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instantcinema.org - an online platform for experimental films and art films. Instant Cinema is designed by interaction designer Folkert Gorter.
'Sosia' can be used as sofa, armchairs or private space. This modular seat has been designed by Emanuele Magini for Campeggi.
A Finger-nose™ stylus by Dominic Wilcox to make multi-tasking around a touchphone even easier.
The Barbara Kruger Art Truck in New York.
Trulia maps out where it's more affordable to buy vs. rent. Consensus is ... still better to buy in four out of five major U.S. cities.
Pampered pooches and the trouble they cause. Great NYtimes slideshow.
Transit Issue luggage tag from Apolis.
Berlin based street artist Evol uses stencils to turn everyday outdoor objects into miniature skyscrapers. Transformation of electrical box above.
Music soundscape visualized in imaginative motion graphics with links and designers insights.
Official launch of the Lamborghini Aventador just a week away, and the Italian firm has revealed this epic new video of the car in action.
20metriquadri, a brand new stand selling design in a borough market in Rome.
Google capturing 'street views' from a pedicab.
The Master Theorem ~ lead by M, the real world Columbia secret society has gone online and opened up weekly puzzle challenges for the masses... if you can get in. Crypto-lovers will be sucked in instantly!
Cute website redesign from graphic designer Veronika Goldberg.
work.place is the work of photographer Carlie Armstrong. The series captures Portland artists, musicians, designers and craftspeople at work.
FEATUREDFun fashion roundup from NotCouture. This week's picks include gorgeous red ballerina flats, porcupine quill necklaces and the anatomy of a classic trench coat.
Negozio Olivetti's stunning Venice showroom and store by architect Carlo Scarpa.
Hide The Good Scissors - fun polygonal nature embroidery
Blackstone Bags - Urban Quiver Camera Bag
TEDxCMU just posted this new talk from Mickey McManus regarding what nature can teach us about computing systems. He also premieres a new quantum-dot-matrix thin film computing prototype!
Wireware - newly launched kitchen designs by Naoto Fukasawa for Japanese firm ±0 (Plus Minus Zero).
Los Angeles based designer George Renfro uses heat sensitive paper for a book on global warming.
Jewelry made of Velcro by Yong Joo Kim, who explores the value of such mundane materials and discovers their hidden beauty through a process of reconfiguration.
Beautiful Sicilian sea salt is mixed with dried summer truffles from Sabatino & Co. Adorable packaging!
Introducing the 100th Year Anniversary Special Edition Infused Olive Oil Bottle! From the Sabatino & Co Mediterranean farms directly to you!
An interactive drawing machine triggered by human emotions creates a cross-platform collective artwork – or Heartwork.
Space Saving Stand to help make the most of limited desk space. 3 levels of storage for your writing utensils and stationary items.
VIDEOThis zombie grindhouse trailer launches the new "Call of the Dead" zombie map for Call of Duty:Black Ops. The trailer features George Romero, Danny Trejo, Robert Englund, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michael Rooker.
Igor "Rogix" Udushlivy's Magritte hanger is a silhouette of famous works of art by the surrealist master.
A New Soft Painting by Artist Danny Roberts. The Painting is Part of his "Series on Love".
Cute packaging for Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie by Glasfurd & Walker.
Discover Turin with this style map from the NYtimes.
Swedish Friggs is releasing their first line of black teas. The packaging has a simple retro feel and was designed by Public Speaking.
Beautifully elegant logo design for William & Son by Achi.
VIDEOTo launch a new babyfood, Olvarit invited 20 babies to a Michelin starred restaurant.
Masuya, awesome lawnmower store by architect Akihisa Hirata.
New from Fred, the OCD chef chopping board, for more precision cuts. On page 11!
Unique planter inspired by Indian block woodcuts. See more beautiful work at the 2011 Pratt Show.
FEATUREDPreview of Jacub Gagnon's latest paintings ~ Petite Lap Giraffes and Tea, anyone? Amazing animals meet object paintings that will mesmerize! (Also see the making of!)
Donkey Creativ Lab's BOB /Building Block Soap look like legos. What could you build?
Compound by Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich at Singapore's Art Biennale reflects on development using traditional building materials.
Rusland Khasanov's liquid font, au revoir, was created by pouring wet ink on wet.
Paris 26 Gigapixels is a stitching of 2346 single photos showing a very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital (354159x75570 px). Dive in the image and visit Paris like never before!
The iPhone 4 will be available in white tomorrow.
Doug Foster's The Heretics' Gate will soon be on view at Camden, London. The film will be projected above water, a vision of hell inspired by Dante's Inferno.
Transformer designed these black knives for Sagaform.
Beautiful drawings by Stuart Kerr, who runs studio Stuco.
VIDEOBeautiful animated ad - Grand Marnier - "La Vie Grand Marnier" - Inspired from renowned designer Jordi Labanda's tribute to vintage French posters
Love these skulls by Matthew Day Jackson, part of the upcoming Vahaerents Art Collection exhibition Sympathy for the Devil.
FEATUREDEggfruit! Found at the La Reine Farmers' Market on St. Croix. It's powdery, sweet and great in smoothies!


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Since his arrest in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Maj. Nidal Hasan has challenged most everything about the case: restrictions on how he can pray, orders to shave his beard, the court-assigned attorneys forced to help his defense.
Yet the Army psychiatrist has barely contested anything in the first week of his long-awaited trial.
Hasan isn't questioning witnesses as they describe being shot, seeing their comrades killed and watching him open fire inside a crowded building at the Texas military base. He rarely objects. His opening statement lasted less than 2 minutes as he told jurors the evidence would show he was the shooter.
U.S. & World
The result has been a swift procession of witnesses, fueling speculation that the trial -- which the judge originally said could take several months -- would wrap up far sooner at Fort Hood's heavily guarded courthouse.
Hasan -- who is acting as his own attorney -- is accused of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others during the attack on Nov. 5, 2009, that remains the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation. The military attorneys assigned to help him believe he wants a death sentence, and two of them spent Friday drafting an appeal after the trial judge refused to let them take over or scale back their duties.
But that didn't break Hasan's impassive stare or silence as prosecutors continued to zip through witnesses, bringing the total this week to more than 40. The judge even offered Hasan a chance to speak up, after a soldier pounded the witness stand to simulate how rapidly Hasan fired his laser-sighted handgun.
"An objection of that description, Mr. Hasan?" Col. Tara Osborn asked Friday.
"No objection," Hasan said.
Hasan, 42, has indicated that he plans to call just two witnesses. Since the trial began Tuesday, he has cross-examined only two prosecution witnesses-- his former supervisor and a member of his former mosque -- and posed only brief questions.
He also didn't question the roughly dozen witnesses who testified Friday about the chaotic, bloody scene the day of the shooting.
Capt. Brandy Mason recalled being shot but initially thinking it was only a sharp pain.
"I kind of sat there looking dumbfounded," Mason told jurors. "I didn't think it was real. We sat there and looked at (Hasan), like `Really?' Then somebody started screaming, `Training or not, get down! Get down!"'
Staff Sgt. Joy Clark said she checked for vital signs of soldiers lying dead near her. "I had thought about possibly throwing a chair at the shooter but witnessed someone else do that and get shot," Clark said.
Sgt. 1st Class Paul Martin recalled bolting out a set of double doors and then running a zigzag pattern to make him a less easy target. "I said he'll have to shoot me again, but I know I'm getting out of this building," Martin testified.
Hasan objected only to one witness, Logan Burnett, as the former Army specialist described how he had undergone 20 surgeries and had three more to go after being shot three times during the attack.
Hasan interrupted Burnett, saying "aggravation evidence has its place," meaning the testimony wasn't about the alleged crime but rather its impact, which is more appropriate to cite during sentencing. Osborn sustained that objection.
How Hasan would defend himself was the biggest mystery heading into the trial. The American-born Muslim wanted to argue that the killings were in "defense of others," namely members of the Taliban fighting Americans in Afghanistan. But the judge denied that strategy.
His mostly silent defense so far may prompt prosecutors to scale back their case, said Victor Hansen, a former military prosecutor who now teaches at the New England School of Law.
"You may see fewer witnesses called," Hansen said Friday. "Instead of hearing from maybe two or three forensic experts, you may only hear from one or two."
Prosecutors said they would meet Friday night to discuss their strategy.
But Hasan was hardly a pushover for prosecutors ahead of the trial. He cited his religion in refusing to shave his beard, which violates military rules, and the fight delayed the trial last year and led to the former judge being removed. Other delays came when he dismissed his former defense attorney and then his Army-appointed defense attorneys, who were forced to stay on as standby advisers.
What remains to be seen is whether Hasan is saving any forceful arguments for later in the trial or whether he's offering the path of least resistance.
His standby attorneys think it's the latter. After the trial's first day, they accused Hasan of trying to secure himself a death sentence. Hasan's lead standby attorney, Lt. Col. Kris Poppe, told the judge that supporting such a "repugnant" defense strategy violates their rules of professional conduct, but Hasan called those accusations a "twist of the facts."
The judge decided the fight was simply a difference in strategy, and she told the standby attorneys to remain in their advisory roles. And any appeal of that ruling would likely be dismissed, said Jeff Corn, a law professor at South Texas College of Law, predicted would likely be dismissed.
"As sympathetic as I am to him (Poppe) and the miserable position he's in, I think he's stuck. The law is clear: If you are a standby attorney for a pro-se defendant and the defendant wants to make decisions tactically disastrous, that's his prerogative," Corn said.

