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Syrian troops backed by warplanes battled rebels for control of a key highway in Damascus Saturday, a day after opposition forces cut the strategic artery as part of what they say are efforts to lay the groundwork for an eventual assault on the heavily defended capital.
Rebels have been on the offensive in Damascus since launching a series of attacks on government positions on Wednesday. They brought their fight to within a mile of the heart of the capital on Friday, seizing army checkpoints and cutting a key highway as they pressed their campaign for the city, the seat of President Bashar Assad's power.
The fighting is the heaviest to hit Damascus since July, when a first rebel assault managed to capture several neighborhoods before a punishing government counteroffensive. After that rebel foray, the regime quickly reasserted its control over the city, which has spared Damascus much of the violence and destruction that the civil war has wrought on other major urban centers.
Both the rebels and the government consider the fight for Damascus the most likely endgame in a civil war that has already killed more than 60,000 people. The city is heavily fortified and dotted with armed checkpoints, and activists say it is surrounded with three of the most loyal divisions of the army, including the Republican Guard and the feared 4th Division, commanded by Assad's brother Maher.
The latest Damascus offensive did not appear to be coordinated with rebels on other sides of the capital, and it was unclear whether the opposition fighters would be able to hold their ground.
Activists said the fighting on Saturday focused on a main highway that leads to northern Syria, a key road the regime uses to move troops and supplies. Rebels cut the road on Friday, and still controlled parts of it on Saturday despite government airstrikes and shelling to try to roll them back, said Damascus-based activist Maath al-Shami.
Activists say the fighting is the only beginning of a long battle for the capital.
"The attack was planned for more than 20 days and those responsible for it are army defectors," al-Shami said. "This is one of the stages to enter the capital. .... Storming Damascus is not easy."
He said only one checkpoint still stands in the way before the rebels reach Abbasid Square, a landmark plaza in central Damascus.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported intense air raids on several Damascus suburbs on Saturday, including Zamalka and Douma, and near the highway as well. It added that troops shelled the northeastern neighborhoods of Jobar and Qaboun, which have witnessed clashes since Wednesday.
Rebels also captured a housing compound for army officers in the Damascus suburb of Adra, the Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees activist group reported.
Al-Shami said the housing unit is close to Adra Prison, one of the country's largest jails, where thousands of detainees are held.
In northern Syria, the Observatory said rebels entered parts of the Mannagh air base near the border with Turkey, and opposition fighters also attacked the Kwaires military base in Aleppo province.
Earlier in the day, President Bashar appointed seven new ministers in a move that appeared aimed at trying to shore up an economy that has been ravaged by the country's 2-year-old revolt, state media said.
State TV said Assad replaced the heads of the oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture ministries. Key security ministries such as defense and interior, which are on the front lines of the civil war, remained unchanged.
The civil war has devastated the Syrian economy, leaving major cities and key infrastructure in ruins and nation's industries gutted. Power outages are common and Syrians in some areas must stand in hours-long lines for bread and gasoline.
Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests inspired by the Arab Spring revolts elsewhere in the region that toppled longtime Arab dictators. It evolved into a civil war as the opposition took up arms to fight a government crackdown on dissent.
The fighting has settled into a bloody stalemate and shows no signs of stopping, despite several tentative proposals from both sides to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi floated the latest proposal late Friday, saying Damascus is ready for dialogue with the opposition so long as the rebels lay down their weapons. He said anyone who responds will not be harmed.
The offer is unlikely to gain any traction among the Syrian opposition. The rebel movement is highly decentralized and deeply distrusts the regime, and most groups are unlikely to stop fighting so long as Assad remains president.
The opposition in January rejected a proposal that Assad put forward for ending the conflict, although it would have kept him in power. He offered a national reconciliation conference, elections and a new constitution. He also dismissed any chance of dialogue with the armed opposition and called on Syrians to fight what he called "murderous criminals."
Late last month, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, changed course and said he is willing to talk to the regime if that would help end bloodshed. He suggested that Assad release tens of thousands of political prisoners as a first step.
Members of the opposition criticized al-Khatib's offer to talk to the regime, and the government flatly rejected it.
Also Saturday, Cardinal Bechara al-Rai, head of the Maronite Catholic church, began the first visit to Damascus by the leader of the church in decades. Rai will attend a ceremony Sunday marking the enthronement of John Yazigi as the new patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Maronite Church was an outspoken critic of Syria's three-decade domination and military presence in Lebanon.


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Ada Lovelace Day is a week from today: Tuesday October 16.
Ada Lovelace Day is a profile-raising day for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Write or record something about a woman in STEM on October 16:
It's really easy to get involved in Ada Lovelace Day: When 16 October starts in your time zone, just write or record something about a women in science, technology, engineering or maths whose achievements you admire. It can be a blog post, a Facebook update, a podcast, a video – whatever you like.
When it's published online, visit our Directory, log in, and add your story to our collection.
Yes, it really is that simple! So make a date to join us on 16 October and help raise the profile of women in STEM.
List sources of inspiration here, or previous year's ALD posts that you've really enjoyed. On ALD itself we'll have a second post to share your favourite links from this year.
Ada Lovelace Day is also raising funds to support ALD 2012 activities, and to investigate founding a charitable organisation to support women in STEM.
NB: for clarity Ada Lovelace Day is independent of, and pre-dates, the Ada Initiative, the non-profit I work for that specifically focuses on women in open technology and culture. We're both named in honour of Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace.

subset: commoncrawl


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- Texas Resorts & Holidays Guide *
- Beautiful American Holidays
Texas Holidays tells you the best places to visit in this beautiful region of usa with maps, pictures and resort reviews. Find out which Texas resorts to stay at for your holiday and day tours to visit the best scenic attractions in USA.
Beautiful Holidays Specialists


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Officials: Teen set fire to home after fight with dad
Girl, 15, referred to Department of Juvenile Services
State fire marshals said a fire that heavily damaged a home in Edgewood on Saturday was caused by a teen who had gotten into a fight with her dad.
Firefighters were called to the blaze around 8 p.m. Saturday in the 1700 block of Harbinger Trail after the Harford County Sheriff's Office said it got a 911 hang-up call from that address and, upon investigation, heard a smoke alarm and saw a couch on fire in the basement.
The fire quickly spread throughout the two-story home and caused about $200,000 worth of damage. Two firefighters were injured while trying to fight the blaze. Both have since been treated and released.
Investigators said they determined that a 15-year-old girl living at the home intentionally started the fire using liquid accelerant after she had gotten into a fight with her dad.
The girl has been referred to the Harford County Department of Juvenile Services on charges of first-degree arson, first-degree malicious burning and two counts of reckless endangerment.


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LITTLE ROCK — Burns bans are now in effect in 50 counties and outdoor burning is strongly discouraged across the state, the Arkansas Forestry Commission said Monday.
LITTLE ROCK — Burns bans are now in effect in 50 counties and outdoor burning is strongly discouraged across the state, the Arkansas Forestry Commission said Monday.
The commission said 48 wildfires burned over the weekend and that 21 homes were threatened by the flames but were saved by suppression efforts.
Most of the fires burned between 5 and 10 acres. A total of 127 acres burned over the weekend, not including a fire in the Ouachita National Forest northwest of Lake Ouachita State Park near Hot Springs that began Friday and had burned about 2,000 acres by Monday afternoon.
Another 13 fires burned across 68 acres on Monday, according to the Forestry Commission.
The commission said its crews have worked 237 fires so far this month, or 30 percent of the total number of wildfires fought in all of 2013.
"We are beginning … what appears to be a much more dangerous year for wildfire activity than we experienced last year. We ask all homeowners and citizens in Arkansas to continue to be very careful," State Forester Joe Fox stated in a news release.
The commission said it has a fleet of 16 planes to assist with fire detection and suppression, and that an additional four single-engine air tankers are expected to arrive Saturday to help ground crews via aerial fire suppression tactics.
Counties with burn bans in effect Monday were Ashley, Baxter, Boone, Benton, Carroll, Clark, Clay, Cleburne, Cleveland, Conway, Crawford, Dallas, Drew, Faulkner, Franklin, Fulton, Garland, Grant, Greene, Hot Spring, Howard, Independence, Izard, Jefferson, Johnson, Lawrence, Lincoln, Logan, Lonoke, Madison, Marion, Newton, Ouachita, Perry, Pike, Prairie, Polk, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Searcy, Sebastian, Sharp, Stone, Van Buren, Washington, White, Woodruff and Yell.
Concerned, too, about the several brush fires in southeast Oklahoma over the past several days, the LeFlore County Commission approved a 7-day burn ban on Monday. The LeFlore County ban excludes only the Forestry Service areas. As of Monday, 20 Oklahoma counties were under burn bans, according to the Oklahoma Forestry Service.
A frequently updated map showing which counties are under burn bans is available on the commission's website, www.arkfireinfo.org.


