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Topic Page: Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent U.S. agency responsible for regulating radio and television, telephone, cable, and satellite. The FCC is both quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial in that it develops policy, enforces regulations, and issues broadcasting permits and licenses. Since its five commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the FCC is a political body and thereby subject to partisanship and ideological manipulation. In the culture wars, the FCC has been variously criticized for overregulation and for not regulating enough.
The U.S. federal government has long declared the airways public property that must be leased prior to any use. In 1912, the Radio Communications Act required the Department of Commerce and Labor to issue radio licenses. In 1927, at the request of broadcasters, the Radio Act established the Federal Radio Communications (FRC) to bring order to the airwaves for improving the quality of transmissions by reducing the crowded conditions. In 1934, the FRC and relevant offices of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Office of the Postmaster General responsible for telephone and telegraph regulations were consolidated, forming the FCC.
As a New Deal creation, the FCC sought to promote competition among broadcasters and foster a free marketplace of ideas by eliminating monopolistic control of the airwaves, reducing chain broadcasting, prohibiting newspaper ownership of stations, preventing broadcasters from using their stations for partisan purposes, and requiring the airing of dissenting views. This led to a conservative backlash, with New Deal foes depicting the FCC as a sinister instrument of big government. Some opposed the 1943 breakup of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) into two networks, NBC and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). In addition, conservatives accused the FCC commissioners of purposely awarding broadcasting licenses to liberals, some labeled "red." At one point, Congressman Martin Dies (D-TX) denigrated the FCC as "the nastiest nest of rats in the country," implying communist affiliation.
Political realignment on the FCC came when President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed John Doerfer and Robert Lee as commissioners. Both were allies of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) and used their position to target broadcasters deemed too liberal by Republican Party standards. To that end, the FCC developed a cozy relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in order to learn the backgrounds of controversial broadcasters. The stated fear was that a "red network" of the airwaves, especially television, could be used by communists during a national emergency (such as a war between the United States and Soviet Union). In a highly publicized hearing spanning three years, the FCC considered revoking the radio and television licenses of Edward Lamb, a liberal Democrat, businessman, labor attorney, and Soviet sympathizer. Lamb, a resident of Toledo, Ohio, won his case in 1957 after several witnesses for the prosecution recanted their testimony, which they claimed had been "coached" by FCC officials.
Some suggested that the FCC joined in the Red Scare as a distraction from the task of regulating the airwaves. During the TV quiz show scandals of the 1950s, for example, the FCC remained largely confined to the sidelines. In March 1960, FCC chairman Doerfer, long regarded as a reluctant regulator, was forced to resign following revelations that he had vacationed on a yacht owned by broadcaster George B. Storer.
One of the most debated FCC regulations was the so-called fairness doctrine (1949–1987), which required broadcasters to devote "equal time" on the air to opposing viewpoints. Many broadcasters argued that "fairness" was an ambiguous standard and that any requirement for equity of opinion was a violation of the First Amendment. In one dramatic instance, the FCC in July 1973 revoked the broadcast license of fundamentalist preacher Carl McIntire (on radio station WXUR in Media, Pennsylvania) because of his refusal to comply with the fairness doctrine. Supporters of the doctrine believed that it fostered democracy and prevented stations from airing only one ideological perspective. Critics countered that the doctrine had a chilling effect by compelling broadcasters to avoid airing controversial ideas. The fairness doctrine also required that if air time was granted to a political candidate for campaign advertising, then equal time had to also be offered to the opposing candidate. However, stations were not required to invite lesser-known candidates to participate in televised debates.
In 1987, the FCC chose to abolish the fairness doctrine even though the U.S. Supreme Court in Red Lion Broadcasting Company v. Federal Communications Commission (1969) had ruled that the commission was legally authorized to regulate content because of the "scarcity" of available public frequencies. By the second half of the 1980s, the FCC had determined that the scarcity argument had been rendered invalid by the diversity of media options. Congress in 1987 attempted to reinstate the fairness doctrine, but the bill was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Although primarily opposed by political conservatives, the fairness doctrine was also criticized by William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices, who in 1973 argued, "The Fairness Doctrine… puts the head of the camel inside the tent that enables administration after administration to toy with TV or radio in order to serve its sordid or its benevolent ends."
In 1984, the U.S. Justice Department broke up AT&T ("Ma Bell") on the grounds that the telecommunications giant was a monopoly. As a result, local and long-distance phone services, as well as cable television, were separated. Out of this process emerged the seven so-called "Baby Bells," each granted a regional monopoly. Upon passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, local telephone companies were required to open their markets to competitors but were permitted to offer long-distance service. Then, in a decision critics characterized as a return to monopolistic days, the FCC in December 2006 approved an $85 billion merger between Bell South (one of the Baby Bells) and AT&T.
Perhaps most controversial, the 1996 law loosened broadcast ownership restrictions, enabling television corporations to increase their reach of the viewing public from 25 to 35 percent. In addition, radio groups were no longer limited to twenty AM and twenty FM stations. Thus, by 2000, Clear Channel Communications was in possession of 1,200 radio stations, constituting 9 percent of the American market. Critics viewed the corporate consolidation of the airwaves as a dangerous concentration of power.
In another decision viewed by critics as too pro-business, the FCC in 1997 chose to assign digital channels without charge. U.S. senators Bob Dole (R-KS) and John McCain (R-AZ), among others, believed that broadcasters should be required to pay $70 billion to the federal government for the assignment of spectrum for digital television.
Beginning with a 1946 report known as the Blue Book (officially titled Public Service Responsibility for Broadcast Licensees), the FCC has reminded broadcasters of their commitment to public service. On May 9, 1961, in an address before the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, FCC chairman Newton N. Minnow denounced the quality of television programming, describing it as "a vast wasteland." The controversial and often-quoted speech annoyed producer Sherwood Schwartz (among many others in the industry), who christened the castaway ship on the television sitcom Gilligan's Island (1964–1967) the S.S. Minnow. While "public service" programming as originally defined by the FCC referred to broadcasts with informational content, as entertainment became a greater part of broadcasting, the issue of indecency became central to the debate over broadcaster responsibility.
In 1973, the comedian George Carlin tested the FCC by delivering a radio monologue called "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." In the legal battle that ensued, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in FCC v. Pacifica (1978) that the FCC has a right to impose decency standards on broadcasters because of considerations (such as the need to shield children from offensive material) beyond First Amendment protections. The Court added, however, that there is a "safe harbor" when indecency standards are not in effect, from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M., when children should be in bed. By 1987, the FCC expanded its definition of indecency from seven dirty words to include sexual innuendo, a decision largely impacting radio "shock jocks" such as Howard Stern.
Indecency fines imposed on broadcasters by the FCC remained relatively small during the 1990s. By 2004, however, with the general public lodging 1.4 million complaints about indecency, the FCC issued fines totaling $7.9 million. That same year, CBS inadvertently televised the singer Janet Jackson exposing her breast during a Super Bowl halftime show, leading to a $550,000 FCC fine. In an ironic legal twist, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in June 2007 that FCC fines for the broadcasting of "fleeting expletives" are unlawful since the same obscene words had been publicly blurted by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
A provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required cable companies broadcasting "sexually-oriented programming" to either scramble those channels or to limit their transmission during the "safe harbor" hours in order to protect children, but the Supreme Court in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group (2000) overturned that regulation as too restrictive. Also in 1996, Congress mandated that television sets larger than thirteen inches (33 centimeters) be equipped with the V-chip, a blocking device capable of reading the program ratings in terms of sexual content and violence as established by the TV Parental Guidelines.
Net neutrality, pertaining to the flow of content over the Internet or any other network, has been a major issue recently addressed by the FCC. Certain commercial Internet providers have argued that they should be able to prioritize traffic flow, providing faster service to those customers who pay more. But the founders of the Internet argue that the original idea was for the medium to operate in a nondiscriminatory manner. Following the 2005 merger between AT&T and SBC Communications, proposals were circulated that suggested the need of "tiering" the Internet for establishing a high-speed tier to guarantee reliable service. Phone companies have argued that rules imposing how they operate their broadband networks will stymie their ability to deliver quality service.
In December 2010, the FCC approved rules for net neutrality. The 5–3 vote followed strict party lines, with Democrats favoring the measure and Republicans opposing it. The regulations require that users of wired networks have access to all legal content, applications, and services. However, providers are allowed to manage the data and even stop the flow of spam, as long as there is full public disclosure of such practices. The compromise measure was criticized by those on both sides of the debate.
See also: Censorship; McCarthyism; Media Bias; New Deal; Shock Jocks.
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By Doris RufOn Apr 22, 2019 Letter Templates
A enterprise letter is a professional piece of correspondence. if you are writing a cover letter, letter of advice, or thank you word, you will want to follow the formal conventions of a enterprise letter. Following those guidelines is essential. It sets the tone that you are taking the correspondence severely and ensures that the letter recipient can attention for your message (and no longer formatting inconsistencies, typos, or any other small errors).before you write — or finalize — your subsequent business letter, make the effort to review a way to layout the letter, from font preference to fashion, at the side of which salutations and sign-offs are suitable to apply. Any of these styles is acceptable to be used in a business letter, but since the regulations for the block format are so clear cut, this can be the simpler choice to select. Many phrase processing programs will have templates to be had to help you format your letter accurately. Whichever format you choose, make sure to single space the letter, and bypass a area between every paragraph and segment. Appearances rely! A business letter is a expert piece of correspondence, but it wont be perceived that way in case you choose a wacky font or have lots of typos. pick the proper font and font length. keep away from informal language or slang. save you typos and grammatical mistakes through proofreading carefully. if you are printing out the letter, bear in mind choosing high quality paper. something paper you select, fold the letter cautiously before putting it inside the envelope. If you could, kind the recipient address at the envelope; if thats no longer possible, use your neatest handwriting. A cowl Letter is a 1-web page enterprise report that needs to be sent together along with your resume/CV whilst making use of for a brand new task and serves to explicit your hobby in the function. the duvet Letter you include to your process application wishes to incorporate and provide an explanation for details about your credentials and revel in for this precise task/agency and show off your interest within the function.
For most activity programs, a properly-written resume and cowl letter or letter of hobby are extra than sufficient. however, sure industries or businesses can also require a letter of recommendation further to those basic essentials. teachers and physician assistants are two such examples of jobs that regularly want a written reference as part of the application. generally speaking, the most convincing reference letters will be those written by a supervisor. In instances in which that is impossible (or unwanted), a recommendation from a coworker who is intimately familiar along with your work is also suited. if you experience as even though your resume and cover letter are not especially strong, a letter of advice assist you to land a process when it otherwise might be impossible. This commonly takes place when you have little or no paintings revel in. In situations like those, a man or woman reference from a friend, instructor, or family member could make all of the distinction with regards to process searching. however, if you are making use of for a mainly competitive process, a robust reference from a preceding enterprise can turn the tide and assist you stand out from the crowd.
With these days era, its commonplace to ship a cowl letter – and a whole job software, for that count number – on-line or by electronic mail. this is in particular commonplace on task boards like CV-Library, and even with direct employers. if you need to ship a cover letter on line or thru email, the approach you must take is a bit different in terms of formatting. if you just need to ship your cover letter as an attachment, then write it as defined earlier than. in terms of saving it, make sure you use the .PDF record extension; any laptop can be able to view the document, and all your formatting could be preserved. home windows desktops use the .docx document extension for documents via default, while Macs use .pages. avoid either of these, because there may be a risk that the organization wont be capable of open your cowl letter. stay with .PDF. if you want to send your cowl letter because the actual body textual content of your e-mail, your technique will want to be barely specific. First, ensure you format the concern line of your e mail like so, software for [Job Title] – [Your Name]. if you had been given a reference quantity, include that in the situation line as properly. as soon as you have carried out that, its time to think about the format of your letter. The paragraphs can be similar to a hard copy of your cowl letter, however you could dispose of the addresses, date and signature.
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Trading Inverse ETFsKen Calhoun Follow |
For traders looking for signs of when the markets are likely to pullback or sell off, one important clue can be found in inverse (or "bear") exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which go up when markets drop. Current charts indicate recent high volume spikes in these instruments, which may provide a leading indicator for market sentiment; specifically that markets are currently poised to drop significantly.
Warning Sign #1: One-Year Recent High Volume in UVXY
Clues as to what institutional traders are doing can be found when significant patterns in volume and price occur. For example in Figure 1 – ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (UVXY) , this one-year chart reveals one-year high buying volume in this inverse ETF. Similar patterns are now trending in other inverse ETFs, indicating selling pressure is underway.
Significant buying volume was seen in late June 2015, as observed in Figure 1. This means that professional traders have been accumulating shares in UVXY and other "bear" ETFs recently. The author has also been buying shares in these instruments, in anticipation of continued buying pressure moving forward during summer and fall of this year.
Yet another technical price-action clue is seen in price pivoting above the 50-period simple moving average (SMA) line for UVXY, for the first time since December 2014. This price bounce is also a long technical signal for this instrument.
Warning Sign #2: 90-Day High Volume & Price Action in SDS
Another confirming technical indicator, a "warning sign" of possible market selling coming up soon, is the recent move up seen in Figure 2 – ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 ETF (SDS) . The high buying volume in this seen in late June, combined with a tall 'wide range' green candle that moved above the 100 simple moving average (SMA) indicates significant buying as well.
A confirming technical signal for both of these key inverse ETFs is if they now move above the 200 simple moving average (SMA) line. If a "golden cross" then occurs, in which the 50 SMA crosses above the 200 SMA, then a strong market correction and/or reversal will be well underway.
Good professional traders don't predict; instead we react to solid, specific data evidence seen in our charts. So rather than predict an upcoming market selloff, the author will instead caution the trading community that "cracks in the foundation" of the markets are now observed, and to carefully watch to see if these instruments do continue upwards.
The astute trader will also look for additional confirming indicators (specifically, weakness in small-caps/Russell index instruments) and sector-specific weakness (in banking, finance and biotechs/pharmaceutical) should be used moving forward, to confirm market selling pressure.
Recommended resource: For more on using this and other trading strategies, see the author's complimentary Saturday "Trading Week Ahead' webinar events at TradeMastery.com/free.
Ken Calhoun is a trading professional who has traded millions of dollars of equities since the 1990s, and is the producer of multiple award-winning trading courses and video-based training systems for active traders. He is a UCLA alumnus and founder of TradeMastery.com and StockTradingSuccess.com (with Steve Nison), popular online educational sites that reach tens of thousands of active traders worldwide.
DISCLOSURE: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not represent the views of equities.com. Readers should not consider statements made by the author as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to: http://www.equities.com/disclaimer.


