text:
The Alamance-Burlington School System decided about 4 a.m. Wednesday to close schools, said ABSS spokeswoman Jenny Faulkner. Notice to media and staff went out about 5 a.m., and automated calls to parents started no earlier than 6 a.m.
Closure notices also are posted prominently at the top of the system�s website, www.abss.k12.nc.us/.
School board member Patsy Simpson said she heard from frustrated parents who said they were left with too little time to make plans. Simpson said she understands the district has a procedure, but she, too, was frustrated.
�I don�t know if that was necessary,� she said.
The district follows weather forecasts, but also checks roads after midnight if conditions are changing. School Superintendent Lillie Cox makes the final decision. Not every forecast for snow or freezing rain pans out, and the district does not want to cancel or delay school without a good reason.
Less than an inch of snow, sometimes mixed with rain, fell in the early evening hours in Alamance County. Cold temperatures in the teens left some icy patches on area roadways.
The district made an early announcement to delay classes during a cold snap in the first week after Christmas break, but that was not about road conditions, but whether buses would start in single-digit temperatures and heaters in schools would work.
The district will make up Wednesday�s snow day Feb. 17, which was scheduled as a teacher workday, according to the ABSS Twitter account.


text:
As part of this great event, a group of bloggers are offering prizes valued at $15 or more and everything is handmade! You'll find the list of participating bloggers under the Rafflecopter form. Be sure to hop around and enter each of the giveaways. The more you enter, the more chances you'll have to win the grand prize! The giveaway ends on September 15th, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.
Our hosts have also put together an awesome grand prize valued at more than $300! The grand prize includes:
- AI2 Cloth diaper from Green Grizls
- Boogie Bear Creations Nighttime Cloth Diaper
- Lil Montner Mama Cloth Set
- AI2 Cloth diaper from 4oh5 Fluff
- Organic Bonnet from Bonnet Friend
- Set of Cloth Wipes & Detergent from Tender Bottoms
- Natural Deodorant from Live Beautifully
- Hybrid Fitted Cloth diaper from Silly Bear Handmade
- Bar of Soap from Bmbyx
- Original Artwork from NJoyArt
- GPS Bracelet from Motherhood Journey
- Fabric Lowercase ABC's from The Crunchy Farm Baby Shop
- $30 Credit to Babycake Boutique
You can gain extra entries into the grand prize by entering all of the giveaways on blogs participating in the Fall in Love with Handmade Event. Click here to access the grand prize entry form!
I am a craft loving gal and even had an etsy site for quite some time. Handmade is where I love!!
I am so excited to share 2 fantastic companies with you during this event!
Goat Haus Dairy is a family operated business making goat milk soaps, lotions and more!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Facebook is in no way affiliated with this contest. Please note that Going Green with the Grizls, The Vagabond Studio, Eight Days a Weeks and all other bloggers participating in the Fall in Love with Handmade Giveaway Hop are not responsible for sponsors that do not fulfill their prizes. We have represented each sponsor with the expectation they will fulfill their prize and in a timely manner. We will contact the sponsor regarding your prize(s). The sponsors, in most cases, are shipping their items to you directly. I will make every effort to assist you obtaining your prize. If there is an issue with a sponsor, please notify the blog you won a prize from within 4-6 weeks for assistance, after that we may be unable to assist you.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Luigifan18 (talk)
|Date Created:
|October 27, 2012
|Complete (save for skills)
|Please feel free to edit constructively!
|Small Magical Beast (Bug, Fire)
|Hit Dice:
|7d10-7 (51 hp)
|20 ft.
|Armor Class:
|20 (+1 size, +2 Dex, +7 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 18
|Base Attack/Grapple:
|Bite melee +12 (1d4+5 plus 1d4 fire plus Leech Life)
|Full Attack:
|Bite melee +12 (1d4+5 plus 1d4 fire plus Leech Life) plus slam melee +7 (1d6+5 plus 1d6 fire) plus flare melee touch +1 (1d4-1 fire)
|5 ft./5 ft.
|Special Attacks:
|Ember, Take Down, Leech Life, Flame Charge, Power Attack, Maximize Strike
|Special Qualities:
|Caterpillar of Solar Embers, Flame Body, Vulnerability to Rocks, Bug Pokémon Traits, Fire Pokémon Traits, Combat Expertise
|Fort +3, Ref +7, Will +2
|Str 20, Dex 14, Con 8, Int 7, Wis 12, Cha 13
|Power Attack (1 HD), Combat Expertise (3 HD), Maximize Strike (6 HD)
|Very hot places
|Solitary or colony (5-50 Larvesta)
|Challenge Rating:
|Usually neutral
|7-12 HD (Small), 13-16 HD (Medium), 17-32 HD (Large)
|Level Adjustment:
You encounter a caterpillar-like creature, about the size of a prepubescent gnome, with a furry mane and five red horns. When it spots you, it spouts fire from those horns and charges.
Summary::Larvesta is the juvenile form of the legendary Moth of Solar Flame. As is, though, it's more like a Caterpillar of Solar Embers. That doesn't mean it's a pushover.
Combat Edit
Larvesta may be frail, but don't let that fool you - it's a powerful force in physical combat, far more powerful than anything of its size has any right to be. (In fact, it's more physically powerful than its adult form!) Its bites and tackles pack quite a lot of force, and it has a penchant for metacombat feats.
Larvesta's flare attack is based on its Constitution instead of its Strength. This makes it far weaker than the flare attacks of many other Fire Pokémon, so it only gets used for full attacks.
Ember (Su): Larvestas have a very minor breath weapon; they can breathe fire. A Larvesta's ember attack strikes in a 15 ft. cone and deals 1d6 + HD + Cha mod in fire damage. Creatures in the area may halve the damage on a successful Reflex save, DC = 10 + Larvesta's Charisma modifier + ½ Larvesta's Hit Dice. Larvesta may not use Ember for 1d4 rounds after having used it. The sample Larvesta's Ember attack inflicts 1d6+8 fire damage with a save DC of 14. This is a [Fire] effect.
Leech Life (Ex): Larvesta's bite attack does an extra 1d8 negative energy damage, +1 negative energy damage for every 3 Hit Die Larvesta has, to living targets. Larvesta gains HP equal to the negative energy damage it deals in this way, and any hit points it gains above its maximum are gained as temporary hit points that last for 1 hour. This is a [Bug] effect.
Flame Charge (Su): Larvesta may move up to 4 times its speed when making a charge action (instead of the normal 2×). If it does so, all of the damage it inflicts is treated as fire damage (which means that Larvesta isn't able to benefit from Leech Life). This is a [Fire] effect.
Take Down (Ex): Larvesta may add 2d8 damage to any attack it makes as part of a charge. If it does, it takes 1d6 backlash damage. This is a [Normal] effect.
Backlash damage cannot be resisted by any means, and a creature killed by it loses 1 extra level/Hit Die if and when it is brought back to life.
Caterpillar of Solar Embers (Su): Larvesta is essentially a living sun, albeit not a very powerful one. It constantly generates an aura of solar power in its immediate vicinity. The area of effect is equal to 10 feet × Larvesta's HD (70 feet for the sample Larvesta). This area is constantly under the effects of a daylight spell, mildly hindering all creatures with an aversion to sunlight or light in general (but often not having a severe effect, instead merely causing disorientation of some sort). Larvesta may suppress or resume the aura as a free action on its turn once per round. There is no save against the effect, nor does spell resistance apply. Anything vulnerable to daylight will suffer in Larvesta's vicinity, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The effective caster level of this ability (for effects that care) is equal to Larvesta's HD.
Flame Body (Su): Larvesta's body is very hot. Anything striking it with an unarmed attack or natural weapon takes 1 point of fire damage per HD Larvesta has (7 for the sample Larvesta) and must succeed on a Reflex save or suffer a burn. The save DC is equal to 10 + ½ Larvesta's HD + Larvesta's Constitution modifier (12 for the sample Larvesta).
Vulnerability to Rocks (Ex): Fire and rocks don't mix well. Fire bugs and rocks mix even worse. Larvesta takes a -10 penalty to all saves against [Rock] effects. If a [Rock] effect doesn't even allow a save, Larvesta takes double damage and is sad.
Advancement Edit
Larvesta's Strength increases by 1 at every odd-numbered Hit Die. Its Charisma increases by 1 at every even-numbered Hit Die. It gains +1 Constitution every time it gains a feat.
At 8 HD, Larvesta learns Bug Bite (Ex). If it connects with its bite attack, it may make a free disarm or sunder attempt (at its option) without provoking an attack of opportunity, gaining a bonus on its opposed attack roll equal to the damage dealt by its bite. If the target was attempting to consume a use-activated consumption-based item (like a potion or goodberry) when Larvesta attacked it, Larvesta steals the effect of that item for itself. This is a [Bug] effect.
At 12 HD, Larvesta replaces its Take Down attack with Double-Edge (Ex). It may add 2d12 damage to any attack it makes as part of a charge, but if it does, it takes 1d10 backlash damage.
At 16 HD, Larvesta learns Flame Wheel (Su). It can thaw itself at will as a free action, and it adds 1d10 fire damage to any attack it makes as part of a charge. (It does not take backlash damage for using Flame Wheel). This is a [Fire] effect.
At 18 HD, Larvesta may evolve into Volcarona. This makes it stronger overall (raising its CR by 2), but it loses some of its physical might; Volcarona's Strength is 6 less than Larvesta's. Its other stats are much higher, though, and its abilities are much different.
At 20 HD, Larvesta learns Bug Buzz (Su). This attack takes the form of a Medium-range emanation from Larvesta. All creatures caught in the area take 1d10 sonic damage per HD the Larvesta has and become confused for 1 round for every 4 Hit Die Larvesta possesses. A successful Fortitude save (DC = 10 + ½ Larvesta's HD + Larvesta's Charisma modifier) can halve the damage and negate the confusion. This is a [Bug] effect.
At 24 HD, Larvesta learns Amnesia (Su). With a Swift action, Larvesta can induce a temporary amnesia within itself. A benefit of this is that it gains a +6 resistance bonus on Will saves for one minute. Additionally, for the duration, it suppresses any mind-affecting effects (except for the Amnesia itself). This attack may be retained by Volcarona once Larvesta evolves.
At 28 HD, Larvesta learns Thrash (Ex). Larvesta may thrash about as a full-round action, attacking all adjacent creatures. While thrashing, it gains a +1 bonus to attack rolls and deals 1d8 extra damage. This leaves it fatigued for one round. This is a [Normal] effect.
At 32 HD, Larvesta learns Flare Blitz (Su). As a Swift action, Larvesta may cast fire shield. It may then dispel the effect by making a melee attack, dealing 1d6 extra Fire damage per HD and setting the opponent on fire for 2d6 fire damage per round. Doing this deals 1d6 damage per 4 HD to Larvesta. This may be cast once per 5 rounds. This is a [Fire] effect. In a Contest, using this automatically gains a fantastic success, gaining 2 points and raising the DC, but Larvesta takes a -4 penalty on the following turn.
Back to Main Page → 3.5e Homebrew → Monsters