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Alpinestars KMX9 kart suit
Certified to CIK FIA homologation standards, the K-MX 9 is a premium quality technical kart suit with a sleek design for entry and intermediate level racers, with an innovative three layer construction and a host of Alpinestars exclusive performance features.
Complies with the CIK FIA Level2 new standard homologation
Technical three-layer construction that meets the new homologation standard, featuring a Twill Oxford polyamide outer shell, a poly cotton twill membrane and poly-toweling lining for comfort, durability and fit.
Engineered for durability, minimal material bunching and high levels of abrasion resistance while the poly-toweling lining offers excellent moisture-wicking.
Mesh panels positioned on under arms, seat area, sides, waist, bottom leg for maximum ventilation.
Lumbar stretch panel for greater flexibility and flat profile in riding position.
Knitted wrist and ankle cuffs provide a snug fit and help prevent unwanted movement of the suit.
Alpinestars Formula 1 style shoulder epaulettes.
Adjustable waist belt allows a tight, personalized fit.
Two flat pockets offer a convenient storage option for those times away from the driving seat.
Premium YKK zippers with Alpinestars zipper pullers, plus double slider for versatile and customizable fit.
Homologation: FIA level 2


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A man accused in the May 2013 kidnapping of his 3-year-old son was held in contempt of court on Tuesday after refusing to testify at his father's trial in the case.
Monty Turner appeared briefly in Boulder District Court on Tuesday morning and refused to comply to a subpoena to testify in Ronald Turner's kidnapping trial. Boulder District Judge Andrew Macdonald held Monty Turner in contempt of court and told him he would return to the Boulder County Jail and could choose to testify at any point before the end of the trial to avoid a jail term up to six months.
"You are in direct contempt at this point," the judge said. "We'll get you back here sometime next week for the sanction."
Ronald Turner is accused of conspiring with Monty Turner in the May 2013 kidnapping of Monty Turner's son, Luke Turner, from Longmont. According to police and prosecutors, the pair carefully planned the kidnapping during the St. Vrain Valley School District graduation so police would be tied up with the influx of visitors to the city.
Police reported that Monty Turner hid in his estranged wife's garage for an opportune moment, forced his way into the house, shocked her with a stun gun and sprayed her with pepper spray before taking the boy.
Police believe Ronald Turner waited nearby and communicated with his son via text message to update him on conditions and then fled the city with him. Ronald Turner was arrested early the next morning in Missouri, but he was by himself.
Police and the FBI tracked Monty Turner to Canada, where he was arrested and the boy was recovered.
Ronald Turner's trial on kidnapping and related charges is under way in Boulder District Court. Monty Turner was initially scheduled to be tried with his father, but changed his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity, which delayed his portion of the trial indefinitely.
Prosecutors sought his testimony about comments he made to a doctor that they believed would allow them to impeach other witness testimony. In order to garner his cooperation, prosecutors offered him immunity to protect him from the use of that testimony against him at his own pending trial on pending trial.
Macdonald asked Monty Turner if he understood his testimony could not be used against him at his own trial or used to add new charges. He said he understood. Macdonald asked him if he planned to testify.
"I refuse," Monty Turner said.
Prosecutors anticipate wrapping up their portion of Ronald Turner's trial on Wednesday. Closing arguments are expected Thursday. No date has been set for Monty Turner's trial yet.
Contact Times-Call staff writer Pierrette J. Shields at 303-684-5273 or firstname.lastname@example.com


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Discussion: The Financial Crisis and the North CountryTuesday, October 21st, 2008
SUNY Canton Business Professors Discuss Impact of Financial Crisis this Friday
A "Financial Meltdown" discussion with SUNY Canton professors from the school of Business and Liberal Arts will be held at noon Friday, Oct. 24, in Payson Hall Room 205. The discussion is targeted for those without a financial background interested in the current economic climate, how the meltdown happened and how it is affecting the lives of north country residents. Speakers include (pictured below left to right) Professor of Accounting Daniel Fay, Assistant Professor of Financial Services Richard Hu, PhD., Assistant Professor of Legal Studies Jondavid DeLong, J.D., and Associate Professor of Economics Edouard Mafoua, PhD.
SUNY Canton offers a wide variety of career-driven bachelor's, associate, and certificate programs, as well as three master's degrees in conjunction with SUNYIT, Utica. Most of SUNY Canton's new four-year programs are designed so students can take them on-campus, online, or both. SUNY Canton OnLine features more than 100 courses online each semester. The college's athletic teams belong to the NAIA's Sunrise Conference, enabling students to compete in their respective sports for four years.


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The video game Bubble Shooter probably got this famous as it is very intuitive and easy to learn. It's some kind of mix of "Tetris" and "Connect Four" - thats probably why it's so easy to get into the game. Some notes on the rules and how to control the game:
The aim of Bubble Shooter is to collect as many points as possible. To get points you need to destroy the colored bubbles. In order to burst those bubbles you need to row/connect at least three bubbles of the same color.
In the bottom center of the gaming window you will find an arrow. You can change to direction this arrow points to with your computer mouse. Every time you click the left mouse button you will fire a new bubble to the current direction of the arrow.
One of the best casual games so far!
Bubble Shooter is such an intuitive game that it takes just seconds to get started. Long time motiviation is guaranted and the highscore is an additional motivation booster. all in all: Bubble Shooter is an awesome browsergame!
Our Games-Team rates Bubble Shooter with 5 out of 5 Stars and our visitors rate the game with 4.9 out of 5 Stars (3 votes).


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Angels go back-to-back-to-back in first to bury Colon
Wilson solid as offense piles on 11 more runs in drubbing of Mets
ANAHEIM -- The Angels have hit 20 home runs in their first 12 games, so getting five Sunday against the Mets isn't that unusual.
It's whom they abused in a 14-2 victory at Angel Stadium that was out of the ordinary.
Bartolo Colon, who won a Cy Young Award for the Angels in 2005, had owned his former team in recent years. In his past nine starts against them, he was 6-1 with a 1.75 ERA.
But the Angels greeted Colon with an extra-base-hit binge in the first inning, as Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Raul Ibanez hit consecutive one-out home runs, and Kole Calhoun and Ian Stewart capped the four-run inning with doubles.
"He's absolutely dominated us." winning pitcher C.J. Wilson (2-1) said. "Today was a complete abberration."
Pujols, who hit career homer No. 495, said: "Everybody knows what Bartolo's going to do. He's got our number. Today wasn't his day.
"Any time you hit three home runs in a row -- and almost four, Calhoun came close -- it's special."
The Angels rocked Colon (1-2) for nine earned runs on 11 hits in five innings, ballooning his ERA from 2.08 to 6.00.
"That was big," manager Mike Scioscia said of the first inning. "Bartolo's tough if you let him get going. He can roll off five or six innings on 50 pitches.
"The mistakes he made early, we didn't miss. We hit them hard."
Mets manager Terry Collins said Colon "Was just up in the zone today with all his stuff. That's just not him.
"Those kind of guys, they've got to pitch down in the zone. When they get the ball up, it straightens out. And when it straightens out, they're going to get hit hard."
The Angels had 11 extra-base hits in the game, including Hank Conger's two-run homer in the fifth inning. Ian Stewart added a two-run homer in the eighth inning off reliever John Lannan.
"When you get results like that and eveybody's rolling, it does seem contagious," the Angels catcher said. "We just wanted to see some good pitches and drive the ball today."
None of Trout's first 27 Major League homers came in the first inning. Twenty-one of his past 32 homers have been struck in the first inning.
"I'm not trying to hit home runs in the first inning, and not trying to hit home runs in the fifth, sixth or seventh," Trout said, disputing the notion that his first at-bat approach is different.
The Mets scored first on a David Wright RBI single.
"For us to come back with four runs, it makes C.J. pretty comfortable," Trout said.
Wilson went seven innings, striking out nine while allowing two runs on six hits and three walks.
"(Pitching coach Mike) Butcher gave me a tip," the left-hander said. "He thought I was opening up a little bit too much with my hips. That worked, and it was off to the races from there.
"The past two games, I've been in pretty good control of the strike zone."
In the seventh inning, after Travis d'Arnaud was called out on strikes, Wright and Daniel Murphy were angry enough about home-plate umpire Toby Basner's strike zone that they earned simultaneous ejections in the seventh for chirping from the dugout.
Wilson disputed the notion that Basner had a funky strike zone, to the Angels' advantage.
"It was just they [the Mets] were looking for pitches I wasn't throwing," he said. "I got a lot of called strikeouts. When that happens, it's back-door sliders or sinkers coming back to the plate. The hitters were just giving up on them."


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Hello all and welcome back to the Saturday Sesh linky hosted by myself and Lucy from What My Fridge Says.
We've been enjoying some sunny autumn days this week and I love the colours at this time of year – very helpful to anyone trying to go on a mindful walk.
On to the linky. My featured post was this one from Mackenzie at Reflections from Me. I deeply admire Mac's honesty and openness about her struggles with anxiety and her post about the question 'how are you?' really resonated. Click here to find out who Lucy's featured blogger was. Feel free to grab yourselves the 'featured blogger' badge!
So here's the formalities…
#thesatsesh is the place to link up your posts when you have a spare few minutes on a Saturday or Sunday AND will also be the place to find some fantastic weekend reading.
If you feel you haven't had the chance to give your blog the promotion it deserves over the last few days then this is the linky for you. Equally if you just love a linky and miss having many at the weekend to take part in then this is also for you!
The basics:
• It's open to all bloggers, and posts of all different shapes and sizes are welcome.
• It goes live on Saturday mornings at 7.00am GMT and closes at 8pm GMT on Sunday evening.
#thesatsesh linky rules:
(we are teachers after all!)
• You can link up to 2 posts, old or new.
• Grab a badge! Please do add #thesatsesh badge to the bottom of the post you are linking up. You can do this by copying and pasting the badge code at the bottom of this post into the HTML area of your post. Tweet Lucy or I if you have any questions about how to do this. First-timers do find this a bit daunting sometimes.
• Let the world know you've joined #thesatsesh by tweeting us @mummy_mindful and @whatmyfridgesays and using #thesatsesh. Follow us on twitter if you don't already as we are very generous with our RTs!
• Comment. Sit back, relax (it's the weekend after all) and share the love by commenting on some great blogs.
• #thesatsesh comment etiquette is to comment on one of each of the host's posts, so one of my posts and one of Lucy's posts and also to comment on the post directly before yours and the the post directly after yours. IF YOU DO COMMENT ON MORE… THAT WOULD BE AMAZING and you will of course go to the top of the class! Do remember to pop #thesatsesh in your comment so the blogger knows where you've come from.
• Any bloggers found linking and running will be put in detention!
The Optional Extra:
• Join #thesatsesh community on Instagram. Have a photo of your weekend fun which you'd like to get some love or maybe it's a photo connected with the post/s you linked up? Then by all means join our little IG community #thesatsesh to boost your likes and comments. Follow us on Instagram @miss_mindfulness_ and @fridgesays and we will follow you back to keep up to date with you all.