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Take a short walk into the Colorado Plateau desert of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (NRA) and you may find the delicate tracks of a lizard in sand or hear the rustling of dried leaves under bushes. These and other signs may indicate the presence of the most common reptiles in Glen Canyon NRA, lizards and snakes.
Like all desert dwellers, reptiles have adapted to survive in hot, arid climates. Reptiles are cold-blooded, or poikilothermic, meaning they regulate their body temperature through external sources rather than by internal metabolism. By spending the hottest parts of the day in the shade, reptiles are able to regulate their body temperature. Lizards sometimes appear to be doing "pushups," which are sometimes used to cool their temperature their environment is too hot. Pushups are more often used as territorial or mating displays. Many reptiles are more active in the early morning, twilight, or night to avoid extreme temperatures and predators. Lizards can be commonly seen during the day while most snakes are more likely to be seen at night.
Habitat preferences vary by species, though reptiles will escape the heat and sun in shady areas under bushes, tree trunks, and crevices in areas with vegetation. This vegetation also provides habitat for their food sources, which include insects and other invertebrates, small rodents, and birds. Some lizards and snakes may eat flowers or seeds when other food is not available. Reptiles do not chew their food; lizards swallow their food whole, while snakes engulf their prey. Predators of reptiles in Glen Canyon NRA include hawks, owls, roadrunners, badgers, coyotes, foxes, and larger reptiles.
The reptiles of Glen Canyon NRA are not well known. A 2003 inventory of reptiles and amphibians of the area expected sixteen lizard species and eleven snake species, but only detected ten lizard species and six snake species, likely due to extreme drought conditions of that year. Future surveys may increase the number of observed species. The sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus graciosus) and eastern fence lizard (S. undulatus) are common to the Colorado Plateau and Glen Canyon NRA. Other common lizards in the area are desert spiny lizard (S. magister), side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana), tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus), and eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris). The tree lizard has been found in riparian areas, with preferences for slickrock walls and boulders.
The chuckwalla (Sauromalus obesus) is the largest lizard found in Glen Canyon NRA. Males in this area have black heads, pale gray torsos, and pale yellow-gray tails. Females are gray-brown with faint spots, the young are banded. When threatened, this large, primarily herbivorous lizard retreats into a narrow crevice and inflates its loose, baggy skin to wedge itself between rocks. Under its loose folds of skin are spaces which can be filled with fluid to be used when moisture is difficult to find. The chuckwalla was historically found along the Colorado River in Glen Canyon as far north as Hite, but likely has a smaller distribution due to Lake Powell.
Common snakes in Glen Canyon NRA include the common kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula), black-necked garter snake (Thamnophis cyrtopsis), gopher snake (Pituophis catenifer), and the striped whipsnake (Masticophis taeniatus). The night snake (Hypsiglena torquata) is active at dawn and dusk (crepuscular) and nocturnal. It primarily feeds on lizards, snakes and their eggs, amphibians, and possibly scorpions. Its venom is especially poisonous to other snakes, but has little effect on mammals and no effect on humans. The common kingsnake is generally active in the morning and late afternoon, but tends to be nocturnal in hot weather. Its pattern varied from all black to black with white or yellow bands.
There are at least four western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridus) subspecies present in Glen Canyon NRA: midget faded rattlesnake (C. v. concolor), Great Basin rattlesnake (C. v. lutosus), Hopi rattlesnake (C. v. nuntius), and the Grand Canyon rattlesnake (C. v. abyssus). Rattlesnakes are the only venomous snakes in Glen Canyon NRA. Like most reptiles, they will avoid detection if possible. Pay attention to your surroundings as you explore the desert of Glen Canyon NRA. If you hear a rattle, stop moving, listen, identify the location of the snake, and slowly move away. Rattlesnakes perceive humans as possible predators—respect the space of a snake and avoid a defensive strike.
The best way to observe a reptile is to first locate the suitable habitat of a particular species, then watch and listen for small movements on rocks or in vegetation, bring a pair of binoculars for a closer view. Keep in mind most reptiles will remain motionless to avoid detection and will quickly move to a hiding place when approached. Increased inventory and monitoring of reptiles can help us better understand these intriguing desert dwellers.
Published 8/07
Last updated: November 29, 2017


