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KBC Vehicle Insurance for LGVs provides you with comprehensive cover when you are on the road. You build your own package: besides the compulsory third-party liability insurance, you can add various forms of cover ranging from assistance insurance to insurance for goods in transit.
Under this policy, you can take out the following forms of cover:
- Compulsory Third-Party Liability Insurance
- Legal Assistance Insurance
- Fully Comprehensive Insurance
- Partial Comprehensive Insurance
- KBC-VAB Assistance
- Driver Accident Insurance
- Goods in Transit Insurance
Compulsory Third-Party Liability Insurance
What is it?
If you have an LGV, you are required by law to take out third-party liability insurance. This insurance will cover damage you cause to others with your car, but not the damage to your own car. The third-party liability insurance is valid in Belgium and all countries not crossed out on your international motor vehicle insurance certificate (the 'green card' that you must have in your vehicle at all times).
You can also take out this insurance for your trailer.
What is insured?
- Material damage or bodily injury you cause to others with your LGV;
- Compensation for injuries sustained by pedestrians, cyclists or passengers in traffic accidents in which your vehicle is involved, even if you are not liable.
Most important exclusions
- Damage to your own vehicle;
- Damage you cause intentionally;
- Bodily injuries sustained by the driver.
Legal Assistance Insurance
What is it?
If a discussion arises concerning your LGV, this insurance provides for legal assistance and support. Specifically, this means informing you of your rights, collecting information including documentary evidence and witness statements, ordering the necessary investigations, and negotiating with the other party. You can also take out this insurance for your trailer.
What is insured?
- Assistance in recovering your loss from the other party;
- Legal assistance in contractual disputes, for instance involving the purchase or repair of your car;
- Legal assistance in administrative disputes with the government, for instance concerning the registration of your vehicle or the revocation of your driving licence;
- Legal assistance from a lawyer if you are required to appear before the court in connection with a traffic offence.
Most important exclusions
Disputes related to:
- the transport of persons or goods for remuneration carried out by you
- the hiring or renting of your vehicle, instalment purchase, hire purchase and other similar financing;
- deliberate violations.
Comprehensive Insurance
What is it?
Insurance that provides extensive protection. It is a type of property damage insurance that covers all manner of loss and damage, such as damage to and theft of your vehicle. You can also take out this insurance for your trailer.
What is insured?
- Damage caused by an accident;
- Vandalism;
- Damage caused by natural disasters, including storms, hail, flooding, etc.;
- Martens gnawing at pipes, cables or insulation in the engine bay;
- Break-ins, theft and attempted theft;
- Glass breakage.
Most important exclusions
- Malicious damage;
- Damage caused by wear and tear or lack of maintenance;
- Facilitation of theft by leaving your insured vehicle unlocked and unattended on a public road or in another location accessible to the public.
Partial Comprehensive Insurance
What is it?
This is a form of property damage insurance that covers damage to your vehicle and provides you with a bit more security for an older car. Whilst fully comprehensive insurance is not worthwhile for an older car, you still want to be properly insured. The major difference when compared to fully comprehensive insurance is that partial comprehensive insurance does not cover damage caused by a collision or another traffic accident.
What is insured?
- Damage caused by fire, explosion or fire-extinguishing operations;
- Damage caused by theft;
- Damage caused by natural disasters, storms, lightning strikes, hail or flooding;
- Damage caused by a collision with wild or stray animals;
- Broken or cracked car windows or sunroofs;
- Medical expenses if you are injured in a car-jacking or home-jacking.
Most important exclusions
- Damage to your vehicle caused by a traffic accident;
- Damage resulting from wear and tear or an obvious lack of maintenance
- Facilitation of a break-in by leaving the vehicle unlocked;
- Malicious damage.
KBC-VAB Assistance
What is it?
Assistance in the event of an accident or breakdown. Depending on the options chosen, this can vary from assistance in the event of an accident or provision of a replacement vehicle.
Available cover
- Personal assistance in the event that family members who live with you suffer health issues while travelling. In addition, hospitalisation, repatriation, a forced extended stay, medical expenses, etc.;
- Vehicle assistance;
- VAB membership;
- Replacement vehicle, including specially equipped vehicles.
Most important exclusions
- Damage you have caused maliciously;
- Repairs (only the towing costs, the costs of shipping replacement parts, etc.).
Driver Accident Insurance
What is it?
Insurance for bodily injuries you could sustain in an accident as an LGV driver.
What is insured?
- Reimbursement of expenses for medical treatment required as a result of the accident;
- Extensive compensation in the event of permanent injuries;
- Compensation for your surviving relatives if you die as a result of the accident.
Most important exclusions
- Accidents caused maliciously;
- Accidents caused whilst in a state of alcohol intoxication with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of more than 1.5 or in a state of drunkenness.
Goods in Transit Insurance
What is it?
This is a form of property damage insurance that covers the equipment and merchandise stored in your LGV against damage or theft while you are transporting it. This only applies for transport for own account.
What is insured?
- Equipment and merchandise in the event of a traffic accident;
- Loading or unloading;
- Fire, explosion or fire-extinguishing operations;
- Vandalism;
- Forces of nature;
- Theft.
Most important exclusions
- The vehicle itself;
- Damage caused by overloading or the poor condition of the vehicle;
- Theft from the passenger compartment;
- Certain goods, such as valuables, jewellery and animals.
Additional information: Trailer Insurance
There various forms of cover available for your trailer:
- An attached trailer is always covered by the third-party liability insurance for an LGV.
- For detached trailers with a GVM exceeding 500kg, compulsory third-party liability insurance needs to be taken out.
- You can also take out legal assistance insurance for your trailer.
More things you need to know
KBC Vehicle Insurance for LGVs may include one or more of the following forms of cover:
- Compulsory Third-Party Liability Insurance
- Legal Assistance Insurance
- Fully Comprehensive Insurance
- Partial Comprehensive Insurance
- KBC-VAB Assistance
- Accident Insurance
- Goods in Transit Insurance
This product is governed by the laws of Belgium.
The insurance in this policy applies for a term of one year, and will be tacitly renewed unless it is cancelled no later than three months before the principal renewal date.
Your intermediary is your first point of contact for any complaints you may have. If no agreement can be reached, you can contact KBC Complaints Management by post at Brusselsesteenweg 100, 3000 Leuven, firstname.lastname@example.com, tel. 0800 62 084 (freephone number) or 078 152045 (paid number), or by fax on 016 863038. If you cannot find a suitable solution, you can contact the Insurance Ombudsman – which serves the whole industry – by post at de Meeûssquare 35, 1000 Brussels, by e-mail at email@example.com, or through its website at www.ombudsman.as. However, you always retain the right to initiate legal proceedings.
Contact your KBC insurance intermediary to request a quotation for KBC Vehicle Insurance for LGVs.
For a concise description of the cover and the most important exclusions under the various forms of cover under this insurance, and also other information, please refer to the product fact sheet
Related products
Ten-year liability insurance
Professional Liability Insurance
Pension Agreement for the Self-employed (POZ)
- The tax-efficient way to build up a supplementary pension
- Guaranteed return
- Combine with a VAPZ