subset: commoncrawl


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Final Thoughts
Monday — Just arrived back home in Seattle. I made it, but my bags didn't. I was on the same plane as Jane and Tony, and their bags didn't arrive either, so I don't feel so bad!
It'll take some time for me to process everything that went on this week at Conference. The Holy Spirit was moving in so many dimensions, not only in my heart but in the ministry as a whole. I don't have the advantage of a long history with Aglow (not any history at all, really!), so there's no basis for comparison, but it seems that these are unprecedented days of change and new directions.
I loved meeting the "Aglow Tribe" — and look forward to meeting even more of you in the future. What a wonderful, special family of believers, and how exciting to see the blessing and favor of God resting on this ministry. There truly is an "open heaven" over us, and a bright future ahead.
See the gallery below — I've tried to capture some of the special moments from the conference — and feel free to add your thoughts, impressions and observations to the conversation.
Blessings to all my new Aglow friends,


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Model prototype on the East Coast?
Model prototype on the East Coast?
tangent | 11 décembre 2013
The I-95 corridor could use some Tesla love!
Sin_Gas | 11 décembre 2013
I agree, and you can sweep right up I95 to the Boston Area--Natick Store or Other. How about Hyannis or Nantucket, Mass--lots of retiree's on the Cape/Island? BTW: snow yesterday--great testing grounds. Up to NH at Waterville or Loon Mountain.


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One of the fun things about sports is that the spirit of competition often gives way to more important things in life, like love and compassion.
And for kids who are just getting into life's journey, it's a nice lesson to learn. Just ask the girls on the Chaparral High School junior varsity swim team.
Among them is Corrie Snell, a 16-year-old junior who by now may be a minor celebrity at the school. She has Down syndrome but it hardly holds her back. An article in this newspaper a few months ago singled her out for her performance as Little Orphan Annie at Temecula's Miss Spectacular 2012 talent pageant for folks with special needs.
She's a special kid, but today's space isn't all about her. It's devoted to those around her, mainly the ninth- and 10th-graders on the Chaparral JV girls team.
Corrie has been a welcome addition to the team the last couple of years. At swim meets, she often swims the 50-yard freestyle, up and back, one time; for most swimmers it's considered a sprint.
And as you can imagine, Corrie is awkward, but she smiles a lot and tries hard. She always finishes last. The rest of the field generally passes her going the other way while she's still on her first lap.
The Chaparral junior varsity team is coached by Chloe Heath, who just two years ago was a senior on the Chaparral varsity team and now assists head coach Craig Winger while she also goes to college.
And on March 18, in a meet against Temescal Canyon, Heath took a chance. She noticed that Corrie's times seemed better when there were more people cheering for her. So she went to the team, asking them to forget about their own goals in order to support a teammate.
"The girls on the team love Corrie and are always willing to help her out," Heath said. "When I brought up the idea of having Corrie participate in the 200 free relay, I asked if anyone would volunteer to be on her team."
Competing on a relay team is a little different than swimming individually. There is a certain esprit de corps. You don't want to swim poorly in your leg of the race. You don't want to let your teammates down.
But in this case, how they swam didn't matter. The teammate that counted most was Corrie.
"Everyone's hands shot up immediately," Heath said of her request for a relay team. They all wanted to join Corrie, even though they knew they had no chance at victory.
"Sometimes it doesn't matter if you win or lose," said sophomore Leah Trybulski, who was part of that first relay team. "For us it's all about team and working together -- and (Corrie) is part of it. That's what is important."
Corrie and Leah were joined on that first relay team by Kennedy Jamieson and Helena Betancourt. At another meet last week, Corrie and Kennedy again swam in the relay, along with Claire Gatzge and Aubriyona Iraldo. A Corrie-led relay was scheduled to swim in two more meets, including yesterday against Murrieta Valley.
Before a practice this week, the girls all agreed that Corrie is the most popular one among them. And coach Heath's strategy worked. The addition of relay teammates adds more energy to Corrie's effort. They finished last -- but in their eyes, she was a winner.
And watching it all was Corrie's mother, Julie Snell, who wrote about what she saw in an email this week.
"Near exhaustion, Corrie mustered enough strength to finish the race as she caught sight of a cluster of her teammates cheering her on from the pool deck before her," Julie Snell wrote. "That sight caught me off guard and stirred an emotional response within me that I wasn't prepared for. A quiet joy swept over me and gratitude filled my mother heart. It takes a village to raise a child, and in our case the raising will last a lifetime."
If you know of someone who would be interesting to feature in a column, call Jim Rothgeb at (951) 676-4315, ext. 2621, or email firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Nate Berg
Nate Berg is a freelance reporter and a former staff writer for CityLab. He lives in Los Angeles.
Green building might be little more than a fringe hippie idea if not for certification. The medals and honors now available through rating systems have enabled a good and altruistic effort to become a highly marketable quality. LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – is now the most well-known and well-used certification system, claiming nearly 9 billion square feet of space participating in its various certification programs globally. But it's not alone, and it's not necessarily the greenest of the green. The relatively new Living Building Challenge has been steadily gathering fans in the green building community for tougher-than-LEED standards such as net-zero energy and net-zero water.
"The Living Building Challenge has emerged as the high bar in sustainable design," says Walker Wells, director of the Green Urbanism program at the advocacy organization Global Green USA. He's had firsthand experience with both LEED and the Living Building Challenge and likes the fact that the Living Building Challenge requires many of the highest possible standards.
One house at a time, though, is a slow go. So Wells and his colleague Ted Bardacke have decided to see how well the Living Building Challenge could be applied to an entire neighborhood. They're teaching a design studio for urban planning grad students this spring at UCLA to test it out.
This is a concept that's been emerging in recent years. Since 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council has operated the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system. Global Green USA has been involved in two projects certified under the system, and while Wells says LEED-ND is a good program, he notes that some of its requirements don't go far enough.
The Living Building Challenge requires that every project meet each of its 20 strict requirements to achieve the certification. All sites, for example, have to be either greyfields or brownfields, meaning that they've already been developed and that they often have some environmental degradation as a result. This idea of renovating existing development to reduce its impact has huge potential in a highly developed world. And at the neighborhood scale, even more so.
"The idea is, how do we take place that's already there, that has some development opportunities and plug in new stuff and modify what's there so that it can achieve some standard of sustainability?" says Wells. "How aggressive or radical do we need to be thinking in this effort to redesign and retrofit cities?"
To test out the concept, Wells and Bardacke are sending their students to focus on a neighborhood in Playa Del Rey, an area of Los Angeles next to the Pacific Ocean.
"There is a good density of housing. But then you could argue there's a terrible balance with jobs, and it's really underserved with retail and no public school in the area, but then great access to public space, both a beach and a lagoon," says Wells. "You look at it from that perspective and you go, wow, what an incredible place this could be. This could have a cohesive, village-like quality to it."
Making changes at a neighborhood level would include efforts like implementing complete streets, building green infrastructure, and even developing district heating and cooling. The principles behind these concepts are deeply entwined with the goals of the Living Building Challenge at the building scale. But making them happen for an entire neighborhood requires more effort: it's coordinating with city departments and public utilities rather than just pulling a building permit.
Wells says an important part of the studio will be to figure out how to do that convincing, and whether a case can be made that transitioning to something like district heating might be in the best interest of a public utility. It could very well be that they'd much rather stop having to maintain power lines and utilities and instead let neighborhoods implement their own mini grid or heating system. By testing out the applicability of the Living Building Challenge at this scale, Wells says, they may be able to find the strategies that can bring some of these ideas into reality.
"I think that narrative, at least at the conceptual level, is critical because otherwise you're coming up with a bunch of fantasy-filled ideas and it won't ever happen because nobody would be interested in doing that," Wells says. "Underlying our whole approach to this class is to say, can you actually do urban planning at a neighborhood level that would be net-positive? Or are cities inherently a suck on their regional resources?"
By the end of the school year, there may be answers to those questions.
Top image: Xavier MARCHANT / Shutterstock.com
Two new studies have revived the long-running debate over how police respond to white criminal suspects versus African Americans.
Often ranked as one of the deadliest cities in America, Camden, New Jersey, ended 2017 with its lowest homicide rate since the 1980s.
Architects and planners have an obligation to protect health, safety and welfare through the spaces we design. As the George Floyd protests reveal, we've failed.
Despite new research on police brutality, we still have no idea whether violence toward African Americans is fueled by racial prejudice. That has consequences.
A new report fleshes out the controversial demand to cut police department budgets and reallocate those funds into healthcare, housing, jobs, and schools. Will that make communities of color safer?