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Liam is Finally Here...!!
Mom, in labor, was craving Dutch Bros. coffee, "like none other", so daddy was amazing enough to stop, and even get her much-adored Owl mug (Breast Cancer Awareness mug). By the time she got to the hospital and got her epidural, she was starving, and had to munch on something (behind the nurse's back, naturally...), so, Baked Cheetos it was.
Mom was soon all thumbs-up, ready to finally meet her baby boy! At 2:49pm, we got to meet beautiful Liam, at perfect 6 pounds 15 ounces, eyes wide open and aware. After 9 long months, both mom & dad were so elated to finally get to meet him...they wept together in joy.
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Natalie Bee is a Birth Photographer and Doula, a mother of four wildlings, and coffee junkie. She captures the beauty of motherhood and birth through a passionate photojournalist approach.
August 2019


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A hunt is on to track down a mystery man who made a threatening call which led to nine North East careers centres closing.
Shocked staff at Connexions Tyne and Wear discovered the message on the service's answer machine when they arrived at work yesterday morning.
They immediately alerted police and on the advice of police none of the offices opened to the public.
Police visited each of the offices in High West Street, Gateshead; Fawcett Street, Sunderland; Ocean Road, South Shields; The Galleries, Washington; Percy Street, Newcastle; Newbottle Street, Houghton-le-Spring; Whitley Bay and the Metro Centre.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the message referred to a man with a gun outside one of the offices, but no one was found near any of the offices with a weapon.
However managers at the advice and careers service were not taking any chances.
They decided to keep all offices closed yesterday. As police narrowed the search for the caller it was decided it was safe to open seven of the offices yesterday afternoon.
However the offices in High Street West, Gateshead, and at Washington remained closed.
Insp Les Pattison, of Gateshead East Police, said: "Our initial reaction was to keep all the offices closed while we assessed what was going on. It became apparent that there was no suspicious activity at any of the centres."


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If the boat driver has to turn around to look at the wakeboard rider, the risk of an accident or injury goes up dramatically. Having a mirror on your wakeboard boat enables the driver to keep an eye on the rider in tow without turning away from the helm.
Monster offers tower mount and windshield mount options to accommodate a variety of placement options. Now you can keep your eyes on the helm and your wakeboard rider at the same time. Have any questions about our tower mirrors, mounts, and clamps? We're here to help—give us a call at 1-877-778-6937.


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Men's PhD® 5" Shorts
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Get the best of both worlds from the first step to the last: this short features a Merino blend interior brief designed for fit, comfort and temperature regulation and an outer synthetic short designed for speed and protection against the elements.
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Lightweight, built-in Merino blend liner helps regulate temperature, dries quickly and resists odors.
Reflective elements for visibility in low-light conditions
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- Garment Weight: 130 g = 4.6 oz
- Style: SW016007
- Machine Wash Cold Gentle Cycle.
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1 Pre-reading
What's your opinion of any of the following things?
2 Reading I
Read or listen to the article once. Were any of your ideas similar to Groucho Marx's?
3 Reading II
Read the article again. Then, complete the quotes with the correct words.
Try to do it without referring back to the article.
1. I've had a perfectly wonderful _____ , but this wasn't it.
2. If you're not having fun, you're doing something _____ .


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Wendy asks of surrogacy: "So what happens, you grab the baby and leave her bleeding and dismiss her?"
Wendy Williams sure has some interesting thoughts about surrogates.
The talk show host opened Wednesday's episode by talking about Kim Karadshian and Kanye West's newborn baby girl, who was welcomed via surrogate on Tuesday morning. The baby was born at 12:47 a.m. and weighed in at 7 lbs. 6 oz.
Though Kardashian said she and her husband were "incredibly grateful to our surrogate who made our dreams come true with the greatest gift one could give," Wendy said they could have coughed up some more money when it came to paying the woman.
According to TMZ, the couple paid $45k for the surrogate. "So when you're a surrogate, what happens?" asked Wendy. "$45,000, which is not a lot of money for the situation."
"So what happens, you grab the baby and leave her bleeding and dismiss her?" she continued, eliciting shock from her audience. "No, seriously."
Williams then wondered if the woman will find a way to profit off the birth. "Will she write a book? Will she start selling stories? Will she give some to Hot Topics?" she said with a laugh. "'Kim called me every night, Kanye called me every hour, they insisted I only eat beyond burgers, salads, out of a plastic container like they do on the show,'" she added.
While no name has been revealed for North and Saint's little sister just yet, Wendy had one in mind there as well.
"I like the name Wild. Wild West," she said. "This is a baby who, if they do their money correctly, she will never have to work a day in her life or apply for a job like me and you. When we have to apply for jobs, you need a normal name. Although, if I got an application here at Wendy and her name was Wild West, I'd be like, bring her to the dance floor immediately. I need to meet her."


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On Tuesday, April 1, Josh Goldberg, the creator of Full Screen Mario, will be unveiling his newest full screen creation: Pokemon. The game will be rolling out on his website, www.fullscreenpokemon.com. Contrary to Full Screen Mario, which took Goldberg more than a year to develop, the entire Full Screen Pokemon engine and maps took but a rainy Saturday's work. Additionally, Full Screen Pokemon was coded in AstleyScript, instead of Mario's JavaScript.
Topher: Hello, Josh and thanks for being here with me today. What inspired you to make Full Screen Pokemon?
Josh: Well, Twitch Plays Pokemon brought Pokemon back into the spotlight again, so I thought, why not capitalize on it? We're no strangers to the game. You know the rules, and so do I.
T: Valid point. So are there any similarities to its predecessor, Full Screen Mario?
J: Sure. More than you would expect. The engine is similar and finding and integrating the sprites were the same. Also, a full screen is what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't get this from any other site.
T: Please elaborate. Do you think this will achieve the 2.7 million unique hits that Full Screen Mario received?
J: Here, let me tell you what I'm feeling. Let me make you understand. Like Super Mario, you're never gonna give this game up. And it will never let you down; I've made sure that the website will handle the incoming hits. That way in game, it will never glitch around and crash on you.
T: Great! Will there be new features not included in the original Red version?
J: Of course! Instead of the original three that you start with, in honor of Twitch Plays Pokemon, I've made Rick Ghastley the only starter available. Additionally, in memory of Bloody Sunday, I've made it so that you can't release Pokemon, to make sure you're never gonna give them up. I still feel for the many casualties that happened that day. Helix be blessed.
T: I completely understand; I was there too. I apologize, I want to keep this interview short, so are there any other points you want to add?
J: I've enjoyed Pokemon, ever since I was a kid; it's partly what also motivated me to make the game. So you could say I've known Pokemon for so long. My heart's been aching, but I was unsure how to code it. Older, I know now how to write it out. You and I both know the game and we're gonna play it. I'm going to reiterate, you're never gonna give it up.
T: Oh, I look forward to it, Josh, and you can bet I'll be one of the first hits. Thanks for your time, Josh. For more information on the game and the game itself, visit www.fullscreenpokemon.com.


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Facebook releases Workplace, an enterprise level social networking and messaging platform, after 20 months in a closed beta known as Facebook at Work.
Workplace has News Feed, Groups, Chat direct messaging, Reactions, Live video, Video and Audio calling, and translation features. Its launching as a desktop and mobile app and is available to anyone. From what it looks like, Workplace is meant to allow companies to increase collaboration and communication between employees. Facebook stated in an announcement that more than 1,000 organizations around the world use Workplace.
The platform will also have Multi-Company Groups, that allows collaboration with companies and employees from different organizations. Facebook is also releasing dashboard analytics, single sign-on, and better IT integration with current IT systems. Employees can also stay connected when they're out of the office using the Work Chat app for iOS and Android.
Workplace does have a lot of competition with the likes of Microsoft's Yammer, Slack, Salesforce's Chatter, Hipchat, and many more.
Workplace has a particular pricing model based on the number of monthly active users. "Workplace will be priced competitively — companies only pay for people who are actively using the product," according to Facebook's announcement. Its tiered pricing structure starts at $3 per month per user for less than 1,000 monthly active users, $ 2 per month per user for 1,001 – 10,000 monthly active users, and $1 per month per user for 10,001+ monthly active users. There's a 3 month trial in case organizations want to test the platform and for non-profits and educational institutions the platform is free.


