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Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
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Manchurian magnificence
Panjin Red Beach in Liaoning province, Northeast China does its name proud each autumn when the seepweed turns crimson to spectacular effect
Saline seepweed loves alkaline soil, and the Liao River delta in northeastern China offers ideal conditions in which to grow. In fact, this member of the amaranth family flourishes here so well that every autumn in September and October it transforms the countryside into a sea of flaming red. In keeping with the color of official Chinese ideology and the country's national flag, the authorities declared its largest wetlands a nature reserve in 1985. A small section is open to the public.

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France is the great wine nation - but you won't find Bordeaux or classic Côtes du Rhône here! We head for the foothills of the Alps for far rarer, more interesting bottles.
Beaujolais is the "first hint of the Alps" and the home of fantastic Gamay.
Savoie is in the mountainous areas just south of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) and the border with Switzerland all the way to Lyon and the Rhone valley.
You can explore the wines below or read further about Savoie or Beaujolais
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text: We're going to be pumpin' some iron and building your muscular strength and endurance with this 45 minute calorie burner. Not all workouts need to be cardio, cardio, cardio and we're going to help get you strength gains and muscle tone with sets and reps. Bring your Minis and get your sweat on with Hot Mama's Strength & Sass Class…ohhhhh…it's gonna be good. So good you'll think of us for daaaaays.


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Great for pre game warm-up
By Splashman
from DFW Texas
About Me Casual/ Recreational
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We used a hitting Tee for warm-up but when I saw this I said this is the ticket. No net to carry and to put up and down. Works for left and right batters with having to change anything. When a kid hits this hard makes a really cool sound, helps to get all the players pumped up for the game. Sets up quick and the team loves it.
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
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MALAGA RETAINED THEIR unbeaten record in the Champions League with a 1-1 draw against AC Milan enough to secure their progression.
A win at San Siro on tonight would have ensured Manuel Pellegrini's men advanced from Group C and that was certainly on the cards when Eliseu fired them ahead five minutes before half-time.
The second half brought a change in ethos from the visitors as they looked to defend their one-goal advantage. However, they were eventually beaten when Alexandre Pato headed in an equaliser in the 73rd minute but there was to be no winning goal for either side as the points were shared.
With both teams keen to push forward, it made for an open start to the game in which possession was given away far too cheaply in midfield, stopping either side from getting into any sort of rhythm.
After Eliseu failed to beat Christian Abbiati with an absurdly ambitious chip, Milan began to take hold of the game and push their opponents back. With 19 minutes on the clock, they tested the away keeper for the first time as Bojan showed fantastic feet to wriggle between a number of Malaga shirts out on the right. Having then cut in side to create the space, he lashed an effort on goal that, despite taking a deflection, was parried aside by the stretching Willy Caballero.
The keeper then produced another inspired save as he tipped Urby Emanuelson's precise 20-yard free-kick wide. The Dutchman's effort looked destined for the top corner but Caballero had other ideas, diving to his right and getting the slightest of touches to prevent a certain goal.
The Andalusians were largely restricted to playing on the counter-attack but they still looked dangerous when Joaquin, Eliseu and Isco linked up intricately. It was one such combination that saw Malaga strike first, five minutes before half-time. Isco shifted the ball away from Nigel de Jong before threading a diagonal ball to put Eliseu in behind. The Portuguese struck the ball first time and found the bottom corner with Abbiati rooted.
Massimiliano Allegri's side came out for the second half with much more urgency and forged a decent opportunity soon after the restart. Bojan fed Emanuelson at the edge of the box but his shot was tame and rolled comfortably into the hands of Caballero. The visitors then began to display why they have been so difficult to score against as they put two solid lines behind the ball and squeezed the space available to the Diavolo.
But as they began to sit deeper and deeper, the pressure became too much and they conceded for the first time in the tournament. Kevin Constant exposed Joaquin's defensive frailties as he charged to the line and swung in a deep cross which Pato nodded in at the back post.
Kevin-Prince Boateng came closest to netting a decisive goal moments later but he, like many of his team-mates, was thwarted by Caballero.
- The draw puts Malaga in the hat for the next round, while second-placed Milan travel to Brussels in a fortnight to face Anderlecht in a must-win fixture.
The Belgian side grabbed all three points on Tuesday with a 1-0 win over a lacklustre Zenit St Petersburg. Dieumerci Mbokani's goal in the first half was enough to secure victory and keep their hopes of qualification for the knockout rounds alive.
As it happened: Manchester City v Ajax, Champions League


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Sound the trumpets and clap your hands — Lady Antebellum has struck gold. The trio's
Golden debuts at No. 1 this week on both Billboard's country and Top 200 all-genres albums charts via Nielsen
SoundScan-confirmed sales of 167,314 copies.
Scooting in just behind Lady A at No. 2 is the new Pistol
Annies CD, Annie Up. It scanned 83,460 units.
And for the second week in a row, Florida
Georgia Line's "Get Your Shine On" is the most-played
country song.
There's a batch of new albums to recognize. They include the soundtrack collection Nashville: The
Music of Nashville: Season 1, Volume 2 (entering at No. 5), the various-artists package Now That's What I Call a Country
Party (No. 10).
Also Craig Campbell's Never Forget (No. 27), Lenny
Cooper's Mud Dynasty (No. 34), Dailey Vincent's Brothers of the Highway
(No. 40) and Mickie James' Somebody's Gonna Pay (No. 56).
Bouncing back onto the chart are The Essential
Alan Jackson (No. 67), Don Williams' And
So It Goes (No. 71) and the multi-artist Mud Digger: Volume 3 (No. 74).
Five new songs come aboard: Lady
Antebellum's "Goodbye Town" (No. 46), Chris
Young's "Aw Naw" (No. 54), Krystal Keith's "Daddy Dance With Me" (No. 58), Weston Burt's "Lucky Sometimes" (No. 59) and
Gretchen Wilson's "Still Rollin'" (No. 60).
Nichols' "Sunny and 75" returns at No. 56.
The No. 3 and No. 4 albums, in that order, are Kenny
Chesney's Life on a Rock (last week's No. 1) and Blake Shelton's Based
on a True Story.
Rounding out the Top 5 songs, in descending order, are Darius
Rucker's "Wagon Wheel," Chesney's "Pirate
Flag," Miranda Lambert's "Mama's
Broken Heart" and Tim McGraw and Taylor
Swift's "Highway Don't Care."
Kinda leaves you
breathless, don't it?