text:
Since opening in 1981, the Downtown Copper Penny has established itself as one of Kingston's best casual dining experiences. Located just minutes away from the beautiful Kingston waterfront!
Penny hours are:
Monday - Thursday 11am – 10pm
Friday and Saturday 11am – 11pm
Sunday 12pm – 10pm
Address: 240 Princess St. Kingston, Ontario
Phone: 613-549-4257
The Copper Penny Grill'n Home specializes in take-out orders but also has seating for those who wish to enjoy their meal on location. The Grill'n Home menu offers you all of the same Copper Penny favourites you know and love from the downtown location.
Grill hours are:
Monday to Thursday and Saturday 11am – 9pm
Friday 11am – 10pm
Sunday 4pm – 9pm
Address: 759 Bayridge Dr. Kingston, Ontario
Phone: 613-389-4677


text: ST. LOUIS (AP) - Federal health investigators have confirmed that ticks carry the new virus that sickened two Missouri men. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suspected ticks were a likely source of the Heartland virus, which was named for the St. Joseph hospital where the men were treated in 2009. A study published Monday and authored by Harry Savage, a CDC research entomologist, said samples from ticks taken from the patients' farms and other land in northwest Missouri have tested positive for the Heartland virus. The study was published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported (http://bit.ly/nxnrLt) . "It's the first time that anyone found the virus in the environment," Savage said. "This is yet another tick-borne disease in the U.S., and it's another reason to take preventative measures to avoid tick attachment and tick bites." There are no treatments for Heartland virus, which can cause low white blood cell counts, fever, chills, diarrhea and other symptoms. Both Missouri men, who are the only recorded cases of Heartland virus, recovered after nearly two weeks in the hospital. When the two men arrived at Heartland Regional Medical Center in 2009 complaining of fever and fatigue, Dr. Scott Folk at Heartland suspected ehrlichiosis, a common tick-borne disease that has infected at least 126 people in Missouri this year. The patients, however, didn't respond to antibiotics used to treat ehrlichiosis. Folk then sent blood samples to the CDC, where researchers determined it was a new insect-borne virus, but were uncertain which insect was carrying the virus. CDC scientists traveled to northwest Missouri to collect ticks and mosquitoes in an effort to trace the virus. Samples taken last year from the patients' farms and the Honey Creek Conservation Area tested positive for the Heartland virus. About one in 500 nymph, or adolescent, ticks collected near one of the patient's homes contained the virus. Savage said the Heartland virus is probably spread elsewhere in Missouri too, though there haven't been any other reports of Heartland illnesses. It's likely patients have caught the virus and been misdiagnosed, because there is no quick, reliable test. Dr. Ericka Hayes, an infectious disease specialist at Washington University, said it's not surprising that the Heartland virus was discovered in Missouri because Missouri leads the nation in tick-related diseases. Preventive measures to avoid tick bites include tucking pants into socks, wearing long sleeves and using bug repellent with DEET. "If you've been outside in Missouri, you should be going over yourself head to toe," Hayes said. She said it takes 24 hours or more for a tick to transmit a disease to a person. "If you can prevent the tick (from attaching), it doesn't matter what disease they're carrying."


text:
Website Deciphers Meaning Of Economic Woes
In the midst of a worsening U.S. financial crisis, economist and Publisher Darrell Williams has launched The Loop 21, www.theloop21.com, an interactive website providing in-depth analysis of economics, politics, social issues and the day's top stories from a minority perspective.
Led by Williams, the website's publisher, and a diverse team of the nation's top young journalists, The Loop 21 helps readers understand how global and national events – especially economic events – affect their daily lives.
"There is a need for all Americans, especially African Americans who are disproportionately affected by this crisis, to really understand how economic issues debated in the halls of Congress will play a role in their lives," Williams says. "With the looming potential for a worsening economy and rising unemployment, we feel it is important to offer our users clear information about their finances, while also serving as a trusted resource for news and politics."
Based in Los Angeles, CA, The Loop 21 strives to lead the debate on financial news and information for African Americans, while also serving as an interactive destination where readers can join the conversation. The site features news, commentary, blogs, polls, video, and more.
As part of its launch plans, The Loop 21 has teamed with UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., to conduct a national Race & The Media survey, soliciting the views of hundreds of minority journalists –Asian American, African American, Native American, and Hispanic American—regarding the impact of race on the 2008 presidential election, and its implications for 2009 and beyond.
The Race &The Media survey results will be released following a candid panel discussion featuring the country's top journalists at the Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 19.
Williams, Ph.D, and publisher of theLoop21.com, is an economist with more than a decade of experience in government, business and academics.
He has worked with the President's Council of Economic Advisors, the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Economic Analysis LLC and global consulting firm LECG LLC.
As a former economics professor at UCLA, he focused on methods to help students understand and apply economics on the job and in their daily decision-making.
The Loop 21 is the premier online destination for in-depth analysis of economic and political news presented from the minority perspective. The Loop 21 not only highlights problems, but also offers insights and solutions, plus a platform where everyone is invited to join the conversation.
The site is an alternative to mainstream media with a mission to lead the debate on economic progress for people of color.
For more information about The Loop 21, visit www.theloop21.com
Latest comments
Ann GarrisonFebruary 22,2018 @ 08:03 PM
I think you have "Filtered HTML" turned on here. If you switch to "Full HTML," it will probably...


text:
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Abdi Aden Magan, who lived for several years in Ohio, did not present any evidence to dispute the allegations that he directed subordinates in carrying out human rights abuses under the regime of former dictator Siad Barre, U.S. District Judge George Smith said in Columbus.
Abukar Hassan Ahmed, a lawyer and human rights advocate now dividing his time between London and Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, alleged in a 2010 lawsuit that the three months of torture he endured make it painful for him to sit and injured his bladder to the point that he is incontinent.
Ahmed says the torture occurred when Magan served as investigations chief of the National Security Service of Somalia, a force dubbed the "Black SS" or the "Gestapo of Somalia" because of techniques used to gain confessions from detainees.
Magan "has not come forth with any evidence demonstrating that he took steps to prevent abuses from occurring or to punish his subordinates for engaging in human rights abuses," Smith wrote.
Magan's attorney had not seen Tuesday's ruling and could not immediately comment. Magan declined to comment to The Associated Press when the lawsuit was first filed. He fought the allegations in court filings for a while, but he has since left the U.S. for Kenya and has not responded to additional court motions.
Initially, Magan argued the lawsuit was filed in the wrong country and too long after the alleged abuse. He also said he was immune from prosecution as long as he was acting within his official capacity and on behalf of the government.
The fact that Magan left the U.S. makes it uncertain whether Ahmed could ever receive financial damages, but the judge will have a hearing where Ahmed can testify about what happened to him, said Kathy Roberts, staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, which brought the lawsuit.
She said the case has never been about the money.
"Today's decision is important not only because it acknowledges Col. Magan's crimes against Professor Ahmed, but it's also important because it sheds light on the role of the security services in suppressing dissent against the Barre regime."
In August, a federal judge in Virginia ordered the former prime minister of Somalia, Mohamed Ali Samantar, to pay $21 million in compensatory and punitive damages to several members of the minority Isaaq clan, who said they suffered brutal repression — including torture and mass killings — under the Barre regime.


text:
Being located in between four great Atlantic Coast Conference colleges, we can't help but be sports fans ourselves.
Our customers are as passionate about their school as they are their favorite cigar. Conversation in the store, if not about tobacco is almost always about sports, especially during football and basketball season.
We have made every effort to carry a wide and diverse collection of ACC Merchandise so every fan can find something to represent their alma mater, or just their favorite team.
We have a collection of real stained glass desk lamps with school logos under our gift section. For other ACC Merchandise, please give the store a call for the most up to date merchandise.
*If your favorite team happens to not be an ACC team, we do have the ability to order other major conference merchandise, just give the store a call.