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- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Can a pay raise fix agriculture industry's labor crisis? Yes and no
Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury News, July 30, 2017
"As migration drops, it becomes more important to keep the best workers around, so farmers are willing to do that," said Jeffrey M. Perloff, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Meanwhile, companies that pay premium wages just pull workers from elsewhere, said UC Davis agricultural economist Philip Martin. "They tend to cream off the best workers….It's like when everybody wanted to work for IBM." Higher wages and rising labor costs are prompting farmers to pursue four strategies, which Martin calls "stretch, substitute, supplement and satisfy."
New orchard systems advisor returns home
David Eddy, Growing Produce, July 29, 2017
Luke Milliron, the new orchard systems advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties, knows the lay of the land. He grew up in nearly Chico and completed his bachelor's degree at Chico State. Milliron also earned a master's degree at UC Davis in the midst of the drought, a good time to study the measurement of almond tree water stress during dormancy.
Tehama County UC Cooperative Extension gets new director
Julie Zeeb, Red Bluff Daily News, July 26, 2017
Josh Davy may be new to the Tehama County UC Cooperative Extension Director position, assuming it July 1 following the retirement of Rick Buchner, but he is not new to Tehama County. Davy joined UCCE as a research tech in 2004. He returned to school while working and graduated with a master's degree in animal biology from UC Davis. Davy was named a UCCE advisor in 2009.
Holy Guacamole: How the Hass Avocado Conquered the World
Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian, July 28, 2017
Looking for a sign of the apocalypse? Consider this: Our global obsession with guacamole and avocado toast has helped spawn record avocado prices, financial woes for millennials and even an uptick in avocado-related crime. Recently, three men were busted for selling off more than $300,000 worth of Hass avocados. They'd stolen the produce from the California agriculture firm that employed them, then passed them off at discount prices that seemed—and were—too good to be true. "Avocados are very subject to theft," says Mary Lu Arpaia, a horticulturist and expert avocado breeder at the University of California at Riverside. "If you're not very honest, it's sometimes easy picking." Call it Grand Theft Avo.
Wildfire Season Is Scorching the West
Andrea Thompson, Climate Central, July 28, 2017
Now bouts of hot, dry weather are coming earlier and earlier, setting the stage for prime fire conditions. Southern California already has a nearly year-round fire season, Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley, said. With those hot periods likely coming earlier and earlier in spring and summer as global temperatures continue to rise, "you're going to have a longer period where fire can ignite and move," Stephens said.
Calif. continues citrus pest program with widespread support
Tim Hearden, Capital Press, July 28, 2017
For its part, the UC has hired and trained four "scouts" to carefully roam citrus orchards looking for signs of the psyllid. The scouts examine newly emerging leaves and tap branches to bat pests onto a clipboard. The scouting project aims to avoid a repeat of what happened in Florida, where the pest was left unchecked when it first invaded citrus growing regions and swept through the state, UC entomology specialist Beth Grafton-Cardwell said.
Master Gardener: Darker areas on citrus leaves could signal iron deficiency
Ottillia "Toots" Bier, Press Enterprise, July 25, 2017
Q. The newest leaves of my citrus trees have dark green areas around the veins but the rest of the leaf is light green. What is wrong?
A. The leaf condition you describe is called interveinal chlorosis and is most commonly caused by a deficiency of iron in the plant. Ottillia "Toots" Bier has been a UC Cooperative Extension master gardener since 1980.
California winemakers no longer fight drought – now it's mildew
Lynn Alley, Wine Spectator, July 24, 2017
After years of drought, California vintners are enjoying wetter conditions this year. But that means vineyards are being plagued with a new problem: mildew. "If you don't find mildew in your vineyards, you haven't looked hard enough," said Glenn McGourty, a UCCE viticulture for Mendocino County. Mark Battany, UCCE viticulture advisor for San Luis Obispo and northern Santa Barbara counties, says that cooler coastal areas in those counties have been ripe for powdery mildew this year. "We've also seen some limited downy mildew, a European import, in a few locations this season," he said. "Quite rare for California."
Worsening labor shortage poses financial challenge to East Contra Costa County farmers — and consumers
Rowena Coetsee, East Bay Times, July 24, 2017
Growers were facing smaller profit margins following the elimination of tariffs on produce imported from Mexico, but the real trouble began when the federal government began cracking down on illegal immigration in the 1990s. East Bay growers also are competing for workers with their counterparts in the Central Valley, where there's a shortage as well, said Janet Caprile, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Contra Costa County.
Aggressive, stinging colonies of wasps out early this year in Sacramento County
Bill Lindelof, Sacramento Bee, July 24, 2017
In on Sacramento County five-acre property, officials treated 90 yellow jacket nests. The reporter used UC ANR resources to round out the story, noting that yellow jackets usually sting at nesting sites and when someone tries to swat them away from a food source. Defensive behavior gets more aggressive as populations become larger at the same time food gets scarce late in the season.
California academic institutions join the AgTech revolution
Aaron Melgar, SiliconAngle.com, July 24, 2017
The food supply chain is so intertwined and complex that making a meaningful change to it requires coordination, according to UC ANR vice president Glenda Humiston. "It really does take a systems approach. A great example is that UC Davis, my division and other parts of the UC system are working on a central valley agriculture plus food and beverage consortium," Humiston said. "It's looking at bringing around the table folks from R&D, trained workforce, adequate infrastructure, finance, supply chain and having them actually work together to design what's needed." This article features 15-minute interview on The Cube with Humiston and Helene Dillard, dean of the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Science.
Smoke from wildfires worries winemakers
Jenice Tupolo, Daily Democrat, July 22, 2017
Exposure to wildfire smoke during veraison can drastically change a grape's flavor. "Smoke in the wine is difficult to blend out and it makes wine less marketable," said UC Cooperative Extension viticulture specialist Kaan Kurtural. Luckily, the smoke flavor doesn't carry over to the next season, Kurtural added.
The Detwiler Fire is active at night, and a scientist says that's relatively new
Lewis Griswold, The Fresno Bee, July 22, 2017
A prolonged drought, tall grasses, steep terrain and erratic winds made the Detwiler Fire in Mariposa County difficult to get under control. In addition, the fire isn't "laying down" at night, which is critical for operations. "People keep saying the fire isn't going down at night," said Scott Stephens, UC ANR researcher and fire science professor at UC Berkeley. "That's something we've been hearing from firefighters since 2008."
Why California's wildfires have burned so much area so early this season
Sally Schilling, Capital Public Radio, July 21, 2017
California wildfires have burned more than three times the acreage compared to this time last year, which is attributed to thick grass that grew after this year's heavy rainfall. "I think that really hot June weather dried out the fuels much more quickly and made them available to burn," said Scott Stephens, UC ANR researcher and fire science professor at UC Berkeley. "Now we're into just the beginning of August, late July and we're seeing these types of fires."
One good thing about temperatures above 104 degrees
Debbie Arrington, Sacramento Bee, July 21, 2017
The summer heat wave appears to have squelched Sacramento's local population explosion of brown marmorated stink bugs. "This year, BMSB started off at historic lows (since 2013)," said UC Cooperative Extension advisor Chuck Ingels. "Then, the June heat wave hit and the population that was there plummeted. It seems to be proof that temperatures over 100 for extended periods reduces the population – probably especially eggs and nymphs."
As California's labor shortage grows, farmers race to replace workers with robots
Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2017
The $47-billion agriculture industry will have to remake its fields with more machines and better-educated workers, or risk losing entire crops, economists say. On crop mentioned in the story is raisins, which requires new varieties to accommodate mechanization. The Sunpreme, developed for "dried on the vine" production by a retired USDA plant scientist, may soon be widely available, said Matthew Fidelibus, UC Cooperative Extension specialist.
Avocado demand is up, but California growers have been pulling out trees. What gives?
Gabrielle Karol, KXTB ABC 10, July 20, 2017
With high prices for avocados and ever-growing demand for the fruit, who's getting rich off avocados? It's not California's growers, says San Luis Obispo farmer Jim Shanley, pointing to the high cost of labor in California compared to Mexico. UC Cooperative Extension specialist Mary Lu Arpaia and staff research associate Eric Focht are working on identifying new, hardier varieties that could weather more extreme temperatures in the Central Valley.
New UCCE farm advisor Luke Milliron explains focus as orchard systems advisor
Cecilia Parsons, Western Farm Press, July 19, 2017
Luke Milliron belongs to the newest 'crop' of University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisors. Milliron was a UCCE horticulture intern through an internship program funded by the Almond Board of California and the California Dried Plum Board. The program trains the next generation of UCCE farm advisors, ensuring that vital research continues for California farm commodities.
Supervisors vote to end participation in Elk River program
Ruth Schneider, Times-Standard, July 18, 2017
The program was designed to support projects and activities that are beneficial to the watershed and was a coordinated effort from multiple agencies including Humboldt County Public Works, University of California Cooperative Extension, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, CalTrout and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Public Works and UC Cooperative Extension decided this year "irreconcilable differences" were straining the cooperation and opted to end participation in the program.
Students learn about hydrology, wildlife, forests, climate and ecology
Union-Democrat, July 14, 2017
California Big Trees State Park graduated 25 students in its summer 2017 California Natural Class. The class is held in partnership with UC ANR. The graduates are now part of a larger, growing community of California Naturalists, who continue to learn about and protect the unique and precious natural resources and public lands. Volunteerism is a key focus of all California Naturalists, and the new graduates will share the new knowledge of nature at Big Trees and throughout California.
UCCE economist Shermain Hardesty retires after more than 30 years
Penny Leff, Davis Enterprise, July 9, 2017
After serving farmers and ranchers as an economist for more than 30 years, including 13 years as a UC Cooperative Extension specialist, Shermain Hardesty retired on July 1.
Drone video: Take a flight over the Sacramento Valley sunflower fields that are exploding right now
Amy Graff, San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 2017
The Sacramento Valley has nearly 50,000 acres of sunflowers and is the largest producer of hybrid seeds in the country, making up more than 90 percent of the U.S. crop, according to Rachel Long, a farm advisor with the UC Cooperative Extension based in Woodland. Most of the seeds in the valley are shipped to Russia, Eastern Europe, Canada and North and South Dakota, where they are used for sunflower oil production.
Your orange tree may be harboring a dangerous pest
Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee, July 7, 2017
The discovery of an Asian citrus psyllid in Roseville is the third to be found in the Sacramento area since last fall. The bugs generally move north on agricultural trucks or are carried by unwitting consumers carrying plants or fruit. "It's incidental, it's accidental, but it's happening," said Chuck Ingels, a UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor.
Quick – how does broccoli grow? The crop-challenged can find answers here
Debbie Arrington, Sacramento Bee, July 7, 2017
The California State Fair will again include a 3.5 acre farm during its July 14-20 run. In addition to edible crops, the farm features several home gardening displays including how to attract pollinators and alternatives to lawn. Over the course of the fair, more than 100 UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners will offer advice and answer questions.

subset: commoncrawl


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I was very sad to learn that former ACBL League Counsel, Grand Life Master, & Barry Crane Top 500 Winner Peter Rank was discovered dead at his California home yesterday morning.
Below is an excellent 2009 interview with Peter.
Peter Rank - a Man of Many Talents By Ken Monzingo 2009 FALL NABC Chairman.
How does this violate our Community Guidelines?
Benefits include:
Plus... it's free!


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Super Norris
The supremacy of Chuck Norris is known by all, or should be. Chuck Norris doesn't play games, he wins them. Thus when Chuck Norris becomes a clone of Super Mario and has to rescue the princess, there isn't anything that can resist him. Use the arrow keys, and don't worry, nothing can kill Chuck Norris.


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Colleagues at Jackson Building Centres' head offices and branch at Lincoln, give a warm send-off to the Three Peaks Challenge team.
Jackson's Three Peaks Challenge secures £14K for hospice
Published: 28 September, 2010
LINCOLNSHIRE: A team from Jackson Building Centres has raised over £14 000 for the Rainbows Hospice after completing the Three Peaks Challenge in record time.
The 10-strong team took on the challenge at the end of August and have now collected their sponsorship pledges from colleagues, family and friends to raise this impressive total. All members of the team ascended and descended the three mountains – Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon – in a time of just 23.5 hours, an accomplishment only achieved by 25% of groups attempting the challenge.
It is predicted that it takes four to five hours to climb the peaks – some of the highest in the UK – but the routes are not a gentle walk and, when three climbs are attempted within 24 hours, the challenge becomes more difficult, draining your energy and depriving you of sleep.
The Jackson team members were Andy Williams, Steve Marris, Paul Bullivant, Lathen Tuplin, David Treasure, Mark Rice, Paul Rice (Lincolnshire Flooring, a supplier to Jacksons) and customers Jon Posey (Aaron Services), David Lummis (Aaron Services), and Fred McDonnell (Plumbmac Services).