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To further enhance it's Super Star Wheel range, HPI has introduced them in a stunning black chrome finish! These awesome wheels are designed to fit the front axel of 2-Wheel Drive cars, such as the HPI's Rush series. Compared to standard wheels they give a slightly wider stance on the MT-2 and Rush trucks. Made from high impact nylon they provide outstanding durability and crash resistance. To coincide with the front wheels HPI has also introduced the Super Star Rear Truck Wheels in Black Chrome (#2161).
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Yesterday, we were informed of a few hotfixes that were being applied to protection paladins. From the hotfixes blog:
- Protection
- Mastery: Divine Bulwark now increases Shield of the Righteous' damage reduction by 0.5% per point, down from 0.75% per point.
- Grand Crusader now also has a 30% chance to trigger its effect from Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous.
- Shield of the Righteous now reduces physical damage taken by 25% (up from 20%).
As I tweeted at the time, these certainly appear to be targeted at "fixing" haste. The logic for why they appear to do that is pretty straightforward.
What Should've Happened
If you recall, Grand Crusader originally procced from successful Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous hits. It was later changed to include avoidance (and later to proc only from avoidance) specifically to reduce haste's value. So this seems like an obvious way to add value back into haste.
Likewise, one of the things we noticed in MoP was that haste got stronger as SotR mitigation increased. When SotR mitigates a large percentage of damage, it ends up being more important to increase the uptime than to further increase the mitigation, favoring haste. In fact, one of the targeted nerfs to haste in MoP patch 5.3.0 was to reduce SotR's base mitigation from 30% to 25%, which was further nerfed to 20% during WoD beta. So this change makes sense as well – increase SotR's base mitigation to make it more valuable by default, and reduce mastery's value by reducing its contribution to SotR. Seems straightforward.
So of course, I expected that when I coded the changes into Simulationcraft (version 603-12) I'd be greeted with stat weights that told me haste was suddenly back in the limelight.
Unfortunately, that isn't what happened.
What Really Happened
First, for a baseline, I ran a sim with version 603-11 to show how haste was really performing. Here is that simulation, along with the stat weight and scale factor plots it produced:
If you look at the html file, you'll see that I'm using a fairly default configuration here. Sanctified Wrath, Light's Hammer, and Holy Shield are chosen as talents, and the gear setup being used is heavily mastery-biased. That heavy mastery bias should help boost haste a little bit. As we can see on the plot though, haste and multistrike are both pretty weak, and performing below versatility, crit, and mastery, with bonus armor being far-and-away the best stat. Also note that since I'm running plots here, I'm only running for ~12k iterations, so the data is a little noisier than a full 25k iteration sim.
If we repeat this with version 630-12, which represents the post-hotfix mechanics, we instead get this:
The first thing you'll probably notice is that haste is solidly at the back of the pack now. In other words, these changes reduced haste's value more than they increased it. So much for conventional wisdom! On the other hand, they did successfully weaken mastery – it dropped in value a bit, as evidenced by the lower scale factor and the shallower slope on the scaling plot. It's still ahead of the other secondaries, but not by as much.
What Went Wrong
First, I obviously went back and double-checked that I had implemented everything properly. But I was disappointed to find that I hadn't made any mistakes – Grand Crusader was now proccing from Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous, and the mitigation value being calculated for Shield of the Righteous matched what it ought to be based on a hand-calculation. So we can eliminate "programmer error" as the cause of these seemingly-erroneous results.
So what did cause it?
Looking at our assumptions with the benefit of hindsight (and data), it's clear we overlooked some things. For example, let's consider the SotR changes. Lowering the mastery contribution certainly weakens mastery, there's no question about that. At low levels, when you don't have much mastery, the buff to the base mitigation value of SotR should be more than you lose from the mastery contribution, resulting in a stronger SotR and (in theory) a stronger value for haste. But at higher gear levels, it's actually a net loss in SotR mitigation, which could cause haste to get even weaker.
To illustrate that, our T17H profile here has about 28% mastery. That contributed 21% mitigation to SotR pre-hotfix for a total of 20% + 21% = 41%. But post-hotfix it only gives 14% mitigation, for a total of 25% + 14% = 39%. As you can see, this makes SotR a little weaker, which subsequently makes haste a little weaker.
Which raises the obvious question, "Exactly how much base mitigation must we add to SotR in order to make haste an attractive stat?" So I took my working copy of the code and tweaked the coefficients a bit to try and find out. Here's what it looks like if you buff the base value to 30%, and keep the +0.5% per point of mastery:
Theoretical Results – 30%+0.5%
Still behind. Let's try buffing it to 35% base:
Theoretical Results – 35%+0.5%
Nope. Not enough yet. Maybe…. 50%?
Theoretical Results – 50%+0.5%
Well, that helps… but it's clearly not enough. 70%?
Theoretical Results – 70%+0.5%
Success! Well, sort of. Haste isn't the dump stat anymore, but it's only tied with crit and versatility and multistrike. To push it up a little further we'd need to do something else, or nerf the other stats somehow. Also note that we're easily hitting the 80% cap on SotR mitigation here, so mastery's not giving us any extra mitigation through that vector, meaning that this is its value just due to block and attack power.
What this tells us is that SotR mitigation is a really inefficient way to buff haste's value. It's taking extreme amounts of change to get any significant bump in haste's value. We might be able to get to a good spot if we allowed SotR to mitigate 70%+ baseline and removed the mastery component entirely. You could imagine buffing mastery a bit to compensate by increasing its contribution to block chance. But we're talking about a pretty extreme changes to how SotR works, which is not something to be done lightly.
I also ran one sim with a base mitigation of 25% and the original 1% per point of mastery, just to see how that changed things. Here's what that looks like:
Mastery gets inflated a lot in this, of course, but haste still doesn't really recover. That tells us something else: it's not just the SotR change keeping haste down. The Grand Crusader change is actually having a negative impact as well.
To figure out why, we just need to consider what adding Grand Crusader procs to Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous accomplishes. No matter what gear you're wearing, this means more holy power income, and subsequently, more SotR uptime. We assumed that this would logically make haste stronger, as we're now amplifying our HP income more.
But while this change does make each point of haste give us more HP generation, it also increasing the natural uptime on SotR as well due to the extra Grand Crusader procs. In other words, we simultaneously made haste give us more HP generation per point and removed some of the reason we'd want that HP generation in the first place. As it turns out, the latter is the larger effect.
I should add that talents have some impact on this. Sanctified Wrath gives us extra holy power generation from Holy Wrath, which leaves less room in the rotation to make use of those Avenger's Shield procs. Switching to Divine Purpose does inflate haste's value a little more:
Post-Hotfix Results – DP talented
But it's not enough to make it a viable competitor with crit or versatility, let alone mastery. Ironically enough, haste was better off before these hotfixes.
Why Is Haste So Bad?
At this point, it's worth considering why haste is performing so poorly, especially given how well it performed in Mists. Based on these results, it's clearly not just a simple issue with Shield of the Righteous or Grand Crusader. So where do we point the finger and place blame? The answer is that it's complicated. It isn't just one thing dragging haste down. It's really a combination of several different effects.
First, there were some changes to the damage model. Mists gave us relatively hard-hitting bosses that could easily kill you in 3-4 seconds if your healer looked away. That has slowed somewhat with Warlords, with bosses being a little more deliberate. Whereas taking two back-to-back melees was a serious danger in Mists, it's a little less fatal in Warlords, in part because of large increases in baseline effective health. As a result, there's less emphasis on maximizing the uptime of SotR via haste (and the now-defunct hit and expertise) than there was in Mists.
Mechanics also shoulder some of the blame. Many of the changes to spells in Warlords ended up buffing other stats, either directly or indirectly, without appreciably affecting haste. It's not hard to come up with some examples of this:
- Improved Block makes mastery more valuable, but has almost no effect on other stats.
- Similarly, Holy Shield buffs mastery, but nothing else (well, crit/ap/etc. for DPS obviously, but we're just considering defensive value here).
- Mastery now grants attack power – this is a huge change that significantly buffed mastery. It already gave us some solid survivability through more blocks and more Shield of the Righteous mitigation, but now we also get the value of a chunk of attack power with every point of mastery.
- Sacred Shield can now crit and multistrike, and benefits from mastery indirectly through attack power. It had none of those synergies in Mists. In addition, with the absence of huge piles of attack power through Vengeance, the value it grants to haste has diminished. In short, in Mists it gave haste a lot of value and nothing to the other stats; in Warlords it now grants some moderate value to all of the stats.
- Likewise, Seal of Insight now benefits from crit, multistrike, and mastery, unlike in Mists. As with Sacred Shield, this mechanic changed from being a primarily haste-focused effect to something that gives a little value to everything.
That's a lot of buffing to other stats and a fair bit of nerfing to haste.
But that's not the worst part, in my opinion. No, in fact, I think the biggest reason haste is weak this expansion is entirely unrelated to class mechanics. It's actually fairly simple: the rating conversion got nerfed, hard.
Consider that in Mists, it took 425 haste rating to get 1% haste, while it took 600 mastery or crit rating to get 1% of either of those stats. Now, of course, we can't directly equate 1% haste to 1% mastery and say they're of equal value. But we can draw inferences from relative worth of 1% mastery and 1% mastery, even if we don't know exactly what that ratio is.
So let's assume you have 600 points of stat to allocate. In Mists, this gives us either 1.00% mastery or 1.41% haste. Even if 1% mastery is stronger than 1% haste, we get more haste to work with from that 600 points. In fact, as long as 1% haste is at least 71% as effective as 1% mastery is, the haste "wins" from the point of view of itemization (and thus scale factors).
So in short: because we get a lot more haste percentage than we do mastery percentage from equal amounts of rating, gearing for haste can outperform gearing for mastery, even if 1% mastery is more effective than 1% haste.
Now fast-forward to patch 6.0.2. The rating conversions got squished along with everything else. Haste now took 20 points of rating to produce 1% haste, while mastery took 23 points to produce 1% mastery. If we repeat our thought experiment with 23 rating, we get to choose between 1.00% mastery and 1.15% haste. Even in the absence of mechanics changes, that's a big nerf to how effective haste can be. Numerically, it dropped to 1.15/1.41 = 0.816, or 81.6% of its pre-squish effectiveness. The rating conversion alone just knocked almost 20% off of haste's value.
Fast-forward to level 100, and the conversion gets even worse. It takes 100 points of haste rating and 110 points of mastery rating to produce 1% of each, respectively. So if we start with 110 points of rating to allocate, we can have either 1.00% mastery or 1.10% haste. Again, the margin just got slimmer, and haste just got weaker. All told, it's now giving us 1.10/1.41 = 0.780, or 78% of the amount it did in patch 5.4.8. That's a pretty substantial nerf to the raw power that haste can produce, and it has nothing to do with mechanics.
Just to see how important that is, let's look back at the original scale factors we calculated pre-hotfix. The table below contains those scale factors, along with an "adjusted" scale factor for haste. To get that adjusted scale factor, I've multiplied it's scale factor by 1/0.78 = 1.282 to represent the value it would have if the rating conversion (relative to mastery) had been similar to the one in Mists. Note how that changes the results:
|Scale Factor (pre-hotfix)
|Haste (adjusted)
That alone puts haste nearly at the top of the heap. The only thing that still beats it is mastery, which we can attribute to the smorgasbord of buffs it got through mechanics changes. Even without further changes, this would be a better state for haste, and we could start looking into ways to reduce mastery's overly-high value to put it at it's rightful(?) place atop our priority list.
But I think this nicely illustrates the point: fixing haste isn't going to be easy. It's being kept weak by a slew of changes, both mechanical and "numerical" (in the case of the rating conversion), that have just made all of the other stats better.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I'd be remiss if I didn't give my own suggestions about how to help fix haste. Though, I'll give them with an obvious disclaimer: both of these hotfixes were changes that I've suggested before as ways to improve haste, and we now see how well that turned out!
First, I think it's clear that Shield of the Righteous isn't the answer. Unless the devs are willing to fundamentally change how SotR works, it's just not an effective way to boost haste relative to the other stats.
A fundamental change, like giving it a very large amount of mitigation with no mastery effect, might work at the expense of mastery. Another even more radical change would be to make haste increase its mitigation directly just like mastery does. For example, maybe it mitigates 20% + 0.5% per point of mastery + 0.5% per 1% haste (or more simply, 20% + half of your mastery percent + half of your haste percent).
Likewise, Grand Crusader might not be the right avenue. Maybe if the avoidance-proc portion was removed it would be less detrimental to haste (and would certainly reduce the value of crit and strength). But I'm not certain of that, and we've already seen I was horribly wrong about the CS proc portion of the ability.
Despite being a big portion of haste's value in Mists, Seal of Insight isn't a great candidate either. Buffing it would simultaneously buff haste, crit, mastery, and multistrike. However, as with SotR, you could imagine some more radical changes that would shift value out of crit, mastery, and multistrike and into haste. For example, if Seal of Insight healed for a fixed percentage of health rather than being based on attack power and spell power. That would make crit, mastery, multistrike, and versatility irrelevant and thus reduce their scale factors. If the fixed percentage of health was higher than the equivalent amount is right now (after accounting for Resolve), that could be a net gain for haste.
I think the smarter avenue at this point is to try and focus on things that affect only haste, or affect haste more directly than other stats. For example, we've already seen that a large part of haste's value was lost to the rating conversion. A simpler fix would be to modify that rating conversion for prot paladins, either directly in the game data or (more likely) indirectly by increasing the rating boost granted by Sacred Duty. If Sacred Duty suddenly increased haste from gear by 30% rather than 5%, haste would be back in business.
Another route is Sanctity of Battle, since that's where the bulk of haste's defensive value comes from. Right now it reduces cooldowns by your haste percentage. If it reduced cooldowns by 1.3% for every 1% haste, that would give haste a large boost, much like a rating conversion change would.
You could imagine adding an entirely new effect. For example, something that procs off of melee hits could selectively add value to haste if done right. However, there are a few issues with this. First, it means designing (and re-balancing around) a new effect. The proc effect itself has to be very specific as well – it can't benefit from mastery, crit, or multistrike, so it would have to be something like a fixed-percent heal or an armor (not bonus armor) buff. And at this point, we've basically come up with a slightly redesigned version of Seal of Insight, so the question becomes "is this significantly different enough to warrant making a separate effect?" Still, a random armor proc from melee hits can only help haste's value, inelegant as it might be.
If we're going for new effects, though, I think we're more likely to get something useful if we think about it from a different perspective. Earlier, we discussed the slew of changes that made mastery so much stronger this expansion. Arguably the biggest factor is that it now grants attack power. In other words, we took a stat that was (relatively) weak and added value to it by piggybacking another stat onto it. Riposte does exactly the same thing for crit, in fact. It takes crit, which is weak for survivability on its own, and bolts on a bunch of value due to avoidance.
It isn't hard to think up ways to do this for haste. The simplest example, perhaps, is to blatantly copy Riposte. Riposte gives you 1 parry rating for every point of crit rating (from gear, anyway, let's ignore the current issue with buffs). The new "Divine Riposte" could give you 1 point of dodge rating for every point of haste rating. This should give haste extra value without tweaking much in the way of mechanics, and without significantly altering the value of other stats.
There are any number of ways to do this, in varying degrees from "ok I'll buy that" to "completely breaks immersion." "Momentum – increases your armor (or bonus armor) by a percent equal to your haste" is on the more logical end. "Shake it Off – reduces the damage you take by half of your haste percentage" is a little less defensible (though obviously, quite effective!). If you want to go to the extreme end of the crazy train, you could tack haste's effect on to Shining Protector (what sense does that even make?) or cause it to increase your stamina (because sprinting is exactly like long-distance running…).
In any event, my point is that I think the solution to our haste "problem" lies not in a raw mechanics change, but in a subtle, "tack some extra value on to haste" change.
Or Maybe….
Of course, we should also talk about the elephant in the room. Is the problem that haste is bad, or is the problem that our attunement says we should like haste? Maybe we're looking at this in entirely the wrong way.
Why not change our attunement to mastery and be done with it? It's clearly the dominant stat with the current mechanics. We're going to extreme lengths here to try and shift value around to make haste better to match our attunement, potentially causing a lot of collateral damage in the process. It might just be easier to switch our attunement, not to mention less disruptive. Plus, many of us remember the days of Cataclysm when we loved mastery to death, so it's not like we don't have a precedent for being a mastery spec.
I think this highlights one of the problems of the attunement system, which is something I pointed out in several conversations during beta. The attunement system puts an additional (and in my opinion unnecessary) constraint on class design. You might have a great set of mechanics cooked up for a class, only to find that it shifts their stat priority and makes their attunement "wrong."
This is problematic even for the simple case of a DPS class. I say "simple" because DPS is a fairly robust metric – easy to calculate, easy to test, and fairly reliable. But even within DPS, we find that the effects of crit, haste, and mastery (and other stats) are multiplicative. In other words, let's say haste, mastery, and crit are perfectly balanced when you have 0% of each, such that each gives exactly the same amount of DPS. If you stack 20% haste (and no mastery or crit), you will find that mastery and crit are now stronger than haste, and this will be reflected in scale factors. Likewise, if you stacked 20% crit, mastery and haste would be the strong stats.
The details vary from class to class due to mechanics, but in the most basic model you would want an equal mix of haste, mastery, and crit (by percent, of course, not rating). This isn't news to anybody who's theorycrafted a DPS class. If you played Retribution in Mists at all, you may have heard the advice "stack haste to 40%, then crit/mastery" – this was the reason for that advice. Stack enough haste, and you make crit and mastery strong enough to overtake it.
Which means that no matter what, at some point your attunement "advice" is going to be wrong. Especially if you start with very close stat weights, which was the stated intent this expansion.
Now consider how much harder your job gets as a designer if you want to do this for tank classes. First of all, how do you even decide which stat is strong? We looked only at TMI here, but we could have considered DTPS or DPS. Which is correct? Or do we look at a mix? If so, what mix?
Furthermore, TMI is a fairly arbitrary metric, all told. You could devise a different metric for measuring smoothness and get slightly different results. In fact, you see this if you change the window size on TMI; the default TMI with a 6-second window (aka TMI-6) may give you different results than a TMI-4 or TMI-8 measurement. Which is correct?
There's no good answer to that question, which is one reason I was skeptical of the attunement system for tanks. If they had designed the class such that haste is our best DTPS stat but horrible for TMI, and TMI turned out to be the more relevant metric for tanking in the first tier, then the majority of the community would be ignoring that attunement anyway.
And then there's the question of tank balance – will we keep up with other tanks if they're getting 5% more of their favorite stat and we're trying to get rid of as much of our attuned stat as possible? Of course, the other tanks could have exactly the same problem….
I think what we have here is a prime example of where the attunement system goes wrong. Instead of just developing cool mechanics and letting the stats fall where they may, it's acting as a constraint. Instead of just making sure that play is fluid and mechanics are solid, we're tweaking things in an attempt to satisfy this "haste>all" edict. It's worth pausing to reflect on whether this is a smart idea or not before proceeding with further changes.
This is one reason I wouldn't mind a bit if the attunement system disappeared in the next context patch. I get the point – to guide newer or inexperienced players. But I think that it's more likely to end up being a trap than a help. I'd rather see the system removed and a small bit of text added to the "Core Abilities" tab of the spellbook. Something like, "As a protection paladin, you benefit greatly from Strength, Stamina, and
HasteMastery." That way, it can be updated based on how the stats shake out rather than acting as a constraint on design.
As usual, there are limitations. I've only simmed a small subset of the possibilities, particularly choice of talents (Holy Shield, Sanctified Wrath) and gear (mastery-heavy). It's always possible (if unlikely) that in a different gear set or talent configuration, haste gained some ground. I'd love to be able to sim a larger swath of configurations, but there's only so much CPU time available, and it's the night before Thanksgiving, and I'd rather be playing the expansion than simming it at the moment.
It's also possible that I've missed something, which is why I try to provide as much of the data as I can. If you see an egregious error or something that looks fishy, please don't hesitate to write a comment and ask about it. The goal of this blog was never "Theck tells you how it is and shouldn't be questioned." It has always been an independent place for me to host my work so that it can be subject to peer review and community discussion.