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I provide high quality silicone doll kits for fellow silicone artists and collectors. All of my doll kits are 100% platinum silicone from Smooth-On. I use Smooth-On's EcoFlex products because I feel they are the best in quality silicone. I offer silicone baby doll kits that were sculpted either by me or by excellent sculpting artists that I trust. I do hold the production rights for each of the silicone baby doll kits that I produce.
When painting your silicone kit, I recommend that you use good quality silicone paints. My favorite brands of silicone paints are Smooth-On and Silicone Art Materials, although FuseFX is also a good choice, particularly for beginners. I do thoroughly wash each of my kits before shipping them, however I highly recommend that you take the time to fully wash and prep your doll kit before you begin painting to ensure that your paint will firmly adhere for a long-lasting finish.
All of the dolls listed on this page are available only as blank doll kits, intended to be painted by the purchaser or an artist of the purchaser's choosing. If you are interested in a completed baby doll, please check my Available Babies page or sign up for my newsletter to be informed when a new completed baby is available.
10 inch Mini Baby Zoe, by Cindy Dowling
19 inch Cloth Body Ari, by Bonnie Sieben
20 inch Cloth Body Taylor, by Bonnie Sieben
20 inch Cloth Body Teddie, by Bonnie Sieben


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A Taylor, Jr
Outlook Reexamined 2008 No. 31 March – June 2009
Please also see the new Basics/Mines blog for the most current updates.
This outlook is based on structured, in-depth conversations with well-placed industry observers, some preliminary statistics, associated trade press items, and the professional judgment of the Editor/Publisher.
New readers of GAN should also check the cover for "Early-Bird", "Late-Bird", and "Pulsetaking" Outlooks, and the large body of information built up in the back issues, Issues 1 to 30.
General Outlook for 2008: The general U.S. 2008 outlook for natural graphite was clearly negative. The factor underlying the outlook are the world economic crash beginning October 2008, and the weakness showing up before that date. Overall U.S. natural graphite demand in 2008 was down 10% from 2007. The 2008 U.S. import quantity would have supported a fairly unchanged outlook.
Before going into the individual outlooks for end-uses, the most likely disturber of these outlooks will be mentioned, the crisis in the world economy. The collapse has added a great deal of chaos to everything, including confidence in the financial system and consumer confidence. Not only has the crude oil price dropped to under half what it was in mid2008 and may continue to drop, but the prices of many metals and minerals have also dropped severely or crashed.
Outlook for graphite-based refractories: Natural graphite (mostly flake) is used in alumina-graphite shapes, carbon-magnesite brick, plus some in crucibles, monolithics (i.e. gunning and ramming mixes), and others. The alumina-graphite shapes are used as continuous casting ware in the form of nozzles and such to guide the molten steel from ladle to mould. U.S. carbon-magnesite brick demand is met by imports from China, a shrunken U.S. production, and monolithics used as a continuous furnace lining. Based on the USGS 2006-07 consumption numbers, the 2007 use in graphite-based refractories was probably down 7% from 2006. U.S. graphite demand in 2008 for use in refractories in this end-use was likely down 5% from that of 2007, and 2009 is likely to be as bad or worse.
Outlook for graphite foil, expanded graphite, and some related items: This is one of the next-biggest markets for natural graphite, and currently is about 6,700 tonnes annually. U.S. graphite demand in 2008 for graphite foil and related items was probably down 15%-20% from 2007.
Outlook for (natural) graphite in brake linings: Natural graphite (amorphous and fine flake) is used in brake linings for heavier (nonautomotive) vehicles, substituting for the formerly used asbestos, and now competing in turn with newer organic compositions. Based on the USGS 2006-07 consumption numbers, the 2007 use in brake linings was down 20% from 2006. The 2008 U.S. natural graphite demand in this use was probably down 15% from 2007, with 2009 probably worse.
Outlook for some of the other natural graphite end-uses: This would include natural graphite use in steelmaking, foundry facings, powdered metals, in plastics and rubber, and in lubricants. Again, for these end-uses, natural graphite will have a complex very price-dependent competition with synthetic graphite and other carbons, especially for use in steelmaking as a carbon raiser. The graphite demands of this group of end uses in 2008 were likely down 10% compared to 2007, except for big drops in the automotive-related uses (i.e. powdered metals down 25% is the most extreme).
There is more background information on natural graphite end-uses and applications in the "Graphite" wiki on Wikipedia, plus information on synthetic graphite applications (i.e., graphite electrodes), and recycling graphite.
The July 2008 Industrial Minerals has a in-depth and authoritative article on graphite in Li-on batteries, particularly for battery-powered vehicles. A May 2008 article in the same journal covered the recent developments in fuel cells, including the graphite-using PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells. However, the later crash in crude oil prices to less than half what they were may drastically slow the development of mass markets for the batteries and fuel cells.
There was a flurry of interest in reopening some of the graphite mines that were closed five or more years ago, and even opening a new one-before November 2008. Such operations include the Ancuabe operation in Mozambique and the Uley operation in Australia, plus the new proposed Eagle Graphite mine/operation in British Columbia, Canada. In light of the situation with Chinese graphite mentioned here earlier, plus higher and more attractive graphite prices, this makes sense. However, this all occurred before the economic crisis and the crash in crude oil prices and many other mineral commodity prices.
Statistical Parameters: The largest-volume Industrial Minerals posted graphite [www.mineralnet.co.uk/] prices are as follows: the December 2007 price for Crystalline Large 90% C +80 mesh was $570-$655 per tonne, in October 2008 $760-$910, and in January 2009 it became $700-$800, and the December 2007 price for Crystalline Fine 94-97%C -100 mesh was $650-800 per tonne, which became $850-1000 per tonne in April 2008, $1050-1090 in October 2008, and $600-$700 in January 2009 . Calculations based on monthly value per tonne of U.S. imports of crystalline flake show a clear upward trend during 2008.
Welcome to the the website Graphite Advocate News (GAN). GAN appears on a frequent but irregular basis and has been designed to quickly update busy executives and professionals on synthetic and natural graphite developments, usually with a reference to where the item appeared so that more information can be obtained if needed. The most recent detailed comprehensive reference to the production, sources, markets and end-uses of natural and synthetic graphite is the "Graphite" chapter in the new 7th edition Industrial Minerals and Rocks, and the Mining Journal-Financial Times Executive Commodity Report on Graphite both written by GAN's editor and publisher, Harold A. Taylor, Jr.


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We first saw pugmarks, and then all the gypsies (Indian made 4X4 open vehicles) followed the marks until they vanished into the forest. Then some fast driving around and waiting here and there where other gypsies were waiting. At last ... in one place ... under thick foliage ... this mother tigress (first picture) was playing with its grown-up boy-cub. The moment we reached the kid moved away leaving the super-alert Mommy behind.
I had long way ahead ... Tala to Umaria by bus ... Umaria to Katni by train ... then another train to Maihar, my next next destination, a shaktipeetha.
Leave a comment to share your beautiful thoughts :)
Click HERE to read more articles about National Parks of India. Click HERE to read complete Backpacking India series.
This post is linked to Our World Tuesday and Nature Notes.
If you want pictures please ask me :)
Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.


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Examining misunderstood and underrated films
Not every film initially receives the attention it deserves. Films can be made ahead of their time, released in a climate that rejects them, or taken the wrong way upon preliminary viewings. For no particular reason at all, films can be unjustly dismissed or not praised as highly as perhaps they should have been. In Re(focused)views, I look back at titles that I believe were misread or misjudged, examine what people thought, and then defend the film with an alternate perspective. All entries in Re(focused)views are discussed in detail.
Brian Eggert
Deep Focus Review


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More than 300 million tons of plastic is produced each year, and most of that colossal amount does not get recycled. Unfortunately, a lot of it ends up in the world's oceans and, eventually, on beaches -- including on the shores of one of the most remote islands in the South Pacific. Although it is uninhabited and should be an untouched paradise, little Henderson Island is anything but. In a 2017 study, researchers calculated that 17 tons of plastic debris have washed up on the island's beaches. They concluded that Henderson has become the world's most polluted island -- despite not even having a single human inhabitant.
A paradise paved with plastic:
Post 1
Plastic should be banned globally.


