninsula, in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area.
Poquoson, which was formerly part of York County, became an incorporated town in 1952 and an independent city in 1975. (In Virginia, municipalities incorporated as independent cities are not part of any county.) However, the ties remain close. Over 30 years after Poquoson became a politically independent entity, some constitutional services such as the courts, sheriff and jail continue to be shared with neighboring York County.
Poquoson is one of the oldest continuously named cities in Virginia. It is also one of the few to retain a name which derived from the Native Americans who inhabited the area before colonization by the English began in the 17th century.
The name of the city is a Native American word which roughly translates to "great marsh." The term pocosin, with its varied spellings, was a term used by the area's inhabitants to describe a low, marshy, woody place covered by water in the winter, but dry in the summer. These Native Americans were Algonquians, a tribal group affiliated through the Powhatan Confederacy, and were hostile to the early settlers. A petition to have the name of the parish and river changed was an attempt to rid the language of all vestiges of Indian terms. However, "poquoson" has survived through the centuries and has become a proper noun used to designate the present city.
The current city is a remnant of a larger area known from the first days of its settlement in the early 17th century by English colonists as the New Poquoson Parish of the Church of England. In the colonial times before separation of church and state and freedom of religion were established in Virginia and the United States, the church parish boundaries and governmental ones were often the same. In addition to the current city of Poquoson, New Poquoson Parish originally included the areas in York County known today as Poquoson, Tabb, Grafton, Dare and Seaford. This land was opened for settlement in the year 1628 and was occupied by people from the English settlement of the Virginia Colony established at Kecoughtan in 1610 by Sir Thomas Gates which eventually became part of the current City of Hampton. The first reference to Poquoson is believed to be in Colonial records of a land grant of 500 acres in New Poquoson to Christopher Calthorpe in 1631 by a court in what became the former Elizabeth City County.
In 1634, the eight original shires of Virginia were created. Poquoson was located in Charles River Shire. The name was changed to York County in 1642-43. The York River was known earlier as the Charles River, and its name was also changed about the same time.
Poquoson grew as a close-knit rural community of York County for the next 300 years. During the American Revolutionary War, independence was won at nearby Yorktown, a major tourist attraction of the Historic Triangle of Colonial Virginia.
Poquoson became an incorporated town in 1952, as the citizens of the community did not want their children to be bussed to York High School due to distance. When the town was incorporated, Poquoson's small predominately African American community known as Cary's Chapel was given the choice to become a part of Poquoson or remain with York County. The Cary's Chapel community chose to remain just outside the town limits in York County. The town became an independent city in 1975 in order to maintain this status. The change from incorporated town to independent city status also effectively protected Poquoson from potential annexation suits by the adjacent City of Hampton.
The changes to incorporated town and independent city were part of a wave of municipal changes in southeastern Virginia in the third quarter of the 20th century. Although Poquoson is one of the smaller of 10 independent cities extant in the Hampton Roads region in the 21st century, it is not unique in the area as a city having large areas of undeveloped and protected wetlands.
Research Tips


text: Just recently upgraded from Parallels 5 to 6 and noticed the upgrade of Parallels Tools to 6.0.11990 somehow keeps Silverlight Out of Browser applications from running in a Windows 7 VM. The VM is running IE7, but is running an installed Silverlight Out of Browser application. This SL OOB application worked successfully in the same VM prior to upgrading to Parallels Tools 6. When the app loads, the Silverlight Out of Browser app window frame shows up, but the page says "Navigation to the webpage was canceled". Please see attached screen shot. Uninstalling Parallels Tools 6 does not resolve the issue.