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Ron Dayne named to College Football Hall of Fame
You can almost hear the crowd at Camp Randall announce the news: "Ronnnn Dayyyyne!"
Heisman Trophy winner and former Wisconsin running back Ron Dayne of Wisconsin was selected Tuesday for the College Football Hall of Fame.
Dayne is part of a class of 12 players and two coaches chosen by the National Football Foundation and revealed Tuesday.
The rest of the players to be inducted in December are: Miami Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde, whose selection was announced Monday; Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel, of Florida; two-time national champion Tommie Frazier, of Nebraska; Ted Brown, of North Carolina State; Tedy Bruschi, of Arizona; Jerry Gray, of Texas; Steve Meilinger, of Kentucky; Orlando Pace, of Ohio State; Rod Shoate, of Oklahoma; Percy Snow, of Michigan State; and Don Trull, of Baylor.
The new Hall of Fame coaches are Wayne Hardin, who led Navy and Temple, and Bill McCartney, of Colorado.
Dayne is the NCAA's career rushing leader with 6,397 yards rushing, though his bowl game yards would boost his career total past 7,000 yards if he played at a time when the NCAA counted them in regular season stats.
The burly tailback won the Heisman for the Badgers in 1999.
Florida and Nebraska fans have been eagerly awaiting the inductions of their beloved quarterbacks for years.
Wuerffel won the Heisman in 1996, when he led the Gators to the national championship, throwing for 3,625 yards and 39 touchdowns in coach Steve Spurrier's Fun-n-Gun offense.
He finished his college career as one of the most prolific passers in major college football history with 10,875 yards and 114 touchdown passes.
Frazier was a four-year starter with running coach Tom Osborne's option attack, and helped the Huskers to national championships in 1994 and '95. His tackle-breaking 75-yard touchdown run put an exclamation point on Nebraska's 62-24 victory over Wuerffel and Florida in the 1996 Orange Bowl national title game.
Frazier finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1995 as a senior and finished his career with 5,476 total yards of offense and 79 total touchdowns.