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A novel study reports that white men and women of European descent inherit common foot disorders, such as bunions (hallux valgus) and lesser toe deformities, including hammer or claw toe. Findings from the Framingham Foot Study—the first to estimate the heritability of foot disorders in humans—appear in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR).
Previous studies show that as many as 60% of older adults have foot disorders which may limit mobility and reduce their quality of life. In fact, bunions affect 23% of individuals 18 to 65 years of age and 36% of those over 65 years according to a study by Nix et al. While experts suggest that women, older adults and those with a higher body mass index (BMI) are at greater risk for foot disorders, there is little understanding of the genetics involved in their development.
The study, led by Arthritis Care & Research Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Marian Hannan from Hebrew SeniorLife and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass, included 1,370 participants enrolled in the Framingham Foot Study. Participants had a mean age of 66 years and 57% were female. Foot exams to identify hallux valgus, lesser toe deformities and plantar soft tissue atrophy were conducted between 2002 and 2008. The team estimated heritability using software that performs genetic analyses of familial data (pedigree structures).
Results show the prevalence of bunions, lesser toe deformities and plantar soft tissue atrophy was 31%, 30% and 28%, respectively. Hallux valgus and lesser toe deformity, two of the most common structural foot disorders that affect up to half of older adults in the U.S. and Europe, were found to be highly heritable depending on age and sex. The team reports that plantar soft tissue atrophy did not demonstrate significant heritability in the study cohort.
"Our study is the largest investigation of the heritability of common foot disorders in older adults, confirming that bunions and lesser toe deformities are highly inheritable in Caucasian men and women of European descent," concludes Dr. Hannan. "These new findings highlight the importance of furthering our understanding of what causes greater susceptibility to these foot conditions, as knowing more about the pathway may ultimately lead to early prevention or early treatment."


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UTS and INSEARCH students and
UTS and INSEARCH students and staff
You need a username and password.
This is the username and password of your UTS webmail account.
To activate your UTS webmail account go to UTS: MyAccount.
NOTE: a current student ID card is required in order to get offcampus access to restricted library resources.
Distance or Offshore mode students should print out Student Admin's Distance mode student ID card application form and send it in as per the instructions.
Contact the Offcampus Access Adminstrator on 02 9514 3381 if immediate offcampus access is required
Honorary and visiting staff
See UTS Human Resources: Guidelines on Honorary Appointments
Community members
All Community Members except Day Visitors can access electronic resources on-campus at designated computers in the City Campus (Blake Library)
How do i access science books
How do i access science books and journals electronically?


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GULL:Height Adjustable Black Nylon Arms
Chair Mechanisms Explained
This Months Special offers! All prices Ex VAT with
CHIRO 24hr MID back Ergonomic Chiropractor Approved Colour Office Chair Choice of 60 seat colours
Lite crescent workstation with Deluxe Cantilever leg and Pedestal
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Our products have been tested to British, European and International standards and all tests and certificates are backed by accreditation from the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS).
Contact Details: 20 Forresters Rd, Burbage, Hinckley, LE10 2RX | Tel: 01212 88 55 00 | Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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The locker room is the heart of your club, vital to both member recruitment and retention. Unfortunately, though, clubs often overlook this crucial area.
Members don't.
The naked truth about the most overlooked area in clubs
"Members spend more time in the locker room than perhaps other areas of the club that get more attention," says Greg White, general manager for the Cherry Creek Athletic Club.
More than just a place to hang clothes, a locker room can either attract members or drive them away. "That's an area where you can lose a prospect," says Jim DeLaunay, the general manager of the Fitness Company's Headquarters Health Club, Morristown, N.J.
Indeed, locker rooms can be a differentiating factor for people shopping for a club membership. "Everybody's got the same treadmills," DeLaunay says. "Everybody's got the same free weights…. It's the club location, the club's overall decor and the club's locker rooms that make the overall difference. As far as facilities go, I think locker rooms are the biggest variable in between clubs."
You can determine whether your locker room is a positive variable by gauging the reaction of current members. Listen to complaints, but also keep an eye out for unspoken feedback. For example, how many people actually use your shower facilities? Do members run in and out of the locker room as quickly as possible, or do they relax, chatting with friends?
On average, only 25 percent of members use a club's showers, according to Bruce Carter, the founder of the Longmeadow, Mass.-based consulting firm Optimal Fitness Systems. It's a telling statistic that most people prefer to wash up at home.
Cleaning up the locker room's image is an important step toward increasing member retention and sales. The locker rooms should be a place where form meets function: Though a practical space for storing belongings or showering, locker rooms should offer a warm, welcoming environment.
"[Owners] don't pay enough attention to the importance of [the locker room] in their prospect's mind," says Carol Nalevanko, the vice president of DMB Sports Clubs. "[Owners] are looking for functionality, not for feel."
According to Carter, members want cleanliness, space and privacy in locker rooms — with cleanliness coming first. "Obviously this is a place where they're going to be most intimate with the club," says Janet Woodfin, general manager of Crunch at 38th Street in New York. And filth makes intimacy unpleasant.
Since cleanliness tops the list of what members want, maintenance of the locker area should be handled on a continuous basis. Many clubs like to do a deep cleaning overnight, with multiple smaller cleanings throughout the day, particularly after rush hours. "Cleanliness — that's a 24-hour-a-day job," says Nalevanko.
Crunch takes cleanliness — and safety — in the locker room seriously. The chain posts employees at each locker room to clean up as needed, and watch out for thieves. "One of our maintenance staffers is assigned to the locker room and serves as security guard and attendant," Woodfin says. "They maintain the showers constantly and maintain any other cleaning duties in the locker room."
In addition to cleaning locker rooms and preventing theft, locker room attendants can take instant feedback from members. "It's important to have individuals back there that can communicate [with] members," says White, who assigns spot checkers and a rotating cleaning crew to the locker rooms.
Cleanliness is an obvious want for members. However, other subtler issues will also affect how members feel about a club's locker rooms. Gang showers may be an obvious no-no, but a host of other design elements can make your customers feel uncomfortable.
The problem with most locker rooms is that men design them, Carter believes. "I've always tried to think like a woman — and an overweight woman — just being in [this] business," he explains. "Women don't like to feel like they're changing in a big room where everybody's looking at them. Especially overweight women.
"The woman who thinks she's out of shape, that's so embarrassing for her and that can last for years in [her] psyche," he adds.
In order to be sensitive to your clients' needs, consider the following guidelines for your locker room's layout, courtesy of Carter. First, while the changing area should be large enough so that people aren't crowding each other, the space should be divided up so that the area isn't intimidating. For example, you could line up a row of lockers so they bisect the space in half, with changing areas on either side.
The shower areas should also be separate, according to Carter, with individual areas for toweling off/dressing (if feasible). Set apart the toilet facilities from the main part of the locker room, so incoming/outgoing traffic does not intrude on the members who are changing/showering. Likewise, the vanity area should occupy its own space, with plenty of counter areas and outlets available (particularly for women), Carter says.
Giving members ample space in the locker provides the privacy that people prefer. WOW! Work Out World in central New Jersey recognizes this.
"We put scales inside the locker rooms in as private a section as possible because we find so many people are vain about their weight and they don't want them in the public areas," says WOW!'s Stephen P. Roma.
Although men and women both appreciate some personal space, more men tend to use showers, according to Nalevanko. So while the ladies' locker room may need more space for amenities, the men's locker room requires more mass area to accommodate showering and drying off.
Unfortunately, larger locker rooms come at a premium price. Still, clubs short on space can get more mileage from their locker room by paying attention to details and making the space as unique and comfortable as possible. For example, DMB Sports Clubs provides lemon or orange water, newspapers in a lounging area within the locker room, and televisions between all the hair drying stations.
Crunch also provides some nice touches. According to Woodfin, the locker rooms boast heated tile floors, which comfort bare feet and evaporate any excess water in the wet areas.
Heated tile floors may not be in your budget, but you don't always have to shell out money to make your locker room stand out. Some inexpensive locker room items include plants; softer lighting; new paint or carpeting; aromatherapy; pictures; fancier faucets, wall sconces, and other fixtures; and courtesy amenities such as soaps, shampoos, razors, conditioners, etc. Towels should be provided if your club can afford them, and many operators consider these items an essential expense, even if they lose money when members "borrow" these items.
"Our towels are provided free," maintains DeLaunay. "That is a cost of doing business"
Carter agrees that towel service is a necessary expense. "It's a great thing to offer, but you're just going to have to spend money," he says. "Especially when car wash season starts — April, May — towels just disappear.
"People walk off with [towels and other amenities] like crazy," he adds. "I don't care if it's a rich area."
This type of pervasive "borrowing" discourages some clubs from offering free amenities. "We supply all the soap products and we don't go beyond that because every time we try, the stuff walks," says Roma.
If you want to provide extra amenities for members, but theft and budgets are issues, consider charging members for the services. While some operators oppose using the locker room as a profit center, it can't be denied that this area can garner a tidy sum.
"There are some clubs that do $100,000 a year just on [permanent] locker and laundry services," says DeLaunay.
Cherry Creek Athletic Club offers members a "Gold Room," a private, locked area with full-size combo lockers, higher-quality towels and a laundry service. The member who opts for this feature pays $36 a month.
Cherry Creek didn't originally introduce the concept to make money, but the Gold Room has proved to be very successful. "It's not really a profit center, although [the rooms] are full and there is a waiting list," White says. In fact, Cherry Creek will be adding more of these Gold Rooms to accommodate member demand.
Even if you don't charge for locker-related services, the locker room is worth the extra investment. Operators need to be aware of the impact the locker room has on their members' overall view of the club. "If you can't stand up to everyone's expectations in the locker room, then you're probably not living up to expectations in the exercise rooms," remarks Roma.
Men Are From Mars, Women Have Nicer Locker Rooms
Gender design issues in the changing areas
Forget feminism, the new "sensitive" man and changing gender roles. All locker rooms are not created equal. As it stands, the women's locker room tends to have more amenities, extra space and privacy, and more attention to detail.
"Women want a beautiful environment," says Bruce Carter, founder of the Longmeadow, Mass.-based consulting firm Optimal Fitness Systems. "They really want that decor. The women, they want privacy. So do men, but the women want it more.
"Women, more often than men, will take the locker room into consideration when deciding to join a health club," he adds.
To make their females members happy, the New Jersey-based WOW! Work Out World chain features private dressing areas and drying areas by each individual shower. WOW! also offers two private changing rooms for members who don't feel comfortable undressing in front of others.
"Guys are obviously very different than women with how private they need their areas to be," explains WOW! President Stephen P. Roma. "I think our emphasis is really placed on the women's locker area."
According to Carter, clubs should provide women's locker rooms with extra space and countertops — to give them room to put on makeup, do their hair, etc. Other features to invest in: a hair bar with lighted mirror and extra floor-length mirrors throughout the locker room (instead of just smaller mirrors above the sinks). In addition to their practical use, mirrors are inexpensive design elements that can create the appearance of extra space within the locker room area, Carter says.
With all of the attention given to the women's locker rooms, you'd think guys would be jealous. Perhaps the only reason men are not feeling short-changed in this gender pandering is because they most likely have not ever had occasion to step into the women's locker room. Still, that doesn't mean guys wouldn't appreciate some extra pampering in their locker rooms.
"What women want, so do guys," says Carter. "It's just guys, we don't admit to it."
Prime Time Crime
Protecting locker rooms against theft
The good news is more and more exercisers are losing weight in health clubs. The bad news is they may also be losing their money. And credit cards. And jewelry. And…
Think theft can't happen in your club? Think again. "As much as anybody would like to think their club is the exception to the rest of the world, the reality is they're not," says Jim DeLaunay, the general manager of the Fitness Company's Headquarters Health Club, Morristown, N.J.
Warnings posted on the Danvers (Mass.) Police Department Web site claim there has been a "recent increase in thefts from health club locker rooms. Lockers are being entered while the victim's out on the floor exercising, playing racquetball or some other activity.
"The thief will enter the club using a temporary pass or a one-day pass," the warning continues. "Once inside, they'll act as though they're a club member. With no one in the locker room, they'll open lockers, stealing only credit cards. Lockers can be opened using a special tool without leaving any signs of forced entry. Many times they'll steal only one credit card, leaving hundreds of dollars behind.
"By stealing only one card the victim does not notice anything has happened. The victim does not become aware that their credit card was stolen until they go to use it, the credit card company calls because of several large purchases in a row, or until their monthly statement comes in the mail."
How can clubs protect their members from theft? Besides posting warning signs and selling locks, clubs can assign attendants to monitor the locker rooms. They can also provide safe boxes at the front desk.
In addition, clubs should carefully match faces with members at check-in time, as well as make a copy of all guests' driver licenses. Furthermore, clubs should encourage all guests to use locks.
"It's amazing what people leave in unlocked lockers," says Bruce Carter, founder of consulting firm Optimal Fitness Systems (Longmeadow, Mass.).
Unfortunately, locks don't guarantee complete safety, which is why club owners should warn members not to leave valuables in the lockers in the first place.
Naturally, in the event of theft, staff can report suspects to the authorities, but Carter tells of a club owned by mafia affiliates who handled things in their own way.
"Their men's locker room was getting hit left and right," he explains. "So they illegally put a camera in the men's locker room. They found out it was their nicest, most trustworthy member."
In the end, the club never contacted the police. The affiliates made the member an offer he couldn't refuse: Pay up or else. He avoided the consequences (concrete sneakers, perhaps?) by taking a second mortgage on his home, Carter says.
Behind Closed Doors
Members may complain about unclean locker rooms, but how many of them actually make a mess? Send us stories about members who misused your locker facilities, and we'll publish them in an upcoming issue. Write to us at: Letters to the Editor, Club Industry, One Plymouth Meeting, Suite 501, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462. E-mail: [email protected]. Fax: (610) 238-0992.