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Read Gary Krakow's review of SanDisk's 32GB, 1.8-inch solid-state drive (SSD)Read More >
Carl Sagan is a personal hero of mine. Ten years ago today this gifted communicator died of cancer. And so today the community of bloggers that loved and admired Carl Sagan is having a spontaneous blogathon in his memory. You might ask, what does Carl Sagan have to do with being a good DBA? Believe it or not, a lot. Yes, really.Read More >
Anyone interested in the architecture of highly scalable and stable infrastructure will enjoy this Presentation by Randy Shoup and Dan Pritchett of Ebay on how they, in their words, "strike a balance between site stability, feature velocity, performance, and cost."Read More >
Martin Wisniewski, Harish Ramchandani and I are headed to GITEX 2006 in Dubai tomorrow. If you haven't heard of this trade show, let me tell you it's huge. It's measured at one of the world's top three IT trade shows by attendance, which last year was about 80,000 people!Read More >
This video ran before Dell's keynote at Openworld. I'm just not sure what more to say; you've just got to see it for yourself.Read More >
It's not academic research about us, The Pythian Group, but rather about our inspiration for our company's name, the actual young woman who was the Pythian priestess, the Oracle of ancient Greece who would give her pronouncements at Delphi.Read More >
I just read this excellent review by Matt Asay of an excellent interview by Guy Kawasaki (of garage.com and apple fame) of MySQL CEO Marten Mickos.Read More >
I've been invited by new Pythian partner GridApp to co-host a webinar with their eminent chief scientist, Matt Zito. If you don't know about GridApp, you certainly should. They offer a rapid-provisioning and configuration management system called Clarity that substantially streamlines repetitive database management chores while simultaneously providing visibility into inventory and configuration changes.Read More >
Did anyone else notice this interesting e-week article titled The Downside of Certification? It immediately reminded me of an article written by Pythian team lead and datawarehousing architect Rob Hamel titled "Get Down with OCP: Evaluating DBA Job Applicants in an OCP World". What Rob noticed in 2004 was that certification can mask a certain type of incompetence from a casual technical evaluation process.Read More >
Tip of the hat to Eddie Awad who does some noticing and some digging to confirm that lnnvl(), a function that provides functionality similar to ANSI "Is Not True" and can be used to return boolean TRUE whenever the predicate to the function is either NULL or FALSE is now supported in 10GR2.Read More >


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COMMENTARY Today's move by the world's major central banks is supposed to make it easier for European banks to borrow dollars. This is supposed to calm investors and depositors so they don't start a bank run and collapse the EU financial system. This is the second time in two-and-a-half months they've tried this desperate move and it already looks to be failing.
The action by U.S. Federal Reserve, Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank makes it easier for European banks holding dollar-denominated securities or making dollar loans to get U.S. currency. In exchange for all those dollars, the other banks will get euros. Nobody else wants them, that's for sure.
The move was taken because there is no liquidity within the EU banking system.
Practically no one is buying bonds from any EU nation except Germany. This has been going on for awhile. I've been tracking bonds from Italy, Greece and Portugal for several weeks and there is very little volume. So while the press has been reporting that Portuguese two-year bonds are trading for more than 18 percent, they really aren't. If no one is buying the bonds then the yield could be infinity for all we know. The market is supposed to tell us that information and there is no market. That's the real information.
Italy actually managed to have a "successful" bond auction today. It was successful as long as you don't look at who bought them or at what price. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
The auction of $10 billion in bonds over a range of maturities saw Italy paying yields of 7.89% on three-year bonds and 7.56% on 10-year paper. Despite the record yields, the auction attracted enough demand--driven mainly by domestic buyers, analysts said--to cover the amount on offer.
Market soars on central bank action
Will the Fed's move hurt U.S. taxpayers?
"Domestic buyers." It has gotten so bad that governments in at-risk nations are leaning hard on their nations' banks to either buy the bonds or at least stop selling them. Governments are even asking ordinary citizens to buy the bonds. Haven't they been hit hard enough?
People are so desperate to find a safe place to stash their cash that German one year bonds are currently trading in the negative. In English that means investors are paying the German government to hold their money for them.
The central banks tried this very same action on Sept. 21st. If it had worked then they wouldn't be doing it again today. The reason it isn't working is because it doesn't fix the fundamental problems of European government debt that are the cause of the problems. Until that is addressed investors - quite reasonably - won't be willing to commit money.
Some news outlets are currently reporting that today's stock market surge shows investors think this idea will work. Go check the volume of trades being made. It is very low. This is a case of making a wave in a very shallow pond.


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Former Irbid [2]deputy Abdul Nasser Bani Hani was killed on Sunday night during a tribal clash in the northern governorate's district of Al Barha, according to a security source quoted in the Jordan Times [3].