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"Tamil Ini" - Short Film - "தமிழ் இனி" குறும்படம்
"Tamil Ini" - is a sincere attempt to portray the state of Tamil in a foreign country, a couple of generations from now.
Tamil Ini" was awarded the Best Film of the week, Mani Ram was awarded the best technician - Director, and Thirumudi Thulasiraman who played role of Thatha was awarded the best actor, by Naalaya Iyakkunar series on Kalaignar TV.
Credits: Written & Directed By MANI RAM Cast Krishnamoorthy THIRUMUDI THULASIRAMAN Child Dev VISHWAS MANI Lakshmi VIDHYA SUBRAMANIAN Saminathan MANI RAM Dev ADI GOVINDARAJAN Neelima JOYA NANDY KAZI Nick Nathan DHRUVA NAIR Chinese Mom CHRISTINA EDMONDSON Chinese Daughter ALIYA EDMONDSON Editing GIRI Assistant Director GK Cinematography ESWARAN Music BALAMURALI BALU Line Producer JAYASHREE MANIRAM An Avatars Production
Watch here


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Kinetics Database Resources
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Administrative Links
Chemical and Biochemical Reference Data Division
Title: Kinetics of the reactions of hydroxyl radicals with aliphatic ethers studied under simulated atmospheric conditions: temperature dependences of the rate coefficients
Journal: J. Atmos. Chem.
Volume: 10
Page(s): 29 - 38
Year: 1990
Reference type: Journal article
Squib: 1990BEN/KER29-38
(C2H5)2O + ·OH → Other Products + H2O
View full bibliographic record.
Rate constant values calculated from the Arrhenius expression:


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Holy war can seem like something that happened long ago or that happens far away � the Crusades of medieval Europe, for example, or jihadists fighting secular forces today. But since their country's founding, Americans have often thought of their wars as sacred, even when the primary objectives have been political.
Holy war can seem like something that happened long ago or that happens far away � the Crusades of medieval Europe, for example, or jihadists fighting secular forces today. But since their country�s founding, Americans have often thought of their wars as sacred, even when the primary objectives have been political.
This began with the American Revolution. When colonists declared their independence on July 4, 1776, religious conviction inspired them. Because they believed that their cause had divine support, many patriots� ardor was both political and religious. They saw the conflict as a just, secular war, but they fought it with religious resolve, believing that God endorsed the cause. As Connecticut minister Samuel Sherwood preached in 1776: �God Almighty, with all the powers of heaven, are on our side. Great numbers of angels, no doubt, are encamping round our coast, for our defense and protection.�
Several founding fathers were more theologically liberal than the typical evangelical Protestant of their day. Still, few were anti-religious, and the nation�s architects often stated that religion supported virtue, which was essential to patriotism. �A true patriot must be a religious man,� wrote Abigail Adams, wife of America�s second president.
George Washington believed so strongly in the religious case for patriotism that he demanded chaplains for the Continental Army. He appealed to the Continental Congress for higher pay for chaplains, and when one chaplain impressed the general, Washington went to great lengths to retain him.
That chaplain was Abiel Leonard, of Woodstock, Conn. Washington wrote letters to the governor of Connecticut and to Leonard�s church, hoping they would support the pastor�s extended service in the Army. In his letter to the governor, Washington wrote that Leonard had proved to be �a warm and steady friend to his country and taken great pains to animate the soldiers, and impress them with a knowledge of the important rights we are contending for.�
For Washington, chaplains not only supplied moral guidance but appealed for God�s support in battle, which was vital. He believed that the war�s outcome rested in God�s hands, and he ordered his soldiers to attend �divine service, to implore the blessings of heaven upon the means used for our safety and defense.�
We cannot fully understand the revolution without recognizing such appeals for God�s favor on the battlefield. Both the founders and ministers understood these ideas because they knew scripture, one of the major sources of American patriotism.
Colonists fought the Revolutionary War in a society in which the Bible was the most read, most owned and most respected book. John Adams once told Thomas Jefferson, �The Bible is the best book in the world.� Perhaps more important, Adams also called the Bible the world�s �most Republican book� � scripture inspired morality, but it also fueled patriotism.
Even those colonists who normally had no use for the Bible found it helpful during the revolution. Thomas Paine would attack Christianity and call the Old Testament �a history of wickedness,� more appropriately judged �the word of a demon than the word of God.� But he did not publish these radical statements until after the revolution.
In 1776, Paine quoted scripture like a revival preacher. His �Common Sense,� the most influential patriotic pamphlet of the revolution, had the feel of a sermon, deploying the King James Bible against King George�s tyranny. Scripture, Paine argued, clearly revealed God�s �protest against monarchial government.�
Paine knew that �Common Sense� had to make biblical sense. He relied especially on 1 Samuel 8, which tells of the Israelites asking for a king. In that passage, God relents and gives them King Saul, but the prophet Samuel warns that their demand signals their rejection of God.
Accordingly, Paine asserted that �monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins� of the Israelites that would later bring curses from God; if Americans would obey God, therefore, they must reject British monarchy. The war for independence was a sacred duty.
The views of the founders notwithstanding, ministers translated the revolution�s meaning to colonists who knew much more about the Bible than political theory. Revolutionary War sermons were convincing because they spoke in ubiquitous stories and images from scripture.
Patriotic ministers did not shy away from biblical violence. They embraced it, almost celebrated it, even in its most graphic forms. For example, they cited the story of Deborah in Judges 5, about God�s condemnation of those who refused to fight his enemies. This text also includes the heroic story of Jael, a tent-dwelling woman who assassinated a Canaanite general by driving a tent peg through his skull. Ministers often quoted this story with an equally gruesome curse from the prophet Jeremiah: �Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.�
There were hundreds such sermons � tools for combating the chronic problems of soldier recruitment and morale. In one example, Israel Evans, a favorite chaplain of Washington, praised fallen patriots as �martyrs for the cause of freedom� and called on the remaining troops to �finish the glorious work of liberty! Arise, and lead on your brother soldiers to dreadful deeds of death and slaughter, until the ruthless hand of Britain shall no more disturb the peace of men.�
Likewise, preachers often called patriotic service in war a sacred virtue. As Massachusetts Congregationalist Eli Forbes proclaimed, not every �good Christian is of consequence a good soldier,� but one could not be a good soldier without �the principle and practice of Christianity.� Peter Thacher of Malden, Mass., insisted that �we are fighting � for our religion, that religion which the word of God hath instituted and appointed.�
Talk of glorious causes has persisted from the revolution through the war on terror. Some Americans think of the United States as �God�s New Israel,� a nation on a divine mission, its wars blessed by God. Sometimes rhetoric makes this view obvious: Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, for example, the White House apologized after President George W. Bush used the word �crusade� to describe the battle against terrorism.
But references to religion can be subtler, or even obligatory, in political speeches. Consider President Obama�s July 4 speech from last year, in which he praised military sacrifices and ended with: �God bless you. God bless your families. And God bless these United States of America.�
We pass over such niceties as commonplace, almost dutiful, in political speech, but they are religious statements. Their roots go back to the revolution, when colonists � from evangelical preachers to founders such as Washington � asked for God�s blessing. Whatever century it is, our leaders often include some suggestion of the same biblical themes that filled revolutionary-era sermons, including sacrifice, courage for the fight and appeals for God�s providential blessings on America. We are, it seems, one nation under God after all.
James P. Byrd is an associate dean at Vanderbilt University and the author of �Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution.�


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Welcome back to school. Personal Creations carries the essentials - supplies for school, gifts for teachers, backpacks for school materials, and other personalized back to school gifts.
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Being prepared is the first step to help kids get that A+. Personal Creations has fantastic back to school gifts for students, affordable shipping, and many personalization options. Our insulated lunch bags, personalized school supplies totes, unique rolling backpacks, and thoughtful gifts for teachers, your child will have all the gear needed to kick off the school year right.
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Our personalized kids furniture helps them stay comfortable at home and provide cool places to study. Pack your school supplies and carry your books in style with our kids' backpacks under $20.


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To request pricing or a quote, use our configurator to assist you in choosing the appropriate instrument part # and accessories to meet your needs.
Дополнительные устройства BioTek позволяют расширить возможности и повысить эффективность рабочего процесса. Доступны автоматические инкубаторы, планшеты для микрообъемов, которые помогут в ваших исследованиях.
Чтобы дополнить или усовершенствовать имиджер, микропланшетный фотометр, промыватель-диспенсер или роботизированную систему, мы предлагаем аксессуары, от трубок/бутылок до фильтров для имиджинга. Воспользуйтесь Список аксессуаров для поиска аксессуара, совместимого с вашим прибором. Поиск по ключевым словам, каталожному номеру, прибору или типу.
BioTek's application notes present the latest-breaking scientific content covering the vast range of applications across our entire product line. Browse applications by topic, detection and product or use the simple keyword search to find the application notes that will facilitate your research.
BioTek's application bulletins provide brief, concise descriptions of timely applications enabled with BioTek instrumentation.
Many applications are straightforward and need no explanation, but best practices and tips & tricks are useful for many complex or esoteric workflows. BioTek's application guides offer detailed information on a variety of topics.
Search or browse our database to find scientific articles submitted by BioTek's applications scientists and published in leading journals.
BioTek's application team has developed more than 170 scientific posters on their latest research highlighting the applications enabled with our life science instrumentation. Browse or search the topics or products of interest.
Our Technical Notes illustrate product-specific capabilities and common applications for BioTek microplate instrumentation, and their implementation in common experimental design.
BioTek's Visual Abstracts are brief animated presentations describing the workflow of a single specific imaging or multi-mode detection application.
Our webinar archives are available for on-demand viewing - search to find a topic, application or product of interest. You can also register to be invited to future webinars here.
Browse BioTek's white papers for timely information on such important topics as Reactive Oxygen Species and 3D Cell culture.
Search the more than 3,000 scientific citations for BioTek's products within our database to learn more about the applications for our life science instrumentation as they're used around the world.
Here you will find a collection of videos found throughout our site. These videos can also be found on BioTek's YouTube channel.
Through our Webinar presentations, BioTek strives to share information and experiences about timely and important microplate-based applications. Sign up today and check back for future topics that may be of interest to you.
BioTek Field Applications Scientists (FAS) and Product Specialists provide unparalleled scientific support, assisting with experimental planning and assay optimization on BioTek's instrumentation and software.
The BioTek Global Technical Support Center (GTS) is your Help Desk for all questions related to BioTek product use, maintenance, troubleshooting support and other frequently asked questions. Normal GTS hours are weekdays from 8:30 A.M. - 5:30 P.M Eastern Standard Time, excluding holidays.
BioTek Instrument Service and Repair is available worldwide at several of our International Service Centers. Field Service is also available for many customers throughout the world.
Search our Frequently Asked Questions by keyword, product or category. For additional assistance call (800) 242-4685 or submit a question via our Ask a Question form.
Nothing can speak to the experience you'll encounter with BioTek like stories from our customers themselves. Customer satisfaction is our top priority. From Engineering to Manufacturing to Sales and Support, BioTek employees around the world are dedicated to providing the best product and best customer experience in the industry.
See some of the many awards that BioTek and our products have received over the years.
As a prospective partner, BioTek can help you achieve your sales and market penetration by providing a unique blend of products, service, support, training, co-marketing and quality assurance designed to meet your customers' requirements while you remain focused on your core business.
At BioTek we feel passionately and genuinely that our employees are our greatest asset. We continue to build our already impressive team having doubled our global workforce in the last five years. With our headquarters in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont, USA, we also have regional offices around the world.
If you're interested in becoming part of our amazing team, check out our list of job openings today!
Review past issues of TekTalk, BioTek's complimentary quarterly e-newsletter. If you are not currently subscribed, you may sign up now to begin receiving the latest life science instrumentation news.
BioTek is committed to maintaining the high quality of our products and services. All of our products are designed and manufactured in the USA at our Headquarters in Winooski, Vermont. Our continual improvement process includes soliciting customer input on quality and product features, and then designing, validating, manufacturing, and testing products to ensure performance and reliability.
Search by keyword, and select a category to narrow your search results.
Вы не ввели никаких ключевых слов. Попробуйте еще раз.