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Safeguard Advisors Has Moved
Effective July 1st, 2017, we have moved our headquarters to Boulder, Colorado.
This more central location allows us to better serve our clients in all 50 states and all 5 US time zones. The relocation also facilitates some exciting strategic initiatives we will be pursuing in the next few months and years to expand and enhance our service offerings.
Safeguard Advisors has been a leading innovator in the self-directed retirement plan advisory field since 2005. We continually seek new ways to enable our clients investing success while adding value with high-quality, personalized advisory services.
There have been no changes on our advisory team. All of our expert consultants are still a part of the Safeguard team and here to assist you.
Our new address is:
4845 Pearl East Circle
Suite 101
Boulder, CO 80301
Our office hours are 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time, Monday – Friday.
Talk to An Expert Today!
Learn these little known strategies and tactics, and unlock your retirement plan today.


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Edward's Garage Doors is your go to source for garage door installation and maintenance in Fair Lawn NJ. We have been servicing clients throughout the New Jersey area for over 20 years. We strive to meet the specific demands of each of our clients. We have one goal in mind, which is to provide high quality garage door repair for an affordable rate.
We understand how frustrating it can be as a homeowner, when you need to have garage door installation. But we encourage you not to neglect getting garage door repair or maintenance. There are many reasons why you should consider getting garage door installation. But the two biggest reasons are that it drastically reduces your energy bill and it's safer.
Our highly trained, professional staff can help you with a variety of tasks. Maintenance is essential for keeping your garage door in working order. There are many services included with our garage door maintenance including…
If you're looking to upgrade your home or simply add more value? We highly recommend getting a brand new garage door. At Edwards Garage Doors, we offer garage door installation and we only use high quality, durable goods. We carry a variety of materials including steel, wood, vinyl or aluminum, so we can conveniently match any design aesthetic. We also work directly with garage door manufacturer, Clopay and install and repair their garage doors.
Are you looking for a garage door installation in Fair Lawn, NJ? Edwards Garage Doors is a family owned, licensed business that has successfully serviced many happy clients. We encourage you to check out our reviews. To learn more about our services, or to set up an appointment, please give us a call at 201-670-4004. We service homes in Fair Lawn NJ and surrounding areas. We look forward to servicing your garage door soon.


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Law School Graduate Unemployment Rate Creeps Up
Depending on the way you look at it, the job market for law school graduates is continuing to erode. Or it's showing faint signs of improvement.
The National Association for Law Placement's new employment report took a snapshot of the Class of 2012 in mid-February, about nine months after graduation.
If you're a pessimist, you could point to the 12.8% unemployment rate of Class of 2012 graduates. That's a bit higher than last year's 12.1% unemployment rate for the Class of 2011.
The overall employment rate for new graduates fell to 84.7% from 85.6%, the fifth year in a row of decline. Not since 1994 has that figure dipped so low. (The number of jobs actually increased, but that was more than offset by an increase in class size.)
Other figures tell a less gloomy story, though. . . .


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Chatbot is set to revolutionize how businesses interact with customers. As a Malaysia Facebook Messenger Chatbot developer, we aim to help businesses navigate the most practical and effective chatbot implementation to help businesses grow.
"Over 2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed. Within a couple of years that will reach 3.6 billion, about half of humanity." -The Economist-
Chatbot are lightweight applications, whether rule-based or powered by artificial intelligence (AI), that are deployed into messaging platforms such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger, among others. Users can interact with Chatbots via chat interface.
What can a chatbot do? Why is it matter for your businesses? How does it work? How can you get your own chatbot? We're going to answer the above questions. Read on.
Facebook first introduced chatbot for its Messenger platform in 2016 in its F8 event and the world started to talk about the possibilities about leveraging on the largest social network for deeper interactions with users. Watch the video, demo starts from 6.16.
While ecommerce industry sees this as a huge opportunity, Facebook Messenger Chatbots can actually do more. We've compiled some of the chatbots that demonstrates potential uses for various industries.
Bus Uncle tells you where is your bus, and tell lame jokes. (Usage: Location based services, system integration) Test the bot.
CoinBot shares fresh news about cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ICO. (Usage: Company or product/service info) Test the bot.
A chatbot that provides mental health information, self-test, and treatment suggestion. (Usage: questionnaire, user survey) Test the bot.
Tribeup Connect turns your Facebook page into Virtual Loyalty Cards. (Usage: Rule based, 3rd party integration) Find out more.
Now you've got better idea about what Facebook Messenger Chatbots can do (also applicable to other platforms), why should you care? What can it do to help your business grow online?
You should take Chatbots seriously, and really consider creating and maintaining a Chatbot uniquely design for your business. Because for the first time ever, people are using messenger apps more than they are using social networks.
Facebook Messenger Chatbot can solve most fundamental challenges posted on social media – such as customer service. Whether you want to build a simple rule-based not, or an AI bot integrating with third party CRM softwares to build robust solution, we're the Malaysia Facebook Messenger Chatbot developer for you.
Consumers nowadays are smarter in terms of information acquisition. Before they make a purchase decision or interested to find out more about your product or services, messaging platforms will be their go-to places to directly engage with your brand. Seize the opportunity, build a selling bot.
Facebook Custom Audience allows advertisers to capture different audiences for retargeting – one of them being whose who interacted with your apps (Chatbot is an app), and those who messaged you before (Chatbot requires initiation via chat). Learn more about Facebook ads retargeting.
Over to you. If you're reading up to this very sentence, you are most probably looking for Malaysia Facebook Messenger Chatbot developer to materialize your chatbot ideas. Share with us your Facebook Messenger (or any other platform, we're game) Chatbot idea. Talk soon!


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Remember the rumors of the Facebook phone? Well though those did really materialize, and Facebook has been working with mobile software developers and now mobile manufactures to deeply integrate the Facebook experience in devices.
In a blog post today, Facebook said that they would be collaborating with INQ and HTC to bring deeper Facebook integration into their upcoming phones. Users will see better Facebook integration in the upcoming Cloud Touch and Cloud Q phones from INQ and the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa phones from HTC.
All the above phones will either have a dedicated button for Facebook or will provide a one-touch access to Facebook through their interface. This would also mean that users will have access to their Facebook contacts as a part of their phone and will have a better Facebook experience overall.
Facebook is also working with other phone manufactures and devices to integrate Facebook as a part of the phone interface or with the Facebook branding itself.
With almost 600 million users, these Facebook phones will definitely fly off the shelves and give Facebook a much tighter control over the mobile market.


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Thursday September 22, 2005
Who's afraid of a 15-minute walk?
In Miami Today, Michael Lewis takes stock of the Miami Performing Arts Center's construction and financial situation. An excellent, and very comprehensive, article—go read it. Some notes:
- We disagree that choice of MPAC's site is poor. While putting it a few blocks further south might have made it more a part of downtown, it's location extends downtown, and creates some good prospects for some of the forgotten parts of overtown. OMNI may have been a failed shopping center, but it's presently home to a decent school. It's also close to the Herald building, the Miami Women's Club, and some of those snappy condos.
- The parking situation really is an embarrasment. They expect people to make a 15-minute walk from downtown? Not only is downtown more then 15 minutes away on foot, but that walk can be accomplished in evening dress maybe two weeks out of the year.
- Lewis enumerates a number of "lessons" learned from the project. For example:
The fourth lesson is that memories are short but major projects are long. Did you remember that this was once a $75 million project? Or that the county commission approved what is now a $446.3 million building cost at $198 million? Or that from the outset, parking was to be a key component? Or that the project was conceived to aid organizations that now find it had to afford the rent? The details and aims of a public project need to be spelled out and held up for scrutiny throughout its course.
But maybe this is a lesson that can never be "learned." Maybe the only way projects of this size ever get done is through a combination of optimism and lies. Maybe any human endevor, when looked at closely enough, stinks. And maybe that's ok. Miami's poor can always use more help, but when we look at how people in some other parts of the world are living, the opportunities even the poorest person in Miami has make commiseration challenging. The taxpayers in Miami-Dade decided to buy themselves a world-class performing arts facility, and if ends up costing a little over a half a billion dollars, what's the big damned deal? Hasn't the US been spending that much every twelve hours or so in Iraq for the last couple of years?
Lewis ends on a well-earned positive note (unlike some puff pieces we've seen (via MAeX )), and he's right to. While the project could have been better planned and managed, it's going to be great, and we're all going to benefit from it. Interestingly, there's a very similar project coming down the pike very soon. Maybe the time interval wil actually be short enough that we won't forget some of these lessons.comments powered by Disqus


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Oxford college bans Christian Union from freshers' fair over 'homophobia & neo-colonialism'
Hubert Au, President of the JCR, the college student union, told Christian Union representatives that their presence at the fair could cause "potential for harm to freshers who are already struggling to feel welcome in Oxford."
READ MORE: Bible shouldn't be taken literally, says leading UK scholar
"Christianity's influence on many marginalised communities has been damaging in its methods of conversion and rules of practice, and is still used in many places as an excuse for homophobia and certain forms of neo-colonialism," wrote Au, whose missive was passed on to and published by university newspaper Cherwell.
Au wrote that the JCR wanted to turn the traditional event, where students are offered the opportunity to sign up for clubs and teams, into a "secular environment."
Following the exchange, in which the Christian Union told Au that his statements about Christianity were "inappropriate… in the same way this would be inappropriate in conversation with many other faith groups," Hu relented, and allowed a "multi-faith stall," though one at which no religious societies would be able to sign up students. The 150-year-old Christian Union refused to attend the fair, which took place earlier this month, on these terms.
After the story made the student media, it prompted pushback from the college, which was founded in 1263 under supervision of the Bishop of Durham.
On Sunday, it voted that Au's decision was "a violation of free speech and religious freedom."
"The Balliol JCR should not make judgments regarding the legitimacy of faith groups or religious expression," said the motion passed by the students.