text:
Certificates of Achievement
Personalize your pursuit
You're looking for more than just a JD. At ONU Law, we work with you to find your interests and personalize your education. Certificate tracks let you tailor your experience at ONU Law and develop a legal education that's based on your interests.
To achieve such recognition, a student must take a designated core course in the field plus additional courses from among a list of electives. The credit hours earned in the core course and the electives must total at least 15 credits. Students who achieve a cumulative 3.0 grade point average for the courses in such a concentration will receive a certificate following their graduation that recognizes their achievement. A student must apply for a certificate of achievement.
To successfully complete the requirements of all certificates except tax, students must demonstrate substantial engagement with a relevant committee or section of a state bar association or the American Bar Association for at least one year. Such involvement may include subcommittee membership and leadership, writing articles for newsletters, attendance and participation at a committee or section meeting, and participation in subcommittee conference calls. If possible, bar engagement should include opportunities to network in-person with members of the bar. The committee or section should be substantively related to the subject matter of the certificate.
The certificate tracks with the designated core courses and electives are:
Certificate in Corporate Law
Required course:
- Business Organizations II
- Antitrust Law
- Arbitration
- Business Planning
- Corporate Finance
- International Business Transactions
- International Commercial Arbitration law
- Securities Regulation
- Corporate Transactional Clinic
- Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders
- Taxation: Partnerships and Partners
- Intellectual Property/Unfair Competition Law
- Competitiveness and Corruption
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Corporate Law Committee
- OSBA I.P. Law Section
- OSBA Corp. Counsel Section
- OSBA Antitrust Section
- ABA Business Law Section
- ABA Antitrust Section
Certificate in Bankruptcy and Commercial Law
Required courses:
- Bankruptcy & Creditor's Rights
One of the following three (the others may be taken as electives):
- Bankruptcy Clinic – Debtor's Counsel
- Bankruptcy Clinic – Chapter 7 Trustee
- Judicial Externship (Federal Bankruptcy Judge)
- Bankruptcy: Practice & Procedure
- Commercial Code: Negotiable Instruments (January Term only)
- Commercial Code: Secured Transactions (January Term only)
- Commercial Law: Sales and Secured Transactions
- Commercial Law: Payments
- Commercial Transactions (Summer only)
- Corporate Finance
- International Commercial Arbitration Law
- Federal Income Taxation
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Banking, Commercial & Bankruptcy Law Committee
- ABA Business Law Section (many relevant committees)
Certificate in Criminal Law
Required courses:
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure
- Prosecution or Public Defender Clinic
- Pretrial Litigation
- Criminal Practice: Advanced
- Evidence
- International Criminal Law
- Juvenile Law
- Scientific Evidence & Opinion
- Terrorism and Criminal Law
- Trial Advocacy
- Trial Advocacy: Advanced
Possible Bar Associate Membership Options:
- OSBA Criminal Justice Committee
- ABA Criminal Justice Section
Certificate in International Law
Required course:
- International Law
- Comparative Administrative Law
- Comparative Constitutional Law
- Immigration and Nationality Law
- International Business Transactions
- International Commercial Arbitration Law
- International Comparative Law
- International Criminal Law
- International Tax
- Legal Issues in Transitional Democracies - Public Law
- Legal Issues in Transitional Democracies - Private Law
- International Human Rights Law
- International and Comparative Law of NGO's
- Terrorism and Criminal Law
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA International Law Committee
- ABA Section of International Law
Certificate in Public Law and Policy
Required course:
- Public Law and the Legal Process
- Administrative Law
- Climate Change: Science and Law
- Creating Families: Marriage, Adoption and Non-Traditional Alternatives
- Federal Courts
- Legislative Process & Drafting
- Civil Rights
- Employment Discrimination Law
- Environmental Law & Policy
- Immigration & Nationality Law
- Labor Law
- Municipal Corporations
- Environmental, Governmental and/or Municipal Government Clinic
- Comparative Administrative Law
- Comparative Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law I
- Competitveness and Corruption
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Administrative Law Committee
- OSBA Environmental Law Committee
- ABA Administrative Law & Reg. Practice Section
- ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources
Certificate in Civil Litigation
Required courses:
- Civil Procedure I & II (or summer course)
- Trial Advocacy
- Alternative Dispute Resolution
- Pretrial Litigation
- Complex Litigation
- Conflict of Laws
- Domestic Relations
- Evaluation and Proof of Personal Injury Damages
- Evidence
- Federal Courts
- ONU Legal Clinic
- Products Liability
- Remedies
- Scientific Evidence & Opinion
- Trial Advocacy: Advanced
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Federal Courts & Practice Committee
- OSBA Negligence Law Committee
- OSBA Litigation Section
- ABA Litigation Section
- ABA Tort Trial Insurance Practice Section
Certificate in Taxation
Required Course:
- Federal Income Tax
- Estate Planning
- Business Planning
- International Taxation
- Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders
- Taxation of Partnerships & Partners
- Taxation of Estates, Gifts & Trusts
- Taxation: Research Methods
- Non-Profit Organizations
- Corporate Transactional Clinic
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- None
Certificate in Real Property Law
Required Courses:
- Property I & II
- Real Estate Finance and Mortgage Law
- Environmental Law and Policy
- Estates, Wills, & Trusts
- Estate Planning
- Taxation of Estates, Gifts & Trusts
- Real Estate Residential Conveyances
- Oil and Gas Law
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Natural Resources Committee
- OSBA Real Property Law Section
- ABA Real Property, Trust, & Estate Section
Certificate in Small Firm General Practice
Required Courses:
- Law Office Economics and Management
- Three credit hours in the Civil, Criminal, Municipal or Transactional Clinic
- Real Estate: Residential Conveyances
- Trial Advocacy
- Domestic Relations
- Juvenile Law
- Estates, Wills, & Trusts
- Criminal Procedure
- Federal Income Tax
- Judicial Decision Making
Possible Bar Association Membership Options:
- OSBA Family Law Committee
- ABA Solo, Small Firm & General Practice Division


text:
Randy Travis remained in critical condition Friday (July 12) at a Plano, Texas, hospital after suffering a stroke and undergoing surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.
According to an update from the Baylor Health Care System, the surgery was completed shortly before 11 p.m. Wednesday. The surgery is the latest episode in a series of medical problems Travis has experienced.
The 54-year-old singer-songwriter sought emergency treatment Sunday and was diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, a heart condition caused by a virus. Viral cardiomyopathy is a disease of heart muscle in which the heart is abnormally enlarged, weakening the heart's ability to pump blood.
His publicist said the stroke was a complication of congestive heart failure.
Travis was first admitted to Baylor Medical Center at McKinney, Texas, located approximately 35 miles from his ranch in Tioga, Texas. His condition was stabilized at Baylor McKinney before he was transferred to the Heart Hospital Baylor Plano in Plano, Texas, for more specialized care.
In a video announcement Wednesday morning, doctors said Travis had been in excellent health before developing a viral upper respiratory illness three weeks ago. Prior to the stroke, doctors said his condition had stabilized and was showing signs of improvement.
After signing to Warner Bros Records in 1985, Travis scored 16 No. 1 singles, including "On the Other Hand," "Forever and Ever, Amen" , "Diggin' Up Bones," "I Won't Need You Anymore," "I Told You So," Deeper Than the Holler," "Is It Still Over" and "Three Wooden Crosses."
Inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1986, he won Grammys for best male country vocal performances in 1987 and 1988.


text:
Each screen in Minitab has a help button you can click for additional help. This document is intended to get you to the right place in Minitab, not be a comprehensive guide of how to use it.
Used to summarize numerical data, find the mean, standard deviation, variance, etc. The by variables is an optional variable used to group the data. Use the statistics button to change what values are displayed. In particular, we will often turn on the variance.
Almost all of the graphs except for the graphical summary are found here.
This is a graph with multiple plots that show a lot of the information about a numerical variable. It includes a numerical summary, histogram, confidence interval, and test for normality.
Used to transform the data or generate new variables.
Create a list of numbers without having to type them all in.
Create a sequence using text. Separate your words with spaces. If there are spaces within your phrases, enclose them in quotes (Alien "American Pie" Jaws).
Useful for simulation purposes and sampling.
Find binomial probabilities. The cumulative probability is the area to the left of the value and the probability is the chance of getting that value.
Used to graph a distribution.
Find normal probabilities. This is easier done with the online probability calculator, but Minitab does allow you to specify a different mean and standard deviation.
Almost everything we do in this unit is a choice under basic statistics.
Used to graph a distribution. Choose view probability when creating hypothesis testing graphs.
Don't confuse this with the probability distribution plot. This is used to see whether a group of data has a particular distribution. We are usually checking for normality. The data has the distribution you're testing for if the points basically fall along the line with no systematic patterns or outliers.
Use this to perform the chi-square goodness of fit test.
Use this to perform a test for independence. Click the chi-square button and select the chi-square analysis.
Use this to perform a one-way ANOVA test. There should be two columns, one for the factor (grouping) variable and one for the response (numerical) variable. If you created a variable for each group, then use the unstacked test.
Use this to perform a two-way ANOVA test. There should be three columns, two grouping variables for the row and column factors and one for the response (numerical) variable.
Used to graph two paired numerical variables.
Used to perform correlation between two or more variables.
Used to perform both simple and multiple linear regression.


text:
Best YouTube Moments in Oregon Basketball: The NomineesPosted by Connor Pelton (@ConnorPelton28) on January 16th, 2014
Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with Oregon.
[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won't be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]
Up until this point, all of our videos have just been single plays. This Oregon nominee features our first real "moment," which begins with point guard Aaron Brooks dropping a pull-up jumper to put the Ducks ahead of top-ranked UCLA by two with 13.4 seconds remaining. After a Bruins timeout, the Oregon defense stiffened, forcing a wild Josh Shipp three-point attempt at the buzzer that fell well short. Pandemonium ensued as the Pit Crew student section seemed to spill onto the court from all four corners.
This moment starts with the Ducks on defense in game three of the CBI Championship series, with the score tied and 33 seconds left. The ball was inbounded to Creighton guard Antoine Young, who got lost "deep in the woods," backing up across the non-existent half-court line that was missing from the brand new Matthew Knight Arena in its initial season. Oregon got the ball back on the violation, and with two seconds left on the clock, E.J. Singler banked in a runner to give the Ducks the CBI title. Once again, the Pit Crew was thrown into a frenzy, celebrating wildly as first-year coach Dana Altman knocked off his former team in the tournament final.
This is as close as Oregon basketball will ever get to "The Pick." With four seconds left and the score even at 68-68 in overtime, guard Damyean Dotson poked away a bad Utah pass and took it the length of the court, slamming the ball home to win the game and keeping the Ducks at a perfect 13-0 record.
If you have any other nominees, put them in the comments and we will add it to the poll. Voting closes a week from now, and the top vote-getter advances to the tournament of champions.