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said that members belonging to Bani Hani [4] tribe, a major constituent of Irbid's population, engaged in a clash on Sunday night during which guns and metal devices were used.
The former deputy was there, trying to separate the angry young men and to ease off the tension, the security source said, adding that Bani Hani was shot by a pump-action gun in the abdomen.
"Bani Hani [in his early 50s] was taken immediately to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival," the source said.
The perpetrator suspected of shooting at Bani Hani has been arrested, the source said.
The source also said that Bani Hani's brother was injured during the clash and is being treated now at Princess Basma Hospital [5] in Irbid, some 90 kilometers north of the capital, describing him to be "in a very critical condition."
Talking to The Jordan Times from Al Barha District, the source described the security situation there as "calm and under control", with police and gendarmerie forces patrolling the densely populated neighborhood.
Last week, a group of unknown assailants set fire to the car of Deputy Qassem Bani Hani (Irbid, First District).
Abdul Nasser Bani Hani, used to be known more in Irbid and Parliament as "Abu Jamal", served in the 16th Parliament [6]as representative of Irbid's First District.
[1] http://www.syndigate.info
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irbid
[3] http://jordantimes.com/former-irbid-mp-shot-to-death-by-tribe-members
[4] http://www.banihani.net/
[5] http://jo.jeeran.com/en/p/princess-basma-hospital-2-irbid/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Jordan
[7] http://www.jordantimes.com


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But Issue is Low Priority
PRINCETON, NJ -- With the defeat this week of the latest attempt to pass campaign finance reform legislation in the U.S. Senate, a new Gallup poll shows that most Americans probably don't care a great deal about the subject, and that the matter is unlikely to emerge as a major issue in the 2000 presidential election. The poll did not ask specifically about the campaign finance measure jointly sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona (a candidate for his party's presidential nomination in the 2000 election), and Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin -- a bill which would have banned unlimited and unregulated donations to political parties, so-called "soft money" contributions. The poll instead focused generally on campaign finance and found that while almost two-thirds of Americans feel that the way federal campaigns are financed needs at least major changes, less than four in ten say that Congress should make the issue a high priority.
Conducted October 8-10, the poll shows that just 39% of Americans say that campaign finance should be treated as either a top or high priority matter compared with other issues before the Congress -- such as tax cuts, gun control and Social Security. Sixty percent say it should be a low priority or not a priority at all.
Despite this relatively low priority, 20% say the financing of federal campaigns needs a complete overhaul, and another 44% say that major changes are needed. The total of 64% who feel that campaign financing needs fixing is higher than the 57% and 58% who expressed the same opinion about Medicare and Social Security in a June 1999, Gallup poll, and is almost as high as the 68% who expressed that opinion about the HMO system in a July 1999, poll. In January 1997, right after the last presidential election, at a time when questions were raised about the sources of Democratic campaign funds, an even larger percentage of Americans -- 70% -- indicated that the way campaigns are financed needed at least major changes.
Negligible Partisan Differences on Campaign Finance
Although the Republicans and Democrats in the Congress appear to be greatly opposed in their approaches to changing the way federal campaigns are financed, the rank and file party identifiers show few differences on the more general question of whether campaign finance reform is needed. Among Republicans, 38% say the issue should be of high priority, compared with 41% of Democrats. When asked how much change is necessary, 63% of the self-identified members of each party say at least major changes are needed.
Older Americans More Concerned than Younger Americans
About Finance Reform
Overall, older Americans appear more concerned about campaign finance reform than younger Americans, both in the priority the issue should receive and how extensively the system needs to be changed. While only 32% of Americans under the age of 30, for example, say that campaign finance should be a high priority for the Congress, that proportion rises to 35% among those in the 30-49 age group, to 43% among those in the 50-64 age group, and to a clear majority -- 53% -- among those 65 and older.
Older Americans are also more likely to want greater changes in the campaign finance system, although the differences are primarily between Americans under 30 and those 30 and older. In the latter group, all agree -- by about 65% to 71% -- that major changes are needed, while only 48% of the youngest group feel that way.