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Bahria Town is the largest real-estate developers and Investors in Pakistan and the largest private housing society in Asia. Bahria Town has establishments in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Murree and Karachi. It is a mega gated community, worth $6 billion only in Rawalpindi. Bahria Town Rawalpindi is the original community it has nine phases, which has a capacity of a planned residential city for 1 million people. The Town's offers amenities (24-hour armed security, schools, hospitals, a fire department, retail shopping, restaurants and entertainment centers). Given the Pakistan's security issues, Bahria Town Pakistan remains the safest place to live with a lower crime rate than other developments. Rival Pakistani developer, Defence Housing Authority, have built similar gated communities in the suburbs of major Pakistani cities such as Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sukkur & Nawabshah etc.
- About Bahria Town Islamabad
- Bahria Town Punjab
- Bahria Town Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
- Bahria Town Sindh
- Bahria Town Balochistan
- Bahria Town Azad Kashmir


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Several hundred Pennsylvania grouse and/or woodcock hunters help the Game Commission manage these important game birds by keeping a log of their daily hunting activities. This survey has been conducted since the mid-1960s and helps us track the status of these game bird populations as well as hunter success. Hunters are asked to record number of flushes and hours by county(s) hunted. If you would like to participate for either game bird, you may download the
Grouse data form (PDF) or the
Woodcock data form (PDF).
At the end of the season, mail the forms to PA Game Commission, Bureau of Wildlife Management, 2001 Elmerton Ave., Harrisburg, PA 17110. You will then be added to the list and receive information through the mail in the future. The preseason mailing includes theFrom the Coverts (PDF) newsletter, field data cards, data forms and a postage-paid envelope for sending us your data forms. Or you may call (717-787-5529) or write to the Bureau of Wildlife Management to become a cooperator. Thanks for your help!


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Hello Gorgeous! Have you heard what is Moxibustion? Yes? No? Who me? Well, seriously babes, I have never heard of this treatment for pain before. I spent a few hours on google to find out a little bit more about the treatment and also to make sure that this treatment will not make me scream like a Banshee. Yeah, you know me well, I hate pain and I will scream at the slightest pain. Alright darlings, I'll stop rambling now and let's talk about Moxibustion and my experience. So let's Rock N Roll!
What is Moxibustion?
Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese healing therapy that has been practiced for thousands of years in China. It is designed to eliminate pains from head to toes. It helps to improve blood circulation, strengthen skin tissues and promotes excretion of toxins within the body without any dangerous medication involved. It involves the burning of moxa stick (look like rolled-up cigar shape) an inch above the skin. Don't worry, the burning moxa stick does not touch your skin during treatment. Moxibustion is absolutely safe and effective treatment option for aches and pains.
What are the health conditions that benefit from Moxibustion?
Moxibustion is used to treat and improve the following health conditions:-
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Neck and Shoulder Pain
- Migraine
- Women's Gynaelogical Problems
- Poor Memory
- Cervical Pain
- Upper Limp Numbness
- Lower Back Stiffness and Pain
- Kidney Weakness
- Leg Pain
- Knee Pain
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Irregular Menstruation
- Frigidity
- Menopause Syndrome
- Gastric Pain
- Constipation
- Joint Weakness and Pain
- Stress Relief
- Improve Immunity
A friend recommended Moxibustion at I&Y Beauty & Slimming Centre and I decided to give it a try. Upon arrival, I was greeted warmly by Carol, owner of I&Y Beauty & Slimming Centre, and invited me to sit down in the reception area.
As usual, like most beauty treatments, I went through consultation procedure with Carol before the treatment. We discussed my health concerns (migraines, neck and shoulder pain), and a solution that fits my situation.
She used the latest computerised health diagnostic 'Quantum Resonance Magnetic Analyzer' to assess and evaluate my health status. I was instructed to hold the test rod to collect my health data and within minutes it showed the test result of my overall health conditions.
The analysis report card showed that I had poor blood circulation. I was explained that my blood flow was poorly maintained and my stress level was so high that led to muscles tense up. Due to these problems, I always had migraine attacks, neck & left shoulder pain and unexplained fatigue. Carol advised me to treat my health problems as soon as possible. She mentioned that Moxibustion is the best option for my situation.
After the consultation, we proceeded with the Moxibustion and Mud Mineral treatment. Carol started by throwing a nice and relaxing massage on my neck, shoulder, arms and entire back part of my body with Essential Oils.
Next, she performed Gua Sha on me by scraping on the affected area with bianstone scraping plate (see image above). This scraping technique helps to release toxins, stimulate blood flow & healing.
I'm blessed with zero pain tolerance so I requested Carol to apply light pressure with the scraping plate against my skin. It was a little painful for me but I can tolerate the pressure. There were bruises around my shoulder blade, neck, middle of my back and across my shoulder. The bruises faded away on their own in about 3 days. Fret not, the bruises were painless.
So right after the Gua Sha and massage, Carol applied the mineral mud on my arms, neck, shoulder and spine area at the acupuncture points. Then she burned the moxa sticks and held it an inch above my skin on a specific areas for a few minutes. I felt warm but neither too hot nor burning feeling. The treatment ended with essential oils and a quick relaxing massage.
Overall. the treatment was very relaxing and comfortable. I felt wonderful and really enjoyed my treatment using Gua Sha technique. After just one session, I had 98% relief (eliminate) of my pain on my neck & shoulder, and my migraines subsided (no migraine attacks till now). I had a great time there and I would definitely go back there again for another treatment.
Before the treatment, I had a mini tour of I&Y Beauty and Slimming Centre. It is a very relaxing place to do your treatment. So let's check it out, shall we?
|The Reception / Consultation area
|Aisle to treatment rooms
|Inside the treatment room
|Comfortable and Relaxing bed
Thank you Carol for inviting me to try out the Moxibustion. I felt light as I walked out from this heavenly place. Babes! If you are interested in trying Moxibustion, please do not hesitate to contact Carol to arrange appointment to discuss further on this amazing treatment.
I&Y Beauty & Slimming Centre
Blk 635 Ang Mo Kio Ave 6
Opening Hours
Tue-Fri : 10.00am - 8.00pm
Sat-Sun p/h : 10.00am - 6.30pm
Tel : 8128 9813 / 6457 7396
Email : email@example.com
Website : www.iybeauty.com.sg
Disclaimer : I was invited for a trial session for personal review purposes only. No monetary compensation of any kind was given or received for this review.


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Optelcon Revos E-2000
- DIAMOND Holland
- Producten
- Actieve Modules
- Industriële Switches
- Optelcon Revos E-2000
Media converter voor industriële omgeving
The DIAMOND optelcon® is a mediaconverter for optoelectronic media designed for flexible use. A major benefit is its compact design, just 100 × 60 × 60 mm (L × W × H). This allows easy, convenient mounting, for example in a cabinet wall with a thickness up to 4 mm and affords IP65 protection.
A M50 cutout is needed. The optical fiber connector is the revos E-2000 2-channel outdoor connector. Its robust design also achieves IP65 protection, making it optimally suited for exterior use as well as industrial applications.
The electrical interface is a RJ45 connector with a transmission rate of 10 / 100 Mbit/s.
The optelcon® is ready for immediate use and requires no additional settings or configuration.
For more information concerning the revos E-2000 outdoor connector, please refere to the revos E-2000 datasheet under the section "Assemblies and adapters / Harsh environment".


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Loading cart contents...
Spotted Notebook
3 in stock
This 1Canoe2 slim notebook is 6×8 in size. It contains 64 lined pages with day and month headers and a black + white spotted cover. This lightweight slim notebooks is perfect to fit within your purse or Bible and is finished off with a simple gold foil detail on the cover.
Additional information
|4 oz
|8 × 6 × .2 in


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What to do when someone dies
When someone dies, the initial shock and pure grief can be completely overwhelming.
We hope this information is simple and will offer some intitial guidance.
When someone dies at Home / Nursing Home
If the death occurs AT HOME or in A NURSING HOME, please contact us immediately on 0121 313 0054 and you will be personally guided through the steps that need to be taken. Our telephone line operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and will always be answered by a funeral director, not an answer machine.
When someone dies in Hospital
If the death occurs, IN HOSPITAL, intitial help will be given by the nurses and from The Bereavement Office, however, when you feel able to, please do contact us as soon as possible. Do not hesitate to obtain support from us at weekends and over bank holidays when the Bereavement Office at the hospital will be closed.
We sincerely hope these details may assist you in your time of need. When someone dies, we understand the devestation that is felt by the family left behind.


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On November 11, Veterans Day, we as Americans have an opportunity to recognize our great debt to our armed forces. At the same time, we can and should acknowledge how veterans' service to the country can continue even after they have taken off the uniform.
The men and women who have served share a number of common traits: persistence, decisiveness, tenacity,adaptability, comfort with risk and preference for bold action, and personal sacrifice for something larger than themselves.
Not surprisingly, these are traits that are also often attributed to successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, many of America's most innovative – and most successful– companies were founded by veterans. Consider FedEx, founded in 1971 by Fred Smith, who just a few years earlier had been serving as a Marine in Vietnam. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, he spoke about how his military service influenced his business career:
"I learned an awful lot in the Marine Corps –particularly about . . . how to treat people, lead people– which has played a big role in FedEx. A big part of the employee relations systems and all that we have at our company came from my experience in the service. The Marine Corps is the best when it comes to teaching people how to lead other folks."
He also talked in the interview about how his military service gave him a relatively high tolerance for risk. Given what he'd experienced on the battlefield, the usual pressures associated with whether or not a business succeeded seemed more manageable: "I was willing to take a chance, because losing wasn't the worst thing in the world that could happen to you. I had seen that very clearly."
Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy.com, the internet naming registrar, served as a Marine in Vietnam, and was awarded a Purple Heart for his service. "There is no doubt in my mind that the lessons I took away from the Corps is what has made me succeed in my life," Parsons told Military.com. "The Marine Corps taught me and gave me the sense of doing things right and more importantly I got confidence and that part of it is so important."
Mike Haynie, who spent 14 years in the Air Force and today serves as an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse, is well positioned to speak to the intersection of military service and business creation. "At its core, entrepreneurship is about the ability to create and grow a sustainable venture in a resource-constrained environment," he told Entrepreneur magazine last year. "This is a skill learned well by all military folks, and they recognize that skill as a competitive advantage in a startup environment."
Consider the story of Dawn Halfaker, a 2001 West Point graduate who deployed with the 3rd Infantry Division, where she commanded a military police platoon in Iraq. In June 2004, while on combat patrol near Baghdad, the Humvee in which she was riding was hit by a grenade. She lost her right arm in the attack, and was later awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for her service.
By January 2006, she had launched her own business, focused on information technology, organization and strategy, intelligence and operations, and supply chain logistics. Today, it employs more than 150 people. Asked about how her time in the Army prepared her for business, she told one publication, "Adaptability is the biggest thing you learn in the military. You're given a mission, and you have a finite number of resources, and no matter what, you have to accomplish that. Things come up, obstacles, but it still doesn't matter. It's very similar in business."
Veterans who are also entrepreneurs say military service imbued them with a number of attributes that equipped them for success as business founders. They know how to work in teams, to lead, and to build camaraderie. They are decisive in the face of the unknown – it's something they had to confront regularly. They know how to not only survive, but thrive in chaotic situations – invaluable raining for the inevitable surprises that confront every entrepreneur sooner or later.
They also understand the need for a strong work ethic. "When I saw an opportunity for this business, I hustled every day, working 80 hours a week," one veteran told the Wall Street Journal recently."Because of my experience in the Marines, the hard work didn't scare me."
America's veterans have served at the frontiers of our nation's foreign policy. It is from a desire to serve that they first donned a uniform, and even though they may no longer wear it, the desire remains.
Our country would do well to make it easier for them to serve at the frontier of our nation's economy–at a time when we need to fully tap the entrepreneurial potential of all of our citizens. Perhaps our veterans today can become American's "greatest generation" of entrepreneurs tomorrow.