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The bird connection
A German naturalist set up the world's first ornithological station in what used to be East Prussia in 1901. Today, Russian scientists band hundreds of thousands of birds at the site. Tourism greatly helps to fund their work
The trap should contain the first birds by now. It's 8 a.m. and Professor Leonid Sokolov, 69, is striding through the pinewoods. The chirruping swells to a crescendo as the track reaches the dunes and a large construction made of fishing net, at its entrance, 15 meters high and 30 meters wide, and 70 meters long. Sokolov steps inside the funnel-shaped trap that narrows as it leads into a cage where some two dozen birds are fluttering about. "Chaffinches and robins," he says. "They can fly 400 kilometers in a single night." Circling, catlike, he plucks the birds from the walls and gently places them in a mesh box.
The birds are en route from their winter quarters in southern Europe to their breeding grounds in the Baltic region. This trap on the Curonian Spit, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea west of Lithuania and Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, lies right in their path, and the birds stop here to rest and feed on insects in preparation for the next stage of their journey. In 1901, when the area was part of East Prussia, the German ornithologist Johannes Thienemann set up the world's first ornithological station in the coastal village of Rossitten. After World War II, this territory was ceded to Russia, and Rossitten became Rybachy. Russian scientists opened a new station on the old site in 1956.
Today, Professor Sokolov is on duty at the Fringilla field station. He carries the birds he has caught into a wooden hut. For the past 43 years, Sokolov has been coming here in the migration season from St. Petersburg. He lifts the first chaffinch out of the box and bends a numbered aluminum band around its leg. "We have banded roughly three million birds here in the past 60 years," he says, "sometimes 9000 in a day." With nimble fingers, he pops the chaffinch head-first into a small tube on a digital scale and notes down its weight, band number, gender, and whether it's a young bird. Then he blows the feathers on its belly to one side and checks the fat reserve at its neck. One gram provides energy enough for a nonstop flight of 200 to 300 kilometers. Sokolov releases the bird through the open window.
The German station was already experimenting with banding at the beginning of the 20th century, but Johannes Thienemann, the son of a pastor, studied theology first. It was his scientific curiosity that drew him to the Curonian Spit. He was thrilled by the species diversity he discovered there, but the flocks of departing birds also created feelings of resentment, too: "Because the question rises unbidden to our lips: Where do you come from? Where do you go? The moment the birds disappear from view, there's nothing left to study." Hence the numbered bands.
Thienemann's scheme was ambitious: Each time a banded bird was found anywhere in the world and reported to the scientists, they would know just that little bit more about the flight routes of its species. Today, these routes are well documented. Nevertheless, the old method still provides valuable information: The ornithologists learn, for instance, how bird populations are changing and how climate change is influencing their numbers and flight behavior. Of course, not every bird that's banded is later found and reported – far from it: Of three million, only 12 000 have been documented to date.
Leonid Sokolov checks the trap every hour. During the course of a spring day, coal tits, blackcaps and goldcrests as well as any number of tourists arrive here. Every year, up to 30 000 people visit the field station, most of them Russians. "I'm putting on my uniform for them now," says Professor Sokolov as the first bus pulls up. He's referring to his chain with the long-eared owl pendant and his fisherman's hat sporting a feather from a rare sea eagle. The school group now on its way over has come all the way from Irkutsk, 5000 kilometers away in Siberia. Sokolov shows the students the squeaky mouse he uses to attract owls and explains the chirping of a male chaffinch by comparing it to a Russian rock star: "What he's saying is that he's moved into a great apartment. The better he sings, the more females will want to mate with him."
Even if scientists are now asking different questions, bird migration continues to fascinate experts and amateurs alike. They are amazed by the cuckoo from Kamchatka in eastern Russia that flies some 35 000 kilometers from there to South Africa and back again every year, traveling nonstop for three days and nights across the Mediterranean Sea or through the Sahara Desert after gaining 100 percent of its body weight in extra fat for the journey. The main puzzle for us humans is still how the birds are able to navigate so precisely: After flying thousands of kilometers from their home, some land right on the same tree as they did the winter before.
Inside the bird station's main building, Director Nikita Chernetsov, 46, is attempting to get to the bottom of the navigation mystery. He and his research team are aided by the robins sitting on old weather maps in their cages upstairs, pecking at a salad of eggs, carrots, cheese and worms. "Migratory birds follow an inner compass and an inner map," says Chernetsov, "so they take their bearings from two separate processes." Birds navigate by the sun, stars and the earth's magnetic fields. They likely also gauge space by the magnetic fields and their sense of smell. "How birds' sensory perception of magnetic fields works at all is still an open question," says Chernetsov. Maybe the answer will once day be found in Rybachy.
The flow of visitors to the Fringilla field station is vital to its survival and research even if it means that on sunny days, the scientists' work is palpably hindered by up to 800 tourists. Director Chernetsov has the tourists to thank for some 20 percent of his budget. "Most of them are not particularly interested in birds; they come here to go swimming," he says. But the growing popularity of the Curonian Spit surprises him a little bit. "It's only happened over the past 15 years." He does have a possible explanation, though: The falling value of the ruble has made EU vacations too expensive for many Russians. "Some people regard this region as a little bit of Western Europe within Russia." He grins: "I don't think that's quite true." But luckily, he adds, on this matter his opinion is not important. The main thing is that for now at least, the future of ornithological research in Rybachy is assured.
Great species diversity on the Curonian Spit: Over three million birds belonging to 200 species have been banded there over the last 60 years
getting there
Lufthansa has up to four daily flights from Frankfurt (FRA) and three from Munich (MUC) to Warsaw (WAW) in June. Continue on to Kaliningrad (KGD) with Star Alliance partner LOT Polish Airlines. Use the app to calculate your miles. Download here:


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Three Melbourne AFL players who were involved in a boozy clash with fans at the Boxing Day Test have been cleared by the club.
James Frawley, Jeremy Howe and Lynden Dunn attracted the attention of MCG security staff.
Melbourne AFL director of sports performance Neil Craig stressed on Wednesday the players had left the ground voluntarily and were not evicted.
Craig says the incident will lead to discussion among the group about what is required in the life of an AFL player and an elite sportsman.
"You start to discuss topics of responsibility, accountability, perception, ripple effect in a footy club, is it fair versus unfair, is it a normal lifestyle or an abnormal lifestyle?" Craig said.
Craig says the incident has created a ripple effect of negative media coverage for the club, but the Demons don't want their players to isolate themselves from the general public.
"They are the sort of things you discuss: the environment you put yourself into, should you or shouldn't you, what are the negatives of doing it, what are the positives of doing it," Craig has told the afl.com.au website.
"Clearly there are some situations you need to think through and make good choices.
"(If you) put your hand up to be part of this industry (then) that is what you sign on for and it is not a matter of debating whether it was fair or unfair.
"That is what it is and professional people accept it and manage it and make it part of their lifestyle."
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Now You See Me 2 (2016)
Posted by best movie Posted on 21.22 with No comments
You've just seen the movie categories sequel titled Now You See Me 2 (2016). You can bookmark this page with the URL http://setevalamano.blogspot.com/2016/01/now-you-see-me-2-2016.html. Thank you!
Now You See Me 2 (2016) 910109.
Label: sequel


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Governor Brian Kemp just issued an Executive Order mandating all schools in Georgia will remain closed for in-person instruction for the remainder of the school year. This includes TCSS.
Please note that current grade calculations will be based upon student mastery of material covered through March 12, 2020 which was the end of the third nine weeks grading period. Student learning will continue after our scheduled Spring Break. We don't want our kids to lose the valuable knowledge and skills they have gained this school year. Teachers will be contacting their students and working with them to ensure additional opportunities are available for students to demonstrate mastery of previously covered material. More details will be available the week of April 13th.
At this time, we do not have any further updates. We know there are academic milestones and other events that our students and families were looking forward to this year. As updates are available, we will share them.
Over the past several weeks, our commitment to the students and the families of TCSS has been paramount. We will continue this commitment through the closure. Together, we will all get through this.


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Non-Degree Seeking Application
To ensure successful completion of your application please review the points below.
- There is a $45 nonrefundable application fee for domestic applicants. There is a $70 nonrefundable application fee for international applicants. ALL APPLICATION FEES MUST BE PAID BY CREDIT CARD WHEN SUBMITTING THE ONLINE APPLICATION. If you are reapplying for non-degree seeking status the nonrefundable reapplication fee is $45.
University of Akron undergraduates are required to pay the application fee.
- Proof of at least a conferred baccalaureate degree must be submitted to the Graduate School. A copy of a college or university transcript (except The University of Akron) reflecting degree conferral or a copy of your diploma must be submitted to the Graduate School.
You will be notified via e-mail once all non-degree seeking application materials have been received, and you have been approved by the Graduate School for graduate enrollment at The University of Akron. Included in this e-mail will be your Student Identification Number as well as the Checklist for Incoming Graduate Students, which will provide information on registration, parking, and purchasing textbooks.
Admission Validity
Students are admitted for the term for which they seek admission as indicated on the graduate application. Admission for graduate studies is valid for one year, thus students are provided the option of deferring admission to a later semester within the one year timeframe. The offer of admission is void, however, if students do not register for courses within the one year from the semester of admission. This does not apply to admission to those programs that admit for the fall semester only. Admission to such programs is only valid for that fall term for which admission was granted.
If you have reviewed the information and are ready to submit your application click on the link below.


text: Friday, May 04, 2012 New Report Calls for Collaboration in Meeting Needs of People With Arthritis A new APTA-sponsored report from the Arthritis Foundation focuses on the unique role of physical, social, and environmental factors in making physical activity accessible, convenient, and effective for adults with arthritis. Environmental and Policy Strategies to Increase Physical Activity Among Adults With Arthritis is designed to engage 6 important sectors—park, recreation, fitness and sport; business and industry; community and public health; health care; transportation and use and community design; and mass media—as partners in providing physical activity opportunities that meet the needs of people with arthritis. Several APTA members were instrumental in the development of the report. Bonita Beattie, PT, MPT, MHA, and Julie Keysor, PT, PhD, served as in-person expert meeting participants. Jill Heitzman, PT, DPT, GCS, CWS, Dina Jones, PT, PhD, Ryan Mizner, PT, MPT, PhD, and Carol Oatis, PT, PhD, were content reviewers. The report will be officially launched at a Capitol Hill briefing hosted by the Congressional Arthritis Caucus, cochaired by Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Rep Sue Myrick (R-NC), on May 16. APTA will cosponsor the briefing. Look for a link to the final report and coverage of the briefing next week in News Now.