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"On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year"
- From The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The year 1975 is one I always remember because it was the year I decided to trace my family tree. I was only thirteen years old, and I lived in Massachusetts. It was the prelude to the nation's Bicentennial celebration, and in 1975 Lexington and Concord celebrated the 200th anniversary on April 19th. There were re-enactments going on all around me that year, including the Knox Trail, Bunker Hill, etc. It was an exciting time to be a kid in Massachusetts, and it really piqued my interest in American History and our family genealogy. Two years later I found out that my Munroe ancestors participated in the Battle of Lexington, and several Munroes were killed that day.
We took our daughter to see the 225th Anniversary of the Battle of Lexington re-enactment, which involved getting to the Lexington Green at o'dark hundred to get a good spot right by the ropes which marked off the battlefield. We watched our ancestors fall to their deaths, which was an odd experience. You can read about that experience at this link: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/04/battle-of-lexington-re-enacted.html
Here are some old images from our family slides that I digitized. The quality is poor, but it brings back memories of the Bicentennial year…
|Holden, Massachusetts Bicentennial Parade
This young man was in my high school class.
He walked with his oxen during the winter 1976 re-enactment of the
Knox Trail when they passed through central Massachusetts.
I remember visiting one of the encampments near my hometown.
We visited Disney World in Florida for the first time
in 1976. The Main Street parade had an
American History theme that year for the Bicentennial.
In 1975, my family visited the
Mayflower II in Plymouth, MA. It took me over 25 years to find
out that my mother had eleven Mayflower passengers
in her family tree. She couldn't believe it!
In 1775 my Girl Scout Troop visited Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. We saw many things, and this is one
of the few photos I took. Back then
the bell was in Independence Hall and we could touch it.
A year later it was moved across the street to a well guarded pavilion.
Twenty years after this trip I found out Ben Franklin was my
1st cousin 8 generations removed.
As you can see, I started my genealogy research very early, but I found some fascinating connections between my family and American history!
Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo


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When I started writing a post on in-game gift giving/receiving, I didn't expect for it to be this long. Obviously, this is part 2. To see a proper introduction, please refer to part 1. Otherwise, do keep reading!
Let's talk about receiving
The idea for this post was actually sparked by a comment by Jel on my series on the Treatment of Women in WoW.
One thing that I wanted to bring up was something that a commenter alluded to and I wonder how other women handle it. How do you deal with guys giving you gifts in wow. Flowers are a nice sweet offering, but I have had guildies give excessive gifts to me. Like top of the line crafted gear that I know took quite a bit of effort to create. I try and politely refuse and or try and get them the equivalent in some fashion but it isn't always feasible. I would love another's perspective on it.
There are a lot of ways we could look at these kinds of situations, but what it all comes down to is this: if you feel comfortable accepting, then accept, if you only feel comfortable accepting in exchange for something else, then do an exchange, if you're not comfortable accepting, then don't accept.
While a giver's intentions probably influence how you feel about receiving something from them, in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter. If you don't mind having stuff handed to you, then by all means, enjoy it! If acquiring your gear or achievement items are part of what makes the game fun, then declining the gift (or at least, thanking the person while ensuring that they'll never do it again) is a wiser course of action.
A Bossy Pally perspective
In case someone was wondering how I, personally, react to gifts in game, they're in luck! (I didn't think anyone was, but you never know. People wonder about strange things.)
Unless I suspect that someone is feeling desperate (note, it doesn't happen often!), I don't really associate receiving practical gifts with being a woman. As was pointed out to me in my Women in WoW posts, I might just be very dense, but whatever. I see the guys help each other out all the time and I don't see it being any different when they help me out.
Yes, I know that when I'm on a lowbie and a stranger gives me food/drink or green gear, then it's probably because I'm playing a female character. No, it doesn't bother me. Yes, I find it weird. No, I'm not going to turn it down. It's food/drink and a bunch of greens. Not a big deal.
Back to friends helping me out, sometimes I appreciate it, sometimes I would rather do things on my own. When I'm in a "do-it-myself" mode, I just won't let anyone know what I'm doing so they won't know. The times where I do accept a gift, I'll make a mental note to be more generous the next time they need help with something.
I don't see gifts for events like birthdays or Christmas to be problematic. Unless, as mentioned earlier, there's a desperate undertone. After all, I'm a huge sucker for holidays and I love to give out presents, so I'm not shocked when others return the favor. They might regret it, though, because I get all "YAY A BESTEST BEST FRIEND!!" and follow them around everywhere. I'm told people don't like it when I do that.
But yeah, I've saved every single flower I've ever received in the game. The more personal ones, I keep in my bags at all time like the sentimental sap that I am.
So what about that desperate undertone?
Thankfully, it doesn't happen often that someone is after more than casual in-game friendship. But for whatever strange reason I can't begin to fathom, it has happened once or twice over the years. And if it has happened to me, it must happen to players more graceful and eloquent than I as well. It's important to keep boundaries, to be polite but straightforward. Not everyone in WoW has wonderful social skills so being very direct is often the only way to be understood.
Final Words on In-Game Gifts
WoW is a social game and, just like in real life, gifts play an important role in the interactions between people. Acts of kindness strengthen friendships and generosity between teammates accelerates guild progress. But giving too much can result in burn out or being taken advantage of. When it comes to receiving, people have their boundaries. Officers typically don't like members trying to "buy" privileges with presents. (And here I have to add, I was an officer in a guild for a year and a half and *no one* ever tried to exchange presents for privileges! I'm very insulted by that.) Players of either gender may or may not appreciate feeling "hit on" by other players. Many players don't like others "doing things for them" since the farm or the grind is part of the fun for them. When receiving a gift is uncomfortable or unpleasant, it defeats the whole purpose of the gift, so being able to say "thanks but no thanks" without being hurtful is a useful skill.


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Recon_Hawk wrote:The production of all your videos are top notch Em. Great job. Keep them coming!
You have Barkley going lower than I've seen anywhere else. Care to share your thoughts on that?
One more question.
In general, is there a list skill set at the receiver position that would fit Russell Wilson better than another skill set? For example, would YAC ability be more important than catching ability, considering Wilson is more the type to find the open receiver as opposed to fitting a ball into tight coverage?
Reason I ask, is because of the Patterson over Woods pick (which I like). They're both talented threats at the receiver position, but obviously different players.
Thanks again, Em.
Return to [ NCAA FOOTBALL & PRO DRAFT ]