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Your patient is dead; the family is gathered. And there is one last thing that you must ask about: the autopsy. How should you go about it? You could do it offhandedly, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world: "Shall we do an autopsy, then?" Or you could be firm, use your Sergeant Joe Friday voice: "Unless you have strong objections, we will need to do an autopsy, ma'am." Or you could take yourself out of it: "I am sorry, but they require me to ask, Do you want an autopsy done?"
What you can't be these days is mealy-mouthed about it. I once took care of a woman in her eighties who had given up her driver's license only to get hit by a car—driven by someone even older—while she was walking to a bus stop. She sustained a depressed skull fracture and cerebral bleeding, and, despite surgery, she died a few days later. So, on the spring afternoon after the patient took her last breath, I stood beside her and bowed my head with the tearful family. Then, as delicately as I could—not even using the awful word—I said, "If it's all right, we'd like to do an examination to confirm the cause of death."
"An autopsy?" a nephew said, horrified. He looked at me as if I were a buzzard circling his aunt's body. "Hasn't she been through enough?"
The autopsy is in a precarious state. A generation ago, it was routine; now it has become a rarity. Human beings have never quite become comfortable with the idea of having their bodies cut open after they die. Even for a surgeon, the sense of violation is inescapable.
Not long ago, I went to observe the dissection of a thirty-eight-year-old woman I had taken care of who had died after a long struggle with heart disease. The dissecting room was in the sub-basement, past the laundry and a loading dock, behind an unmarked metal door. It had high ceilings, peeling paint, and a brown tiled floor that sloped down to a central drain. There was a Bunsen burner on a countertop, and an old-style grocer's hanging scale, with a big clock-face red-arrow gauge and a pan underneath, for weighing organs. On shelves all around the room there were gray portions of brain, bowel, and other organs soaking in formalin in Tupperware-like containers. The facility seemed run-down, chintzy, low-tech. On a rickety gurney in the corner was my patient, sprawled out, completely naked. The autopsy team was just beginning its work.
Surgical procedures can be grisly, but dissections are somehow worse. In even the most gruesome operations—skin-grafting, amputations—surgeons maintain an attitude of tenderness and aestheticism toward their work. We know that the bodies we cut still pulse with life, and that these are people who will wake again. But in the dissecting room, where the person is gone and only the carcass remains, you find little of this delicacy, and the difference is visible in the smallest details. There is, for example, the simple matter of how a body is moved from gurney to table. In the operating room, we follow a careful, elaborate procedure for the unconscious patient, involving a canvas-sleeved rolling board and several gentle movements. We don't want so much as a bruise. Down here, by contrast, someone grabbed my patient's arm, another person a leg, and they just yanked. When her skin stuck to the stainless-steel dissecting table, they had to wet her and the table down with a hose before they could jerk her the rest of the way.
The young pathologist for the case stood on the sidelines and let a pathology assistant take the knife. Like many of her colleagues, the pathologist had not been drawn to her field by autopsies but by the high-tech detective work that she got to do on tissue from living patients. She was happy to leave the dissection to the P.A., who had more experience at it anyway.
The P.A. was a tall, slender woman of around thirty with straight sandy-brown hair. She was wearing the full protective garb of mask, face shield, gloves, and blue plastic gown. Once the body was on the table, she placed a six-inch metal block under the back, between the shoulder blades, so that the head fell back and the chest arched up. Then she took a scalpel in her hand, a big No. 6 blade, and made a huge Y-shaped incision that came down diagonally from each shoulder, curving slightly around each breast before reaching the midline, and then continued down the abdomen to the pubis.
Surgeons get used to the opening of bodies. It is easy to detach yourself from the person on the table and become absorbed by the details of method and anatomy. Nevertheless, I couldn't help wincing as she did her work: she was holding the scalpel like a pen, which forced her to cut slowly and jaggedly with the tip of the blade. Surgeons are taught to stand straight and parallel to their incision, hold the knife between the thumb and four fingers, like a violin bow, and draw the belly of the blade through the skin in a single, smooth slice to the exact depth desired. The P.A. was practically sawing her way through my patient.
From there, the evisceration was swift. The P.A. flayed back the skin flaps. With an electric saw, she cut through the exposed ribs along both sides. Then she lifted the rib cage as if it were the hood of a car, opened the abdomen, and removed all the major organs—including the heart, the lungs, the liver, the bowels, and the kidneys. Then the skull was sawed open, and the brain, too, was removed. Meanwhile, the pathologist was at a back table, weighing and examining everything, and preparing samples for microscopy and thorough testing.
Despite all this, the patient came out looking surprisingly undisturbed. The P.A. had followed the usual procedure and kept the skull incision behind the woman's ears, where it was completely hidden by her hair. She had also taken care to close the chest and abdomen neatly, sewing the incision tightly with weaved seven-cord thread. My patient actually looked much the same as before, except now a little collapsed in the middle. (The standard consent allows the hospital to keep the organs for testing and research. This common and long-established practice is now causing huge controversy in Britain—the media have branded it "organ stripping"—but in America it remains generally accepted.) Families can still have an open-casket funeral, and most do. Morticians employ fillers to restore a corpse's shape, and when they're done you cannot tell that an autopsy has been performed.
Still, when it is time to ask for a family's permission to do such a thing, the images weigh on everyone's mind—not least the doctor's. You strive to achieve a cool, dispassionate attitude toward these matters. But doubts nevertheless creep in.
One of the first patients for whom I was expected to request an autopsy was a seventy-five-year-old retired New England doctor who died one winter night while I was with him. Herodotus Sykes (not his real name, but not unlike it, either) had been rushed to the hospital with an infected, rupturing abdominal aortic aneurysm and taken to emergency surgery. He survived it, and recovered steadily until, eighteen days later, his blood pressure dropped alarmingly and blood began to pour from a drainage tube in his abdomen. "The aortic stump must have blown out," his surgeon said. Residual infection must have weakened the suture line. We could have operated again, but the patient's chances were poor, and his surgeon didn't think he would be willing to take any more.
He was right. No more surgery, Sykes told me. He'd been through enough. We called Mrs. Sykes, who was staying with a friend, about two hours away, and she set out for the hospital.
It was about midnight. I sat with him as he lay silent and bleeding, his arms slack at his sides, his eyes without fear. I imagined his wife out on the Mass Pike, frantic, helpless, with six lanes, virtually empty at that hour, stretching far ahead.
Sykes held on, and at 2:15 a.m. his wife arrived. She turned ashen at the sight of him, but she steadied herself. She gently took his hand in hers. She squeezed, and he squeezed back. I left them to themselves.
At two-forty-five, the nurse called me in. I listened with my stethoscope, then turned to Mrs. Sykes and told her that he was gone. She had her husband's Yankee reserve, but she broke into quiet tears, weeping into her hands, and seemed suddenly frail and small. A friend who had come with her soon appeared, took her by the arm, and led her out of the room.
We are instructed to request an autopsy on everyone as a means of confirming the cause of death and catching our mistakes. And this was the moment I was supposed to ask—with the wife despondent and reeling with shock. But surely, I began to think, here was a case in which an autopsy would be pointless. We knew what had happened—a persistent infection, a rupture. We were sure of it. What would cutting the man apart accomplish?
And so I let Mrs. Sykes go. I could have caught her as she walked through the I.C.U.'s double doors. Or even called her on the phone later. But I never did.
Such reasoning, it appears, has become commonplace in medicine. Doctors are seeking so few autopsies that in recent years The Journal of the American Medical Association has twice felt the need to declare "war on the nonautopsy." According to the most recent statistics available, autopsies have been done in less than ten per cent of deaths; many hospitals do none. This is a dramatic turnabout. Through much of the twentieth century, doctors diligently obtained autopsies in the majority of all deaths— and it had taken centuries to reach this point. As Kenneth Iserson recounts in his fascinating almanac, "Death to Dust," physicians have performed autopsies for more than two thousand years. But for most of history they were rarely performed, and only for legal purposes (if religions permitted them at all—Islam, Shinto, and the Greek Orthodox Church still frown on them). The Roman physician Antistius performed one of the earliest forensic examinations on record, in 44 B.C., on Julius Caesar, documenting twenty-three wounds, including a final, fatal stab to the chest. In 1410, the Catholic Church itself ordered an autopsy—on Pope Alexander V, to determine whether his successor had poisoned him. No evidence of this was found.
Even in the nineteenth century, long after church strictures had loosened, people in the West rarely allowed doctors to autopsy their family members for medical purposes. As a result, the practice was largely clandestine. Some doctors went ahead and autopsied hospital patients immediately after death, before relatives could turn up to object. Others waited until burial and then robbed the graves, either personally or through accomplices, an activity that continued into the twentieth century. To deter such autopsies, some families would post nighttime guards at the grave site—hence the term "graveyard shift." Others placed heavy stones on the coffins. In 1878, one company in Columbus, Ohio, even sold "torpedo coffins," equipped with pipe bombs rigged to blow up if they were tampered with. Yet doctors remained undeterred. Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary," published in 1906, defined "grave" as "a place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student."
By the turn of the century, however, prominent physicians such as Rudolf Virchow, in Berlin, Karl Rokitansky, in Vienna, and William Osler, in Baltimore, began to win popular support for the practice. They defended it as a tool of discovery, one that was used to identify the cause of tuberculosis, reveal how to treat appendicitis, and establish the existence of Alzheimer's disease. They showed that autopsies prevented errors—that without them doctors could not know when their diagnoses were incorrect. Most deaths were a mystery then, and perhaps what clinched the argument was the notion that autopsies could provide families with answers—give the story of a loved one's life a comprehensible ending. Once doctors had insured a dignified and respectful dissection at the hospital, public opinion turned. With time, doctors who did not obtain autopsies were viewed with suspicion. By the end of the Second World War, the autopsy was firmly established as a routine part of death in Europe and North America.
So what accounts for its decline? It's not because families refuse—to judge from recent studies, they still grant that permission up to eighty per cent of the time. Doctors, once so eager to perform autopsies that they stole bodies, have simply stopped asking. Some people ascribe this to shady motives. It has been said that hospitals are trying to save money by avoiding autopsies, since insurers don't pay for them, or that doctors avoid them in order to cover up evidence of malpractice. And yet autopsies lost money and uncovered malpractice when they were popular, too.
Instead, I suspect, what discourages autopsies is medicine's twenty-first-century, tall-in-the-saddle confidence. When I failed to ask Mrs. Sykes whether we could autopsy her husband, it was not because of the expense, or because I feared that the autopsy would uncover an error. It was the opposite: I didn't see much likelihood that an error would be found. Today, we have M.R.I. scans, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, molecular testing, and much more. When somebody dies, we already know why. We don't need an autopsy to find out.
Or so I thought. Then I had a patient who changed my mind.
He was in his sixties, whiskered and cheerful, a former engineer who had found success in retirement as an artist. I will call him Mr. Jolly, because that's what he was. He was also what we call a vasculopath—he did not seem to have an undiseased artery in him. Whether because of his diet or his genes or the fact that he used to smoke, he had had, in the previous decade, one heart attack, two abdominal aortic-aneurysm repairs, four bypass operations to keep blood flowing past blockages in his leg arteries, and several balloon procedures to keep hardened arteries open. Still, I never knew him to take a dark view of his lot. "Well, you can't get miserable about it," he'd say. He had wonderful children. He had beautiful grandchildren. "But, aargh, the wife," he'd go on. She would be sitting right there at the bedside, and would roll her eyes, and he'd break into a grin.