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Re: Lunar LanternBonechewer Server Here, looking for trade.
Posted: January 28, 2012 1:00:00 AM | Edits: 0 | Rating: -3
Re: Panda CubI had 2 WoW accounts, one being the C.E. I merged the two accounts to a single BattleNet account over a year ago. Anyways, I made a new toon on the C.E. account and at Level 10 did an account to account transfer. When the new toon arrived I was able to send all three C.E. pets to my primary toon thus getting 3 pets from the C.E. Now my primary toon has the Panda, Mini Diablo, and Zergling.
Posted: November 04, 2011 12:00:16 AM | Edits: 0 | Rating: +3
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Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Coconut and rum cake
Spiced pork belly
Make up a spiced paste that consists of:
I bunged my bit of belly in the oven at 220C for 20 mins and then at 180C for 50 minutes with ten minutes' rest. If I hadn't had the paste on the top, which I didn't want to burn the shit out of, I'd have roasted it full pelt for maybe 30 minutes and then rested for 20 or something.
Lamb sweetbreads
This is what they look like raw and skinned. They smell faintly of fish. But don't let any of this put you off. Cooked, they are creamy and interesting and luscious.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Baba Ga-who?
small bunch parsley
small bunch mint
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Mushroom quinoa with goat's cheese
Home alone
It's always the way when Giles goes anywhere: I rather look forward to having the place to myself without his constant clattering, singing, shouting, cackling and raging, conducting his professional feuds and world-domination strategies in his massive office next door, fielding phone calls and hammering away at his laptop, which always sounds, when he is in full-cry, like a troop of teenaged boys galloping down the stairs.
He leaves the house after consulting me eight times about every single thing he's packing "Are you sure? Are you sure the red socks and not the striped ones? Sure? They're going in... Sure?" and looking briefly miserable on the doorstep. After I close the door I punch the air and shout "YES" and vow to leave the bed unmade, do no washing up, watch Judge Judy all day and drink the kind of cheap white wine that burns holes through carpet.
Within an hour I'm a gibbering wreck, wide-eyed at my spooky, silent house and jumping at small noises.
And I don't don't know what the hell to eat. Working withing Giles' strict things-we-can-and-can't-eat thing means a trip to Waitrose is a logistical assault. Nothing non-organic, basically no fish at all because it's all endangered, nothing processed, nothing from abroad. It's why we're constantly eating roast chicken. Sometimes I think to myself "Gosh, wouldn't it be easy to go shopping if I didn't have to cook for Giles and all his arseholish ways" but then I GO to Waitrose as I did just now and I can't find, or think of, anything that I might want to eat. Not one thing.
So I'm going to make a chocolate cake instead. Definitely something I can't do with him around.
Last night
But I suspect from the way that she giggled in a slightly embarrassed way after delivering some of the more risque lines that there was a producer off screen going "Sorry, sorry - this is supposed to be a SELFISH day. Can you say selfish and indulgent a bit more, please? Thanks."
I don't know, there was just something a bit contrived about it, like telly people can't fathom that you could just have a show called "Cooking with Sophie" where she makes some stuff and says "This is quite nice for breakfast." It has to be a massive themed performance, like a giant fancy-dress birthday party with clowns and a bouncy castle and a present table, rather than just jammy dodgers and crisps and a run round the garden.
And the worst thing about it was that she doesn't know how to pronounce "bruschetta", which just made me feel sad.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Rack of lamb (WITHOUT a herb crust)
Monday, 22 March 2010
How to talk to a butcher
Marrow bone and parsley salad
This is the kind of thing that I would never in a million years cook if it weren't for Giles and his not-scared-of-anything eating. It's a recipe from Fergus Henderson's seminal cookbook Nose to Tail Eating, which was published in a tiny print run in 1999.
It's a perfectly terrifying cookbook, advising on how to cook brains and brawn and pig's heads and other parts of animals you'd previously thought were totally un-eatable. Its saving grace for the amateur cook is how charmingly its written; you can tell that Fergus is a nice guy and just wants for you to do well and live a long and happy life. His exortation in his recipe for boiled gammon and carrots with parsley sauce that the sauce must be served in a jug so that guests can "express themselves" is an editorial tick that has entered into our daily cannon.
Anyway, on Saturday we went to the vastly overpriced farmer's market near us and found a butcher who was selling marrowbones for about tuppence each. (Butchers often throw them out, or give them to people to feed to their dogs, but don't let that put you off. You might be able to pick some up for free if you're more charming and brave than I am.)
We took them home and roasted them in a slightly too-hot oven for about 20 minutes. If you do this, I would advise you set your oven to about 200C and fashion little foil cups to sit the bottom of the bone in because otherwise stuff leaks out everywhere, which is a shame. Depending on the size of the marrow bone, people can eat three or four little ones and two or three big ones. You can tell the marrow bone is ready because the marrow will be sort of bouncy and slightly melted but hasn't entirely disappeared.
You serve these roasted bones with toasted sourdough and also a parsley salad, which goes like this:
1 large handful/bunch parsley, roughly chopped
small handful capers, chopped or not, up to you
half a shallot, chopped
You then dress this salad with a large squeeze of lemon and a splash of olive oil. The idea is to spread the toast with some marrow, top it with parsley and eat.
This isn't a meal, obviously, for anyone frightened of salt or fat as it's very greasy and an overindulgence can quickly make you feel queasy. But it IS delicious, modern and economical. And, I daresay, gives you a very shiny coat.
Duck and beetroot
Sometimes I surprise myself with the recipes I decide look nice. For example, this roast duck and beetroot thingy, which I picked out of Waitrose Food Illustrated the other day and tried out on Saturday, looks totally weird (doesn't help that I've put it on a black dish... should have used a white one to show up the colour). But something about it appealead to me. Often I think I'm lacking a vitamin supplied by an ingredient in the recipe. For a whole year, I went crazy for any recipe with eggs in it and I'm convinced it was because I was starved of B12.
Anyway, this is a Gordon Ramsay recipe, although these days I think when things are said to be by Gordon Ramsay they've actually been rustled up by an ambitious sous-chef and given the okay by GR via an iPhone video link.
But whoever made it up, this is jolly easy but looks pretty amazing. The sauce with the beetroot is quite sweet. Either just go with it, or reduce the sugar by a third.
For 4
800g beetroot, trimmed and peeled
100g butter
150g soft brown sugar
150ml sherry vinegar
75g sultanas (I didn't have any, so didn't use them)
4 duck breasts with skins on. All duck recipes make a huge song and dance about Gressingham duck, but Waitrose only have them smothered in all kinds of digusting sauces so I just used normal free range duck.
1 Cut the beetroot into thin slices. Melt the butter with the sugar and vinegar in a pan. When the sugar has dissolved, add the beetroot and toss to coat. Season then cover with crumpled piece of greaseproof paper. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.
2 Stir in the sultanas if using and cook for another 10-15 minutes, until the beetroot is just tender (which, with beetroot, means a bit of bite still left). If you want the sauce really syrupy, remove the beetroot and boil the liquid until it's like chocolate sauce.
3 Score the skin of the duck breasts with a sharp knife in a criss-cross pattern and season. Place skin-side down in a dry frying pan and cook gently for 8 minutes. Don't be tempted to use a non-stick frying pan because the skins won't go as crispy. Turn up the heat after the initial 8 minutes to give the skin a chance to really crisp up.
The duck breasts will stick like glue to the bottom of the pan. This is annoying, but all it means is that you have to take a slim fish slice and really get under the breasts to separate them from the bottom of the pan. If you're genuinely spooked by stuff like this you could, before you put the breasts into the pan, brush the skins with the MEREST HINT of oil. And really, I mean a tiny cat's lick.
After you flip the breasts, the recipe says to cook for another 3 minutes. This 8 min + 3 min cooking time doesn't give especially rare meat. If you want it rarer, I'd say cook for 6 + 2 mins. I guess commercial recipes don't want to recommend rare cooking times because they don't want to be accused of poisoning people.
4 Spoon the beetroot and cooking juices into the centre of a plate or onto a large serving dish. Slice the breasts up quite thick and arrange them over the top.
Friday, 19 March 2010
White sauce - experienced cooks look away
My mother, in her haste to make food for 4 children, while repairing a wall that had fallen down in the middle of the night and fixing the car, had left out two quite important steps when she was talking me through it, which I later discovered when reading a cookbook. Can't remember which.
So here we go, this is a white sauce. I'm not including exact amounts, because they don't really matter. The important thing is that you get the hang of the method and the idea.
Take a knob of butter, approximately 50g and melt it gently in a pan
Now take the pan off the heat (this is very important) and sprinkle over a tablespoon of flour. Stir in with a wooden spooon until there are no lumps. Add flour bit by bit until you have made a sort of butter-and-flour paste. Stop when it is still on the creamy side, rather than stiff and dry.
Now add about two glugs of milk and with a wooden spoon or whisk (still with the pan off the heat) mess it about until it seems more or less mixed in. A couple of little lumps don't matter.
Put the pan back on the heat and pour in the rest of the milk - eg. probably about 3/4 of a pint if you were doing a macaroni cheese for about 4-6 people.
Heat it all over a medium flame, stirring often with a whisk or a wooden spoon - or a combination of both. About three or four minutes into this, you ought to find that the sauce starts to thicken. At this point you can add cheese if you are making a cheese sauce. Either way, throw in a pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper.
After the sauce has thickened and you've added your extra ingredients cook the sauce for a bit - maybe 4 or 5 minutes or even more - over the lowest flame you've got, stirring all the time. This extra bit of cooking is what prevents the sauce from forming that horrible grainy floury texture that happens so often.
If you wander off for a minute and then come back and it's formed a skin, don't worry, just stir this all in. If for some reason your sauce turns out much more thick than you wanted it, you can add more milk.
And that ought to be that.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Flexible gratin
So I made it to Waitrose in the end and actually had a pretty nice time. I stopped to look at a cookbook I always see there, which is called "Do-Ahead Dishes for the Dinner Party Diva" or something. I had always thought it looked like my least favourite kind of cookbook - swirly cartoon drawings of stick-thin women on the front and then crappy boring recipes for roast chicken and salad dressings on the inside.
But actually, it was quite good. I flicked through and happened to land on a recipe for Pork and Ginger potstickers, which sound from the description like little Chinese dumpling things, which I've always been curious about. So, to hell with it, I thought - this book can't be that bad and I tossed it into my trolley.
Anyway, back to lunch. I decided to make a gratin. I love making gratins because they are a way of eating a meal consisting of mostly vegetables without wanting to hang yourself. I'm not one of those girls who thinks that fat and dairy are bad for you. I eat no processed food, nor do I often eat meals where carbohydrate is the focus (pasta, baked potato, rice), so I feel blithely entitled to cover everything I do eat in cream and cheese, fat and salt.
This particular gratin was a variation of one in Nigel Slater's Tender. He describes it as being a white cabbage gratin with cheese and mustard, although he then forgets to include the mustard in the recipe or the method. But it's okay, I forgave him. I'm not so mojo-less that I can't add a bit of mustard to a damned white sauce.
My take on Nigel's gratin was white cabbage based, but also included spinach, mushrooms and a lot of chopped up left over roast chicken covered with a pecorino/parmesan cheese sauce and topped off with two generous handfuls of breadcrumbs.
So, here we go:
1 pointed cabbage
6 chestnut mushrooms, chopped
2 large handfuls of spinach
chopped up leftover roast chicken (or anything if you have it and not if not)
pecorino and parmesan
salt and pepper
2 large handfuls breadcrumbs
enough white sauce to cover the lot. Have we talked about white sauce? I kind of assume that if I can make it, anyone can - but if you can't, just shout.
1 - Boil the cabbage for 2 mins in salted water
2 - melt some butter in a pan and briskly toss round the chopped mushrooms and spinach until wilted but not totally surrendered
2- Make up a white sauce, using about 300ml of milk and then throw in a very large handful of chopped or grated pecorino and two large pinches of parmesan, salt, pepper and some cream if you've got it
3 - Add a level teaspoon of dijon mustard and stir until the cheese has melted
4 - spread the cabbage out on the bottom of a gratin dish, then arrange over that the spinach and mushrooms, then over that the chicken if using, then the white sauce and finally the breadcrumbs.
5 - shove in a 180C oven for 20-25 mins
Cooking fatigue
I think this is might be what they call cooking fatigue, although it's more commonly experienced by working mothers of three than by lazy freelancers who can't be bothered to go to Waitrose. It's also maybe because of my diet. I rarely find exciting recipes that conform to my diet plans that aren't things you've heard about before: quinoa, broad bean salad, ceviche. Yawn.
Or what happens is that I decide to "make things up", which are almost always disgusting because while I'm an OK cook, I'm no kind of chef. Maybe this is it? Maybe this is the end of my cooking "journey"? Now I know that if I follow a recipe it'll probably turn out okay and I've conquered (mostly) my fear of mass catering all that's left is to sit about eating leftover roast chicken until I die.
But before I flake out completely I scoured Waitrose Food Illustrated and today's the table, which if you don't know is the Times' new food section thing and found some food that I can be almost bothered to slop downstairs and put my apron on for:
Barbequed squid
Roast pork with a muscovado crust
Lamb tagine
All that's missing are all the ingredients. Do they sell mojo at Waitrose?
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Kale with garlic and chilli
I didn't die, or get bored with writing the blog, or drink too many hot toddies and then drive into a lampost, while aiming for Waitrose. I went to France - the South of France. To Nice where it is nice. To kvetch about the wedding in French. "Sacre bleu! La robe! La robe N'EST PAS FINI!" And also, it felt like, to eat nothing but baguettes and cheese. Although there was one cheese that was so uric that it tasted exactly like I imagine pissy knickers might taste.
A lot of the cooking was done by my friend Julia Churchill, a brilliant home cook who really ought to be writing about cooking but she's too busy being some kind of high-powered literary agent. Fact about Julia: she once cooked a vegan lemon tart for Lou Reed.
So I came back from France late on Sunday night and dived back into my no-booze all-greens diet. Whoopee!!
Above is some of Monday night's supper (out of shot is a huge, meltingly roasted chicken) and what you're looking at really is the green stuff, which is kale not the carrots, although they were nice too.
I've cooked kale before but I was doing it wrong - I'm pretty sure I just boiled it and plonked it on a plate and it was absolutely disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Giles is a huge greens freak so I grudgingly bought some more last week but was secretly hoping that it would just sit in the larder and go gross and we'd eventually throw it away. But the game was up and he insisted on cooking it last night properly.
This meant me pinching yet another idea off Henry, who braises kale with chilli and garlic. G heated some oil in a large heavy frying pan-thing and added lots of chopped chilli and garlic. Then he added the kale (no water or anything!) and cooked it until it all sort of wilted down like spinach, for about 5-10 minutes. And then we ate it, feeling like such good little citizens and it was actually really nice. Not as good as a hot toddy, but much better than pissy French cheese.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
So, last night, I had a disaster of epic proportions, involving over-salting a thai pork thing to such a degree that even Giles, the salt monster himself, half-man, half salt-lick, went "Burlagh!!" when he tasted it. What a waste. Whither my cooking mojo, damnit?
So I approached the kitchen feeling depressed as hell at lunchtime today and stood for a long time staring at a shrink-wrapped packed of mackerel fillets (oily fish! So good for you! AND SO SCARY) and wondering whether to just end it all with my Victorinox paring knife.
But I didn't. Instead I boiled up some quinoa and mixed it in with some baby spinach leaves, dijon mustard dressing and shredded mackerel and ate it feeling holy. As diet food goes, it's pretty hardcore. But I'm nothing if not a show-off.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
March cold cure-all
Everyone seems to be ill at the moment, except me. So I thought I'd post a reminder to everyone that the best cure for a nasty cold is a hot toddy and 12 hours in bed.
This is how my mum used to make them for me. (That is my mum, above, in the pink Crocs).
1 bottle whisky
1 lemon
1 bowl sugar
1 hot kettle, about 5 mins off the boil
1 mug or glass
Stand next to the kettle and surround yourself with the ingredients. Start with a finger of whisky and half a spoonful of sugar, a squeeze of lemon and a slug of hot water.
Mix artistically. Taste gingerly. Add ingredients as neccessary until you have something hot, sweet and lemony with a boozy kick.
Whether or not you choose to take two painkillers of your choosing with this is entirely up to you. Obviously, I would never recommend mixing painkillers with alcohol, because it is dangerous.
Anyway, drink this and then go to bed for 12 hours. Everyone always laughs at me and calls me a weakling when I go to bed as soon as I've got a sore throat but my great Uncle Jim always did it and he was in the army and lived until he was 100, so if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. And you.
Liver and spinach
Chicken liver, turned into a pate OR cooked by Giles in a rich sauce of tomato and paprika: tick.
1 packet organic chicken livers, washed and sorted for gross bits of sinew or any green bits (gall bladder! Augh!)
1 - Sweat the onions gently for about 10-15 minutes and then throw in the garlic. Cook that until you start to smell garlic and then throw in the livers.
Instead of having a brownie afterwards, I had an apple. *SMUG*
How not to drink
I'm always a bit freaked out by those "Are you an alcoholic?" surveys, because whenever I do them, and answer them honestly, it always turns out that I ought to get myself to the Priory immediately. Do I drink by myself? Yes. Do I drink to forget my problems? Of course. Do I find it difficult to stop after one drink? Who doesn't? Do you scour the house in a rage for alcohol after a particularly trying day? (Ok I made that one up. But the answer is yes.)
There are two times in my life when I've realised that I am going to end up actually an alcoholic if I didn't stop drinking immediately. There are alcoholics on both sides of my family, so I'm as "at risk" as a ming vase on the M4.
The first one was when I was about 23 and working in a seriously lowly job and then my boyfriend ran off with another girl. Which I was doubly pissed off about because before he went out with me he was GAY - running off with a boy I could take but a girl was just beyond the pale. I would come home to my parents' house from work and sit at our kitchen table while my father, god bless him, would pour red wine down my throat until I passed out. I must say, it worked, because I didn't feel nearly so much like killing myself when I was drunk.
In fact, I wrote 40,000 words of a really excellent comic novel, mostly in those evenings when I was drunk. Well, I say it's excellent but the first agent I showed it to hated it and the second didn't even write back. Bastard. And the restraining order means I can't EVEN push a molotov cocktail through his damn letterbox.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, then one day my parents went on holiday and I was left in the house by myself. I wasn't so crazy about cooking and shopping back then and so after three days there was no more alcohol left in the house and I RAGED around it trying to find something to drink. As I stood in the laundry, contemplating a bottle of cherry brandy, I realised I needed to stop immediately.
The second time was when I was working as a reporter for the Londoner's Diary, which is the gossip column in the Evening Standard. I was, for weeks at a time, either drunk or hungover. When I found myself slipping out for a Bloody Mary the second the afternoon edition had been sent (back when the Standard had different editions) I thought I should stop.
I mean, I was hardly Anne Robinson, or George Best, but you don't need to hit rock bottom to be drinking too much, or too regularly. Anyway, my point is that stopping drinking is really boring, but I learnt that it's basically all about replacing the FIRST drink of the evening. (Not a new concept, but I'm pleased with how well it works).
If you want to have an alcohol-free evening, all you need to do is replace the first drink you would normally have of the evening with something else. The plain fact is, I'm normally just thirsty. I'm not one of those people who drinks 18 pints of water a day. I would, but I'm too busy drinking 18 cups of tea. So, my dummy evening drink is usually a virgin Mary or a plain tonic water with ice and lemon.
My brain is so incredibly stupid that it totally thinks it has been given a little drinky and Giles' stash of Chardonnay is left untroubled. If I can just stop Giles from pounding down the stairs at 6pm, rubbing his hands together, doing a little dance and shouting "Let's have a BEER!!!" then I might even make it to the altar sober.
Diet time
Monday, 8 March 2010
How not to make hot cross buns
Ok fine. It's not Delia's fault, it's my fault. I've got a fan oven and I always forget to adjust the temperature down by about 10-20C to prevent the oven setting fire to whatever it is I'm baking.
I also blithely igored her warning not to use easy-blend dried yeast, which I think may have contributed to the rather hard outer-shells of my buns. So nul points to moi.
Despite being burnt and rock-hard, these are mega-tasty. They take about 2 hours to make and if you've got any interest in trying them out, this is a very good recipe, flavour-wise. They really do taste just like hot cross buns.
You can find the recipe here: http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/sweet/hot-cross-buns.html
Just remember to turn the temperature down a bit if you've got a fan oven...
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Egg poaching for dummies
So I was intrigued when I was flicking through Peter Gordon's latest cookbook, fusion, by a recipe where he poaches eggs in a little cling-film parcel. I doubt it's because he, like me, can't poach eggs, but because he's poaching them with black vinegar (I had to look this up - it's a kind of Chinese rice vinegar), truffle oil, chilli and spring onion.
It's a pretty neat idea and it works (although the above picture is of just a plain egg poached in cling film, without the chilli and other exciting things) - kind of. I found that the 8 minutes cooking time PG recommended was a bit too long, but that, at a guess, was because my eggs weren't hot-off-the-hay-fresh.
Anyway here is the recipe for the poached eggs, found on p. 26 of Peter Gordon's excellent and exotic book. He serves the egg as a sort of starter-thing, on a bed of parmesan mashed potato and it goes like this:
1 - Unroll about 40 cm of clingfilm and fold it over on itself to make a double thickness. Line a teacup with the film and put in the tsp of vinegar and the truffle oil.
This method allows you to scatter all sorts of things that don't need a lot of cooking (or actually, even cooked things, little snippets of crispy bacon?) in with the egg and then poach it altogether in a little parcel, which looks pretty cool and clever. Which, come on admit it, is what we all long to be.
Friday, 5 March 2010
Nothing to do with food...
Flossie the Hamburgler
She said to me the other day in the brutal, but matter-of-fact way she has: "Your blog is really lame. You need more photos and a search button and a sitemeter." She gave me a bored look as she casually re-directed $0.001 off the paycheque of every United States citizen with a social security number into her Barclays student current account. Then she popped another brownie into her mouth and said "and the name is just stupid. You're nearly 30. Just call it Recipe Rifle. I mean, that's a crap name too, but better than Recipe GIRL." She looked me up and down in that judgmental way that thin people or French people do. I mean, she's not French, but you get my meaning. She is thin, though. For such a giant asshole, she is very thin indeed.
So there we are - it's a bit different. I must say, it's spooky to be able to see where all my differnt visitors are coming from. Or actually, maybe it's nice. It means you are real, not just figments of my imagination.
Florence has a hamburger recipe that she wants to share with you all, which is good timing because I wanted to do something - now barbeque weather isn't out of the realms of imaginations - on burgers. So when she gets off her fat lazy student butthole and passes it on to me, it will, verily, be yours, too.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Good reason to buy an apple corer
This works very well. All the sugar melts and escapes out into the roasting pan, but when you put the apples onto the plate or bowl, you can spoon the melted sugar out and heap it over the top.
(for 6)
6 cooking apples
120g butter
6 tbsp raisins
4 tbsp brown sugar
1 - Heat oven to 190C. Core the apples and score with a knife around the equator of each apple.
2 - Stuff sugar, raisings and a knob of butter into each apple
3 - Bake for 25-30 mins and serve with cream or creme fraiche
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Bad mood buns
So I'm in this bad mood, and I'm raging my way back home, on the tube, off the tube, past the stupid Kentish Town Forum "No I don't want tickets to fucking Groove Armada, go away AND DIE!!!!!" And I stamped into the house after flicking a V sign at the horrible black cat who shits in our garden and aimed a kick at it, but it took off (I wasn't REALLY going to kick it) and threw off all my clothes until I was down to leggings and a vest and my apron and did two things.
1) I started to cook a stew (at 9.15pm at night)
2) Started to comfort eat
Both of these things were surprising to me. Most of the time, I feel like my role as a cook-foodie-person is completely bogus. I don't *really* know the first thing about food and couldn't give a rat's ass for bumming Borough market or finding a supplier for the most "marvellous BURRRRAAAAAATA darling" and at pretty much any time of the day if you said to me "Shall we go to McDonald's" I'd say "Start the car, I'll go and put on some stretchy trousers."
But on the tube on the way home, raging away, all I wanted to do when I got home was to sit down with a large stack of cookbooks. Maybe make some pancakes. DEFINITELY do a stew with those lamb shanks before they get a bit tired. And it was then that I thought that maybe I'm not a total fraud. Again and again, I return to the stove. Not usually to eat, but to bash pans, chop, stir angrily, slide something into a roiling oven.
But then I started comfort eating aswell - a worrying turn of events. I don't comfort eat. Ever. I eat when I am hungry and stop when I'm not. I'll eat some chocolate because I fancy it. I never eat just because I'm pissed off - but I did tonight. FOUR BROWNIES. And a fifth isn't out of the realms of possibility. I wonder what it all means?
Anyway, I was supposed to make hot cross buns ages ago but keep being distracted by stupid pointless things that take up all my time and piss me off. And I've just looked at the recipe and I haven't got two really significant ingredients, so a flour-based celebration of the crucifixion and reurrection of Jesus Christ is just going to have to wait until I can get down to Waitrose for some mixed peel.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Meat fear
I don't know how it happened, but I think it started after I learned how to drive and was able to take myself to Waitrose. It was the meat aisle that did it. All those rows and rows of plastic packets of formerly happy bouncing lambs and docile cows and perky chickens. And I felt dizzy and ill and every time I go there now, I have to rush through.
Giles has very little sympathy for me on this. His argument is that you should always, always go to a local butcher whose meat comes from little farms and isn't sold in plastic cartons. I agree with him, but the butcher doesn't also sell deoderant and light bulbs and bok choi. And even then, butchers have started freaking me out too. I'm finding it increasingly hard to prepare a chicken for the oven without feeling just awful and guilty and SAD. What is wrong with me? I don't want to be a vegetarian, I really don't. I don't think it's neccessary.
It's not like I don't buy absolutely the most expensive, premium, grass-fed, free-range stuff I can. But my uncle used to have a farm and it was an excellent small farm in the Welsh hills, where old-fashioned husbandry was practised. Fresian cows, free to roam the blustery hills, patted and cared-for, used to hang their heads over the garden wall and look at you with their big brown eyes; we hunted for hens' eggs in the wood where the chickens scratched and buck-buckawed. And the process of slaughtering the animals was still fucking barbaric.
So I don't know what to do. I think the answer is to buy less meat. Or get therapy.