text: 41chevy 9,814 Posted May 25 Remember them first before the shopping, bar b que and Indy. They paid for you being able to do this. As for my Nam brothers, I don't have it in me to be with you all this year but you're all in my heart. For those offended by this true image. . .good! 15 1 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


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Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times
March 25, Tuesday, 17:30
ITU Faculty of Architecture (Taşkışla) hall 109
The lecture will be in English with simultaneous Turkish translation.
"Transdisciplines", a lecture series organized by Garanti Gallery and Platform Garanti in collaboration with Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture continues. The fourth event hosts Fiona Raby, with the lecture "Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times".
"Designers have an unthinking optimism about the future. They automatically assume what they design is neutral and implicitly good. There is a deeply embedded ideology that the role of design and architecture is 'to make the world a better place'. But how do the designers acknowledge their contradictions, their inconsistencies and celebrate a humanness which, if they admit it, is deeply flawed?"
Dunne&Raby: Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby use products and services as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Many of their projects are collaborative, working with industrial research labs, academia and cultural institutions.
They have produced several projects in the context of their works. "Placebo" gathers a collection of electronic objects exploring mental well-being in relation to domestic electromagnetic fields (2001). "Consuming Monsters: Big, Perfect, Infectious" explores roles for design in the debate about different biotechnological futures (2002-) including "Evidence Dolls" (commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in 2005). "Designs for Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times" celebrates human beings as contradictory, complex and psychologically flawed. Their latest project "Do you want to replace the existing 'normal'?"(2008) moves this thinking into the world of product design. It is currently included in the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition at MoMA New York, along with "Technological Dreams Series: no 1 Robot" (commissioned by Z33, 2007).
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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(A short history of the knowledge of the atom) Compiled by Jim Walker
Originated: Sept. 1988 Latest revision: Nov. 2004
atom n. A unit of matter, the smallest unit of an element, consisting of a dense, central, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a system of electrons, equal in number to the number of nuclear protons, the entire structure having an approximate diameter of 10-8 centimeter and characteristically remaining undivided in chemical reactions except for limited removal, transfer, or exchange of certain electrons.
The history of the study of the atomic nature of matter illustrates the thinking process that goes on in the philosophers and scientists heads. The models they use do not provide an absolute understanding of the atom but only a way of abstracting so that they can make useful predictions about them. The epistemological methods that scientists use provide us with the best known way of arriving at useful science and factual knowledge. No other method has yet proven as successful.
In the beginning
Actually, the thought about electricity came before atoms. In about 600 B.C. Thales of Miletus discovered that a piece of amber, after rubbing it with fur, attracts bits of hair and feathers and other light objects. He suggested that this mysterious force came from the amber. Thales, however, did not connect this force with any atomic particle.
Not until around 460 B.C., did a Greek philosopher, Democritus, develop the idea of atoms. He asked this question: If you break a piece of matter in half, and then break it in half again, how many breaks will you have to make before you can break it no further? Democritus thought that it ended at some point, a smallest possible bit of matter. He called these basic matter particles, atoms.
Unfortunately, the atomic ideas of Democritus had no lasting effects on other Greek philosophers, including Aristotle. In fact, Aristotle dismissed the atomic idea as worthless. People considered Aristotle's opinions very important and if Aristotle thought the atomic idea had no merit, then most other people thought the same also. (Primates have great mimicking ability.)
For more than 2000 years nobody did anything to continue the explorations that the Greeks had started into the nature of matter. Not until the early 1800's did people begin again to question the structure of matter.
In the 1800's an English chemist, John Dalton performed experiments with various chemicals that showed that matter, indeed, seem to consist of elementary lumpy particles (atoms). Although he did not know about their structure, he knew that the evidence pointed to something fundamental.
In 1897, the English physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron and proposed a model for the structure of the atom. Thomson knew that electrons had a negative charge and thought that matter must have a positive charge. His model looked like raisins stuck on the surface of a lump of pudding.
In 1900 Max Planck, a professor of theoretical physics in Berlin showed that when you vibrate atoms strong enough, such as when you heat an object until it glows, you can measure the energy only in discrete units. He called these energy packets, quanta.
Physicists at the time thought that light consisted of waves but, according to Albert Einstein, the quanta behaved like discrete particles. Physicists call Einstein's discrete light particle, a "photon*."
Photoelectric effect
Atoms not only emit photons, but they can also absorb them. In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote a ground-breaking paper that explained that light absorption can release electrons from atoms, a phenomenon called the "photoelectric effect." Einstein received his only Nobel Prize for physics in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect.
* Note: I anachronistically use the word photon here. Actually, physicists did not refer to light quanta as photons until after Gilbert N. Lewis proposed the name in an article in Nature, Vol 118, Pt. 2, December 18, 1926.
A heated controversy occured for many years on deciding whether light consisted of waves or particles. The evidence appeared strong for both cases. Later, physicists showed that light appears as either wave-like or particle-like (but never both at the same time) depending on the experimental setup.
Other particles got discovered around this time called alpha rays. These particles had a positive charge and physicists thought that they consisted of the positive parts of the Thompson atom (now known as the nucleus of atoms).
In 1911 Ernest Rutherford thought it would prove interesting to bombard atoms with these alpha rays, figuring that this experiment could investigate the inside of the atom (sort of like a probe). He used Radium as the source of the alpha particles and shinned them onto the atoms in gold foil. Behind the foil sat a fluorescent screen for which he could observe the alpha particles impact.
The results of the experiments came unexpected. Most of the alpha particles went smoothly through the foil. Only an occasional alpha veered sharply from its original path, sometimes bouncing straight back from the foil! Rutherford reasoned that they must get scattered by tiny bits of positively charged matter. Most of the space around these positive centers had nothing in them. He thought that the electrons must exist somewhere within this empty space. Rutherford thought that the negative electrons orbited a positive center in a manner like the solar system where the planets orbit the sun.
Rutherford's atom
Rutherford knew that atoms consist of a compact positively charged nucleus, around which circulate negative electrons at a relatively large distance. The nucleus occupies less than one thousand million millionth (10 ) of the atomic volume, but contains almost all of the atom's mass. If an atom had the size of the earth, the nucleus would have the size of a football stadium.
Not until 1919 did Rutherford finally identify the particles of the nucleus as discrete positive charges of matter. Using alpha particles as bullets, Rutherford knocked hydrogen nuclei out of atoms of six elements: boron, fluorine, sodium, aluminum, phosphorus, an nitrogen. He named them protons, from the Greek for 'first', for they consisted of the first identified building blocks of the nuclei of all elements. He found the protons mass at 1,836 times as great as the mass of the electron.
But there appeared something terribly wrong with Rutherford's model of the atom. The theory of electricity and magnetism predicted that opposite charges attract each other and the electrons should gradually lose energy and spiral inward. Moreover, physicists reasoned that the atoms should give off a rainbow of colors as they do so. But no experiment could verify this rainbow.
In 1912 a Danish physicist, Niels Bohr came up with a theory that said the electrons do not spiral into the nucleus and came up with some rules for what does happen. (This began a new approach to science because for the first time rules had to fit the observation regardless of how they conflicted with the theories of the time.)
Bohr said, "Here's some rules that seem impossible, but they describe the way atoms operate, so let's pretend they're correct and use them." Bohr came up with two rules which agreed with experiment:
RULE 1: Electrons can orbit only at certain allowed distances from the nucleus.
RULE 2: Atoms radiate energy when an electron jumps from a higher-energy orbit to a lower-energy orbit. Also, an atom absorbs energy when an electron gets boosted from a low-energy orbit to a high-energy orbit.
The electron can exist in only one of the orbits. (The diagram shows only five orbits, but any number of orbits can theoretically exist.)
Light (photons) emit whenever an electron jumps from one orbit to another. The jumps seem to happen instantaneously without moving through a trajectory.
The examples above show only two possibilities from Rule 2.
By the 1920s, further experiments showed that Bohr's model of the atom had some troubles. Bohr's atom seemed too simple to describe the heavier elements. In fact it only worked roughly in these cases. The spectral lines did not appear correct when a strong magnetic field influenced the atoms.
Bohr- Sommerfeld model of the atom
Bohr and a German physicist, Arnold Sommerfeld expanded the original Bohr model to explain these variations. According to the Bohr-Sommerfeld model, not only do electrons travel in certain orbits but the orbits have different shapes and the orbits could tilt in the presence of a magnetic field. Orbits can appear circular or elliptical, and they can even swing back and forth through the nucleus in a straight line.
The orbit shapes and various angles to the magnetic field could only have certain shapes, similar to an electron in a certain orbit. As an example, the fourth orbit in a hydrogen atom can have only three possible shapes and seven possible traits. These added states allowed more possibilities for different spectral lines to appear. This brought the model of the atom into closer agreement with experimental data.
The conditions of the state of the orbit got assigned quantum numbers. The three states discussed so far consist of: orbit number (n), orbit shape (l) and orbit tilt (m).
In 1924 an Austrian physicist, Wolfgang Pauli predicted that an electron should spin (kind of like a top) while it orbits around the nucleus. The electron can spin in either of two direction. This spin consisted of a fourth quantum number: electron spin (s).
Pauli gave a rule governing the behavior of electrons within the atom that agreed with experiment. If an electron has a certain set of quantum numbers, then no other electron in that atom can have the same set of quantum numbers. Physicists call this "Pauli's exclusion principle." It provides an important principle to this day and has even outlived the Bohr-Sommerfeld model that Pauli designed it for.
In 1924 a Frenchman named Louis de Broglie thought about particles of matter. He thought that if light can exist as both particles and waves, why couldn't atom particles also behave like waves? In a few equations derived from Einstein's famous equation, (E=mc2) he showed what matter waves would behave like if they existed at all. (Experiments later proved him correct.)
In 1926 the Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger had an interesting idea: Why not go all the way with particle waves and try to form a model of the atom on that basis? His theory worked kind of like harmonic theory for a violin string except that the vibrations traveled in circles.
The world of the atom, indeed, began to appear very strange. It proved difficult to form an accurate picture of an atom because nothing in our world really compares with it.
Schrödinger's wave mechanics did not question the makeup of the waves but he had to call it something so he gave it a symbol:
The "psi" symbol of Schrödinger's wave came from the Greek lettering system.