Mr. Jolly had come into the hos- pital for treatment of a wound infection in his legs. But he soon developed congestive heart failure, causing fluid to back up into his lungs. Breathing became steadily harder for him, until we had to put him in the I.C.U., intubate him, and place him on a ventilator. A two-day admission turned into two weeks. With a regimen of diuretics and a change in heart medications, however, his heart failure reversed, and his lungs recovered. And one bright Sunday morning he was reclining in bed, breathing on his own, watching the morning shows on the TV set that hung from the ceiling. "You're doing marvellously," I said. I told him we would transfer him out of intensive care by the afternoon. He would probably be home in a couple of days.
Two hours later, a code-blue call went out on the overhead speakers. When I got to the I.C.U. and saw the nurse hunched over Mr. Jolly, doing chest compressions, I blurted out an angry curse. He'd been fine, the nurse explained, just watching TV, when suddenly he sat upright with a look of shock and then fell back, unresponsive. At first, he was asystolic—no heart rhythm on the monitor—and then the rhythm came back, but he had no pulse. A crowd of staffers set to work. I had him intubated, gave him fluids and epinephrine, had someone call the attending surgeon at home, someone else check the morning lab-test results. An X-ray technician shot a portable chest film.
I mentally ran through possible causes. There were not many. A collapsed lung, but I heard good breath sounds with my stethoscope, and when his X-ray came back the lungs looked fine. A massive blood loss, but his abdomen wasn't swelling, and his decline happened so quickly that bleeding just didn't make sense. Extreme acidity of the blood could do it, but his lab tests were fine. Then there was cardiac tamponade—bleeding into the sac that contains the heart. I took a six-inch spinal needle on a syringe, pushed it through the skin below the breastbone, and advanced it to the heart sac. I found no bleeding. That left only one possibility: a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot that flips into the lung and instantly wedges off all blood flow. And nothing could be done about that.
I went out and spoke to the attending surgeon by phone and then to the chief resident, who had just arrived. An embolism was the only logical explanation, they agreed. I went back into the room and stopped the code. "Time of death: 10:23 A.M.," I announced. I phoned his wife at home, told her that things had taken a turn for the worse, and asked her to come in.
This shouldn't have happened; I was sure of it. I scanned the records for clues. Then I found one. In a lab test done the day before, the patient's clotting had seemed slow, which wasn't serious, but an I.C.U. physician had decided to correct it with vitamin K. A frequent complication with vitamin K is blood clots. I was furious. Giving the vitamin was completely unnecessary—just fixing a number on a lab test. Both the chief resident and I lit into the physician. We all but accused him of killing the patient.
When Mrs. Jolly arrived, we took her to a family room where it was quiet and calm, with table lamps instead of fluorescent lights and soft, plump chairs. I could see from her face that she'd already surmised the worst. His heart had stopped suddenly, we told her, because of a pulmonary embolism. We said the medicines we gave him may have contributed to it. I took her in to see him and left her with him. After a while, she came out, her hands trembling and her face stained with tears. Then, remarkably, she thanked us. We had kept him for her all these years, she said. Maybe so, but neither of us felt any pride about what had just happened.
I asked her the required question. I told her that we wanted to perform an autopsy and needed her permission. We thought we already knew what had happened, but an autopsy would confirm it, I said. She considered my request for a moment. If an autopsy would help us, she finally said, then we could do it. I said, as I was supposed to, that it would. I wasn't sure I believed it.
I wasn't assigned to the operating room the following morning, so I went down to observe the autopsy. When I arrived, Mr. Jolly was already laid out on the dissecting table, his arms splayed, skin flayed back, chest exposed, abdomen open. I put on a gown, gloves, and a mask, and went up close. The P.A. began buzzing through the ribs on the left side with the electric saw, and immediately blood started seeping out, as dark and viscous as crankcase oil. Puzzled, I helped him lift open the rib cage. The left side of the chest was full of blood. I felt along the pulmonary arteries for a hardened, embolized clot, but there was none. He hadn't had an embolism after all. We suctioned out three litres of blood, lifted the left lung, and the answer appeared before our eyes. The thoracic aorta was almost three times larger than it should have been, and there was a half-inch hole in it. The man had ruptured an aortic aneurysm and had bled to death almost instantly.
In the days afterward, I apologized to the physician I'd reamed out over the vitamin, and pondered how we had managed to miss the diagnosis. I looked back through the patient's old X-rays and now saw a shadowy outline of what must have been his aneurysm. But none of us, not even the radiologists, had caught it. Even if we had caught it, we wouldn't have dared to do anything about it until weeks after treating his infection and heart failure, and that would have been too late. It disturbed me, however, to have felt so confident about what had happened that day and to have been so wrong.
The most perplexing thing was his final chest X-ray, the one we had taken during the code blue. With all that blood filling the chest, I should have seen at least a haze over the left side. But when I pulled the film out to look again there was nothing.
How often do autopsies turn up a major misdiagnosis in the cause of death? I would have guessed this happened rarely, in one or two per cent of cases at most. According to three studies done in 1998 and 1999, however, the figure is about forty per cent. A large review of autopsy studies concluded that in about a third of the misdiagnoses the patients would have been expected to live if proper treatment had been administered. George Lundberg, a pathologist and former editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association who has done more than anyone to call attention to these figures, points out the most surprising fact of all: the rates at which misdiagnosis is detected have not improved in autopsy studies since at least 1938.
With all the recent advances in imaging and diagnostics, it's hard to accept that we not only get the diagnosis wrong in two out of five of our patients who die but that we have also failed to improve over time. To see if this could really be true, doctors at Harvard put together a simple study. They went back into their hospital records to see how often autopsies picked up missed diagnoses in 1960 and 1970, before the advent of CT, ultrasound, nuclear scanning, and other technologies, and then in 1980, after they became widely used. The researchers found no improvement. Regardless of the decade, physicians missed a quarter of fatal infections, a third of heart attacks, and almost two-thirds of pulmonary emboli in their patients who died.
In most cases, it wasn't technology that failed. Rather, the physicians did not consider the correct diagnosis in the first place. The perfect test or scan may have been available, but the physicians never ordered it.
In a 1976 essay, the philosophers Samuel Gorovitz and Alasdair MacIntyre explored the nature of fallibil- ity. Why would a meteorologist, say, fail to correctly predict where a hurricane was going to make landfall? They saw three possible reasons. One was ignorance: perhaps science affords only a limited understanding of how hurricanes behave. A second reason was ineptitude: the knowledge is available, but the weatherman fails to apply it correctly. Both of these are surmountable sources of error. We believe that science will overcome ignorance, and that training and technology will overcome ineptitude. The third possible cause of error the philosophers posited, however, was an insurmountable kind, one they termed "necessary fallibility."
There may be some kinds of knowledge that science and technology will never deliver, Gorovitz and MacIntyre argued. When we ask science to move beyond explaining how things (say, hurricanes) generally behave to predict- ing exactly how a particular thing (say, Thursday's storm off the South Carolina coast) will behave, we may be asking it to do more than it can. No hurricane is quite like any other hurricane. Although all hurricanes follow predictable laws of behavior, each one is continuously shaped by myriad uncontrollable, accidental factors in the environment. To say precisely how one specific hurricane will behave would require a complete understanding of the world in all its particulars—in other words, omniscience.
It's not that it's impossible to predict anything; plenty of things are completely predictable. Gorovitz and MacIntyre give the example of a random ice cube in a fire. Ice cubes are so simple and so alike that you can predict with complete assurance that an ice cube will melt. But when it comes to inferring exactly what is going on in a particular person, are people more like ice cubes or like hurricanes?
Right now, at about midnight, I am seeing a patient in the emergency room, and I want to say that she is an ice cube. That is, I believe I can understand what's going on with her, that I can discern all her relevant prop- erties. I believe I can help her.
Charlotte Duveen, as we will call her, is forty-nine years old, and for two days she has had abdominal pain. I began observing her from the moment I walked through the curtains into her room. She was sitting cross-legged in the chair next to her stretcher and greeted me with a cheerful, tobacco-beaten voice. She did not look sick. No clutching the belly. No gasping for words. Her color was good—neither flushed nor pale. Her shoulder-length brown hair had been brushed, her red lipstick neatly applied.
She told me the pain had started out crampy, like a gas pain. But then, during the course of the day, it had become sharp and focussed, and as she said this she pointed to a spot on the lower right side of her abdomen. She had developed diarrhea. She constantly felt as if she had to urinate. She didn't have a fever. She was not nauseated. Actually, she was hungry. She told me that she had eaten a hot dog at Fenway Park two days ago, and she asked if that might have anything to do with this. She had also seen the birds at the zoo a few days earlier. She has two grown children. Her last period was three months ago. She smokes half a pack a day. She used to use heroin but said she's clean now. She once had hepatitis. She has never had surgery.
I felt her abdomen. It could be anything, I thought: food poisoning, a virus, appendicitis, a urinary-tract infection, an ovarian cyst, a pregnancy. Her abdomen was soft, without distension, and there was an area of particular tenderness in the lower right quadrant. When I pressed there, I felt her muscles harden reflexively beneath my fingers. On the pelvic exam, her ovaries felt normal. I ordered some lab tests. Her white-blood-cell count came back elevated. Her urinalysis was normal. A pregnancy test was negative. I ordered an abdominal CT scan.
I am sure I can figure out what's wrong with her, but, if you think about it, that's a curious faith. I have never seen this woman before in my life, and yet I presume that she is like the others I've examined. Is it true? None of my other patients, admittedly, were forty-nine-year-old women who had had hepatitis and a drug habit, had recently been to the zoo and eaten a Fenway frank, and had come in with two days of mild lower-right-quadrant pain. Yet I still believe. Every day, we take people to surgery and open their abdomens, and, broadly speaking, we know what we will find: not eels or tiny chattering machines or a pool of blue liquid but coils of bowel, a liver to one side, a stomach to the other, a bladder down below. There are, of course, differences—an adhesion in one patient, an infection in another—but we have catalogued and sorted them by the thousands, making a statistical profile of mankind.
I am leaning toward appendicitis. The pain is in the right place. The timing of her symptoms, her exam, and her white-blood-cell count all fit with what I've seen before. She's hungry, however; she's walking around, not looking sick, and this seems unusual. I go to the radiology reading room and stand in the dark, looking over the radiologist's shoulder at the images of Duveen's abdomen flashing up on the monitor. He points to the appendix, wormlike, thick, surrounded by gray, streaky fat. It's appendicitis, he says confidently. I call the attending surgeon on duty and tell him what we've found. "Book the O.R.," he says. We're going to do an appendectomy.
This one is as sure as we get. Yet I've worked on similar cases—with identi- cal results from the CT scan—in which we opened the patient up and found a normal appendix. Surgery itself is a kind of autopsy. "Autopsy" literally means "to see for oneself, " and, despite our knowledge and technology, when we look we're often unprepared for what we find. I want to think that my pa- tient's condition is as predictable as the sun's rising, as the melting of an ice cube, and maybe I have to. But I've been around long enough to know that in human beings the simplest certainties can be dashed.
Whether with living patients or cadavers, we do not know until we look. Even in Mr. Sykes's case, I now won- der whether we put our stitches in correctly, or whether the bleeding had come from somewhere else entirely. Doctors are no longer asking these questions. And our arrogance only deepens. In 1995, the National Center for Health Statistics stopped collecting autopsy statistics altogether. We can no longer even say how rare autopsies have become. ♦