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|Techpriest88 (talk)
|Date Created:
|Please feel free to edit constructively!
Graveborn Edit
You have no recollection of your former life... it's hard enough clinging to the memories you've made since your return. Upon arriving in the Shadowfell, you were overcome by terrible fear of the Unknown. What if your deeds were not enough to save you from oblivion? What if all you believed was a lie and you were headed toward certain doom? Through sheer force of will, you clawed your way back into the natural world and out of your shallow grave - a survivor haunted by unspeakable terror.
|Average Height:
|Average Weight:
|130-170 lb.
|Ability Scores:
|+2 Charisma, +2 Strength or +2 Constitution
|6 squares
|Common, choice of one other
|Skill Bonuses:
|+2 Endurance, +2 Bluff
|Undead Resistances:
|You are immune to disease and have resistance to poison damage and necrotic damage equal to 5 + one-half your level.
|Shadow Origin:
|You were reborn in the Shadowfell, so you are considered a shadow creature for the purpose of effects that relate to creature origin.
|Undead Subtype:
| As you are no longer among the living, you have the undead subtype, which grants you the following traits:
|Whispers of the Grave:
|You have the whispers of the grave power.
|Whispers of the Grave
|Graveborn Racial Power
|You are haunted by the whispers of the dead, but not without benefit. They occasionally reveal valuable truths.
|Action Type::No Action
|Effect: Add your Charisma modifier or Constitution modifier as a power bonus to the skill check result.
Graveborn have an unnerving presence about them that is as much a result of their cold flesh as their detached cunning and determination. They have a supernatural way with words and often get what they want, but even so, they fear for their lives. Graveborn escaped death once, but only just. Above all else, graveborn fear the inevitable coming of the Raven Queen's servants to claim their wayward souls and deliver them to their unknown fate.
Haunted continually by the whispers of those who died and were buried in their vicinity, some graveborn seek to escape the voices by venturing into the wilds as barbarians. Others try to drown them out with arcane music or the more preferable, though demanding, voice of a warlock patron. Since they harbour no memories of their former lives and find it difficult to retain even recent memories, graveborn are often distant and unapproachable, even to those who have known them for decades.
Play a graveborn if you want...
- to be an undead haunted by the fate you've fled.
- to do whatever it takes to survive.
- to be a member of a race that favours the barbarian, bard, and warlock classes.
Physical Qualities Edit
Graveborn are usually similar in appearance to living humans, but occasionally resemble other races. Their skin is always very pale, sometimes almost grayish in hue. They are unnaturally gaunt and underweight, giving the impression of a weak or sickly person. Though they have no need for sustenance, food allows their undead form to re-knit itself in an imperfect semblance of life - particularly dead flesh, regardless of origin, and fungus. While they do not reek of decay, as many undead are said to, graveborn always smell somewhat stale. Even so, is not difficult to mistake one for a living person.
Playing a Graveborn Edit
Graveborn attempt to blend in with the race they most resemble. As such, they take up names common to their surroundings. The ultimate goal of any graveborn is to avoid what she once escaped: death and the clutches of the Raven Queen. They seek the power to defeat those who would threaten their survival. They occasionally enter into an alliance of convenience with other adventurers, when they cannot accomplish their goals alone, finding grudging acceptance among those who do not fit in with accepted society. Sometimes graveborn find their cold hearts warmed by their living comrades and grow more willing to accept death, whenever it should finally come for them.
Graveborn Characteristics: Cunning, determined, detached, distrustful, manipulative, phobic, secretive, survivor
Male Names: As humans, or whatever race they most closely resemble.
Female Names: As humans, or whatever race they most closely resemble.
Graveborn Adventurers Edit
Everywhere there was civilization, wherever people had died and been buried, their spirits could be heard. The whispers were maddening. Jamell fled from cities and villages, seeking out the wild places of the world, where he hoped to find peace. He embraced the ways of the wild, finding comfort in the temporary madness evoked by his rage whenever he allowed the primal spirits to flow through his form. In communing with the spirits of nature, he has become more willing to release himself to death, to fall back into the cycles of nature, when his time comes again.
To Galebrook, the voices of the departed were not so much a cacophony as an orchestra without direction. He studied the interplay of art and the arcane as much to stave off madness as to give voice to these victims of the grave, none so lucky or strong as he, having escaped his fate. Life is a stage, one upon which he would perform eternally, for death had no claim upon his soul.
Sylene knew she could not defy the Raven Queen for long on her own. In order to maintain her existence, she would need to forge an alliance with entities beyond the natural world. Looking to the stars, she swore an oath to whatever power would hear her. Fortune smiled upon her - or did it? Perhaps the powers Outside are more to be feared than death itself. Only time will tell...
Back to Main Page → 4e Homebrew → Races → User Races


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The Importance of CoachingThere is a tendency among those who don't understand the NBA game very well to dismiss the importance of coaching. Phil Jackson is sometimes derided for winning titles with the Hall of Fame caliber duos of Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant but leadership, strategy and motivation are important elements for team success. Keep in mind that in order to win a championship it is vital not just to get the maximum out of the team's stars but also to squeeze as much productivity as possible out of the other players on the roster. While Jackson's star players could undoubtedly have had great individual statistical success playing for any NBA team, Jackson came up with offensive and defensive plans that made sure that his stars did not have to carry all of the burden by themselves.
Before Jackson took over in Chicago, many people thought that Jordan was too focused on his own scoring exploits to lead a team to a championship. Before Jackson took over in Los Angeles, O'Neal had a history of not working hard on defense and of getting swept out of the playoffs. Jackson did not just make those teams a little bit better; he turned them into powerhouses: the 1996 Bulls set the all-time record for regular season wins (72) and the 2001 Lakers set the all-time record for playoff winning percentage (15-1).
Of course, in this year's Finals Jackson's Lakers lost to Doc Rivers' Celtics. Just last season many people were saying that Rivers is a terrible coach and even now there are people who act like Rivers was some kind of accidental tourist along for the ride during the Celtics' championship run--but accidents don't last for 82 regular season games and four playoff series. Rivers is a very good coach. As a former All-Star guard he knows the game and he also has a good rapport with his players, which is very important. After the Celtics came back from 24 points down to win game four of the Finals--the turning point of the series--Kevin Garnett spoke about Rivers' leadership:
Doc is not afraid to tell us when we're messing up. I've been around for a while and I've seen some coaches sort of say the 'right thing.' He gives it to you straight, lets us know and he's probably one of the best motivators I've been around in a while. He gives up hope through his words and we believe it. We go out and try to do what is asked of us. He gave us confidence and just told us, 'Cut it to 10, cut it to 7, get it to 3.' We just continued to fight.
Garnett spent his whole career in Minnesota before joining the Celtics this season and while I suppose it is possible that the "some coaches" remark could have been in reference to Bill Blair's brief tenure or Kevin McHale's interim stint on the bench or the short reigns of Dwane Casey and Randy Wittman, I suspect that Garnett was referring to Flip Saunders. Saunders is a good NBA coach who designs some of the best out of bounds plays in the league. However, I see no evidence that he is the kind of coach who can lead a team to a championship. He inherited a championship team in Detroit and the Pistons spun their wheels for three years until Joe Dumars canned Saunders in favor of assistant coach Michael Curry. Check out what Curry recently told Jim Rome:
Give the Celtics a lot of credit. They played extremely well. They played extremely well the entire season. We have to figure out a way and we have to get better at playing harder, more focused and more consistent throughout the year--taking care of a lot of the little things as far as taking care of our bodies and little things out on the court so that when we do get into situations in which we are under duress when we are playing a team that is just as good or better then we can perform at a high level and hopefully we can take care of those situations when we get back to the Eastern Conference Finals again.
Rome asked Curry if the Celtics were better than the Pistons or just more focused and Curry offered a very telling reply:
I think that having focus is part of being the better team. Throughout the regular season the Celtics have shown that they were the best team in the league. They played with the focus, with the understanding and the desire of the importance of each game. They've done a tremendous job. Give the coaching staff credit, give the players credit--they've done a tremendous job. At the end of the season, everyone says that they want to win a championship but you want to be in a position where you feel you deserve a chance to win it because you've outworked everybody that you're playing against. We did not outwork them.
Rome asked Curry about the Pistons' reputation for acting as though they can "turn it on and off." Curry plans to change that:
That's a label I do not like and we're going to get rid of that label as far as the team turning it on and off...We're going to do it the championship way...We're going to have more accountability and do the little things to make sure that we can be a more consistent team. That starts with the way we practice every day, the way we prepare for games every day and the way we approach games during the regular season, understanding that if we want to be there in the end it will be because of all the work we have done along the way.
Basically, in those brief replies Curry summarized every criticism that I have had about the Pistons under Saunders' regime--and since Curry was on Saunders' staff he obviously knows exactly what was going on behind the scenes on a day to day basis. Clearly, Curry believes that the Pistons were taking shortcuts in their preparation and were not as focused as the Celtics were. Casual fans have the mistaken belief that the most important coaching takes place during games but the reality is that the most important coaching takes place during practices and in the interactions that take place before the game. It is the coach's job to prepare the players as well as possible and then it is the players' job to execute. Some of the greatest coaches of all-time--Jackson and John Wooden, to name just two--are renowned for having calm, placid demeanors during games. That is because they know that the most important work is done before the game and they were not interested in grandstanding for the TV cameras. Do you know why Red Auerbach started lighting victory cigars? He once explained that he never understood why other coaches were jumping up and down and making spectacles of themselves on the sidelines, particularly if one team had a big lead with very little time left; smoking the cigar was his way of saying that the game is over and there is nothing more that he needs to do.
Curry has no track record as an NBA head coach, so I don't know whether or not he will be able to implement the program he described to Rome--but Jackson and Pat Riley had no prior NBA head coaching experience when they took over in Chicago and L.A. respectively but their focus on doing things "the championship way"--as Curry called it--paid off quickly.
Labels: Doc Rivers, Flip Saunders, Kevin Garnett, Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach
posted by David Friedman @ 5:10 AM