In 1926, a German physicist, Max Born had an idea about 'psi'. Born thought they resembled waves of chance. These ripples moved along waves of chance, made up of places where particles may occur and places where no particles occured. The waves of chance ripple around in circles when the particle appears like an electron in an atomic orbit, and they ripple back and forth when the electron orbit goes straight through the nucleus, and they ripple along in straight lines when a free particle moves through interatomic space. You can think of them as waves when traveling through space and as particles whenever they travel in circles. However, they cannot exist as both waves and particles at the same time.
Just before Schrödinger proposed his theory, a German physicist Werner Heisenberg, in 1925, had a theory of his own called matrix mechanics which also explained the behavior of atoms. The two theories seemed to have an entirely different sets of assumptions yet they both worked. Heisenberg based his theory on mathematical quantities called matrices that fit with the conception of electrons as particles whereas Schrödinger based his theory on waves. Actually, the results of both theories appeared mathematically the same.
In 1927 Heisenberg formulated an idea, which agreed with tests, that no experiment can measure the position and momentum of a quantum particle simultaneously. Scientists call this the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle." This implies that as one measures the certainty of the position of a particle, the uncertainty in the momentum gets correspondingly larger. Or, with an accurate momentum measurement, the knowledge about the particle's position gets correspondingly less.
The visual concept of the atom now appeared as an electron "cloud" which surrounds a nucleus. The cloud consists of a probability distribution map which determines the most probable location of an electron. For example, if one could take a snap-shot of the location of the electron at different times and then superimpose all of the shots into one photo, then it might look something like the view at the top.
Note: Just as no map can equal a territory, no concept of an atom can possibly equal its nature. These models of the atom simply served as a way of thinking about them, albeit they contained limitations (all models do).
Although the mathematical concept of the atom got better, the visual concept of the atom got worse. Regardless, even simplistic visual models can still prove useful. Chemists usually describe the atom as a simple solar system model similar to Bohr's model but without the different orbit shapes. The important emphasis for chemistry attemps to show the groupings of electrons in orbital shells. (The example above shows the first eleven elements.)
Chemical behavior of the elements form together to create molecules. Molecules may share electrons as the hydrogen and water molecules above illustrates. (Atoms which share electrons have the name "ions.") The outer electron shell of an atom actually does the sharing and bonding of the atoms. This in turn allows chemists to describe the interactions of chemistry. Even though the orbit model of the atom does not provide an accurate model, it works well for describing chemistry.
A helium atom with two electrons orbiting a nucleon made of two protons and two neutrons
A mystery of the nature of the nucleus remained unsolved. The nucleus contains most of the atom's mass as well as the positive charge. The protons supposedly accounted for this mass. However, a nucleus with twice the charge of another should have twice the number of protons and twice the mass. But this did not prove correct. Rutherford speculated in 1920 that there existed electrically neutral particles with the protons that make up the missing mass but no one accepted his idea at the time.
Not until 1932 did the English physicist James Chadwick finally discover the neutron. He found it to measure slightly heavier than the proton with a mass of 1840 electrons and with no charge (neutral). The proton-neutron together, received the name, "nucleon."
Isotopes of Hydrogen
Although scientists knew that atoms of a particular element have the same number of protons, they discovered that some of these atoms have slightly different masses. They concluded that the variations in mass result, more or less, from the number of neutrons in the nucleus of the atom. Atoms of an element having the same atomic number but different atomic masses get called "isotopes" of that element.
In 1928, Paul Dirac produced equations which predicted an unthinkable thing at the time- a positive charged electron. He did not accept his own theory at the time. In 1932 in experiments with cosmic rays, Carl Anderson discovered the anti-electron, which proved Dirac's equations. Physicists call it the positron.
For each variety of matter there should exist a corresponding 'opposite' or antimatter. Physicists now know that antimatter exists. However, because matter and antimatter annihilates whenever they come in contact, it does not stay around for very long. (By the way, an unsolved problem remains as to why the universe consists of mostly regular matter and not an equal amount of antimatter. Physicsts call this "symmetry breaking".)
There exists not only anti-electrons but in 1955, physicists found the anti-proton, and later the anti-neutron. This allows the existence for anti-atoms, a true form of antimatter.
When scientists found out about the atomic nucleus, they questioned why the positively charged protons should remain so close without repelling. The scientists realized that there must exist new forces at work and the secrets must lie within the nucleus. They knew that the force which holds the protons together must occur much stronger than the electromagnetic force and that the force must act over very small distances (otherwise they would have noticed this force in interactions between the nucleus and the outer electrons).
In 1932, Werner Heisenberg concluded that charged particles bounce photons of light back and forth between them. This exchange of photons provides a way for the electromagnetic forces to act between the particles. The theory says that a proton shoots a photon at the electron, and the electron shoots a photon back at the proton. These photon exchanges go on all the time, very rapidly. However, because no one can see them (measure them), Heisenberg called these exchange particles, virtual photons. (Virtual meaning, not exactly 'real'.)
In 1935 a Japanese physicist, Hideki Yukawa, suggested that exchange forces might also describe the strong force between nucleons. However, virtual photons did not have enough strength for this force, so he thought that there must exist a new kind of virtual particle. Yukawa used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to explain that a virtual particle could exist for an extremely small fraction of a second. Since its time of existence occurs nearly exactly, there would occur a great uncertainty in the energy of the virtual particle. This uncertainty allowed the particles to exist very strongly only at certain times and the particles could slip in and out of existence. He also calculated that these particles should be about 250 times as heavy as an electron. Later, in 1947, the physicist Cecil F. Powell detected this particle and called it the "pion."
Although the pions describe the transmitters of the strong force, they do not get classed with the other force-transmitting particles, such as the photon or the W and Z particles. Pions now appear not as elementary particles but rather composites made up of "quarks." The strong force gets transmitted by the pions only at relatively larger nuclear levels.
Physicists presently think that all the forces in the universe get carried by some kind of quantum particle. This theory started in 1928 with Paul Dirac stating that photons transmit the electromagnetic force. The theory called "quantum electrodynamics," or QED, developed from work by Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Sin-Itiro in the late 1940s. The four known forces and their particles appear as follows:
PARTICLE NATURE AND ROLE Photon Carrier of the electromagnetic force (magnetisim, light, heat, EMR, electricity) W+, W-, Z Carrier of the weak force (radioactivity) Gluon (8 types) Carriers of the strong force (holds the quarks) Gravition Carrier of the gravitational force (undetected so far at the time of this writing)
From 1947 until the end of the 1950's, physicists discovered many more new particles (dozens of them). The various types of particles needed a new theory to explain their strange properties.
In 1960, Murray Gell-Mann and Yuval Ne'man independently proposed a method for classifying all the particles then known. The method became known as the Eightfold Way. What the periodic table did for the elements, the Eightfold Way did for the particles. In 1964 Gell-Mann went further and proposed the existence of a new level of elementary particles and called them "quarks" (the spelling derives from a phrase in James Joyce book, Finnegans Wake, "Three quarks for Muster Mark."
Gell-Mann thought there existed at least three types of quarks. They have the names, "up," "down," and "strange." From 1974 thru 1984 the theory predicted three more quarks called "charm," "bottom" (or beauty), and "top" (or truth). And each quark has their corresponding anti-quark.
The theory of the quark explains the existence of several particles including the nucleus of the atom. In fact the proton and neutron each get made up of three quarks and the force which holds the quarks together come from particles called "gluons."
Quarks do not exist by themselves but only in pairs (mesons) or triplets (baryons).
The following charts list the various particle groupings:
LEPTONS (spin 1/2, mass < mesons) NAME MASS LIEFTIME CHARGE SPIN Electron 0.5511 MeV Stable -1 1/2 Positron 0.5511 MeV Stable +1 1/2
Muon &
105.6 MeV 2 x 10-6 s -1 +1 1/2 1/2
Tau &
1.78 GeV < 50 eV 291 x 10-15s 0 0 1/2 1/2
Muon neutrino &
0 (?) <.05 MeV Stable (?) 0 0 1/2 1/2
Tau neutrino &
0 (?) <70 MeV Stable (?) 0 0 1/2 1/2
QUARKS (particles with 1/3 or 2/3 charge) NAME MASS LIFETIME CHARGE SPIN
Up &
1.5-4.5 MeV Stable * +2/3 -2/3 1/2 1/2
Down &
5.0-8.5 MeV Variable * -1/3 +1/3 1/2 1/2
Strange &
~100 MeV Variable * -1/3 +1/3 1/2 1/2
Charm &
~1.2 GeV Variable * +2/3 -2/3 1/2 1/2
Botton &
~4.2 GeV Variable * -1/3 +1/3 1/2 1/2
Top &
175 GeV Variable * +2/3 -2/3 1/2 1/2 * As quarks occur only in pairs or triplets, their lifetimes vary
BOSONS (force carrying particles) NAME NATURE MASS LIFETIME CHARGE SPIN Photon Electromagnetic 0 Stable 0 1
Weak force 80.4 GeV 10-25 s +1 -1 1 1 Z Weak force 91.2 GeV 10-25 s 0 1 Gluon Strong force 0 Stable 0 1 Graviton* Gravity 0 Stable 0 2 * Undetected at the time of this writing
MESONS (masses between the electron and proton) NAME MASS LIFETIME CHARGE SPIN Pion (pi-zero) 135 MeV 0.8 x 10-16 s 0 0
Pion (pi-plus)
Pion (pi-minus)
140 MeV 2.6 x 10-8 s +1 -1 0 0 Kaon (K-zero) 498 MeV 10-10 s 5 x 10-8 s 0 0
Kaon (K-plus)
Kaon (K-minus)
494 MeV 1.2 x 10-8 s 0 0 J/PSI 3.1 GeV 10-20 s 0 1
D (D-zero)
D (D-plus)
1.87 GeV 10-12 s 4 x 10-13 s 0 +1 0 UPSILON 9.46 GeV 10-20 s 0 1
938.3 MeV 938.3 MeV Stable (?) Stable (?) +1 -1 1/2 1/2
939.6 MeV 939.6 MeV Stable in nuclei 15 Min. free 0 0 1/2 1/2
1.115 GeV 1.115 GeV 2.6 x 10-10 s 0 0 1/2 1/2
Sigma (sigma +)
Sigma (sigma - )
Sigma (sigma 0 )
1.189 GeV 1.197 GeV 1.192 GeV 0.8 x 10-10 s 1.5 x 10-10 s 6 x 10-20 s +1 -1 0 1/2 1/2 1/2
XI (xi-minus)
XI (xi-zero)
1.321 GeV 1.315 GeV 1.6 x 10-10 s 3 x 10-10 s -1 0 1/2 1/2 Omega minus 1.672 GeV 0.8 x 10-10 s -1 3/2 Charmed lambda 2.28 GeV 2 x 10-13 s 1 1/2 And this only describes the beginning!
From the time of the ancient Greeks until today, the visual concept of the atom has proved elusive and obscure, yet the mathematical concepts have grown stronger. Although nothing has yet proven absolute, humans can now predict the behavior of atoms with great accuracy. But the world of the atom, the quanta of particles, appears so strange that we can no longer visualize what we think and talk about. The particles have a quality of complete random existence and non-existence about them; and yet the methods of quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and the whole of quanum mechanics provide such precise, useful, and powerful tools, that it encompasses all of the classical physical laws. The predictions of quantum mechanics have verified themselves many times and to a precision of better than one part in a billion. No predictive method has yet come as close. Even the unproven psychics, soothsayers, and prophets can only dream about such powers of prediction. If you delve into the strange world of atoms, you might start going crazy and start speaking to dogs:
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
To translate ATOMS into another language click here.
For an Indonesian translation of ATOMS (or many other languages), click here.
The "Atoms" HyperCard stack (An Apple computer document) got compiled by Jim Walker (alias: Zardoz) of Flight Engineering in September 1988 and transferred to the html language in 1997. This text may change as new information about the atom arrives. If you wish to use this text, please refer to the latest revision.
Bibliography (click on an underlined book title to obtain it):
Particles, by Michael Chester, 1978, Macmillan Publishing
The Particle Explosion, by Frank Close, Michael Marten, Christine Sutton, 1987, Oxford University Press
The Nature of Reality, by Richard Morris, 1987, The Noonday Press
Foundations of College Chemistry, by Morris Hein, 1967, Dickenson Publishing Co., Inc.
The Key to the Universe, by Nigel Calder, 1977, The Viking Press
The Quark and the Jaguar, by Murray Gell-Mann, 1994, W.H. Freeman and Company
The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition
Thanks to Marco Musy from Cern, European Organization for Nuclear Research, for correcting some of the quark, boson, and Tau masses.
An E-Prime document