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Looking for a sweet treat or gift idea that's light on calories? Try these delicious tarts!
Preparation Time: 25 mins
Cooking Time: 25 mins
Extra Time: 96 hrs
(about 3 - 5 days, for refrigeration)
Yield: 24 x mini pies
Preheat oven to 350°F.
FILLING: Mix together well the spices: coriander, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. In an airtight container, place dried mixed fruit, apple, pineapple, orange juice, and mixed spices and refrigerate for 3 to 5 days, stirring occasionally.
PASTRY: To make pastry, sift flours, almond flour, cocoa powder, and one tablespoon of sugar substitute into a large bowl. Rub in buttery spread with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg, then just enough water to make the ingredients come together. Knead quickly and lightly on a floured surface until smooth. Wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before rolling.
MINI PIES: Roll out pastry to 1-inch thickness and cut into 24 rounds using a 3-inch cutter. Gently ease into lightly oiled muffin tins. Stir remaining 2 tablespoons sugar substitute into fruit mixture and divide the mixture evenly between the pastry cases.
Decorate with leftover pastry, cut into star shapes. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until pastry is crisp. Lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar for further decoration, if desired.
* 2 teaspoons "Mixed Spice" product can substituted for ground coriander, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves (or see Mixed Spice recipe link).
** NOTE: If desired, 3 Tbsp sugar substitute can be replaced by equivalent amount of granulated or brown sugar, if desired (serving suggestion is not included in the nutritional analysis).
For holiday gifts, wrap pies in plastic wrap and place in colorful gift bags or boxes, or use wrapping paper and bows.
Note: Refrigeration of some ingredients for several days is required for enhanced flavor.
*** Please carefully check the ingredients of cocoa to ensure it contains no dairy, if a dairy-free recipe is required.


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Father Pat's Pastoral Ponderings
The Sunday Before Holy Cross
September 12, 2010
Psalm 91 (Greek and Latin 90) has always ranked among the more favorite and popular psalms of the Christian people, a fact that surely has something to do, in the East, with its being the opening psalm of the funeral service in the Orthodox Church.
It is also one of the very few psalms about which everyone in antiquity agreed that it should be prayed each day of the week. For all that, Christians have shown themselves less sure about exactly when, during the course of the day, this psalm should best be prayed.
Two specific periods during the day — the night and the noontide — are indicated in the psalm itself: "You shall fear no terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day; neither the thing that prowls in the darkness, nor the attack of the noonday devil."
Christians in the East, observing the references to daylight and high noon, picked this psalm to be prayed daily at the sixth hour, a custom that prevails to the present time. According to Saint John Cassian in the early fifth century, some of the monastic elders of the East understood the "noonday devil" of this psalm to be a special temptation to spiritual weariness and dejection, that mysterious despondency and distress of heart known in ascetical literature as akedia (The Institutes 10.1).
Christians in the West, on the other hand, more impressed by the references to darkness and the night, chose Psalm 91 to be prayed each evening at the canonical hour of Compline, or bedtime. For example, one finds this usage in the sixth-century monastic Rule of St. Benedict and in the traditional Roman breviary.
These two traditions, however, are not really so disparate as they seem. After all, Holy Scripture associates the noon hour — the sixth hour — not only with light, but also with darkness: "Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour" (Mark 15:33). When Christians pray each day at noon, they observe that hour in recollection of the darkness that fell as the Savior hung on the Cross.
An early witness to this custom is Hippolytus, a priest of Rome, writing about the year 210. In a work entitled The Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus wrote: "Pray also at the sixth hour, because when Christ was attached to the wood of the cross, the daylight ceased and became darkness. Thus you should pray a powerful prayer at this hour, imitating the cry of him who prayed and all creation was made dark for the unbelieving Jews."
The Christian custom of praying Psalm 91 at noon, therefore, is tied to a specific moment in the Christ-event-namely, the time when Jesus, hanging on the Cross for our salvation, listened to the taunts of those who crucified Him: "He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe" (Mark 15:31-32).
This Christological reference, based the actual narrative of the Gospels, provides an important element in the interpretation of this psalm. The enemies envisioned in this prayer are the very demons who waged incessant war against Jesus and, ultimately, saw to His execution; these are "the noonday devil," the "thing" that prowls in the darkness, the "evil," the "scourge," "the asp and the adder," "the lion and the dragon." These are the demons defeated on the Cross.
Such is the noon hour, as Jesus faced it. The three hours of darkness just before His death on the Cross evoke the three days that immediately preceded the death of the First Born: "So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days" (Exodus 10:22). Each day, as the Christian prays with Jesus at noon, he encounters once again the dark mystery of the ninth plague, the satanic shadow that rises to defy God's first recorded words, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3).
Here we touch the deeper meaning of the noonday prayer — our salvation through the defeat of the demons on Calvary. John Cassian spoke of noon as that hour when "the spotless victim, our Lord and Savior, was offered to the Father, and mounting the Cross for the salvation of the whole world He destroyed the sins of the human race (The Institutes 3.3.).
Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and a Senior Editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity.
Subscribe to Pastoral Ponderings — Fr. Reardon's weekly essay.
Read past essays and listen to podcasts by Fr. Reardon.
Books by Fr. Reardon:


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"A story of men at their best and at their worst . . . leaves you gaping in admiration at Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer's courage."—National Review
"Meyer's dazzling bravery wasn't momentary or impulsive but deliberate and sustained."—The Wall Street Journal
"[A] cathartic, heartfelt account . . . Combat memoirs don't get any more personal."—Kirkus Reviews
"A great contribution to the discussion of an agonizingly complex subject."—The Virginian-Pilot
"Black Hawk Down meets Lone Survivor."—Library Journal
"Into the Fire is a deeply compelling tale of valor and duty. Dakota Meyer will not identify as a hero, but he will, I think, accept the title warrior. Dakota's storytelling is precise and, for a Medal of Honor recipient, touchingly humble. With deft prose he drops us smack in the middle of one of the most heinous small unit firefights of the current wars. His insights into military tactics and politics in a war zone are sharp and uncompromising and work as a primer on infantry war fighting for the uninitiated. Dakota was a magnificent marine and he is now an equally magnificent chronicler of warfare and the small group of people who do today's fighting for America."—Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
"The story of what Dakota did . . . will be told for generations."—President Barack Obama, from remarks given at Meyer's Medal of Honor ceremony
"Sergeant Meyer embodies all that is good about our nation's Corps of Marines. . . . [His] heroic actions . . . will forever be etched in our Corps' rich legacy of courage and valor."—General James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps
"[Bing] West's greatest strengths are his exceptional personal courage and his experienced perception of combat."—The Washington Post
"West [is] the grunts' Homer."—Los Angeles Times Book Review


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In the best interest of our families, staff, and children, we have decided to close all Cambridge Schools until further notice, due to the evolving situation with COVID-19.
2550 Glades Circle Road, Weston, FL 33327
Director, Sandra Cardenas
Assistant Director, Lisa Robert
License #46436
School Hours: 8:30am to 3pm
Extended Hours: 7am to 6pm
CAMBRIDGE SCHOOLS™ OF WESTON offers 18 months of age through Pre Kindergarten the opportunity to learn developmental skills in a modern, safe and secure facility. Our credentialed staff engages children through a series of specialized learning center areas, which makes each day an exciting learning adventure!
PROGRAM CURRICULUM INCLUDES: Classical Literature, Poetry, Phonics, Math, Science, Art, Journal Writing, Music & Movement, Library, Spanish, Computer Lab, Physical Education, Classical Artist & Author Studies
- Full & Part Time Programs
- VPK Provider
- On-Site Swimming Pool
- Spanish Bilingual Classes
- Flexible Schedules
- Holiday & Summer Camps (through 2nd grade)
- Before & After Care Programs
- Enrichment Classes
- Friday Parades
- Farm Day
- Winter Show
- Book Fairs
- 100th Day Celebration
- Man in My Life Night
- Lady I Love Night
- Graduation