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Do financial advisors undo or reinforce the behavioral biases and misconceptions of their clients? It's a question that receives no shortage of attention in an industry that wrestles with behavioral economics, a fiduciary standard and an overall effort to do right by clients. And it's a question most recently asked by three top economists in an undercover audit of Boston-area financial advisors.
You won't like the answer.
"We document that advisors fail to 'de-bias' their clients and often reinforce biases that are in their interests," the authors found. "Advisors encourage returns-chasing behavior and push for actively managed funds that have higher fees, even if the client starts with a well-diversified, low-fee portfolio."
The National Bureau of Economic Research sponsored the study by Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, Markus Noeth of the University of Hamburg and Antoinette Schoar of the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The authors hired actors to pose as clients displaying signs of the worst self-defeating investment behavior. In each of the 300 appointments, the actors were given one of the following investment portfolios to take in with them: 1) a portfolio that chased returns; 2) a portfolio with a heavy concentration of company stock; 3) a low-cost, diversified stock and bond portfolio, and 4) a portfolio invested in cash.
The wealth ranges varied for the "clients," either between $45,000 and $55,000 or between $95,000 and $ 105,000; those ranges were picked to mimic the savings of average households in different age ranges.
While specific firms and advisors were not named, the study focused on retail advisors at the lower end of the wealth spectrum, and did not include private wealth managers or hedge funds. The typical advisor in the study worked either for a bank, retail investment firm or their own independent operation.
Most advisors in the study are paid on commission based on the fees and volumes that they generate. Only a small subset of the advisors are independent and would be paid based on capital under management.
The study found advisors' reactions to different portfolios or investment scenarios varied significantly. They were broadly supportive of the trendchasing portfolio but much less supportive of the company stock portfolio. Most strikingly, according to the authors, advisors were "unsupportive of the index portfolio and suggested a change to actively managed funds. Overall, advisors had a significant bias towards active management."
"In nearly 50% of the visits, the advisor encouraged investing in an actively managed fund; by contrast, in only 7.5% of the advice sessions (21 visits), advisors encouraged investing in an index fund."
When advisors mentioned fees, they did so in a way that "downplayed them without lying."
For example, the actors often heard arguments like, "This fund has 2% fee but that is not much above industry average."
A bit of good news; consistent with portfolio theory, most (75%) did ask clients about their demographic characteristics to determine risk preferences and investment time horizons.
"The recommended investment in stocks and domestic assets significantly increased with annual income, a fact that may be explained by an assumed higher risk or loss tolerance for the welloff," according to the authors.
The bad news? In many cases, the information did not get used in the way predicted by portfolio theory: the recommended exposure to equities decreased with the amount invested.
"Female clients were asked to hold more liquidity, advised to hold less international exposure, and pushed less frequently to invest in actively managed funds. At the same time, advisors did not seem to tailor portfolio advice with the age of the client at hand."
The authors also found evidence of "catering," a term they used to describe advisors that initially supported their client's existing strategies in an attempt to establish credibility and not alienate a potential client. However, the initial reaction to a client's strategy varied significantly from the later recommended course of action.


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Jason Lalak necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 92 diseños de 24 diseñadores freelance.
Women Impacting Public Policy -- Women and Technology Today
The Voice for Women in Business in our Nation's Capital, Women Impacting Public Policy, Inc. (WIPP) is a national bi-partisan public policy organization that advocates for and on behalf of women and minorities in business in the legislative processes of our nation, creating economic opportunities and building bridges and alliances to other small business organizations. Through WIPP, our collective voice makes a powerful impact on Capitol Hill and with the Administration.
Women and technology Today is a educational initiative to help women business owners better understand technology, telecommunications, technology policy and how it impacts their businesses.
Women small business owners, small business owners interested in technology issues from internal, external and business opportunity perspectives.
Text should include:
Women and Technology Today
Would like for the image to include a large W, preferably hidden in the design.
Nothing too feminine, no high heels...
Would prefer a vertical logo
Color: most of our identity is in red and blue but we are open to a brighter color treatment with this logo. NO PINK!
Please see http://www.wipp.org for more information on WIPP. Please see http://www.giveme5.org for the logo of a parallel project branded under the WIPP umbrella.
Please see attached file for the new WIPP logo that will be launched later this month, Women Impacting Energy Logo and Woman Accessing Capital Logos.
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Coarse Accessories
A selection of Accessories for General Coarse fishing, including Hooks/Hooks to Nylon, Weights, Splitshot and Feeders, Floats, Line, Tools and Catapults.
We have lots more products in store than currently displayed here. If you can't see what you are looking for, please contact us for advice. We can also take your order over the phone (01323) 460441.


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For more than 20 years, ColorGATE's color competence has been supporting the graphic arts industry with its printing equipment manufacturers as well as producers, operators and technology users for Sign & Display, decor, ceramic, textile and packaging. The market for large format printing with its applications in LFP and Wide Format also benefits from ColorGATE's solution competence on the way from analogue to digital printing and into the future of Print 4.0.
ColorGATE has been successful on the up-and-coming market of Industrial Printing and the revolution of inkjet technology since the beginning in 2000.
In addition, ColorGATE distributes color measuring devices and accessories for professional color management purposes to create color profiles for digital imaging, prepress, and digital printing. Since 2010 ColorGATE provides SmartControl, a proven Industrial Printing Operating System (IP OS) for operation in industrial grade digital printing systems.
We meet our customers as partners on equal footing and our corporate culture is driven by an innovative spirit and the trust and satisfaction of our customers. ColorGATE's worldwide network of trained Sales Partners is ensuring optimal support for our end users. In Commercial Printing, ColorGATE works closely with the leading imaging companies and more than 50 other manufacturers.
As experts for applied color management and developers of intelligent device drivers for digital printing systems of all kinds, ColorGATE´s team continuosly provides it's know-how to users and partners to offer high performing, and reliable solutions to the diversity of different requirements and areas of application.
"Only foresight enables you to take advantage of opportunities - and only detailed knowledge brings finesse. The digital transformation of the printing industry is in full swing. Driven by the development of Industry 4.0, it is changing and linking machines, people and markets. This rapid development requires intelligent solutions and a new way of thinking for the decisive edge, which ensures competitive advantages and new business opportunities – that's Print 4.0", Thomas Kirschner, CEO and Founder of ColorGATE.
The following key terms characterize our corporate culture, the type of work we do and our relationships with customers, business partners, colleagues and co-workers:
Our solutions are easy to install, easy to use and easy to update.
It is our goal to find simple solutions for all tasks and in all situations.
It is easy to communicate and to do business with us.
Our staff knows what they are talking about.
We are flexible and take the appropriate action as the situation requires.
We choose short decision-making processes and flat hierarchies.
It is our goal to find the easiest solutions possible that yield the greatest benefits possible for our customers.
We understand our customers' business and are able to put ourselves into our customers' shoes.
We "look beyond the end of our own noses" and strive towards solutions that build one upon the other and complement one another.
We don't run away from problems, we tackle challenges head-on, are decisive and seek solutions.
Our staff represent the ColorGATE brand and contribute towards attaining our corporate goals with their communication with our customers and amongst one another.
We establish long-term relationships and communications structures.
We create solutions for the exact, consistent transmission of color information to increase our customers' production reliability.
We enable optimal color reproduction to meet a wide variety of different application needs.
We enable optimal production implementation and capacity utilization, with solutions to balance out differences between systems of the same model, for example.
We are competent with respect to all the components, technologies and materials involved in and relevant to the process.
We are closely networked and maintain an intensive exchange with the development departments of leading system manufacturers.
It is our goal to always find and implement the optimal workflow.
The careful analysis of all the steps in the process and the processes in all areas enables us to eliminate bottlenecks and increase uptimes.
We work quickly and are very focused and develop mature solutions for long-term use.
We are always looking for ways to improve.
We share our experience and our knowledge and learn from our customers. This enables us to take advantage of opportunities on the market sooner than others and to react with innovative solutions.
We develop new application options for our products and solutions and adapt them to new areas of application.
We pay attention to the material and immaterial resources we use and develop solutions that are designed to use fewer natural resources and to be ecologically friendly.
How do we want to get organized and treat each other so that we can all work productively and with great motivation? – We have compiled this set of guidelines to serve as orientation:
We take part in the partner programs of leading manufacturers; in regular quality testing, ColorGATE solutions prove impressive again and again by getting best marks.Certifications