text:
Student Wireless Connection process
Below are links to step by step instructions for various operating systems:
iOS (iPod, iPad, iPhone) - MacOSx is very similar
To connect to the new student wireless network for this year, there are several steps to follow depending on the operating system and version on your device. These steps involve; firstly setting up a secure connection to our wireless network and secondly authenticating yourself with our internet firewall. The second part will need to be done at least once a day at the moment until we get our wireless network and firewall talking to each other nicely.
If you have tried to connect to the BHS_Guest, BHS_Portal, PROVISIONING or Aurora networks and those connections are saved on your device then you will need to delete them. Also if your Apple device has a "zero_IT" profile saved then this will also need to be deleted.
The quick details are that the BHS_Student_2014 network is the most secure wireless network and will work well for Apple, Blackberry, Chromebooks, and modern Android devices. You will however have to tell Android and ChromeOS to use TTLS for its EAP method (top option box) and leave the "Anonymous identity" option blank and tell ChromeOS not to check the server CA certificate and Share the network with other users.
We still have a problem with Microsoft clients and cheap and/or old android devices so for Microsoft Windows and troublesome androids you will still need to use a less but still reasonably secure method with a common shared wireless key. This network is called "BHS_Student_Shared" and uses the password "studentlogin2014".


text:
Is It Me???
Now is it me or does Michael Jackson and his son Blanket look like Darth Vader and Mini Me on Halloween ?????
4 comments:
O.K now what the hell...
if anybody know about
the way muslimas cover themselves in
these quote unquote islamic countries,,
that's exacty what he looks like..
Like he's suppressed.. Come on Mike'
Peace and Blessings to all the Muslims worldwide.
- Monday, December 08, 2008
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- Friday, July 14, 2017


text:
Kier license LimitState:SLAB
6 Jun 19
6 Jun 19
Newsletter Archive
New Italian Site and Software
LimitState software is in use by companies and universities across the globe. With this in mind, we are translating our software into more languages and developing language-specific sites where users can find out more about our products. The first of these is Italian, with a dedicated Italian website being made live this week, along with an Italian version of LimitState:RING 3.0.
Visit www.limitstate.it to see the new site for yourself.


text:
Rates are between £9 - £10 per hour, and increase based upon number of hours worked. Your customers pay you directly into your bank account the following Friday.
When customers make an enquiry we send out the job via SMS to all registered cleaners in the area. Jobs are allocatd on a first come first served basis.
We basically help you grow and run your business. Our software handles all your job schedules (available on your app) and payment processing. We also help out with customer service.
No, customers provide their own products and vacuum. However, it can be useful to carry a few cloths and products in case customers run out.
As a self-employed service provider, you are your own boss and manage your own micro-business. You decide where, when and what cleaning offers you accept.


text:
School conjuration (creation); Level cleric/oracle 3, shaman 3; Subdomain family 3
Casting Time 10 minutes
Components V, S
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect food and water to sustain three humans or one horse/level for 24 hours
Duration 24 hours; see text
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
The food that this spell creates is simple fare of your choice–highly nourishing, if rather bland. Food so created decays and becomes inedible after 24 hours, although it can be kept fresh for another 24 hours by casting a purify food and drink spell on it. The water created by this spell is just like clean rain water, and it doesn't go bad as the food does.


text:
Organized jointly by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service Japan, various U.S. states including Iowa, Nebraska, several U.S. agricultural trade organizations, and the Japanese Prefecture of Yamanashi, the program is scheduled for March through mid-summer of this year.
Japan's partnership with the United States can be traced back more than 50 years to the famous "hog lift" [an airlift of hogs] of 1959. After Yamanashi Prefecture was devastated by 2 typhoons, farmers from the state of Iowa assisted Yamanashi farmers in rebuilding Japan's hog industry by donating and transferring hogs to repopulate the prefecture. Since that time the livestock industry in Japan has developed alongside the Japanese economy, reflecting the evolving tastes and growing purchasing power of the Japanese consumer.
Partnership was the aim in 1951 when the U.S. Embassy worked with the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture to help establish the U.S. program known as the Association for International Collaboration of Farmers, now referred to as the Japan Agricultural Exchange Council. The Association's mission is to help Japanese farmers learn about agricultural techniques in the United States and bolster U.S.-Japan cooperation. Since 1952, over 12,000 Japanese farmers have gone to the U.S. and returned to Japan with new ideas, new business contacts, and a better understanding of the United States.
The United States is the most reliable foreign supplier of high-quality agricultural products to Japan, and Japan's purchases have been essential to the health of the U.S. economy. In 2008, Japan purchased approximately $14.7 billion worth of grains, oilseeds, meats, dairy, and other food products from the U.S., making Japan our third largest agricultural export market.
While the U.S.-Japan agricultural relationship is strong and growing, both governments continue to discuss ways to enhance market access that is both science-based and commercially viable for producers of agricultural and livestock exports such as U.S. beef, rice, fruits, and vegetables.
Japan's food security stands upon two pillars -- domestic production and a reliable source of imports. As Ambassador Roos noted, "Our partnership in agriculture is an example of the close bond between our 2 countries."