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Two American soldiers were shot and killed last week in Afghanistan at least ostensibly because of outrage over "Koran burning."
Two more Americans were killed yesterday as the protests continued.
In other words, four Americans (and many other people) have now been murdered because of an inadvertent "insult" to some old books.
If you haven't read the details about the Koran burning incident, you might assume that American soldiers created a huge pile of Korans, poured gasoline all over them, and then cheered and fired their guns in the air as they set it ablaze.
That would be the sort of insensitive, bigoted act that might be expected to lead to protests (if not murders, which are a crime of a whole different order).
But that's not what happened.
What happened, at least judging from initial news reports, is that Americans wanted to stop some Korans from being used to pass notes at a prison... so they threw them away. And the trash was then burned.
That's not a symbolic gesture. And it's presumably hardly the first time that old Korans have been thrown away. (How else are you supposed to get rid of them?)
The treatment of the trash probably did not enter into the minds of the folks who threw the Korans away. And they probably had no idea how this treatment of old books might be viewed.
So the insult, if any, was inadvertent.
But, despite an apology from the President of the United States, the retribution for this inadvertent insult has now led to four murders and counting.
Murders. Human beings intentionally shot and killed.
No matter what moral universe you live in, thinking that an act like this somehow justifies premeditated murders is outrageous.
And if that can't be understood by reasonable Muslims and the leaders of Afghanistan--the latter of whom should now be extending their deepest and most sincere apologies for this abhorrent conduct--we really are screwed.
(Perhaps, as some are arguing, the recent protests are really about pent-up frustration at the American occupation and at how many innocent Afghanistan civilians have been killed by Americans in recent years. If so, that's certainly a more justified reason to protest. That said, it's pretty hard to find an American or American soldier who actually wants to be occupying Afghanistan.)
SEE ALSO: Bombing Iran Would Be A Terrible Idea--And It Wouldn't Even Work