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Confluence has been migrated and upgraded. Please file an INFRA ticket if you see any issues.
Ocean enables realtime search written in Java using Lucene. It is currently in patch phase at LUCENE-1313. Ocean offers a way for Lucene based applications to take advantage of realtime search. Realtime search makes search systems more like a database. Realtime search offers similar functionality to that of a relational database such as atomicity and transactional updates. Like an RDBMS, where after an insert one can immediately select what was just added without incurring any kind of extra cost, updated documents are also immediately searchable.
There is a good article written by Adam Bosworth. I think many of his points are quite valid. It is worth mentioning the main points of the article here as they also define the positive attributes of the Ocean open source search system.
- It is worth making things simple enough that one can harness Moore's law in parallel
- It is acceptable to be stale much of the time
- Be as loosely coupled as possible
- SQL databases have problems harnessing Moore's law in parallel (whereas distributed search systems do not)
- SQL databases have problems allowing users to evolve a schema over time. Lucene offers the ability to define any fields at any time including the ability to define multiple values for a field something SQL databases do not offer.
- SQL queries are more complex than search queries which are more suitable for end users
From a discussion with Karl Wettin:
I was an early user of Solr when GData came out. They were similar in that they were both search exposed as XML. GData however offered realtime search and Solr offered batch processing. I worked for a social networking company that wanted the updates available as fast as possible. It was hard to achieve anything below a couple of minutes as the queries the company wanted used a sort. In Lucene a sort loads the field cache into RAM which on a large index is expensive. There are ways to solve this but they were not available. In any case I wanted to figure out a way to allow updates to be searchable in a minimal amount of time as possible while also offering functionality like SOLR of replication and facets. The one thing GData had over Solr was realtime updates or the ability to add, delete, or update a document and be able to see the update in search results immediately. With Solr the company had decided on a 10 minute interval of updating the index with delta updates from an Oracle database. I wanted to see if it was possible with Lucene to create an approximation of what GData does. The result is Ocean.
The use case it was designed for is websites with dynamic data, some of which are social networking, photo sites, discussions boards, blogs, wikis, and such. More broadly it is possible to use Ocean with any application that requires the database like feature of immediate updates. Probably the best example of this is all of Google's web applications, outside of web search, uses a GData interface. Meaning the primary datastore is not mysql or some equivalent, it is a proprietary search based database. The best example of this is Gmail. If I receive an email through Gmail I can also search on it immediately, there is no 10 minute delay. Also in Gmail I can change labels, a common example being changing unread emails to read in bulk. Presumably Gmail is not reindexing the entire email for each label change.
Most highly trafficked web applications do not use the relational facilities like joins because they are too expensive. Lucene does not offer joins so this is fine. The only area Lucene is currently weak in is range queries. Mysql uses a btree index whereas Lucene uses the time consuming TermEnum and TermDocs combination. This is an area Tag Index addresses.
The way Ocean is designed there should be no limitations to using it compared to using Lucene IndexWriter. It offers the same functionality. If one does not want to use the transaction log Ocean offers because one simply wants to index 1 million documents at once, Ocean offers what is a called a LargeBatch. It is a way to perform a large number of updates taking advantage of the new IndexWriter speedup, combined with transactional semantics.
What I Learned
Merging is expensive and detrimental to realtime search. The more merging that occurs during the update call, the longer it takes for the update to become available. Using IndexWriter.addDocument, committing and then calling IndexReader.reopen takes time because a merge must occur during the commit call, which would be called after each transaction. I learned that I needed to design a system that would not perform merging in the foreground during the update call, and have the merging performed in a background thread. Karl Wettin had created InstantiatedIndex and it took some time to figure out that it was the right object to use to create an in memory index of document(s) that would be immediately searchable. The issue of losing data is solved by the standard method Mysql uses which is a binary transaction log of the serialized documents and deletes.
Lucene uses a snapshot system that is embodied in the IndexReader class. Each IndexReader is a snapshot of the index with associated files. Ocean uses an IndexReader per snapshot however the IndexReaders are created more often. This means the IndexReaders are also disposed of much more quickly than in a system like SOLR. A lot of design work went into creating a system that would allow the IndexReaders to be created and then to remove them when they are no longer required. A referencing system was created for each snapshot where Java code may lock a snapshot, do work and unlock it. Only a set number of snapshots need to be available at a given time and the older unlocked snapshots are removed. Deletes occur in ram directly to the bitvector of the IndexReader with no flush to disk. This is because it was found to be prohibitively expensive to flush a new deletes file to disk on each update transaction. The file would then need to be cleaned only a few transactions later. Because there is a transaction log there is no need to write the deletes to disk twice and it is much faster to append to a file than create a new one and delete it possibly seconds later.
How it Works
Ocean writes updates to a transaction log and an in memory index. A transaction consists of document adds and deletes. If a transaction consists of (default: 100) or less documents, the documents are serialized to the transaction log. If greater than (default: 100), the documents are encoded into a Lucene segment by using an IndexWriter to write the documents to a RAMDirectory that is serialized to the transaction log. The latter reduces redundant analyzing if the transaction log is being replicated.
The in memory index is actually a series of indexes that are periodically merged in memory. When documents are first added, they are placed into a WriteableMemoryIndex that uses the Lucene contrib project InstantiatedIndex. InstantiatedIndex provides an in memory index where all of the objects are stored as is which makes for fast insert times because there is no serialization to bytes as with a RAMDirectory. Once the InstantiatedIndex reaches a predefined limit, it is converted into a RamIndex. The RamIndex uses a RAMDirectory and is an intermediary step before the in memory index is written to disk. RamIndexes are periodically merged in the background as well. The DiskIndex utilizes FSDirectory.
Ocean uses a different than usual process for writing indexes to disk. Instead of merging on disk, meaning reading from indexes on disk and writing to the new index at the same time, the merge process occurs in RAM. This happens with the RamIndex where it is in RAM and simply written to disk. When multiple DiskIndexes are merged, the new index is first created in RAM using RAMDirectory and then copied to disk. The reason for creating the index first in RAM is to save on rapid hard drive head movement. Usually DiskIndexes are partially in the system file cache. The normal merging process therefore is fast for reads and slow for the incremental write process. Hard drives are optimized for large sequential writes which is the described mechanism Ocean performs by first creating the index in RAM. The large segment which is typically 64MB in size is written all at once which should take 5-10 seconds.
Each transaction internally is recognized as a snapshot. A snapshot (org.apache.lucene.ocean.Snapshot) consists of a series of IndexSnapshots (org.apache.lucene.ocean.Index.IndexSnapshot). The parent class of DiskIndex and RamIndex is DirectoryIndex. DirectoryIndex uses IndexReader.clone http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-1314 in the creation of an IndexSnapshot. IndexReader.clone creates a copy of an IndexReader that can be modified without altering the original IndexReader like IndexReader.reopen does. DirectoryIndexSnapshots never have documents added to them as they are single segment optimized indexes. DirectoryIndexSnapshots are only deleted from. Each transaction with deletes does not result in an IndexReader.flush call because this process is expensive. Instead, because the transaction is already stored on disk in the transaction log, the deletes occur only to the SegmentReader.deletedDocs.
Facets and filters need to be cached per Index. Each Index is really the same as a Lucene segment. However due to the way Lucene is designed, if one is merging outside of IndexWriter then each segment needs to be in it's own physical directory. This creates some extra files such as the segmentinfos file. Ocean manages deleting the old index directories when they are no longer necessary.
Transaction Log
Each transaction is recorded in the transaction log which is a series of files with the file name format log00000001.bin. The suffix number and a new log file is created when the current log file reaches a predefined size limit. The class org.apache.lucene.ocean.log.LogFileManager is responsible for this process.
The transaction record consists of three separate parts, the header, document bytes, and other bytes. The other bytes can store anything other than the documents, usually the deletes serialized. Each part has a CRC32 check which insures integrity of data. The transaction log can become corrupted if the process is stopped in the middle of a write. There is a CRC32 check with each part because they are loaded separately at different times. For example during the recovery process on the Ocean server startup the documents are the first to be loaded and in memory indexes are created. Then the deletes from the transactions are executed. Then the indexes are optimized to remove the deleted documents. The process described is much faster than performing each transaction incrementally during recovery. It is important to note that internally each delete, especially the delete by query is saved as the actual document ids that were deleted when the transaction was committed. If the system simply re-executed the delete by query, then the transaction would create inconsistent results.
Snapshot Log
The snapshot log is a set of rolling log files that contain the snapshot information. Each transaction generates a new snapshot entry in the current snapshot log file. The snapshot element contains the index elements. The log is in XML for human viewing which is useful for debugging.
<snapshot id="29.02" numDocs="10" maxDoc="25" deletedDocs="15">
<index snapshotid="974" id="787" segmentGeneration="401" type="disk" maxDoc="466" numDocs="442" deletedDoc="95" minDocumentId="117" maxDocumentId="483" minSnapshotId="693" maxSnapshotId="116" deleteFlushId="876" lastAppliedId="780" /></snapshot>
The id of the snapshot
The index id
Segment generation of the index as reported by IndexReader.
The type of the index
The max doc value of the index
Number of documents in the index
Number of deleted documents in the index
The minimum document id in the index
The maximum document id in the index
The minimum snapshot id in the index
The maximum snapshot id in the index
Snapshot id the last time the deleted docs were flushed to disk
The last snapshot id that affected this index
There are two ways to do replication and I have been leaning towards a non master slave architecture. I looked at the Paxos at War algorithm for master slave failover. The problem is, I did not understand it, and found it too complex to implement. I tried other more simple ways of implementing master slave failover and it still had major problems. This led me to look for another solution.
In a master slave architecture the update is submitted to the master first and then to the slaves which is not performed in parallel. Configuration changes such as turning semi-sync on or off would require restarting all processes in the system.
The ideal architecture would allow any node to act as the proxy for the other nodes. This would make every node a master. The transaction would be submitted to all nodes and the client would determine on how many nodes the transaction needs to be successful. In the event a transaction fails on a node, nodes are always executing a polling operation to all other nodes that rectifies transactions. This does not need to run too often, however if a node is just coming back online, it needs to reject queries until it is up to date. The node may obtain the latest transactions from any other node.
When a new node comes online, it will need to simply download the entire set of Lucene index files from another node. The transaction log will not always have all transactions contained in it's indexes because there is no need. It is faster for a new node to download the indexes first, then obtain the transactions it does not have from another node's transaction log.
Because the Ocean system stores the entire document on an update and there is no support for update of specific fields like SQL, it is much easier to rectify transactions between nodes. Meaning that deletes and updates of objects are less likely to clobber each other during the rectification process.
GBase mentions a feature that is perhaps somewhat interesting and this is crowding. It is similar to what in Solr is referred to as Field Collapsing however the implementation for Ocean could be a little bit easier and more efficient. Solr's Field Collapse code performs a sort on the results first and then seems to perform another query. GBase allows only 2 fields to be crowded making the implementation seem a bit easier. Also it would seem to be easier to simply obtain more results than are needed and crowd a field similar to how the NutchBean uses a dedupField. I have tried to implement this feature into Ocean and have been unable to get it quite right.
I wanted facets to work in realtime because it seemed like a challenging thing to do. The way I came up with to do this is a copy on read versioned LRU cache embodied in the BitSetLRUMap. The bit sets for faceting need to be cached. The problem is, each transaction may perform deletes and the bit set needs to reflect this to be accurate during an intersection call. Rather than perform deletes on all of the cached bit sets for each transaction (which would consume a large amount of RAM and create a lot of garbage) a copy on read is used (deletes are applied only when the value is read). The bit set cache stores the deletes docs of each snapshot/transaction. If a given bit set is required and the value is out of date then the deletes are applied to a new one. Each value in the cache stores multiple versions of a bit set. Periodically as snapshots are released by the system the older bit sets are also released. This system is efficient because only the used bit sets are brought up to date with the latest snapshot.
Facet caching needs to be handled per segment and merged during the search results merging.
Storing the Data
SOLR uses a schema. I chose not to use a schema because the realtime index should be able to change at any time. Instead the raw Lucene field classes such as Store, TermVector, and Indexed are exposed in the OceanObject class. An analyzer is defined on a per field per OceanObject basis. The process of serializing analyzers is not slow and is not bulky over the network as serialization performs referencing of redundant objects in the data stream. GData allows the user to store multiple types for a single field. For example, a field named battingaverage may contain fields of type double and text. I am really not sure how Google handles this underneath. I decided to use Solr's NumberUtils class that encodes numbers into sortable strings. This allows range queries and other enumerations of the field to return the values in their true order rather than string order. One method I came up with to handle potentially different types in a field is to prepend a letter signifying the type of the value for untokenized fields. For a string the value would be "s0.323" and for a long "l845445". This way when sorting or enumerating over the values they stay disparate and can be modified to be their true value upon return of the call. Perhaps there is a better method.
Since writing the above I came up with an alternative mechanism to handle any number in an Field.Index.UN_TOKENIZED field. If the field string can be parsed into a double, then the number is encoded using SOLR's NumberUtils into an encoded double string. There may be edge cases I am unaware of that make this system not work, but for right now it looks like it will work. In order to properly process a query, terms with fields in the query that are Field.Index.UN_TOKENIZED will need to be checked for having a number by attempted parsing. If the value can be parsed into a double then it is encoded into a double string and replaced in the term. A similar process will be used for date strings which will conform to the ISO 8601 standard. The user may also explicitly define the type of a number by naming the field such as "battingaverage_double" where the type is defined by an underscore and then the type name. This is similar to Solr's dynamic fields construction.
The following are default document fields. Some are currently placed by TransactionSystem, some by OceanDatabase. It is probably best for most applications to use OceanDatabase so all of them are mentioned here.
Unique type long object id persistent across updates to an object assigned by Ocean.
Unique type long document id to uniquely identify the document. This is useful when performing deletes and the exact documents deleted need to be saved in the transaction.
Type long version of an object.
Date the object was created.
Date the object was last modified.
Tag Index
The tag index patch is located at LUCENE-1292. I had seen people mention using a ParallelReader to have an index that is static and an index that is dynamic appear as one index. The challenge with this type of system is to get the doc numbers to stay aligned. Google seems to have a realtime tag index system. I figured there must be some way using the Lucene architecture to achieve the same thing. The method I came up with is to divide the postings list into blocks. Each block contains a set number of documents, the blocks are not divided by actual byte size but by document number. The blocks are unified using a TagMultiTermDocs class. When a block is changed it is written to RAM. Once the RAM usage hits a certain size, the disk and memory postings are merged to disk. There needs to be coordination between this process and the merging of the segments. Each Tag Index is associated with a segment. In Ocean the merging of segments is performed by the Ocean code and not IndexWriter so the coordination does not involve hooking into IndexWriter. Currently there needs to be a way to obtain the doc id from an addDocument call from IndexWriter which needs a patch still.
Distributed Search
Distributed search with Ocean will use the http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-1336 patch. It provides RMI functionality over the Hadoop IPC protocol. Using Hadoop IPC as a transport has advantages over using Sun's RMI because it is simpler and uses NIO (non blocking sockets). In large systems using NIO reduces thread usage and allows the overall system to scale better. LUCENE-1336 allows classes to be dynamically loaded by the server from the client on a per client basis to avoid problems with classloaders and class versions. Using a remote method invocation system for me is much faster to implement functionality than when using Solr and implementing XML interfaces and clients or using namedlists. I prefer writing distributed code using Java objects because they are what I am more comfortable with. Also I worked on Jini and Sun and one might say it is in the blood. The idea to create a better technique for classloading comes from my experiences and the failures of trying to implement Jini systems. Search is a fairly straightforward non-changing problem and so the dynamic classloading is only required by the server from the client. By having a reduced scope problem the solution was much easier to generate compared to working with Jini which attempted to solve all potential problems even if they most likely do not exist.
In the future it is possible to write a servlet wrapper around the Ocean Java client and expose the Ocean functionality as XML possibly conforming to OpenSearch and/or GData.
An object is localized to a cell. Meaning after it is created it usually remains in the same cell over it's lifespan. This is to insure the searches remain consistent. The object contains the cellid of where it originated from. This allows subsequent updates to the object (in Lucene a deleteDocument and then addDocument are called) to occur in the correct cell.
Name Service
Name services can become quite complex. For example it may be possible in the future to use Zookeeper which is a lock based service. However even by Zookeeper's own admission these types of lock services are hard to implement and use correctly. I think for Ocean it should be good enough in the first release to have an open source SQL database that stores the nodes and the cells the nodes belong to. Because there is no master there is no need for a locking service. The columns in the node table would be id, location, status (online/offline), cellid, datecreated, datemodified. The cell table would simply be id, status, datecreated, datemodified. Redundant name services may be created by replicating these 2 tables. I am also pondering an errors table where clients may report outages of a node. If there are enough outages of a particular node the name service marks the node as offline. Clients will be able to listen for events on a name service related to cells, mainly the node status column. This way if a node that was online goes offline, the client will know about it and not send requests to it any longer.
Location Based Services
LocalLucene provides the functionality for location based queries. It is possible to optimize how LocalLucene works and I had code that implemented LocalLucene functionality directly into Ocean that I may put back in at some point. The optimization works by implementing a subclass of ScoreDoc that has a Distance object as a member variable. This removes the need for a map of the document to the distance value from the DistanceFilter. I would like to see DistanceFilter use the new Lucene Filter code that returns DocIdSet.
Configuration Options
The server number differentiates servers in a cell and is encoded into the uniquely generated ids on a server as the first 2 digits of the id.
The maximum number of documents the InstantiatedIndex holds. Internally known as the WriteableMemoryIndex.
Number of changes to the overall index before the system checks to see if any indexes need to be merged. Executing this on every transaction would be a waste.
Size in bytes all ram indexes after which they are written as a single optimized index to disk.
The maximum number of snapshots the system keeps around. The system will only remove the snapshot if it is unlocked.
Disk indexes that have too many deleted documents need to be merged to remove the deleted documents. This is the percentage of deleted documents a DiskIndex needs to have in order to be considered for merging.
Duration in milliseconds after which a snapshot is considered for removal.
The percentage of deleted docs after which the deleted docs file is written for an index/segment.
The maybe merges call is sometimes started in the background after a transaction, this milliseconds value is for running it in general in the background according to a timer.
Timer value in milliseconds for checking on deleting old log files.
This is the buffer size in bytes to be used for the RAMDirectory when multiple DiskIndexes are merged. Ocean merges the DiskIndexes into a RAMDirectory first, then flushes the RAMDirectory to disk. This is to perform a large sequential write which is much faster than an incremental write process which usually used in Lucene merges.
To Do
- Finish and write test cases for OceanDatabase
- Facets
- Filter caching
- Distributed updates
- Name service
- Write the node asynchronous conflict resolution code and test cases
- Test case for LargeBatch