Survey Methods
The results reported here are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 976 adults, 18 years and older, conducted October 8-10, 1999. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
As you may know, Congress will be considering several issues this fall, including tax cuts, Social Security, gun control and campaign finance. In terms of all these issues and others that Congress will be considering, do you think campaign finance should be the TOP priority, a HIGH priority, a LOW priority, or should it not be a priority at all?
|Top priority
|High priority
|Low priority
|Not a priority at all
|No opinion
In general, which of the following statements best represents what you feel about the way federal campaigns are financed -- [ROTATE 1-4/4-1: 1) It needs to be completely overhauled, 2) It needs major changes, 3) It needs minor changes, (or) 4) It is basically fine the way it is]?
|Jan 30-Feb 2, 1997
|Oct 8-10, 1999
|Completely overhauled
|Major changes
|Minor changes
|Fine as is
|No opinion


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This property has been removed by the agent. It may be sold or temporarily removed from the market
2 bedroom apartment for saleJenner Court, Stavordale Road, Weymouth, DT4 0AF
Offers in Excess of £90,000
Property Description
Key features
- Residents' lounge with conservatory
- Communal Laundry
- Lift to all floors in Phase I and Phase II
- Parking
- Guest Suites
- House Manager
- Gardens
Full description
Jenner Court is conveniently located for Weymouth town centre with its beaches and marina and comprises of 60 properties arranged over 3 / 4 floors each served by lift. The Visiting House Manager can be contacted from within each property in the case of an emergency. Each property comprises an entrance hall, lounge, kitchen, one or two bedrooms and bathroom. It is a condition of purchase that residents be over the age of 55 years.
c. 462 ft'sq (43m2) A FIRST FLOOR TWO BEDROOM RETIREMENT APARTMENT
ACCOMMODATION fully carpeted throughout
Entrance door with spy hole
Door entry system. Ceiling light. Smoke detector. Door to cupboard housing electric immersion heater and shelving. Further storage cupboard with fuse boxes. Ceiling light and power point. Door to
Double glazed window with curtains and curtain rail. TV aerial point. Telephone point. Power points. Storage heater. Emergency pull cord. Wall lights.
Tiled and fitted with a range of wall and base units with roll top work surfaces. Spaces for electric cooker and refrigerator/ freezer. Single stainless steel sink unit with single drainer. Power points. Emergency pull cord.
Double glazed window with curtains and curtain rail. TV point. Power points. Storage heater. Wall lights, emergency pull cord.
Double glazed window with blinds and curtain rail. Storage heater. Wall lights, emergency pull cord.
Fully tiled and fitted with shower cubicle with hand grip. Low level WC, pedestal wash hand basin. Emergency pull cord. Strip light with shaver socket. Extractor fan. Wall mounted electric heater.
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) graphs
Listing History
Map & Street View
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Market Info
Disclaimer - Property reference 40078. The information displayed about this property comprises a property advertisement. Rightmove.co.uk makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the advertisement or any linked or associated information, and Rightmove has no control over the content. This property advertisement does not constitute property particulars. The information is provided and maintained by Retirement Homesearch, New Milton. Please contact the selling agent or developer directly to obtain any information which may be available under the terms of The Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007 or the Home Report if in relation to a residential property in Scotland.
Map data ©OpenStreetMap contributors.


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12 traditions of Christmas explained
For a significant number of New Zealanders, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. For others, the holiday has lost its religious meaning, and is all about visiting family and friends and exchanging gifts.
But it has remained a festival associated with vaguely superstitious customs, relics of long ago, maintained out of respect, or perhaps jest.
How did these traditions come about? Why does Christmas involve faux trees invented in a toilet brush factory, and kisses underneath "poo-sticks"? Did you know the large red stripe on a candy cane represents the blood of Christ?
Here is your chance to be the one who knows a disturbing amount about Christmas ...
If you're thinking of luring a lover beneath a cutting of mistletoe for a lucky Christmas smooch, think again. Mistletoe comes from two Anglo Saxon words, "mistel", meaning dung, and "tan", meaning twig or stick. Full translation, therefore - "poo on a stick". Not all that romantic.
Celtic legend says mistletoe can bring good luck, heal wounds, increase fertility and ward off evil spirits.