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Cable Assemblies from Remke Industries
Dual Key Shielded to Coupler Micro-Link Plug Assembly, TPE, Female, 4 pole, 6.6', 22 AWG -- 404A0066AA9
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The Remke family of Micro-Link connectors is available in four different materials - PVC, PUR, TPE and Rubber - to protect against harsh conditions as well as environmental & temperature concerns. This family of connectors, cable assemblies and receptacles offer NEMA 6 and IP 68 protections in 2 thru 6 pole configurations, male & female, straight or 90 degree, single or dual keyway styles.
Features of the family of Micro-Link Molded Connectors & Cordsets include:
- Pin configurations used by major U.S. & European sensor manufacturers
- Machined contacts(instead of stamped contacts) for highly accurate tolerances
- Gold-plated contacts for enhanced corrosion resistance and conductivity
- High-impact resistant contact carriers for longer product life
- Vibration-resistant design so the connector will stay securely fastened to the sensor or mating receptacle
- Fast & easy replacement of 12mm to 18mm sensors, switches & control components
- Shielded and splitter styles
Micro-Link connectors have been designed for low amperage AC or DC control systems and are compatible with the pin configurations used by major U.S.and European sensor manufacturers.
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Category 5E Shielded Right Angle Patch Cable, Right Angle Right/Right Angle Up, Black 2.0 ft -- TRD815SRA12BLK-2
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On one hand, this is something I should have done a long time ago. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a step down to me, mentally.
I finally made up a torrent for that Ubuntu GTK 1.2 Remix, the one I "released" around October, and has been downloaded about 500 times since then, if the download ticker on Filefront can be trusted.
I should have done it quite a while ago because it makes a lot more sense to seed it as a torrent, from here in my house, than to rely on an external site to host the ISO. So why didn't I do it before now?
Just lazy, I guess. That and I anticipated updating it, maybe starting from scratch from 8.04.2, and correcting the niggling little inconsistencies that I knew weren't showstoppers, but weren't quite perfect.
But the software itself needs no updates, and the core system — which is to say, Ubuntu itself — needs very little maintenance aside from a system update, if you have it installed. And since Hardy will be around into the next decade, I was never really "motivated" to rebuild the entire system and recreate an ISO.
It's true, there are a lot of housekeeping points that could be corrected, but I only use it to troubleshoot old hardware, and the little things I can correct manually. As can any other intermediate-level Linux user who thinks it worthy of installing.
But to be honest (perhaps a little too honest), I'm not thrilled with it any longer. I had two epiphanies in the time between October and this morning, and those ephiphanies made the entire experiment less attractive than ever.
The first was that a graphical environment may not be what's best for an old, old system. GTK2 on a 450Mhz machine is great. At 100Mhz, it's abominable. GTK1.2 is wicked fast at 450Mhz. At 100Mhz its slow as molasses, as my American friends say.
But convert that entire graphical system into something terminalish but still X-based, and now the entire machine is screaming along at the speed of light (or at least as close as it will ever get).
Awesome and terminal applications at 100Mhz are a giant step forward over GTK1.2 applications performancewise — and featurewise. Nothing GTK1.2 is likely to see software improvements, but those terminal programs are just as popular now as ever. And if Awesome-plus-X is good, dvtm and the framebuffer can promote a machine from garbage-can dweller to a ship of the line.
The second epiphany was that, realistically speaking, my bizarre hybridization of DSL and Ubuntu wasn't really that great. Hold it up next to something like Puppy Linux or SliTaz, and that 187.4Mb ISO is rather … weak. 😳
Other people are doing a much better job tackling the low end of the technological spectrum than I am, and I see no need to duplicate efforts. Sure, my own "rendition" of Ubuntu is unique in its own way, but it's not particularly persuasive.
And to be honest, if I need to work in a live environment, I'm more inclined to grab the Puppy Linux disc or my SliTaz mini-ISO, than I am to burn my personal Ubuntu remix and boot that. I do use it, occasionally, but its usefulness to me has paled in comparison to other people's products.
Anyway, for those reasons I finally made up a torrent for the ISO, mostly so I can seed it myself and stop babysitting the hosted file. I don't plan on updating it or rebuilding it at all in the future, and I'll probably shift or move that page down rather than keep it in the site navigation.
Whatever happens, please feel free to experiment with it or upon it; if you pull down the torrent now you'll probably be downloading directly from my 100Mhz Pentium running rtorrent on Crux, although I see that it has been reseeded elsewhere, so it has already propagated. Whether that's good or bad, remains to be seen. … 😉