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Adore Labradorite Sterling Silver Gold-Plated Anklet
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2009 was the "year of the app," especially for the iPhone, whose App Store is overflowing with more than 100,000 offerings. While it's easy to make fun of the more ridiculous apps, some truly stellar wares stood out from that massive pile, and we're taking the time to honor them.
We recently published Wired readers' favorite iPhone apps of 2009, as well as Apple's top picks. Now it's our turn. The Wired staff has chosen its 20 favorite apps, broken into separate categories: productivity, games, hobbies, and travel and outdoors. These are apps we deemed exceptional either for their innovation, elegant design, usefulness or a combination of all these qualities.
Ready for this? Drum roll, please.
Productivity ————
We've been using instant messaging for years, but BeeJiveIM is the most feature-rich, well-designed app we've seen that crams this communication method into our pockets. The app supports several IM services (such as Google chat, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger), as well as chat-room functionality and the ability to upload videos and photos. Plus, it's got push support, so IMs can pop up on your iPhone, just like text messages, the instant you receive them. It's a fancy app worth the $10 (on sale for $7 until Jan. 1, 2010). Download BeeJiveIM.
Who doesn't like Dropbox? The service allows you to store and share your computer's files online through a "dropbox" folder, and this new iPhone app allows you to access your Dropbox anywhere you go. On the iPhone, Dropbox really comes in handy for listening to your friends' shared music or viewing their videos and photos. The Dropbox service is free for 2 GB of storage per month. It costs $10 per month for 50 GB and $20 per month for 100 GB. The iPhone app is free. Download Dropbox.
We're gaga for Instapaper here at Wired. The app is perfect for tech-savvy newshounds constantly on the run – i.e., us. After downloading the app, you add a "Read Later" button to your web browser toolbar. Whenever you see a webpage with contents you want to save to read on your iPhone, you click the Read Later button. Launch Instapaper et voila – it's there. Very useful not just for saving web articles, but also recipes, map directions, airplane itineraries and so on. The app is $5; there's also a light version you can get for free. Download Instapaper.
Tweetie 2
We've been raving about this app for months, and with good reason: Tweetie 2 is probably the most loved app in the App Store. Its beautiful interface and rich feature set make using Twitter a blast. It's a must-have for any Twitter user with an iPhone. Tweetie 2 is $3. Download Tweetie 2.
Games —–
Canabalt is braindead simple, and that's what makes it such a great game. It's a retro-style, side-scrolling adventure with one objective: Survive. Avoid running into obstacles or falling into pits; tap the screen to jump. The music is awesome, too. A fully playable Flash version of the game is available at Canabalt.com. It costs $3 to have it on your iPhone. Download Canabalt.
Doodle Jump
Another game that falls in the "charmingly simple" category is Doodle Jump. You take on the role of an adorable alien who bounces from platform to platform, with a goal of getting as high as possible. Trampolines, jetpacks and other goodies help you along the way. It costs just a buck in the App Store. Download Doodle Jump.
Flight Control
At this point in the year many of us have played Flight Control so many times we've grown sick of it. But that doesn't disqualify it from being one of the best iPhone games of the year. Who knew that using your finger to land planes could be so much fun? Somehow, this game pulled that off. It only costs a dollar. Download Flight Control.
Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor
You get to be a spider who swings around with his web while jumping extraordinary distances. And you don't even have to wear a lame red suit. For $3. Need we say more? Download Spider.
There are plenty of tower-defense strategy games out there, but TowerMadness brings the genre to a new level. The game's objective is to set up missile turrets and laser cannons to defend your flock of sheep from aliens and giant insects. What's so great about the game? Web 2.0-savviness: TowerMadness regularly hosts contests for players to compete for the most points to get prizes; the game also issues free upgrades with new levels. High replay value, smooth 3-D graphics and an awesome web experience: a true winner in our book, and it costs a dollar. Download TowerMadness.
Words With Friends
Wired readers adored Words With Friends – a Scrabble knockoff that you can play online – and it was a favorite among our staff, too. No surprise there: The social integration of the game is excellent. You can play with multiple friends simultaneously, and you can even taunt each other with an in-game chat tool. It's got a beautiful interface, too. The ad-free version of the game costs $3; there's also a free version with ad support. Download Words With Friends.
Travel and Outdoors ——————-
Whoever thought unit conversions could be fun? Convert is a gorgeous unit converter and calculator that makes conversions for everything from money and time to air pressure and energy. It's a lot more useful than you'd think. When cooking, for instance, if you're trying to triple a recipe and need to convert tablespoons into cups, you can simply punch some numbers into this app. Or if you're traveling to Japan and need to convert dollars into Yen, this should come in handy, too. Convert is a buck in the App Store. Download Travel and Outdoors.
Sending postcards can be a real drag, especially when you're trying to take it easy on vacation. Forget about wasting money on a generic-looking postcard from the museum and just download Postman. With the app you can create your own postcard using photos taken during your trip and then send it off instantly. That spares you the trouble of blowing money on postage, too. Download Postman.
Red Laser
Everyone's familiar with this scenario: You're browsing a brick-and-mortar retail store, and you spot something you'd like to buy. But we all know you can probably find a better deal online, without paying tax, too. Red Laser's a great app to help you check. It's a barcode scanner that brings up online deals super fast. Beats the heck out of standing there and manually searching shopping sites with the iPhone's web browser. The app costs $2. Download Red Laser.
Not all gadgets turn us into lazy couch potatoes. The iPhone proves that with the help of RunKeeper. It's a nifty app for tracking your progress for runs, bike rides, hikes, skiing and more. The app tells you total distance, time and current pace, and when you're done it uploads your data to your account on RunKeeper's website. The $10 version, RunKeeper Pro, has audio cues; the free version is cueless. Download RunKeeper.
Taxi Magic
Cabs can be as hard to get as a high-paying position in the journalism industry, but TaxiMagic pulls off the miracle of getting you a cab late at night in San Francisco. The app automatically loads with nearby cab services, and you can even use Taxi Magic to calculate a fare estimate for your destination and pay for the ride when you get there. Good news: It's free. Download Taxi Magic.
We lurve public radio, and the KCRW app streams all three KCRW channels: On Air, Music and News. It accompanies the streams with clean art, and there's also an Events button displaying music, news and arts happenings around time. Totally sweet for just a buck. Download KCRW.
Hobbies ——-
Best Camera
The best camera is the one you have with you. And unfortunately the first- and second-generation iPhones' built-in camera mostly sucks, but this app can still make shots look awesome. Best Camera grabs pictures from your iPhone camera roll, lets you process them and then share them via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. A slick interface makes the process easy: A rolling strip of icons at the bottom of the screen contains your editing tools. The app is $3. Download Best Camera.
Electronic musician Brian Eno turned the iPhone's touchscreen into a dreamscape of wonderful ambient sounds in his app Bloom. Tapping the screen in different places emits a different note; they change colors to create soothing visual animations as well. Bloom costs $4. Download Bloom.
Another sweet image-editing app, CameraBag is for photographers who want to keep things short and sweet. The app automatically applies effects filters to your photos by simply swiping from left to right. Effects include black and white, instant Polaroid, Cinema and more. CameraBag costs $2. Download CameraBag.
There's gold in them public book archives. Project Gutenberg has about 30,000 public domain e-books to date, including classics such as Gulliver's Travels, Oliver Twist and Tales of the Jazz Age. Eucalyptus is the best app we've seen providing for accessing and reading Project Gutenberg books on your iPhone. It costs $10 in the App Store, and it's worth it. Download Eucalyptus.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com, Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com


text: Mauritius is an island of beautiful beaches fringed with palm and casuarina trees, protected by a coral reef forming lagoons of crystal clear water. A fertile island where waving fronds of sugar cane dominate the landscape; where there are large forested areas, huge craters, gorges and spectacular waterfalls all with a backdrop of mountains whose jagged profile indicates their volcanic origin. Its climate is idyllic with sunshine all the year round, temperatures varying little from summer to winter. Its many statues tell the story of its past, while the mosques, temples, pagoda and cathedrals are a testament to its multi-ethnic heritage. There is everything here to provide the visitor with the perfect holiday: a quiet atmosphere, the possibility of engaging in a range of activities from water-sports to golf, evenings of pleasure and entertainment with night clubs and Casinos. Mauritius has it all and much more .. to be discovered


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- Three options to use when you have to introduce yourself and you're the speaker;
- How do you handle eye contact between speaker and audience--and how do you know whether it's disrespectful or a cultural concern? I've got 5 tips for you;
- What's going on when you get an adrenaline rush and need to catch your breath while speaking. I share how to take control of your breathing and manage your body's responses;
- Can a mentor help you to become a better speaker? I hope this blog's among your mentor-sources, but here are some more reasons for finding a mentor to guide your public forays;
- If you want my tips on a regular basis for your employees, colleagues, members, or customers, download the Eloquent Woman blog's widget to post on your own blog or website;
- A former NPR intern and scientist shared her tips for vocalizing, which work for radio as well as for public speaking;
- Why speakers (and most all others) have trouble remembering jokes they want to retell; and
- Need to give an impromptu speech? I walk you through a time when it happened to me, and break down how to make it manageable. If I were you, I'd start preparing now for that eventuality.
Since March is Women's History Month, we also had two popular guest posts on the topic. Alyssa Gardina of the Women's Museum in Dallas shared some unforgettable women speakers who are represented in the museum's collections, and Joni Hubred-Golden of the Michigan Women's Forum did the same, focusing on great women speakers in her state's history. Check out these great inspirations and don't forget to let me know what topics you want to see covered next month!