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NY Times Leaves Industry Disclosure Out Of Op-Ed Celebrating Broadband Mediocrity
Complaints about the poor quality of customer service from big internet providers like Comcast or Time Warner are often punctuated with an exasperated variant of "I'm paying XX dollars every month, how can they get away with this?" The short answer is because they can, because in all likelihood there's no real broadband competition in your area, because cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner are strengthening their grip on broadband and aren't feeling much pressure to improve your service.
The salt in the wound is that even though you do pay quite a bit for connectivity to the internet, what you're getting in return probably isn't all that great, at least when compared to the rest of the developed world where faster, cheaper internet connections abound. But the mere adequacy of cable-delivered U.S. internet is not without its defenders. Richard Bennett of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) inked an op-ed for the New York Times this weekend arguing that we're actually doing pretty OK on the cable broadband front. Bennett's arguments, however, require a little scrutiny and clarification.
First and foremost, some disclosure is needed. Between 2009 and 2011 (the most recent data available) the ITIF received nearly $100,000 from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the cable industry's chief lobbying group. (The NCTA's 990 forms for the relevant years can be found here, here, and here.) Over that same time period ITIF also received $122,500 from CTIA -- The Wireless Association, which lobbies on behalf of the wireless telecommunications industry. (990s here, here, and here.) The New York Times identified Bennett as a senior fellow at ITIF but did not disclose these donations, which are relevant given his promotion of America's broadband systems, which are dominated by the cable networks, and mobile broadband development.
UPDATE: The Times has responded to Media Matters' inquiries on the financial disclosure aspects of Bennett's op-ed: "We are entirely confident that this essay was handled correctly and we do not intend to comment further on it."
In his op-ed, Bennett wrote:
But that began to change as the economy turned around. Private investment and advances in technology, brought about by a competition policy that encouraged cable and phone companies to improve their networks, have propelled America's networks forward.
Over the last three years America's broadband systems have doubled in speed, while Europe's have remained stagnant. And that will continue, because broadband companies here are installing advanced fiber-optic technology faster than Europe, and most of the world's users of the fastest mobile broadband technology, 4G/LTE, live in America.
The important thing to note here is the inclusion of phone companies and "mobile broadband technology." Yes, the United States is leading the world in deployment of 4G mobile internet, but broadband to your phone is in no way on par with, or a substitute for, a wired internet connection. It's more expensive and it's more restrictive -- monthly data caps for mobile providers like Verizon range from one gigabyte to ten gigabytes, not nearly sufficient for data-intensive online activities like streaming video. And if you go over the cap you get hit with additional fees or throttling of your connection.
As for fiber optic technology, it's prohibitively expensive -- for consumers and for service providers who actually have to lay the cables. As Ars Technica points out: "While fiber purchasing may be on the rise, that doesn't necessarily mean that retail, fiber-to-the-premises is even available, much less priced competitively in most of America." Right now, 16 states have more than 25 percent of end-users accessing the internet via wireline fiber, and many of those states are small and/or sparsely populated. Huge population centers have next to no fiber penetration: California has 15 percent, Texas has seven percent, Ohio has six percent, and Illinois has less than one percent. Cable providers like Comcast and Time Warner that already have existing networks would like nothing more than to see competitors' fiber network buildouts cease.
And, as a matter of fact, the competitors are doing just that. Verizon, which had been laying FiOS fiber optic cables to try and compete with cable companies, decided that it was easier to just give up on fiber, focus on mobile internet, and enter into cross-marketing agreements with Comcast in areas not covered by FiOS.
Bennett's op-ed was based on a report the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation put out earlier this year arguing that U.S. broadband "is better than in all but a handful of nations that have densely populated urban areas and have used government subsidies to leap-frog several generations of technology ahead of where the market would go on its own." That report drew criticism from a number of observers who claimed that the ITIF cherry-picked data and made several claims that could not be corroborated. But even if the report were entirely accurate, it's still a celebration of mediocrity and an acknowledgement that in the broadband arena, the U.S. is not in a position of global leadership.