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|Cheapest Way
|Bus — $127
|Fastest Way
|Bus — 1d 6h 48min
|Eco-Friendly Way
|Bus — 171 lb CO2
|Available Modes
|2 modes — bus and by car
|1,110 miles
It's 1110 miles between Spring Hill to Monterrey. On a typical day, it might take between 18h 49min and 19h 46min from Spring Hill to Monterrey under normal conditions. If traffic is heavy, it could take around 20h 42min and costs will only go up due to traffic and congestion to drive to Monterrey by car. In these situations, we would highly recommend public transit if available.
We estimate driving cost by using a 20 mpg fuel economy, fuel costing $2.70 per US gallon, the one-way cost of the drive, excluding tolls, may be about $149.
Because Monterrey is so far away from Spring Hill, we recommend simply booking a flight. Other options to Monterrey do exist, but going by plane will save you valuable time. Book as soon as you can, as there may be limited availability.
For these medium length trips, it's important to book your tickets as soon as possible. While there are bus or by car transportation options available, the sooner to book the better. While prices for buses or trains might not fluctuate as much as flights, their availability certainly will. It's recommended to book these flights at least 2 weeks away, but even more if you are able.


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When: 7pm Every Tuesday Night @ HacDC
A night to talk about security and privacy related things and to teach others about how to protect themselves online. We reference the 7-layer OSI model in the context of security and engage in productively paranoid activities.
Helpful resources:
- Prism Break: Stop reporting your online activities to the American government with these free alternatives to proprietary software.
- Tails: A live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity.
- UnlistMy.Info: Find out which top Online sites store data about you, and tell them to unlist your info.
Red Pills:


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The basics
· Kansas City Wizards (2-3-1, seven points) vs Chicago Fire (2-3-2, eight points)
· Chicago leads the all-time series with a 20-9-7 record
Game info
· 8:30 ET at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas City, Kan.
· TV: Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports Español
What's at stake?
A jolt of confidence. After mixed results to start the season, Chicago and Kansas City are currently enduring rough stretches that have left them in the middle of the Eastern Conference standings. The Fire was embarrassed 4-1 in Toronto last weekend, and the Wizards fell 2-1 to previously winless D.C. United in their last action. A result would go a long way to restoring each side's swagger.
Last meeting
The last time these two teams saw each other, Peter Vermes was managing his first game after Curt Onalfo was relieved of his duties. The Fire were also reeling after a locker-room confrontation between Bakary Soumare and Denis Hamlett. Short-handed Chicago won 2-0 on goals from the now-departed Chris Rolfe andMike Banner, and Kansas City didn't put up much of a fight. Marco Pappa was a force in that game, and will try to repeat that performance this weekend.
Heroes & Villains
Brian McBride vs. Jimmy Conrad — Playing on a small field should only highlight McBride's strength in the air. With so little space to exploit, the Fire will look for McBride to receive the ball, hold it and link up with his advancing teammates. Conrad's job will be disrupt that rhythm, keep the ball from the Chicago veteran and win as many balls in the air as possible. The matchup should only be renewed on dead-ball situations in which both represent their side's best options to score.
Andrew Dykstra vs. the Wizards sputtering attack — Transitioning to Dykstra between the pipes hasn't been completely worry-free for the Fire, and he figures to be tested against a Kansas City squad starved for goals. The Wizards have only scored at home this season, but their luck in front of the net has dried up during the last three games. With Davy Arnaud likely missing out on the action because of injury, Ryan Smith, Kei Kamara and Josh Wolff need to put the young goalkeeper in tough positions for Kansas City to earn three points.
Stat that makes you go "Hmm …"
The Wizards were held scoreless for more than 360 consecutive minutes over the course of four matches until Kei Kamara scored in stoppage time against D.C.
He said it
"We're kind of on that fence right now. We're almost at that tipping point as to when it's going to start coming together." -- Kansas City manager Peter Vermes