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This month's guest expert is Hayley Coleman from TripAdvisor. In this post Hayley introduces us to a selection of best restaurants in Ho Chi Minh that are ideal for travellers visiting Ho Chi Minh. She takes a look at what's on offer in each restaurant along with sharing reviews from TripAdvisor travellers. You can also find more great travel reviews and tips from TripAdvisor on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
With 2013 on the horizon, many people will be thinking about New Year's resolutions. If travelling is on your list, Ho Chi Minh City is one of South East Asia's most vibrant and exciting cities and a firm favourite with our TripAdvisor community.
Vietnam's largest city is filled with eateries serving many different cuisines and styles, but as Ho Chi Minh is such a popular destination for backpackers and those looking for a great value trip, we have pulled together a list of the top Ho Chi Minh City restaurants ideal for the budget conscious backpacker*. We've also included quotes from some of our top contributors, keen to share their insights and experiences on the restaurants.
1. Bahdja Restaurant, 87-89-91 Ho Tung Mau Street, District 1
This restaurant claims to be Ho Chi Minh City's first Algerian restaurant and serves multi-ethnic Berber North African and Mediterranean cuisine cooked and served in a traditional Algerian style.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"A tidy and crisp restaurant with a warm welcome and attentive service."
"We found this delightful oasis by accident when exploring Ho Chi Minh City one afternoon. We went back the following evening for what I can only describe as the most heavenly food in Ho Chi Minh City."
"This is an interesting offering in a very central location, offering something different at reasonable prices. Worth a visit! All-in-all we had a good time and will be back for more."
2. Cuc Gach Quan, 10 Dang Tat, Ward Tan Dinh, District 1
Set in a French colonial house, restored using recycled materials, Cuc Gach Quan offers traditional Vietnamese food.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"Two former family town houses in Ho Chi Minh City converted into a fabulous cosy restaurant, which retains the former house atmosphere. Simply wonderful Vietnamese cuisine served by the most attentive and friendly staff."
"I picked this as it was the highest ranked Vietnamese restaurant for Ho Chi Minh on TripAdvisor and the reviews were spot on. There are so many good places to eat in Ho Chi Minh but this was by far my favourite."
"If the Michelin Guide should ever dare to come out here, this is the restaurant that would be recommended as the best. Genuine Vietnamese food and rich flavours."
3. Skewers, 9A Thai Van Lung, Dong Khoi / Hai Ba Trung Area
Located in District One, Skewers serves Mediterranean cuisine for those looking to sample something other than Vietnamese food during their time in the City.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"You can't go wrong with anything at this stellar restaurant. Fabulous ambiance and service."
"Skewers is one of my favourite restaurants in Ho Chi Minh. Consistently great food, excellent service and a nice menu, it's hard to pick which dish I like best!"
"I would struggle to find fault with our recent dining experience at Skewers. Every dish we ordered was delicious. Portions are generous, and the prices are quite reasonable."
4. Huong Lai, 38 Ly Tu Trong Street, District 1
Serving traditional Vietnamese food, this restaurant is set in the loft of an old French-colonial house, all staff here are from disadvantaged families or are former street children and receive on-the-job training, education and a place to stay.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"Training kids to give them a future with a hand up rather than a hand out is hugely commendable. Food, service and prices are very good. It thoroughly deserves a visit and your support, you will not be disappointed."
"This is the perfect place to have your first Vietnamese dinner or just to have a quiet and good quality dinner."
"The restaurant itself is a beautiful setting for a meal. The staff were so unbelievably friendly – lovely young children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The food was tasty with a great, extensive Vietnamese menu. Simple but tasty."
5. My Place, 195 Dien Bien Phu, District 3
Located in District Three this restaurant offers Belgian and French inspired cuisine.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"I was impressed with everything at My Place. It is quiet and comfortable. The food is good, and for the quality, not too expensive."
"Hidden in a small alley, My Place is truly a gem hidden in a big city. The set lunch menu offers great value to anyone."
"Fantastic western food in this little restaurant hidden away in District Three. This is home cooked European fare at its best, ideal for those looking for a break from Vietnamese food."
6. Baba's Kitchen, 164 Bui Vien, Pham Ngu Lao, District 1
Located in District One, Baba's Kitchen serves Indian cuisine.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"Can't recommend this restaurant highly enough. My wife and I enjoy our Indian food and Baba's dishes are without doubt some of the best we have tasted."
"Enjoyed all the food we ordered and pleasantly surprised at the quality of the dishes. The service was excellent with the waiters always refilling our waters (free) and was all reasonably priced."
"Having travelled in India and tried the real cuisine I had been disappointed to return to the UK only to find illuminous coloured curries which lacked the real flavour. Baba's kitchen was a real find, the curry was amazing. Fresh and fragrant and 100% authentic."
7. Fanny, 29-31 Ton That Thiep, District 1, Dong Khoi Area
Located in District One, Fanny is an ice cream parlour serving ice cream, cakes and sweet treats.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"I would recommend this place for all ice cream lovers. There are lots of choices and some rather interesting combinations, a large well illustrated menu to choose from and around 50 different kinds of ice cream. They also have a great selection of ice creams for kids."
"A very popular ice cream parlour with seating indoors and out. The very extensive and picturesque menu features such items as sushi and fondue ice cream."
"A delight of Vietnam – a must try with every flavour you could possibly think of and more!"
8. Ly Club Restaurant, 143 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia. District 3
Set amid a garden featuring an infinity fountain, the French colonial-era style Ly Club is located in Ho Chi Minh's District Three.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"We visited based on a review in an airline magazine and we weren't disappointed. We had the seven-course tasting menu and each course was delicious. Serving sizes were very generous and they also let us swap a course with no extra charge."
"We had our final meal in Vietnam at Ly Club and it didn't disappoint. The whole experience was as good as any fine dining experience we have ever had."
"We went there for our wedding anniversary dinner and it was the best anniversary ever. We took the Chef's recommended course and wines and all were excellent. The staff were well trained and we felt very comfortable."
9. Hoa Tuc, 74/7 Hai Ba Trung, District 1
Offering contemporary Vietnamese cuisine, Hoa Tuc is located in District One and also offers cookery classes. Décor is Parisian inspired and alfresco dining is available.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"Lovers of Vietnamese cuisine should not miss this restaurant. Situated along Hai Ba Trung road (just behind the Opera House)."
"We loved this restaurant. It's in a little alley opposite the Park Hyatt and has a great atmosphere and fantastic food. We went there twice and it was our favourite restaurant of all the places we went in Ho Chi Minh City."
"We had some great meals in Ho Chi Minh City but the meal at Hoa Tuc was definitely the best. Set in the corner of a courtyard, the setting was quiet and romantic, the staff really friendly and the food amazing."
10. Café Alex, Street 40, Nguyen Thi Thap, District 7
Located in District Seven, Café Alex serves Asian, Vietnamese and English cuisines.
What TripAdvisor travellers say:
"This is really a great find in the city. The food is really good – genuine English food, done properly. Overall, a nice place to relax and enjoy some good food."
"Cafe Alex is a great little cafe in District Seven serving real English food. The bangers and mash are a must, along with the fish and chips!"
"I have been to Cafe Alex many times and consider it one of the best. It is a really friendly restaurant offering both Western food and Vietnamese food all day long."
So take your pick of cheap places to eat in Ho Chi Minh City for your trip. Whatever you pick, we're sure you wont be disappointed, and it definitely won't eat into your budget. For more information on Ho Chi Minh City click here.
*List is selected according to the TripAdvisor Popularity Index.


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Theaters (The Marquee)
Theaters and the Movies They Are Playing
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|Screenland at Tapcade
|Kansas City, MO (~3 miles)
|Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Mainstreet
|Kansas City, MO (~4 miles)
|Regal Kansas City 18
|Kansas City, MO (~4 miles)
|Regnier Extreme Screen Theatre
|Kansas City, MO (~4 miles)
|Screenland Armour
|North Kansas City, MO (~4 miles)
|Tivoli at the Nelson-Atkins
|Kansas City, MO (~5 miles)
|Pharaoh Cinema 4
|Independence, MO (~6 miles)
|Boulevard Drive-In Theatre
|Kansas City, KS (~7 miles)
|B & B Twin Drive-In
|Independence, MO (~7 miles)
|Cinergy - Mission
|Mission, KS (~9 miles)
|B & B Northland 14
|Kansas City, MO (~9 miles)
|Standees Theatres
|Prairie Village, KS (~9 miles)
|AMC Independence Commons 20
|Independence, MO (~10 miles)
|B & B Liberty Cinema 12
|Liberty, MO (~10 miles)
|AMC Ward Parkway 14
|Kansas City, MO (~10 miles)
|Cinemark 20 and XD
|Merriam, KS (~11 miles)
|Rio Theatre
|Overland Park, KS (~12 miles)
|Glenwood Arts
|Overland Park, KS (~12 miles)
|AMC BarryWoods 24
|Kansas City, MO (~12 miles)
|B & B Lee's Summit 16 with Grand Screen
|Lee's Summit, MO (~14 miles)
|B & B Lee's Summit New Longview 7 w/ Grand Screen
|Lee's Summit, MO (~14 miles)
|Blue Springs 8 Theatre
|Blue Springs, MO (~14 miles)
|AMC Town Center 20
|Leawood, KS (~15 miles)
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