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Basement Waterproofing North Hills, NY
Vulcan Basement Waterproofing In North Hills, NY
How to get rid of mold
Mold growth can be slowed down by keeping humidity levels below 55%. The use of dehumidifiers and air conditioners will make a huge difference.
A number of commercial and natural products can be used to remove mold from hard surfaces.
Use exhaust fans and proper ventilation in the home and especially in the basement.
Clean bathrooms and kitchens with mold killing products.
Don't use carpeting in bathrooms and basements – ever.
What is the difference between mold and mildew?
Mold and mildew are both fungi and their spores are always flying through the air. Basements often provide perfect growing conditions for both as they thrive in humid, damp conditions. Mildew is commonly gray or white. Mold is usually black, red, green, brown, or a combination of these colors.
A More Detailed Inspection for Basement Water Damage
Even if none of the above problems seem to exist, continue with a more detailed inspection of your basement walls.
- Poured concrete walls
efflorescence (a whitish powder) could indicate seepage and porosity that tend to worsen.
- Wall surfaces
Search for vertical or horizontal cracks. Some may have fully penetrated the wall, opening routes for water entry – depending on local water table and soil conditions.
- Construction joints
Explore for openings where basement walls and floors meet. Such gaps can admit water and insects, as well as lead to cracked floors.
- Mortar joints
Inspect mortar joints especially around below-grade piping and conduits when leakage appears, your floor space could be rendered unsafe for storage, carpeting or laundering use.
- Structural points
Examine corners where frames butt against foundation walls. These junctures are often uneven, resulting in gaps.
- Efflorescence
The appearance of efflorescence warns that basement water seepage is threatening your foundations and that cracks will endanger your basement floors.
- Water pipes
Check your pipes for excessive condensation.
- Masonry block walls
Look for signs of staining in the block closest to the basement floor. This could mean water is building up inside the wall and deteriorating the block's integrity.