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Watchuseek Blog
Monday, July 18, 2011
Bold move: Limited edition Movado Bold celebrates Derek Jeter's 3000th hit.
Movado has just launched a special edition Bold watch. On July 9, 2011, Derek Jeter became the first Yankee player to hit 3,000 hits in his career, the 28th in baseball history to do so, and the second player, after Wade Boggs, to achieve the feat with a home run. The watch features an indigo blue metallic dial customised with Jeter's number 2 positioned prominently and appropriately at 2 o'clock.
Limited edition of 300 pieces
This special edition watch uses the new Movado Bold bracelet. The caseback is engraved to commemorate Jeter's 3000th hit and only 300 pieces of the watch have been issued. Each of the watches comes in a special sleeve accompanied by a thank you note from Derek and will retail for $550. Movado will donate $100 from the sale of each timepiece sold to Derek Jeter's Turn 2 Foundation.
Career milestone
"We are extremely proud of our long standing partnership with Derek Jeter and the Turn 2 Foundation," said Mary Leach, Chief Marketing Officer, Movado Group, Inc. "It is such an honor to be a part of this historic occasion, and we are very excited to introduce this special edition Movado Bold timepiece to commemorate Derek's incredible career milestone."
Derek Jeter established the Turn 2 Foundation in 1996, his rookie year, and has been actively involved in its youth programmes since its inception.
Derek Jeter
Many players and coaches consider Jeter to be one of the best players of his generation. He is the all-time hits leader among shortstops. He has been among the American League (AL) leaders in hits and runs scored for the past ten years. He is the all-time Yankees hit leader and also has the most career hits of any active Major League player.
Movado is one of the world's premier watchmakers. Movado Group, Inc. designs, manufactures and distributes watches from nine of the most recognised in time including: Movado, Concord, Ebel and ESQ by Movado along with Coach, Hugo Boss, Juicy Couture, Lacoste and Tommy Hilfiger licensed watch brands. The company is headquartered in New Jersey but the watches are made from their manufacture in Bienne, Switzerland. We'll show higher resolution pictures of the watch as they become available.
Posted by Michael West at 10:50 AM
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text: Sijun Forums :: View topic - yeeha im a retard Log in to check your private messages Sijun Forums Forum Index >> Archive : Sep99 - Dec00 View previous topic :: View next topic Author Topic : "yeeha im a retard" imdakingmemberMember #Joined: 22 Oct 1999Posts: 321Location: USA Posted: Sat Nov 06, 1999 11:52 am heh i flattened the frikin psd.... oh well..... im an idiot carry on to the kewl pics =) http://members.tripod.com/imdaking you have to go through my site to see the pic forcing you to view my site and give me a comment on that too! mwhaauahaah hehe =P imdaking Back to top imdakingmemberMember #Joined: 22 Oct 1999Posts: 321Location: USA Posted: Sat Nov 06, 1999 1:59 pm hmm what resolution are you running? Back to top chrisk82memberMember #Joined: 16 Jan 2000Posts: 91Location: CO Posted: Sun Nov 07, 1999 12:09 am Nice design, but it needs a lot of work. First, how come there is a huge gap on the left of the front page? And second, it may be useful to put your images in a gallery with thumbnails to make browsing more fast. (I'm using IE5.0 if it helps) Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First Sijun Forums Forum Index -> Archive : Sep99 - Dec00 All times are GMT - 8 Hours Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Digital Art----------------Digital Art DiscussionWork in ProgressGallery/Finished Work Miscellaneous----------------Random MusingsArchive : Sep99 - Dec00 You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum Powered by phpBB © 2005 phpBB Group


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Tag Archives: algae
BEACON Researchers at Work: Climate effects on algae… and undergrads
This week's BEACON Researchers at Work blog post is by MSU graduate students Jakob Nalley and Danny O'Donnell, with University of Texas undergraduate Farhana Haque. Go ahead, take a deep breath, and let it out. Almost half of the oxygen … Continue reading


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We had one game where somebody in the office had to play. That's just a statement that it happened, nothing else. The club is working on that. They asked me what has been a surprise and that has been a surprise, but it's not a big deal. The interview was about what more than that, but they pick out one thing. I think that many teams are struggling with the reserve teams. We'll try to make it better, bring it attention, and maybe accelerate that process.The ticket service rep called in to help the shorthanded Galaxy reserve team, Dan Cerwinske, was a college teammate (Dayton) of Chris Rolfe, the Chicago Fire star, (Chris writes a blog, too) and he still plays in a local league. I actually met Dan the day I grabbed a beer with fellow reporter Martin Rogers. Dan looked to be in decent shape - and I can attest to his bonafides as a Galaxy enthusiast, because he was wearing an Angel City Brigade T-shirt that evening. Apparently, Dan can help patrons purchase passes (310-630-2221 firstname.lastname@example.com) and also play on the pitch.
Not to say that there shouldn't be a better reserve player system, of course. That's across the board for MLS, but I also remember when the system first came into existence. That was 2005, and before that, there were no reserve teams or games at all.


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Your baby is growing and learning at an amazing rate. As you watch the progress from day to day, offer encouragement with plenty of cheers and positive reinforcement—your approval will help your child believe, "What I'm doing is great!"
He can stand unassisted and cruise along the furniture
Her babbling begins to have the inflections of language
He understands that smaller objects fit in larger ones
She can pull herself up and sit securely
He understands what "no" means but may be too curious to resist
She can respond to one or two commands
"What comes next?" Introduce sequencing by laying pieces out on the floor, with the biggest piece at one end and the smallest at the other. Talk about the sizes: "This is the biggest cup and this is the smallest."
New discoveries. Let your child be the discoverer and explorer, because that's the joy of play!
Let's chat. Promote your baby's language development and encourage early "conversations" by pretending to call her, or helping her call her dolls and stuffed animals.
Again! Again! He'll want to press the buttons and hear the sounds over and over again, so let him go. Besides being good for a laugh, these actions cement in his mind the idea that his actions cause something else to happen.
The joy of motion and the chance to get a different view of the world are just some of the pleasure of outdoor toys like swings.
Make connections. Here's a chance for you to help your child make connections between words and meanings as well as understand directions.
Talk about motion. "You're swinging back and forth" or "you're moving up and down." Count out loud the number of times baby goes back and forth, and point out things in your yard for baby to see, labeling them with words.
You can do it! Let your child play with the toy independently. Be there to help him if he needs you, and offer your encouragement: "You can do it … go ahead."
Play a game with your child to make up a song—make a sound with the toy and ask your child to mimic you. Or just follow what your child does.
Attach words to your child's movement with the toy, and also to the toy's features. Say "back and forth" or "side to side" as your child moves the toy.
Clap or sing along to encourage your child; you may even want to accompany him on another instrument. These "I can" play activities get filed away in your child's memory bank and boost self-confidence.
Children the world over, from those living with the most sophisticated families in big cities to those living in remote villages in developing countries, spend much time 'just playing.
Toys that encourage children to imitate real life: Playsets with miniature figures, kitchen toys, tea sets, medical kits, pretend telephones—they all help children learn about the world around them by bringing it to their level.
Many children love to take long baths because it's such a soothing experience. But it's also an opportunity for a form of creative play that doesn't take place anywhere else.


text: Batu Caves ADD TO TRIP PLANNER REMOVE FROM TRIP PLANNER Batu Caves is a an iconic and popular tourist attraction in Selangor. Site of a Hindu temple and shrine, Batu Caves attracts thousands of worshippers and tourists, especially during the annual Hindu festival, Thaipusam. A limestone outcrop located just north of Kuala Lumpur, Batu Caves has three main caves featuring temples and Hindu shrines. Its main attraction is the large statue of the Hindu God at the entrance, besides a steep 272 climb up its steps to finally view the stunning skyline of the city centre. Monkeys frolic around the caves, and it is a popular spot for rock climbing enthusiasts. Paintings and scenes of Hindu Gods can also be seen in the Ramayana Cave. Batu Caves is a place where you should not miss on your next visit to Malaysia! Getting Here By Car or Taxi Batu Caves is accessible by car or taxi as it is situated beside the main highway of MRR2 in Batu Caves area. KTM Komuter There is also the KTM Komuter train service from KL Sentral to Batu Caves. Monorail and Bus From KL Sentral, take the monorail service to Titiwangsa station. Alight here and take the bus to Batu Caves. Who To Contact Batu Caves Temple Management Office +603 - 6189 6284 Dark Cave, Batu Caves +603 - 6186 7011 Fax: +603 - 6177 5111 Email Click here Related Brochure View all brochure


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Garage sales for residential properties are permitted on the first full weekend of March, June, September, and December each year. No permit is required.
For information on "Estate Sales", click here.
Churches and businesses must contact Planning at (714) 647-5804 for regulations for "temporary outdoor activities"
Regulations for residential garage sales include:
- Sales may only occur on Saturday and/or Sunday
- Sales may begin at 8:00 a.m. and must end at 5:00 p.m.
- Items sold may not be displayed on the public sidewalks, parkways, streets or alleys
- Items sold must be used goods, from your household, and not purchased for resale
- Signs may NOT be posted on telephone poles, public street lights, traffic signs, or on any structure in the public right-of-way (Signs posted illegally will be removed and a fine may be mailed to the responsible party)
- Signs may be posted one week before the sale weekend
- Signs must be taken down one day after the last date of your sale
Persons conducting sales on any unauthorized weekend or violating any of the above regulations will be subject to an Administrative Fine or a misdemeanor citation.
For additional information call Code Enforcement at (714) 667-2780.