In ancient midwinter festivals, people draped holly, ivy and evergreen boughs around their houses, believing it would bring back the sun. Mistletoe was particularly special because of its clusters of little orb-like berries.
In fact, mistletoe leaves are toxic, and eating the berries is less likely to induce love than a laxative effect.
The tradition of kissing underneath mistletoe began in the Victorian era and was once believed to lead to marriage and promote fertility.
Native Americans used the muscle-contracting medicinal properties of the plant to induce abortions instead.
All considered, the mistletoe pucker-up is a tradition best avoided.
Does anybody actually like fruitcake? The sloppy marzipan, gritty currents and indiscernible bitter bits.
Television host Johnny Carson famously joked: "The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other."
Recipes date to the 16th century, when it was discovered fruit could be preserved by soaking it in large solutions of sugar. Since sugar was cheap, it was an effective and affordable way for the colonies to ensure their native plums and cherries would make the journey to Europe without spoiling.
By the 19th Century, people were combining all sorts of candied fruits - pineapples, plums, dates, pears, cherries, orange peels and cheap nuts - into a cake-like form.
The origin of the fireside footwear owes more to myth than fact. We know, thanks to Twas the Night Before Christmas, that hanging stockings by the chimney dates back at least to the poem's 1823 publication.
According to legend, the original Saint Nicholas, who travelled around bringing gifts and cheer, came upon a small village one year and heard of a family in need. An impoverished widower could not afford to provide a dowry for his three daughters. Saint Nick knew the man was too proud to accept money, so he simply dropped some gold coins down the chimney, which landed in the daughters' stockings, hanging by the fireplace to dry.
From this, it is said the modern tradition was born.
The early history of Christmas remains uncertain. We know that Christmas has been celebrated in either December or January since about 350 years after Christ was born.
Midwinter celebrations fitted in with ancient winter festivals in North Africa and Europe, when ceremonies were held to bring luck for the upcoming harvest season. Bonfires and candles were lit to coax back the sun.
Before Christ was born, December 25 was known as the birthday of the Persian god, Mithra, so it is possible the two festivals were combined.
Christmas made good use of the idea that the birthday of the Saviour had replaced the birthday of the sun.
The 12 days of Christmas are from Christmas night – December 25 – to the morning of January 6, the Epiphany, or Three Kings Day. According to the Bible on this day the three wise men came to give gifts to baby Jesus.
In the Western Church, the Twelfth Day marks the end of the Christmas season, and the beginning of the Epiphany season, when merriment would cease.
The 12 days were first mentioned by one of the Fathers of the Early Eastern Orthodox Church, in the 300s, as the Festal Tide.
In 567 the Council of Tours confirmed the Twelve Days, from Christmas to Epiphany, a festal of the church, and it was ordained to be a time of peace and concord among Christian men, when all strife must cease.
Undoubtedly the most popular symbol of Christmas in the Western world, but did you know artificial trees were invented in a toilet-brush factory?
An evergreen tree such as a spruce, fir or pine symbolises eternal life, and its Christmas connections date back to the Middle Ages.
Roman Catholic countries celebrated the Feast Day of Adam and Eve on December 24. Germans would host a procession carrying "paradise trees" with apples representing the forbidden fruit. It was German evangelist Martin Luther who apparently first decorated a fir tree in 1510.
The tradition was introduced to England during the Victorian era about 1840, after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert (a German) who introduced the tradition of Christmas trees into their palaces.
In the 1930s Addis Company used spare machines in its toilet-brush factory to manufacture artificial trees.
Also known as Saint Nicholas, or Kris Kringle, or Father Christmas, Santa Claus has been crafted by folklore (and commerce) into a toy distributor and assessor of child behaviour, but he is actually based on a real person.
Saint Nicholas was born around the year 270 in Turkey. He dedicated his life to serving God, giving all he had to the poor. He became the bishop of a town called Myra, and was known for his generosity and love for children.
Stories tell of how he did many kind deeds in secret, expecting nothing in return. Within a century of his death he was celebrated as the patron saint of children and the anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, Saint Nicholas Day, December 6.