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LITTLE ROCK — There is no chance that Arizona or Syracuse or Wichita State will be unbeaten when the NCAA Tournament concludes April 7 in Jerry Jones' palace.
LITTLE ROCK — There is no chance that Arizona or Syracuse or Wichita State will be unbeaten when the NCAA Tournament concludes April 7 in Jerry Jones' palace.
The numbers are stacked against the only three college teams without a blemish, and although they would never admit it, coaches Sean Miller, Jim Boeheim and Gregg Marshall wouldn't mind losing one between now and the start of the NCAA on March 18. A bullseye grows larger and heavier with each W.
Just last season, Louisville won 11 in a row to get to 16-1 before a stumble against Syracuse initiated a three-game skid. The Cardinals lost once more a couple of weeks later and then won 16 straight and the national championship.
I always thought Arkansas' loss to Kentucky in the second round of the SEC tournament was the best thing that could have happened to the 1994 Razorbacks, who were on a 12-game roll heading for Memphis and the league tournament. At 1-1, Arkansas returned to Fayetteville to get ready for a 6-0 run through the NCAA.
Although Indiana had an extremely difficult draw in the 1976 NCAA Tournament on its way to the last perfect record by a college team, the Hoosiers did not have to deal with a few obstacles facing the triumvirate that is 60-0:
—There were only 32 teams in the Tournament in 1976 and 5-0 was enough.
—There was no Big Ten postseason tournament when the Hoosiers were 32-0 and the conference tournament is the perfect trap for a team that completes the regular season unbeaten. In the tournament, lower seeds are desperate to escape the NCAA bubble and nothing works better than beating a No. 1 seed. Even the top seed usually has to win three tournament games to take home the trophy and that may include beating a team for the third time — ask Georgetown about the 1985 championship and trying for 3-0 vs. Villanova.
—There is far more talent available these days and the shot clock and 3-point shot initiated in the mid-80s enables dozens of teams to prevail in one 40-minute contest.
Since the turn of the century, Kentucky's 2012 team is the only national champion with as few as two losses. Kansas lost three in 2008. Every other champion has lost at least four and UConn lost nine in 2011.
On Thursday night, when three top 25 teams fell to unranked opponents, Arizona and Syracuse won on the road. Arizona trailed Utah in the second half before a 14-2 spurt. Syracuse got past Wake Forest despite making 3-of-14 3s and 22-of-33 free throws — numbers that will sink a team sooner or later.
Boeheim laid the groundwork for that first loss when said, "You're not going to make those plays all the time down the stretch … be down and go 10-0 on somebody at the end of the game."
Conventional wisdom is that Syracuse will be the first to lose because the Orange play in the Atlantic Coast Conference and that the first loss could occur this evening against Duke. More likely is that Syracuse lose a road game at Pittsburgh, Duke, or Virginia — the three teams closest to the Orange in the ACC standings.
Arizona has already beaten UCLA, second best in the Pac-12, in their only regular-season meeting, but they could meet again in the conference tournament and the Wildcats have seven league games remaining against teams in the top 55 RPI.
The pick to lose first is Wichita State and the game circled is Wednesday at Indiana State, a team the Shockers beat by 20 the first time around. That day, Dawon Cummings was 7-of-14 and his teammates were 9-of-37. They'll shoot better in Terre Haute. If Wichita State wins, it's clear sailing to the postseason.
Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media's Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is firstname.lastname@example.com.


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|Country Of origin:
Formed in 1992 in Toronto, Canada, by Detroit expatriate Ken Bluke, Sons of Otis have pounded out some of the lowest, slowest space rock on record. The band originally consisted of just Bluke and was called Otis (after a character in the film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). Otis self-released a debut EP, Paid to Suffer, under that one-word moniker in 1994 after bassist Frank Sargeant joined up to aid Bluke in his search for the perfect stoner tonality. The group slowly built a solid underground following and in 1996, they were signed to Hypnotic/MCA. This brief partnership produced the band's first full-length disc, SpaceJumboFudge, as the "Sons of" was added to their name to avoid legal problems with another act with which they were unwittingly sharing "Otis." Bluke and Sargeant had extreme difficulty finding a drummer and after going through a legion of them, they simply used a drum machine on SpaceJumboFudge. This was quite a development considering Bluke's die-hard passion for vintage equipment and the analog sound creation and recording methodology. The music didn't suffer from this modern infringement and Sons of Otis fans were popping up everywhere, especially in Europe where heavy music's viability never waned to the degree that it did in North America. After quickly becoming disillusioned with their label, Sons of Otis fled to Frank Kozik's Man's Ruin for proper ultra-hip stoner/space rock incubation. In 1999, Man's Ruin released Templeball and fans of stoner, doom, and space rockers like Sleep, Kyuss, and Electric Wizard really began to catch on. Many positive reviews and higher profile tours and performances followed as Sons of Otis built their reputation as an original and singularly heavy outfit. A re-release of SpaceJumboFudge hit stores in 2000 and the group followed up their Man's Ruin offerings with Songs for Worship in 2001 on their third label, The Music Cartel. When Ryan Aubin (formerly of Canada's Shallow North Dakota) officially joined up, he put an end to the years of fill-in drummers and Sons of Otis were primed for their first fully coordinated sonic attack on subs and woofers everywhere. Songs for Worship demonstrates the truth of this serendipitous musical convergence and is perhaps the group's most definitive release. The music is dense to say the least. Bluke's vocals float in the sludgy grind -- indiscernible, but darkly spirited -- while the impossibly low guitars and bass issue the core of Sons of Otis' sound. The slow, post-Sabbath riffs belch and purr like a giant tranquilized cat, asleep, dreaming of kills in slow motion. Pusher followed it up in the summer of 2002, introducing a more hard rock-oriented direction and leaving behind some of the heaviness of the past for a more aggressive approach. Spooky and trippy with an air of evil, but not so serious as to scare smokers trying to get lost in space, Sons of Otis take listeners for a visceral trip deep inside the earth -- beneath the hard rock mantle and down to the magma where the energy of life is stored, all the while separating body and mind. The former buried deep in terrestrial airlessness while the latter spins off toward a giant black whole at the galaxy's center. ~ Vincent Jeffries~ Rovi


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David Petraeus apologized Tuesday for the extramarital affair that led to his resignation as CIA chief in November.
Petraeus, who before he retired was one of the most decorated and respected military figures of his generation, gave the keynote address on Tuesday night at the University of Southern California's annual dinner for veterans and ROTC students at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
"I join you keenly aware that I am regarded in a different light now," Petraeus told the crowd.
U.S. & World
Petraeus opened his speech with a mea culpa about his affair, his personal journey and a new chapter since his resignation working in the private sector in economics, energy and veterans issues.
"I regret — and apologize for — the circumstances that led me to resign from the CIA and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters," Petraeus said.
"Life doesn't stop with such a mistake," he added. "It can and must go on."
Petraeus received a standing ovation from the 600-plus attendees. He accepted the invitation to speak last year, before his resignation.
Petraeus served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from Sept. 6, 2011, until his resignation on Nov. 9, 2012 over an affair with Paula Broadwell, the author of his biography, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."
Petraeus reportedly ended the affair about the time he learned that Broadwell had allegedly been sending harassing emails to a longstanding family friend of the Petraeuses, Jill Kelley.
An FBI investigation had led authorities to Broadwell's email account.
Before that, Petraeus was a decorated four-star general, serving more than 37 years in the Army, including as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.


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Una Pizza Napoletana: Anthony Mangieri Not Necessarily San Francisco-bound
There may yet be a glimmer of hope for us Anthony Mangieri fans in the New York City area. Although it's been reported that he may be opening his next pizzeria in San Francisco, he may not be, either. A Bay Area pizzeria for Mangieri is far from a foregone conclusion. It is entirely possible that another Garden State venture may be in the offing. Yes, Anthony Mangieri is thinking about going home again.
"I've been working making bread and pizza, first in Jersey, then in New York City, since 1993, and though I loved doing both things in both places, I am going to take a little break," Mangieri said. "I'm scared and excited all at the same time. I know a lot of people think I'm crazy and stupid for doing this now. But it kind of makes sense for me at this moment."
So what's on Mangieri's immediate agenda?
- A motorcycle trip with friends
- A cross-country driving trip with many stops for mountain-biking along the way
- Some time in Hawaii spent in a boat on the water
Then, and only then, will Mangieri decide if he wants to open in San Francisco, where he's never lived, or head back to the Red Bank, New Jersey, area, where a lot of his family and friends are, and where he thinks the time may be right for his longtime neighbors to support and embrace what he does.
Don't fret, though. Mangieri's track record indicates that he'll be back with his hands in the dough and his pies in a wood-burning oven before too long.
His path has never been linear, but somehow he always finds his way back to doing what he does best—making seriously delicious pizza.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


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Consider a probability distribution $\pi$ on the real axis that has a density (w.r.t Lebesgue) proportional to $e^{-V(x)}$, where $V(\cdot)$ is a potential function. For any reasonable volatility function $\sigma:\mathbb{R} \to (0:+\infty)$ the diffusion $$ dX^{\sigma}_t = [ -\frac{1}{2} \sigma(X_t^{\sigma})^2 V'(X_t^{\sigma}) + \sigma(X_t^{\sigma}) \sigma'(X_t^{\sigma}) ] dt + \sigma(X_t^{\sigma}) \, dW_t $$ has $\pi$ as unique invariant distribution.
Question: Given two volatility functions $\sigma_1, \sigma_2$, are there tractable ways of comparing the speed of convergence to equilibrium of the two associated diffusions?
For example, if $\sigma_2(x) = \alpha \cdot \sigma_1(x)$, the diffusion $X^{\sigma_2}$ is just $X^{\sigma_1}$ slowed down by a factor $\alpha$: any ways of comparing the two diffusions should say that if $\alpha > 1$ then $X^{\sigma_2}$ converges 'faster' than $X^{\sigma_1}$. Spectral Gaps work but are not very tractable when comparing two non-proportional diffusions. Is it hopeless ?
Motivations: I consider several MCMC algorithms with target density $\pi$: each one of them, after some time-rescaling, looks like a diffusion $X^{\sigma}$. Which algorithm is the best $i.e.$ what diffusion $X^{\sigma}$ mixes the fastest ?


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Given a Beastmaster ranger (or multiclass feat which grants an animal companion) and, for the sake of argument, a cat companion.
Does a character's personal equipment which effects all melee attacks (like iron armbands of power) boost the damage of the companion's melee basic attacks?
Does a character's personal equipment effect powers like Predator Strike which attack via the beast?
Is there a difference between the two cases?