text:
New England's Motor Sports Racing show hosted live by John Williams, Scott Tapley, Dana Nelson, and Mike Lebel airing live every Friday morning from 9 A.M. to 10 A.M. in the Williams Broadcasting's "In The Pits" on line radio network at www.williamsbroadcasting.net. or call us live 207-527-2000. As well as selected Radio Networks throughout New England. WQRY106.com every Sunday morning at 9 A.M. to 10A.M. WJAB Radio 96.3 on Saturdays from 8 A.M. to 9 A.M.
All Williams Broadcasting Daily Reports and Weekly Show are available on our web site , SoundCloud, ITunes, Libsyn, and Stitcher Radio.
Call us live at 207-527-2000 from 9AM-10PM Friday
Williams Broadcasting
Copyright©2018 All Rights Reserved.


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While the end of the year might be a good thing for some people, it might be rough for the book readers of the world. There was too long of a list of books that came out this year and not enough days in the year to keep up. When looking back at the books that came out, it's hard to pick just one favorite above the others as it's like trying to pick your favorite kid.
So, don't worry. I did it for you.
There might not be any mysteries that came out this year, mainly because some of the mysteries have been done so many times before it gets repetitive. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins probably had the highest sales amongst the older generation. They were able to get consumed with that world and the mystery. It was very much like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was a few years ago. We don't have any of those books on this list.
The list below probably relates to the people probably around the age of thirty and younger. There is a mix of books in there that some may not like and some may not agree with. Opinions are important, especially with book reading. The point is that we all are able to read the books and let them into our lives. The books that mean the most to us are the ones that we can relate to in some way, and that's why I chose these books for the top books of 2015. Below is the list of the top ten books that came out this year.
10. Evil Never Dies by T.R. Ragan
Out: 8/4
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24840347-evil-never-dies?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/review-evil-never-dies-by-tr-ragan-suspenseful-finale-as-lizzy-comes-to-terms-with-her-loss/
In the latest book of the series, Lizzie struggles with the loss of Jared and trying to be the role model. She submits to the darkness in her and finds that it might not be what she thought it would be, but it might be too late for her to turn back. The story touches on the struggle that we all must deal at some point in our lives when we lose loved ones and whether or not we would submit to the darkness within, or be able to rise above it.
9. Fall With Me by Jennifer Armentrout
Out: 3/31
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20980781-fall-with-me?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/book-review-fall-with-me-by-jennifer-armentrout-story-of-not-letting-past-ghosts-control-the-future/
I admit, initially when reading this book, I didn't think it was one of her better books, but after reading it a second time I wonder why I thought that way. I have loved every other book that Armentrout has written and I think that I had such high expectations for this book. When reading in between the lines, I see how beautiful the relationship between Reese and Roxy is and how pride is an ugly thing that can keep love from happening.
8. Paper Hearts by Claire Contreras
Out: 9/9
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25284952-paper-hearts?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/release-day-blitz-paper-hearts-by-claire-contreras/
Like the first book of the series, this story has a beautiful couple that you just want to hate because they are so cute. They were torn apart because of circumstances and once again pride shows its ugly head and keeps them apart. It's not until they get older and wiser that they see that love is more important than one's pride. I love every character that Contreras creates because they are real and can relate to anyone that reads the books. Hard feat to do for an author.
7. Scorched by Jennifer Armentrout
Out: 6/16
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18045624-scorched?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/review-scorched-by-jennifer-armentrout-a-heartbreaking-story-of-overcoming-one-of-lifes-hardest-things/
It's these kinds of books that make me love Armentrout's writing. While she may create characters that are similar and have their own bubbly lingo, she will throw in a deeply flawed character that we get to transform into that beautiful swan. This story touches on something that hit close to me and I couldn't help but understand the story that much more. Alcohol is a problem for millions of people out there (whether it effects them directly or indirectly) and it hurts deeper sometimes than physical pain.
6. The Shadowhunter Academy series by Cassandra Clare
Out: around the 20th of every month
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=shadowhunter+academy
In the surprise series released by Cassandra Clare, we get to watch one of our favorite characters, Simon, as he tries to insert his life into the Shadowhunters. While he has some of his memories back, he doesn't have the core ones. Like the ones that connect him with Clary and Isabelle. At times, he can be annoying with it (especially the first few novellas) but he finally comes to his senses towards the end. The best part of the series, though, is that we get to see the background stories for all these characters that we heard about and how they effected the Shadowhunter world. Especially for Valentine and how he came to power. A must read for anyone who is a fan of the series.
5. Nowhere but Here by Katie McGarry
Out: 5/26
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23492282-nowhere-but-here?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/book-review-nowhere-but-here-by-katie-mcgarry-story-of-living-life-to-the-fullest-and-to-face-your-fears/
She is not like many of the other authors on this list where she had multiple books that come out each year, but when she does release a book, it's one that you get right away and then obsess over it. This book is the first book of the series and it's a spin-off of sorts from her last series. She talks about the importance of living your own life and not letting your past dictate it for you. Like many of her other books, she is able to bring characters to life that we can relate to in some way and hope that things turn out well for them in the end.
4. Confess by Colleen Hoover
Out: 3/10
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609310-confess?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/review-confess-by-colleen-hoover-story-of-loss-love-and-how-amazing-fate-can-be/
When reading this book, I was not expecting to like it as much I did. I read the blurb and I was like 'eh this sounds interesting enough to read'. But after reading it, I was obsessed. Especially after finding out that the confessions in the book are all real. Some of them are dark and sinister while others are funny and light. It's those dark ones that make you see how ugly the world can be and how it's something that should be recognized. I liked how Hoover was able to work that kind of theme into her story, without it being the center point for it.
3. King/Tyrant by T.M. Frazier
Out: 6/15 and 8/16
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27918024-king-tyrant?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: King – https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/release-day-blitz-for-king-by-tm-frazier/
Tyrant – https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/tyrant-by-tm-frazier-release-day-blitz-and-review/
If you want to a read series and literally curse out the author from start to finish, then start reading this series. It dominates your life and doesn't let go. If you join the Facebook group you will see that you are not the only one who suffers from King-itis. Frazier creates characters that we love but there are so many twists and turns that you never know what to expect. It's the perfect book to read when you want to get worked up and get all crazed over.
2. Stark International series by J. Kenner
Out: 4/7, 6/23, 9/1
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/series/118761-stark-international-trilogy
Review: Say my Name – https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/book-review-say-my-name-by-j-kenner-story-of-a-broken-woman-learning-to-trust-again/
On my Knees – https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/book-review-on-my-knees-by-j-kenner-a-little-repetitive-but-sets-up-what-should-be-an-explosive-finale/
Under my Skin– https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/review-under-my-skin-by-j-kenner-jackson-and-sylvia-deal-with-the-ghosts-of-their-pasts/
It's not very often where the sequel is better than the originally, but in this case, it is. Damien's series is good in its own way, but I found that I liked the relationship between Sylvia and Jackson a whole lot more. They had more layers and I felt that we got to see more of a transformation for the characters throughout the series. Kenner had enough twists and turns that kept you coming back for more and demanding to know what happens next.
1. Lawless by T.M. Frazier
Out: 12/8
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25756072-lawless?from_search=true&search_version=service
Review: https://nerdysoul.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/lawless-by-t-m-frazier-book-tour/
There are really no words to describe how amazing this book is. While the King part of the series has its own dark secrets, this story never had gotten me so angry before. I never actively spent time in a discussion group talking about a book because it was THAT good. It made me want to hunt down Frazier and demand answers. It's hard to make a book that creates such a reaction from the fans and the torture is waiting for the next installment to come out. COME ON FE-BEAR-Y!
What book did you like the most this year?


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text: I Our Games Welcome to the games section! Here you can find our past and future creations. The list is not complete yet. We will be adding the rest of our portfolio in the coming weeks. Sir Tincan Jaques Roque Bloo Kid 2 Bloo Kid Hurrican Rocket Ninja Cyborg Takatis Games for Kids Puzzles for Toddlers and Kids Animals For Toddlers Animal Learning Puzzle Animal Puzzle For Toddlers


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Asprucci, Antonio
Updated About encyclopedia.com content Print Article
Asprucci, Antonio
Asprucci, Antonio (1723–1808). Important Neo-Classical architect working in Rome. His best-known works are the sumptuous interiors of the Villa Borghese, Rome (from 1782), and the enlivening of the Borghese Gardens with arches, pavilions, pools, ruins, and temples, including the Ionic Temple of Aesculapius (1787) and the Chiesetta di Piazza di Siena (c.1787), with its portico of unfluted Greek Doric columns. Antonio was the first Italian architect to revive the Greek Doric style. He used several Egyptianizing motifs in his Neo-Classical designs. His son, Mario Asprucci (1764–1804), also worked on the Villa Borghese Gardens in the 1780s and 1790s (the plan of which was by the Scots landscape-painter Jacob More (c.1740–93)), and was responsible for the original designs for Ickworth House, Suffolk (c.1795), executed, with some modifications, by Francis Sandys from 1796.
Lavagnino (1961);
Lavagnino (1961);
Meeks (1966)


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Well, are you?
I mean, why would you do that?
Intuition is like our built-in GPS for navigating life.
Why would you disregard clear instructions from your GPS – a device specifically made to tell you how to get where you want to go?
One word.
You block it because your intuition is asking you to change something you don't really want to change.
Unhappy in your marriage? You get that nagging feeling something isn't right. Like this isn't quite how you envisioned it. And that feeling won't go away, will it?
That's your GPS telling you "Hey, this relationship is not serving your path, purpose and higher self. How about looking for ways to exit it with loving kindness?"
Still, you ignore that nudge.
And wonder why you have this vague sense of unease that no amount of eating, buying stuff or trips to the therapist will fix.
It's your GPS sending out warning signals. Not the "Danger Will Robinson" kind but more of the "Are you sure you want this?" kind.
You ignore it. Smash it down with more food, things you buy on sale at Kohl's, or even some other just-as-destructive behavior.
Because your higher self is asking you to change something that won't be easy.
Telling your spouse that you're unhappy only to realize that they're not all that invested in changing things is hard to accept. It can mean a whole lot of things – they don't care enough, they're not willing to get out of their comfort zone …. lots of reasons for it.
And then it's on YOU to make the hard choice to leave. Which sucks, really, because you have a nice, albeit not-very-fulfilling life. You like the way things are. If only your partner would change then things would be great.
Yeah, no. Things don't work that way.
You are the only one who can change YOUR life.
Here's the thing: It's okay to feel the fear. It's okay to acknowledge that you're scared. It's all okay to hang out in that knowing for a bit. You don't have to act immediately.
But that nudge, that voice, that knowing will only get louder even if you try to shut it down with food, spending, drinking, etc.
It will.
Until you can't ignore it anymore.
Until the Universe smacks you hardcore on the head and says "NO! You are going down the wrong path. You must make this decision now."
And you really don't want to get to that place.
So, listen to that voice.
If you don't want to hear what it says, ask yourself why.
Ask yourself what it means for you if you decide to follow that nudge. Ask what about it scares the hell out of you.
Start listening even if you're scared to act.
That's the very first step to aligning with your path.
Just listen.
ACTION STEP: If you truly can't hear your inner voice, I'd love to step in and help you. Gently and with humor and warmth, I'll assist you in hearing what it is saying so you can let it marinate in your consciousness for a bit. Baby steps are just fine. No big leaps …. just small, conscious ones.
Stop blocking your Higher Self. It knows what you came here to do.


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Welcome to world of Colorado artist Richard Dean Van Vliet (pronounced Van VLEET). His profound, intense art is representative of the Baby Boomer generation and a critical time in American history, art, and music, the nineteen-sixties psychedelic era and the Visionary Art Movement. While drawing some from the Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism and even Pop Art movements of the earlier twentieth centoury, Van Vliet's work forges a fresh spirit into the nineteen-eighties and up through to today.
"I like to tell a story within stories, as a chapter in a book, as a painting within paintings. I find influence from Hieronymus Bosch, Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, and M.C. Escher brought to contemporary time. I like to create multiple stories within multiple dimensions and perspectives. The zone between the conscious and subconscious, where positive space turns to negative space and vice versa. I superimpose these images into a separate reality. I think of them as Mindscapes, the merging of the physical and psychological. Landscapes of symbolic meaning transcending into meditation or zen are what I try to convey."
Over forty years of work to choose from, a legacy of the 1960's and 1970's to today, many inspired by Southwest scapes and Rocky Mountain vistas, others come from inner travels, and some go almost extraterrestrial. Van Vliet's covers traditional abstract to fantasy landscape to absolute chaos (and some all of the above)! While a few of his pop art pieces could be on a Keith Moon drumset or t-shirt, other oil enamel pieces could adorn a Hunter S. Thompson story, while still others take you to far away and maybe inner fantasy realms.
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