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1964 AMC Rambler Classic - The Rumbler
Brian Anderson's Homebuilt, Turbocharged Rambler Dares to Be Different With 7-Second E.T.'s
What we have here is a street-driven, 7-second, 1,300-rear-wheel-horsepower, four-door, turbocharged '64 Rambler Classic. It's a Dare to Be Different sleeper on steroids. That's the short version of our rationale for inviting Brian Anderson and his 175-mph family sedan to the '04 and '05 Pump Gas Drags(tm) -we just had to see this thing run. Next thing we knew, Brian showed up for a leg of Power Tour(r) '06 just to prove that his creation was actually highway friendly. Impressive!
Why a four-door Rambler? Because it was there. About 10 years ago when Brian was 16, his interest in cars was just budding since he finally was able to legally pilot one. Brian was looking for something old, simple, and even more critically, cheap, since much of his fun money came from his lawn-cutting business. Languishing in the yard of one of his regular customers was an old four-door sedan that Brian had blown grass and leaves all over for five years. He'd never given the car a second thought and actually didn't know what it was, but suddenly the unidentified mid-'60s family car looked like a promising learning experience.
The car's owner didn't share the same vision of potential, and when Brian asked if it was for sale he was told that he could have it if he could drag it out of the yard. Brian was stoked. The car wasn't exciting to look at and he'd never even heard of a Rambler, but it was a '60s-era V-8 car with only 56,000 original miles on it. Score!
Once back home, Brian started with what he knew from go-karts and filed down the crusty points and poured some fuel into the carb. Surprisingly, the little 287ci AMC sputtered to life. Of course after nearly a decade of sitting there was a slew of maintenance to catch up on before the Rambler was streetable. With his funds draining quickly, Brian got a job at an auto parts store to take advantage of the employee discount, and it wasn't long before he was cruising to high school in his new project.
High school is about the time that most young gearheads start turning their attention toward speed parts and going fast, and Brian's buddies were already in full swing with their Mustangs, Camaros, and Novas since parts and knowledge on them are common fare. Unfortunately there's little to nothing available for 287ci AMCs, and the rearend and torque-tube driveshaft weren't ideal for power (and Rambler used them through 1966!). But Brian had developed a bond with the Rambler, plus he liked being known as "the Rambler guy," so he resolved to start saving for a full drivetrain swap.
Coming from a Ford family, Brian initially planned to swap in a 351ci Cleveland, a C6 trans, and a 9-inch rear from a Torino parts car, but the more he investigated the swap the more it looked daunting due to the lack of cheap, readily available parts to make the drivetrain fit and make the power he wanted. After adding up the different options, Brian relented and decided that building a small-block Chevy was the easiest and most affordable route. Once he'd graduated and saved up enough cash to gather together the parts, he dove right in with an engine-building book in one hand and a wrench in the other and learned by doing. The rest of the driveline was a hodgepodge of parts, including a TH350 trans connected to a 9-inch rear from a '69 Mustang that hung from leaves removed from a junkyard '78 Camaro, all mounted with home-brewed fabrication that Brian devised as he went.
That initial setup was good for mid-14s, and once Brian had a platform he could actually play with, the speed bug really bit and he began researching how to squeeze more from the 383ci. Though forced induction was the obvious answer and Brian toyed with the idea of a Roots-style blower, he really wanted to keep that four-door sleeper look and just couldn't bring himself to cut the Rambler's hood, so a centrifugal was the only option. After reviewing a magazine article outlining a 700hp Mouse with a blow-through carb setup, Brian decided to emulate it on his own engine and swapped on a set of AFR aluminum heads and a blower cam with an air-to-air intercooled ProCharger D-1. There are no Chevy-powered Rambler kits, so Brian fabbed up the plumbing with help from a buddy at an exhaust shop. Suddenly the big black four-door was in the low 11s with an occasional high 10-and getting a lot more attention. That only whetted Brian's appetite and eventually led to an upgrade to a D-1R ProCharger that returned timeslips in the 9s. This of course necessitated a more serious rollcage, which Brian built with the help of his friend Glen Musselwhite. Nines are quick in anyone's book, but that's really fast considering the car he was working with and that Brian was learning and doing nearly all of the work himself through trial and error.
There are much bigger blowers to be had, but Brian decided to jump aboard the turbo bandwagon and see where that would take him. By this time the drivetrain and chassis were at their limits, so Brian, now working toward his degree in engineering, began to assemble a much more serious platform that would enable the Rambler to utilize the power he was planning. The rear suspension was replaced with a four-link and full back-half while the front received a custom coilover setup designed by Brian. The 383ci and TH350 were replaced with a World Products-based 408ci with Dart heads backed by a Neal Racing Powerglide.
Turbo plumbing is a science unto itself, but again Brian wasn't scared by his lack of experience and just tried to package his new gargantuan 106mm hairdryer and its air-to-water intercooler as logically as he could. The blow-through system gave way to fuel injection controlled by a FAST XFI box, and soon those 9-second timeslips faded to 8 seconds on 93 octane. With a little extra volatility in the tank and the boost cranked up to 20 psi he's been able to coax the 3,300-pound Rambler through the lights at 7.91 at 175 mph. Math tells us that it takes just a bit under 1,400 hp to do that, but since the car had to be in its street-friendly, 93-octane-swilling tune at the '05 Pump Gas Drags(tm), Brian was held to a best of 8.752 at 159.27 mph.
Had he been able to repeat that number the event would have been his for the taking, but two slower runs netted him a 9.246 average time and a Seventh Place finish. Still, that's not too shabby for a four-door AMC sedan home-built by a kid in his mid-20s. But never satisfied, Brian says he's already moving on to the next evolution of the Rambler, which will involve a new long-block and a pair of 88mm turbos that should kick the power capability up to just shy of outrageous for any street-driven car-which is what Brian tells us he intends to keep it as. That's good news, 'cause we think Brian's next fabrication project should be a trailer hitch to prepare the Rambler for Drag Week(tm).
Quick Inspection: '64 AMC Rambler Classic Brian Anderson Kathleen, GA
POWERTRAINEngine: Beginning with a World Products block, Brian used an Eagle crank and rods with JE nitrous pistons (28cc dish) to displace 408 ci. Up top, 252cc, 18-degree, ported Dart heads house 2.15 titanium and 1.60 Inconel valves with Jesel 1.6 rockers negotiating a custom-ground Comp Cams solid roller cam. An 18-degree Dart single-plane intake mates to a 90mm Accufab throttle body while Bosch 160-lb/hr injectors disperse the fuel from twin Aeromotive pumps. The pressure comes from a 106mm Precision Turbo with an air-to-water intercooler that Brian squeezed under the dash. Power: With careful tuning for 93 octane on the FAST XFI fuel injection system, Brian sees 1,330 hp at 7,000 rpm to the wheels and 998 lb-ft of torque at 6,900 rpm. Transmission: A Powerglide from Neal Racing Transmissions uses a Dedenbear case and a 10-inch, 3,500-rpm stall converter from JW. Rearend: A Ford 9-inch is stuffed with 35-spline Moser axles and a spool with 3.55 gears.
ChassisSuspension: The Applied Racing Technology four-link rear uses QA1 double-adjustable coilover shocks with 150-lb/in springs and an A.R.T. antiroll bar. The front uses QA1 single-adjustable coilovers with 250-lb/in springs on a custom suspension designed by Brian. Brakes: Aerospace Components disc brakes take up all four corners and are pressured by a Chrysler 111/48-inch manual master cylinder. Wheels and Tires: Weld Prostars measure 15x3.5 in the front with M/T 26x7.50-15 tires; 15x12 Prostars and 315/60R15 M/T drag radials fill up the rear.
StyleBody: The body is stock and all steel. Paint: The Dark Charcoal Pearl Metallic is a Lexus color from an '04 IS300 laid down by John Meyers in Warner Robins, Georgia. Interior: The seats are Kirkey aluminum race seats. Shadburns Upholstery in Macon, Georgia, made and installed the carpet, and Brian did all the other interior work. At the time of these photos the cage was only a 12-point, but Brian's going to have to upgrade to a 25.5-spec chassis if he really wants to play and run the car as fast as it's capable of going.


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Bernstein awarded National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend
March 23, 2012
Undergraduate Campus
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded Andrew Bernstein, associate professor of history, a $6,000 summer stipend. This highly competitive program provides scholars with funding for two months of full-time research and writing.
This award enables Bernstein to spend the summer of 2012 working on his upcoming book, "Fuji: A Mountain in the Making." Bernstein hopes that the book will "resituate and augment conventional views of Fuji to create something new: a comprehensive 'environmental biography' of the mountain that does it justice as an actor in, and product of, both the physical world and the human imagination."
Learn more about Bernstein's research.
Learn more about the NEH summer stipend program.