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Using Irrigation to bring life to barren land
Raindrops are like liquid gold to farmers in the poorest countries of the world. Yet when the rains do come - and in many places they come erratically or with decreasing frequency - with no irrigation techniques available, most of that precious moisture is washed away, unused. Land is so dehydrated that they are unable to grow enough produce even to sustain their families, there seems to be no way out.
Practical Action is working with communities to introduce simple yet effective irrigation systems to combat the issue. So instead of parched, dusty fields, there are life-giving gardens brimming with hearty fruit and vegetables or sturdy columns of maize, year after year.
Drip Irrigation
Even if rainfall is low or erratic, the drip irrigation system enables farmers to nourish and grow the crops they need.
This is how it works:
- A large, water harvesting tank in the village catches the rain and stores it.
- A farmer fills a 20-litre drip bucket and places it one metre above the ground on poles.
- The drip bucket is attached to a long hose that criss-crosses the crop field.
- Simple gravity provides enough pressure to force the water through the hose.
- Water drips through the holes in the hose, directly onto the roots of the plants.
- 100-200 plants can be grown using just one drip bucket system
Treadle pump irrigation
Able to be operated by one or two adults, the treadle pump uses pedal power to suck water up from wells up to 7.5m deep at a rate of up to 18m3 per hour – that's six times more water than from a traditional hand pump. What's more, because leg muscles tire less than arm muscles, it can also be used by the farmers for longer. And because most of the parts are manufactured locally, it also brings much needed income to the local economy.
Read more about treadle pump irrigation, and their impact in Nepal
How Mahima Gharti rescued her community through farming
Forced to flee from conflict in her native village, Mrs Mahima Gharti migrated to the Shanti-tole settlement in Kathmandu with her family to start afresh. But soon their dreams lay in tatters. Saline had rendered the 1/6th hectare of land they had bought barren. Faced with a heartbreaking choice, Mahima's husband was forced to leave his family behind and migrate to India to find work. Mahima was left to work as a labourer – and bring up their five children – alone.
But after hearing Practical Action staff talk at a village meeting, Mahima was determined to turn things around. After forming a women's farming group in Shanti-tole with five of the poorest families in the settlement, they found a suitable plot and set to work.
With the help of Practical Action, the women are now skilled in vegetable and seed cultivation. As Mahima told us, "We used to scatter seeds but, after training, I now know how to make nurseries and transplant into the main field." To her and her children's delight, this meant her husband could return home, where he now works the land using a treadle pump. Mahima's farming group have now set up a savings plan and are able to produce at least three crops a year. Mahima expects to earn around NPRs 10,000 a year (around £75) from her hard work – money that means her family will be able to stay together.
Raghu Raj Chaudhari from Badariya, South-west Nepal
Raghu Raj Chaudhari lives with his wife and three children in Badariya in the Kailali district of South-west Nepal. With no land of his own, he worked as a daily labourer but his income was barely enough to feed his family, his children stopped attending school and he often had to borrow money.
With Practical Action's help a farmers' group of landless labourers was formed. Between them this group leased 24 kaththas (8,000 sq metres) of land and undertook training on improved methods of vegetable cultivation. They were also provided with seeds, fertilisers, spray tanks and a deep bore for irrigation.
Raghu describes how his life has changed. "I have been working on farms for the last 16 years but never had the opportunity to learn new methods of cultivation," he says. "With the training I can now grow both seasonal and out of season vegetables, raise nurseries and harvest vegetables at the right time."
He now reaps three harvests a year and makes a good income. He has purchased a water buffalo, replaced his rice straw roof with galvanised roofing sheets, re-admitted his children to school and no longer needs to borrow money.
With £18, three families could have enough seeds to plant both this year and next. £35 could train seven people in basic crop husbandry during the all-important growing season: selecting not only the right crops but the required amount of water, fertilizer and shade. £105 is enough to pay for everything needed to make a drip irrigation kit, or £62 could pay for a treadle pump.
With your support, we've reached out to many people with these technologies.
Please help us carry on doing the same for others. It could turn their dry, dusty patches of land into lush, fertile gardens of tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, okra, onions or maize.
You can also help us by sharing this page with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers
You can download further information on irrigation from Practical Answers, the technical information service of Practical Action.
If you have a question about this technology, you can submit a technical enquiry to the Practical Answers team.


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Digital enlargement of handmade patterns, illustrations and paintings make LEMON wallpapers truly unique. Here is a pattern from the LemonxAureum collection.
• Each roll is 19.68" wide x 10.9 yards long
• Repeat: 55.11" (w) x 48.11" (h)
Additional Notes
• Printed to order, 3 week lead time.
• Vinyl type 2 substrate
• Made in Johannesburg, South Africa
Color Description
Grey illustration on white background
Additional Info
Read more about the artist, Lemon, here.


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CAIRO - Undeterred at being interrogated by prosecutors, a popular Egyptian TV satirist was back on the air Friday poking new fun at the international publicity he received after lampooning the Egyptian president.
Bassem Youssef - known as Egypt's Jon Stewart - was interrogated this week for allegedly insulting Islam and the country's leader, questioning that drew criticism from Washington and rights advocates.
In his weekly Friday TV show, Youssef says he "overdid it." He said all the segments on his show called "ElBernameg," or "The Program," wouldn't focus on the country's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
"Not everything has to be about the president. This isn't fear. I am not pulling back," he said.
Youssef then said sarcastically that after his visit to the attorney general, he had decided not to talk on the show about Morsi - just the attorney general. The television audience, which included one of Egypt's most prominent opposition figures, Hamdeen Sabahi, erupted in applause and laughter.
Then Youssef spent a good part of his show ridiculing both the attorney general and the president.
Responding to a member of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood party who said in a news clip that Youssef only focuses on the Islamist group and the president, he joked: "They are not two things. They are one."
It was a way of mocking the president's insistence that his policy decisions are made independent of the Brotherhood from which he hails.
On Friday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed concern about the Egyptian government's application of what it called "blasphemy-like charges," saying they were being used to stifle dissent and limit the freedoms of religion and expression.
The USCIRF noted that the questioning of Youssef and Egyptian comedian Ali Qandil over charges of insulting Islam were "just two of the most recent examples of a disturbing trend that affects all Egyptians."
The group said that such charges were not new under Morsi, who was elected last June after the 2011 overthrow of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, but were becoming more frequent.
While Youssef's fast-paced show has attracted a wide viewership, it also has earned a fair share of detractors. Youssef has been a frequent target of lawsuits, most of them brought by Islamist lawyers who have accused him of "corrupting morals" or violating "religious principles."
Recent legal moves against protesters, activists and critics come as unrest in Egypt continues amid deep political polarization.
The opposition charges that Morsi, in office for nine months, has failed to tackle any of the nation's most pressing problems. They say the Brotherhood is trying to monopolize power, breaking its promise to include other factions in key decisions.
Morsi blames the country's woes on corruption under Mubarak as well as ongoing protests. He says the opposition has no grassroots support and, along with former regime supporters, is stoking unrest for political gain.


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St. Joseph's (8-7) has now dropped back-to-back home games while CCNY (6-9) has won two of their last three games.
Senior Megan Moran (Syosset/St. Dominic's) helped lead the Lady Bears attack finishing with a career-high and game-high-tying 23 points, 15 in the first half, while corralling eight boards and dishing out a career-high six assists.
Junior Samantha Retas (Brooklyn/Bishop Kearney) had one of her best all-around games in a St. Joseph's uniform, securing her team-leading sixth double-double of the year by way of 17 points and a school-record 21 rebounds. Retas matched a school record with six blocks and added five assists and three steals to her stat line.
St. Joseph's struck first less than 15 seconds into the contest and built a 15-8 advantage at the 14:12 mark of the first half and it looked like the Lady Bears may have their way with the Beavers.
However, CCNY had other ideas coming right back and taking a 26-22 lead with 3:39 left in the opening frame. St. Joseph's battled back and took a late 30-28 lead before a miraculous last second shot by Taylor Pompilio found the bottom of the net to send the two teams deadlocked at 30-30.
The second stanza saw the Beavers get on the board first to take a 32-30 lead at the 18:59 mark before the Lady Bears responded with a 8-0 run over three minutes that gave them a 38-32 lead and it looked as if the St. Joseph's had all the momentum. CCNY would not go away though, taking a 43-42 lead at the 13:28 mark.
The Lady Bears fought back and took a 50-46 lead with 9:33 remaining helped by four Moran free throws and it seemed St. Joseph's had recaptured the momentum. The Beavers showed their resiliency and toughness coming right back and taking the lead for good at 52-51 on a Lee layup with 6:40 remaining.
A nearly five-minute drought ensued for the Lady Bears after Kelly McNamee (Glendale/Mary Louis)hit a jumper with 6:12 left to play to cut the deficit to 54-53. CCNY took advantage of the St. Joseph's cold stretch and the Lady Bears did not snap out of it until it was too late.