In his satiric 1809 book A History of New York, Washington Irving created the jolly characterisation of Santa Claus as a portly, bearded man who smokes a pipe. Irving's story also included the first mention of Santa sliding down a chimney.
Drinks giant Coca-Cola is often said to have been behind the colouring of Santa; the image of his red suit, illustrated by artist Haddon Sundblom, was widely circulated in 1931 as part of an advertising campaign, and has since become mainstream. Others argue his red colouring pre-dated the fizzy pop link.
Clement Moore's 1822 poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas, now more commonly referred to as "Twas the Night Before Christmas", introduced and popularised many of Santa's defining characteristics – notably, that he drove a sleigh guided by "eight tiny reindeer" identified by name:
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN! On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
The red-nosed Rudolph, everybody's favourite reindeer, came along more than a century after his eight Christmas counterparts.
The original 1939 book "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written when Chicago-based Montgomery Ward department store asked one of its copywriters, 34-year-old Robert L. May, to create a Christmas story shoppers.
The retail store had been buying and giving away colouring book at Christmas Time every year, but decided creating its own book would cut costs. In the first year of publication, 2.4 million copies of Rudolph's story were distributed.
It is said that the story is reminiscent of May's own childhood experiences of being bullied for being frail and scrawny.
May's brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks, decided to adapt the story of Rudolph into song. Marks' musical version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was recorded by Gene Autry in 1949. It went on to become the second biggest-selling Christmas song of all time, after Bing Crosby's "White Christmas".
Another German tradition. Invented in the 17th century, they made their way to America in the mid-1800s.
The holiday treat was made to symbolise the Christian roots of Christmas – the white stripes standing for the purity of Jesus Christ, the three red stripes standing for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the larger red stripe representing the blood Jesus Christ shed for our sins.
Naturally, the shape symbolises a shepherd's crook. The peppermint flavour has been said to signify the hyssop plant that was used for purifying in the Bible.
Tom Smith, a London sweet shop owner, is said to have invented the Christmas cracker. In 1847, after spotting French bon bons, or sweets, wrapped in paper with a twist at each end, he sold similar sweets with a "love motto" inside.
He soon improved his product by adding a trinket – such as jewellery and miniature dolls – and put them up for sale in time for Christmas. It could be said that this was the birth of the original cracker, although at this point it still lacked the bang we associate with Christmas crackers today.
Two years later, supposedly inspired after he kicked a burning log which sparked and crackled, Smith created what he called "Bangs of Expectation".
The crackers became known as "Cosaques" because the noise they made when opened reminded people of the cracking of the Cossack's whips as they rode through Paris during the Franco-Prussian wars.
By 1900, Smiths' factory was producing some 13 million crackers a year.
Although Kiwis seem to prefer salmon and ham, turkey is widely considered the traditional dish of Christmas.
The turkey was introduced into Europe from the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries and, because it was inexpensive and quick to fatten, it soon rose in popularity as a Christmas feast food.
Before turkey took over, the popular Christmas dishes were goose and cockerel or, in wealthy households, peacock and swan.


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The event has been reduced to 54 holes for the first time in 2013 and prize-money reduced significantly to $A250,000 but with the opening event of the 2013 LPGA Tour season, the Australian Women's Open, being held just two weeks later in Canberra, several leading players will be in Australia to prepare for their season.
The Rolex Ranked World No. 8, Shin, is a great addition to the high calibre field that has been assembled for the 24th staging of the event. The South Korean superstar will be joined by the likes of seven-time Masters champion, Karrie Webb, defending champion Christel Boeljon, World No. 7 and compatriot So Yeon Ryu and 2012 Ladies European Tour Order of Merit winner Spaniard Carlota Ciganda.
Defending ISPS Handa Women's Australian Open champion Jessica Korda and recently turned professional American Cheyenne Woods, who is the niece of Tiger Woods, will also be ones for Shin to watch out for.
Shin is coming off another fantastic year on the LPGA where she posted two victories. The first came at the Kingsmill Championship when she defeated Paula Creamer in a nine-hole, two-day playoff. She then went on to win the RICOH Women's British Open, her second major, with the tournament's largest margin of victory (9 shots).