text:
Ground-breaking symposium on porn harms to young people: the ill effects of the pornographic experiment on relationships and sexuality named out loud
Experts address packed-out UNSW theatre
The ground-breaking symposium 'Pornography and harms to children and young people' held at the University of New South Wales in Sydney last Tuesday has been declared a major success.
Hosted by Collective Shout, the Australia-first event brought together leading academics, researchers, educators, psychologists and youth and child advocates to examine the harmful impacts of early pornography exposure. Emceed by Andrew Lines of the Rite Journey, speakers including Dr Michael Flood, Maree Crabbe, Dr Joe Tucci and Susan McLean, unpacked the global research as well as examining local experience, to a standing-room only audience.
I also addressed the symposium on 'How girls are harmed by porn-conditioned boys' (pic above). I unpacked how girls and young women were affected by porn-using boys in their everyday lives. From my introduction:
The proliferation and globalisation of hypersexualised imagery and pornographic themes has led to destructive ideas about sex and makes healthy sexual exploration almost impossible.
Sexual conquest and domination becomes all important, untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy and authentic human connection
Young people are learning about f—ing but not about making love.
Young men are being conditioned and shaped by the messages they imbibe from pornography, given a sense of entitlement to the bodies of women and girls. Viewing porn often reinforces the idea that girls are always available for sex.
Girls are under extreme pressure to give men what they want, to adopt pornified roles and behaviours, their bodies merely sex aids. Girls learn that they are service stations for male gratification and pleasure.
I drew from stories girls themselves relayed to me in schools around the country, including demands for naked selfies, boys sending them 'dick pics' and porn videos uninvited (including to girls as young as 12), inappropriate touching, sexual harassment, comments about their bodies, being ranked in comparison to porn stars, demands for porn-inspired sexual acts, boys not respecting denial of consent, being mocked or having rumors started about them for resisting unwanted sexual activity.
After canvassing the research on how boys and young women socialized by porn act out on women and girls, I looked at ways forward so that girls can stand up against warped notions of sexuality conveyed in pornography and seek relationships based on mutual respect and care.
I quoted Tiffany, 15, who wrote to me through Facebook:
Hi Melinda. I was really touched by what you had to say and you opened my eyes to what sort of world we live in and as a 16 I'm disgusted and amazed and what girls my age have to go through. You said something about being asked for nudes and that and personally I didn't know what you meant by that as I haven't been asked to do that… Until today. To tell you the truth I wouldn't of known what to do about it if you didn't speak about it and I'm very grateful to you. The boy asked me for a photo or video and I said no that's when he called me lame but I immediately told him I am more than just my body and you shouldn't treat me like a piece of meat and instantly blocked him. Thank you for telling me that and I hope I have done the right thing and myself and other girls are taking part in taking action on this case and we want to make a difference. I want to help girls feel like they are worth something…
MTR on ABC QLD
There was a great deal of media interest in the symposium, with many speakers giving media interviews throughout the day. Here's an interview I did with Steve Austin of ABC QLD.
See also:
Other media coverage here.
Media Release about the symposium.
Technology Online News.com: How the dark world of pornography is damaging kids lives forever.


text:
Roger Federer, who has won a record 15 Grand Slam titles, teamed up with reigning Australian Open champion Serena Williams and Australia's Lleyton Hewitt and Samantha Stosur. Their opponents were 2009 winner Rafael Nadal, 2008 winner Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick and U.S. Open champion Kim Clijsters.
The players wore microphones on court, adding to the entertainment of a mixed-doubles match featuring player substitutions. Commentating as they lunged, lobbed and smashed, they displayed their athleticism and personalities.
There was the eloquent and debonair Federer who played the role of master of ceremonies. It was Federer's idea to hold the match, which he helped organize a day earlier. There was the good-natured Clijsters cracking jokes, playful Nadal with his sideways grin and wisecracking Roddick.
To the delight of the crowd, Roddick mocked Williams' infamous meltdown at the US Open when a line judge called her for a foot fault during a crucial point in her semifinal loss to Clijsters.
"Did you really call a foot fault on me in a charity match?" Roddick reprimanded a line judge. "You realise Serena's over there, right?"
The camera panned to Williams sitting on the sidelines shaking her head and laughing, as the packed 15,000-seat stadium erupted in laughter. Williams has been touchy on that subject since her arrival in Australia last week — the profanity-laced, finger-pointing tirade cost her a record fine of $82,500.
Federer tried three times to show off the shot from his U.S. Open victory against Djokovic that he has described as the greatest of his life: a between-the-legs, back-to-the-net winner from the baseline. On Sunday, it worked once and sunk into the net twice.
Djokovic displayed his powerful serve, acing Williams on one point and prompting her to comment: "You look really good acing girls."
Later, Nadal smashed a winner at Williams' feet, evoking a piercing shriek from the world's No. 1-ranked women's player.
"Don't scare me like that Rafa," she said, drawing support from teammate Federer who assured her, "I'll get him back."
At one game break, Clijsters massaged Nadal's sore thigh. She did not interact with ex-fiance Hewitt — both of them are now married with kids.
In the end, Federer's so-called Red Team beat the rival Blue Team 7-6 in their one-set match that lasted an hour and a half. The teams were named for the colors of Haiti's flag.
"It was a fun afternoon for all of us. But most important is that we can help Haiti," Federer told the center court crowd after the match ended.
Some players made separate contributions, organizers said, including 2008 Australian Open winner Maria Sharapova ($10,000),American John Isner ($5,000) — after he won the Auckland tournament — and Marcos Baghadits ($5,000) — after he win in Sydney.
Seats cost AU$10 — a fraction of the normal price for a Grand Slam match — and fans lined up from early morning, waiting hours to get tickets for the afternoon match.
"It was electric in there," said Melbourne resident Helen Forrest, 63. "This was just really fun and a really good way to see the other side of the players."
Zaggy Dean, a 40-year-old real estate photographer from Melbourne, called it a worthy cause.
"I'm devastated about this tragedy. It's one of the poorest countries in the world," he said. "This was a great opportunity."


text:
The value of all farm real estate, which includes all land and buildings on farms, averaged $2,100 per acre as of January 1, 2009. That's down 3.2% from 2008, according to USDA's annual survey of land values and cash rents. Keep in mind the eight-month lag in releasing the data from the "as of January 1" date. But the survey does pick up the weakness that swept across the farmland market the last third of 2008. It also shows the Plains states held values firmer than areas more heavily impacted by the overall economic downturn and floundering housing market, such as the Northeast, Cornbelt and Mountain regions.
The full USDA/NASS report can be found here.
The report also indicated that cash rents for cropland rose $4.50 per acre, or 5.3%, while pasture rents remained unchanged for the 2009 crop and grazing year. Cropland cash rents paid in 2009 average $90 per acre, compared with $85.50 per acre in 2008. Pasture cash rents average $10.50 per acre, consistent with the 2008 price but above the 2007 price of $10.00.
USDA said the 3.2% decrease in the value of all farm real estate from 2008 is the first decline since 1987. Regional changes in the average value of farm real estate ranged from virtually no change in the Northern and Southern Plains regions to an 11% decline in the Mountain region. The highest farm real estate values remained in the Northeast region at $4,830 per acre. The Mountain region had the lowest farm real estate value, $922 per acre.
Both cropland and pasture values are also down from the previous year, USDA said. Cropland values declined by $110 per acre (3.9%) to $2,650 per acre. In the Cornbelt region, the average value decreased 4% from the previous years, to $3,870 per acre. However, in the Northern Plains and Delta regions, cropland values rose 1.6% and 0.6%, respectively.
Pasture value declined by $20 per acre (1.8%) from 2008 to $1,070 per acre. The Mountain region had the largest percentage decrease in pasture value, 16% below 2008.
The contraction in the overall economy has caused less commercial and residential development in many regions. Livestock and crop commodity prices have decline from a year earlier, thus producers and investors are less optimistic than a year ago, said. A decrease in the demand for recreational land has also contributed to the overall decrease in land values, said USDA.
In interested in seeing a copy of my newsletter, LandOwner, just drop me an email at [email protected] or call me at 800-772-0023.


text:
Homophobia is intolerable
I was disturbed to read of some Taiwanese religious leaders speaking out against same-sex marriage ("Same-sex marriage criticized," Sept. 19, page 2). The claims they make about same-sex marriage and homosexuality are not only ridiculous, they are a form of hate speech.
The homophobic views being promoted by these religious organizations create hatred and division within society. They cause real harm to gay people who are the target of their attacks.
Fortunately not all religious groups in Taiwan share these extreme views. However, it is important that they condemn the words of these so-called religious leaders. A clear message needs to be sent that preaching homophobia is totally unacceptable.
David Reid
Taradale, Australia
I want dual citizenship
I love Taiwan. I really do! It is a great democratic nation with friendly people and a rich culture. I even like stinky tofu, but only the fried type! I like it so much I've decided to settle down here and live here for the rest of my life with my family. I have a Taiwanese wife with a baby on the way, have a full-time job, started a small business, bought a house here and am learning Chinese too. There is only one thing that bothers me: how I will never be able to become a full citizen of Taiwan and proudly be Taiwanese.
Why would I want to be a citizen of Taiwan? Well I would like to vote here and be recognized as a citizen. My wife and child are Taiwanese, so why can't I? I want to be a part of the society that my daughter will grow up in, where I own property and where I will live. It does not sound that crazy, does it?
Some of you may say that it is possible for me to become a citizen of Taiwan and get a passport here. Yes, that is true, if I renounce the citizenship of the country I was born in. Now, I plan to live in Taiwan for the next 20 to 50 years, but I still really love the country I grew up in. Why should I have to give that up? Can I not be a citizen of both?
It really bothers me that Taiwanese can live in Canada their whole lives, but still are able to come back every four years and vote for a president. I have a greater interest in the welfare of this country because I am a full-time resident of Taiwan and chose to live here with my family.
I hope the laws can be changed so that it might be made more reasonable for foreigners to obtain citizenship and integrate into this society. We are not going anywhere any time soon; we are marrying Taiwanese, making babies and buying property here. Some of us are here to stay. So can we please be Taiwanese too?
I know some of you may thinking to yourselves: "You're not Taiwanese! You don't even speak Taiwanese." I have rectified that and have started learning Taiyu (台語) as well.
Elias Gasparis
New Taipei City