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Welcome To Double Eagle Pawn
When the economy suffers, people often have nowhere to turn when they need extra cash. Nobody can predict those times; they come out of nowhere, and its all too easy to give up once financial streams such as banks and credit cards run dry. At the same time, when money is tight the last thing any of us want to do is pay full retail value for items. For residents of Spokane, Wash., and the surrounding area, theres a place they can go for help or, simply, whenever they want a quality shopping experience. Double Eagle Pawn has provided pawn and loan services to the Spokane metro area for almost 20 years. Now with three locations throughout the Spokane are, there is a Double Eagle Pawn near you.


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DEKALB — The Irish of Peoria Notre Dame had to fight, scratch and claw with everything they had just to keep Lutheran within reach during Tuesday night's Class 3A supersectional.
Eventually, the Crusaders' deft 3-point touch, led by Joe Kellen's career night, was too much, and Lutheran ran off with the state semifinal bid after a 71-60 victory. Both teams shot over 50 percent from the floor in each half, and Notre Dame had Lutheran's 14-point, second-half lead down to six with 1:26 left in the game. But Lutheran (30-3) buried seven of nine from the free-throw line from then on, putting the clamps on the Crusaders' second trip to the state tournament in Peoria in the past three years.
"I told them before the game, 'Hey, just let them fly,'" said Lutheran coach Tom Guse, who led his team to third place in Class 2A in 2012. "That's who we are, and tonight, we were going to be who we are. … And when Joe (Kellen) gets going, he's a great shooter."
With Kellen lighting the fire, Lutheran drilled eight of its first 11 3-point shots, and 12 of 27 overall, while the Irish sank just one of its 10 treys in the game — and that was a fade-away, buzzer-beater by Shea Feehan just before halftime.
Kellen, who buried his first six 3-pointers, was the spark on this night. Lutheran came into the game with 282 3-pointers, draining them at a 41 percent rate on the season. They were even better Tuesday, and Kellen, who had 76 3-pointers on the season, never had a game like this one.
The quiet, lead-by-example shooting guard didn't stop shooting the entire night.
"They left me open, and I was feeling it," said Kellen, who hit 3s from both the left and right baselines, as well as from the top of the key, in the game's first five minutes. "I mean, what was I supposed to do?"
He was 7-for-9 from long range in the game and 10-for-12 from the field, and he scored a career-high 31 points, also going 4-for-5 from the free-throw line, all coming in crunch time.
The Crusaders' scoring leader, Thomas Kopelman, also came out firing, and he drilled three of his first five from downtown. Kopelman went 7-for-14 from the floor and tallied 20 points to go along with his seven rebounds, and post player Nate Wieting added 10 points and 11 rebounds.
Lutheran even got 2-plus minutes of playing time from center Ryan Dolan, who has battled through two broken ankles and a punctured lung — among other obstacles — to return weeks ahead of schedule.
Still, Notre Dame (21-13) somehow kept it close enough to worry the Crusaders late.
"We knew we had a run in us. We just kept fighting, and waiting for it to come," Feehan (24 points on 11-for-17 shooting) said. "We never gave up, we kept going after them and going after them.
"They just wouldn't let us back in it."
Lutheran will now take aim at its best finish in school history, needing a win over Lincoln in the 12:15 p.m. Friday quarterfinal inside Peoria's Carver Arena. Lincoln pulled out a 40-37 defensive victory over Cahokia in the Springfield Supersectional to earn the next shot at the Crusaders.
Jay Taft: 815-987-1384; firstname.lastname@example.com; @jaytaft


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Chicken tikka skewers
Nutrition and extra info
- Healthy
Nutrition: per serving
- kcal234
- fat4g
- saturates1g
- carbs9g
- sugars8g
- fibre2g
- protein40g
- salt0.7g
- 150g pot low-fat natural yogurt
Yogurt is made by adding a number of types of harmless bacteria to milk, causing it to ferment.…
- 2 tbsp hot curry paste
- 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
- 250g pack cherry tomatoes
- 4 wholemeal chapatis, warmed, to serve
For the cucumber salad
- ½ cucumber, halved lengthways, deseeded and sliced
- 1 red onion, thinly sliced
- handful chopped coriander leaves
- juice 1 lemon
Oval in shape with a pronouced bulge on one end, lemons are one of the most versatile…
- 50g pack lamb's lettuce or pea shoots
Lamb's lettucelams lett-ess
Sometimes known as Corn Salad, lamb's lettuce has long spoon-shaped dark leaves and a…
Put 8 wooden skewers in a bowl of water to soak. Mix the yogurt and curry paste together in a bowl, then add the chicken (if you have time, marinate for an hr or so). In a large bowl, toss together the cucumber, red onion, coriander and lemon juice. Chill until ready to serve.
Shake off any excess marinade, then thread the chicken pieces and cherry tomatoes onto the pre-soaked skewers. Cook under a medium grill for 15-20 mins, turning from time to time, until cooked through and nicely browned.
Stir the lettuce or pea shoots into the salad, then divide between 4 plates. Top each serving with 2 chicken tikka skewers and serve with the warm chapatis.


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Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi says he's still attached to The Last of Us film, but production is at "a standstill"
Don't expect The Last of Us film to hit theaters anytime soon.
Sam Raimi headlines
Game of Thrones' Arya Stark a contender for Ellie in The Last of Us film
During a Sony Screen Gems panel at San Diego Comic Con, the film version for The Last of Us was discussed in public for the first time. Naughty Dog's Neil Druckman is set to write the script, and Mr Evil Dead himself, Sam Raimi, will produce.
The Last of Us film to be distributed by Screen Gems, script penned by Druckmann
The Last of Us film is set to be distributed by Screen Gems and the screenplay will be written by Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann according to Deadline citing a press release.
Warcraft movie: Raimi blames Blizzard's "mismanagement" for delays
Sam Raimi has said Blizzard is at least partially to blame for his decision to give up directing the upcoming Warcraft movie.
Sam Raimi exits World of Warcraft film
Sam Raimi is no longer on board an upcoming World of Warcraft film, the director has revealed.
Bowie's son "hugely jealous" of Raimi directing WoW movie, could be first "good" game film
Duncan Jones, the director of movie Moon, says he's "hugely jealous" of director Sam Raimi being the man in charge of the World of Warcraft movie.
Metzen on WoW movie: "We are going to do it right"
Did you think we were going to get some crappy tie-in for World of Warcraft with Sam Raimi at the realm? This is Blizzard we're talking about.
Report: Director Sam Raimi decides to start work on Disney film first instead of WoW flick
It's being reported Sam Raimi has decided to work on the film he has inked with Disney first, before moving on to the World of Warcraft film.
Interview: Blizzard's Chris Metzen on the WoW movie, Heart of the Swarm, more
It's late in the afternoon and it's fitting to find the developer known as the Bourbon Cowboy – Chris Metzen – on horseback. Admittedly, it's a virtual steed; we've just walked in on him playing World of Warcraft in his office at Blizzard's Irvine, CA headquarters. It turns out even the mind behind some of […]
WoW movie being penned by Private Ryan writer
MTV's scooped the writer of the World of Warcraft movie: it's Robert Rodat, the screenwriter behind Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot.The info comes from a quote from Sam Raimi, zombie-turned-fantasy super-director:"We want to be really faithful to the game…to the Horde and the Alliance and the mythology that takes place in the game, and […]
WoW movie gets "Rise of the Lich King" sub-head
The IMDB page for the upcoming World of Warcraft movie's been updated: apparently, the Sam Raimi movie's going to be called Warcraft: The Rise of the Lich King.As MTV points out, the interesting bit's the fact that a World of Warcraft novel, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, was released in the US earlier this […]
"You could make a brilliant World of Warcraft movie," says Spider-Man director
According to MTV, Spider-Man director Sam Raimi has said that a World of Warcraft is an excellent choice for yet another film based around videogames."There's World of Warcraft — what an awesome video game!" he said. "It has such great, adventurous characters in it and such fantastic landscapes and rules… You could make a brilliant […]
Sam Raimi latest
Sam Raimi says he's still attached to The Last of Us film, but production is at "a standstill"
Game of Thrones' Arya Stark a contender for Ellie in The Last of Us film
The Last of Us film to be distributed by Screen Gems, script penned by Druckmann
Warcraft movie: Raimi blames Blizzard's "mismanagement" for delays
Bowie's son "hugely jealous" of Raimi directing WoW movie, could be first "good" game film
Report: Director Sam Raimi decides to start work on Disney film first instead of WoW flick
Interview: Blizzard's Chris Metzen on the WoW movie, Heart of the Swarm, more
"You could make a brilliant World of Warcraft movie," says Spider-Man director


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CENTER VALLEY, Pa. -- Dates have been set for Penn State Lehigh Valley's previously announced spring Rape Aggression Defense (R.A.D.) training program. R.A.D. is a comprehensive program for women that will be taught by a nationally certified R.A.D. instructor. The program aims to teach techniques, tactics, awareness and risk-reduction that can aid in self-defense. It is open to women Penn State Lehigh Valley students, faculty and staff.
R.A.D. classes will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. Apr. 8, 15 and 22. Participants must be able to attend all three classes.
There are 18 spaces available on a first-come, first-serve basis. To register or for more information, contact Cindy Nguyen at firstname.lastname@example.com or 610-285-5042.
Last Updated April 02, 2013


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Events from May 25, 2020
No events
Dear Members
Due to concerns related to community spread of coronavirus, please be informed that all activities and events to be postponed until further notice.
Should you have any enquiries, kindly email to IEM Penang Secretariat at: email@example.com.
Thank you for your understanding.
Bank name: CIMB BANK BERHAD
Bank Address: MENARA BHL, NO.51, JALAN SULTAN AHMAD SHAH, 10050 PENANG
Bank Account Number: 80-0762026-7
Account Name: The Institution of Engineers, Malaysia