The diminutive Shin played 18 events, made all 18 cuts and posted eight top 10 finishes, including the two wins. She finished the year seventh on the LPGA Money List with US$1,234,597.
Shin has recorded three top 10 finishes at the Ladies Masters, including a runner-up finish to Webb in 2007.
Ryu has been remarkably consistent as she played her way up the Rolex World Rankings last year. She has finished inside the top ten in 11 of her last 12 starts, two of those victories in Korea and the US. The 2011 US Women's Open Champion is sure to give another good account of herself.


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Cindy Crawford Still Putting The Rest Of These Bitches To Shame
She looks good, huh? Here's some pics of Cindy Crawford, 41, frolicking on the beach in Hawaii with her husband, nightclub owner Rande Gerber. Cindy has two kids, Kaya and Presley and still looks like a hot piece. Get it, Cindy! Cindy's proud of her post-childbirth body.
"When I was 23, other women could look at me and say 'Well, she's never had kids'. But now I have and I know what it's like to have to lose baby weight.
"I'm actually happier with my body now than I was back then, because the body I have now is the body I've worked for."
Cindy, who came under fire earlier this year for letting her four year old daughter appear in a bikini in some catalog photographs, denies she has ever used Botox or surgey in preserving her looks. This is contrary to what French magazine "Gala" reported last year when it ran an alleged quote from Cindy saying she owes the quality of her skin to her cosmetic surgeon. Cindy's rep denies she ever said that and claims Cindy was hurt by the revelations. I wouldn't be too worried? Who reads "Gala"? Seriously, this is America – our typical citizen doesn't go out of his way to indulge in all things French unless "fries" comes after it.
Photos: PacificCoastNews.com
More photos of Cindy Crawford in a bikini after the jump.
Photos: PacificCoastNews.com


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Rising Yields Could Kill the Recovery
Three weeks ago, I wrote that I was sticking to my call for a U.S. recession, and that the risk of deflation outweighed that of inflation. Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute also reiterated the recession call. I can understand the heat he's under, and the need to respond.
So, in response to many queries following the rout in U.S. Treasuries, I thought I'd address this situation again....649 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.
There's no substitute for a trading floor to get great ideas, so Jim Cramer created a better one at Real Money and blogs there exclusively. We then added legendary hedge fund manager, Doug Kass, with his exclusive Daily Diary and best investing ideas. Staffed with more than 4 dozen investing pros, money managers, journalists and analysts, Real Money Pro gives you a flood of opinions, analysis and actionable trading advice found nowhere else, and allows you to interact directly with each expert.
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Environmental scientists use the presence or absence of certain organisms to measure the health of an ecosystem. They're called "indicator species." So when you're looking for one of them across a large region, it makes sense that more people would make the search go faster and be more thorough.
Dan Duran, assistant professor in
"I've gone to places where the habitat looks perfect--the right kind of streamside area, the mud looks right--and they're not there," said Duran. "And the site is really close to major interstates where probably the stuff that runs off that road every single day, is going to have an impact on them. So if that's true, that these various chemicals are doing this to that beetle, the question is, what else is happening too? So it's your mine canary. It's your thing that says, oh, there's a problem before other things say that."
Duran's goals are to chart where Elaphrus is found in the waterways of the Philadelphia region, and to track changes to their range over time. But ours is a watery habitat, so how will it play out - one researcher vs. how many hundreds of streams?
The answer, of course, is citizen scientists.
"Because I can't be everywhere," he admits. "I would love to have 50 sites within a county or two of Philadelphia. And all these people who are out there who are interested in nature could go and find them."
It's a pleasant task he's suggesting. In their native environment, Elaphrus blends into the surroundings very well, so seekers need to spend a little quiet time in the great outdoors. "One of my friends calls it Zen collecting," Duran explains. "You just sit still for a minute. A few times I've found them, I was kind of tired, I sat down to rest and all of a sudden, I noticed the ground moving, and I saw them. You slow yourself down a little bit, and then they're there."


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William Breathes had heard a lot of good things about Colorado Alternative Medicine, and the shop measured up to his high expectations, which you can read about in his latest review. And there are dozens more options available in our medical-marijuana directory.
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