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Brea, CA (PRWEB) June 19, 2013
Embassy Suites Brea, the only full service upscale hotel in North Orange County, today announced that it has received a TripAdvisor® Certificate of Excellence award. The accolade, which honors hospitality excellence, is given only to establishments that consistently achieve outstanding traveler reviews on TripAdvisor, and is extended to qualifying businesses worldwide. Only the top-performing 10 percent of businesses listed on TripAdvisor receive this prestigious award.
To qualify for a Certificate of Excellence, businesses must maintain an overall rating of four or higher, out of a possible five, as reviewed by travelers on TripAdvisor, and must have been listed on TripAdvisor for at least 12 months. Additional criteria include the volume of reviews received within the last 12 months.
"Embassy Suites Brea – North Orange County is pleased to receive a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence," said Russell Hanover, General Manager at Embassy Suites Brea. "We strive to offer our customers a memorable experience, and this accolade is evidence that our hard work is translating into positive reviews on TripAdvisor."
"TripAdvisor is delighted to celebrate the success of businesses around the globe, from Sydney to Chicago, Sao Paulo to Rome, which are consistently offering TripAdvisor travelers a great customer experience," said Alison Copus, Vice President of Marketing for TripAdvisor for Business. "The Certificate of Excellence award provides top performing establishments around the world the recognition they deserve, based on feedback from those who matter most – their customers."
About the Embassy Suites Brea – North Orange County
The Embassy Suites Brea – North Orange County is a 228 all-suite hotel located in upscale North Orange County, CA. The hotel offers complimentary cooked-to-order breakfast and a Complimentary Evening Reception featuring beer, wine and light snacks. Brea Mall is adjacent to the hotel and offers shopping, dining and spa experiences. The Embassy Suites Brea is a Tripadvisor.com Certificate of Excellence winner and currently ranks #1 by guests staying in Brea, CA. For more information about the hotel, please visit http://www.brea.embassysuites.com.
Or contact: Lisa Kotlar at lisa.kotlar(at)hilton(dot)com.
About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is the world's largest travel site*, enabling travelers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors**, and over 100 million reviews and opinions. The sites operate in 30 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors.
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/6/prweb10840867.htm

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Diddy Speaks On Nicki Minaj & Lil Kim's Beef! "I Love Both Of Them. Kim Is The Queen. And Nicki Is The Queen In Her Own Right"
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text:
"A Night of Timeless R&B" in Philadelphia on November 15, 2014 was a lot of fun. Doing the new show and it's blend of classics making them feel new again and the what's now of PARADISE is energizing. The ladies are enthralled with new addition Paul'Micael Bair handling the male leads of SHALAMAR ™ reminiscent to some of a young El Debarge mixed with Justin Timberlake – while for my ears having his own developing style. It's really hit packed and energetic from start to finish which ends with some of my own signature solo hits. I met some super people like Brian Walmer who is continuously supportive of the new music, Patty Jackson from WDAS and radio personality Muthaknows. Put your hands in the air doesn't need much prompting. Good vibes all around.
Once arriving home, I was beyond ecstatic to spend a week with my daughter Lauren who was visiting from the bay. Cooking, just hanging out in our lightweights aka pajama's or comfy clothes – getting to watch "Scandal" together, talking politics, current events, pop culture..dining out, shopping for makeup at our favorite spot and just overall spending time being together. I'm so happy that we have the relationship we do and that I put the time in from day one to be present – and remain so. I cherish time spent with family and friends. The week was capped off with dinner at our favorite Ruth's Chris Steakhouse with my Mom and one of my nieces. We shared so many laughs – the only person missing was my son Arie, we had a creme brûlée' for him – this is life!
Celebrating one of my closet friends choreographer, dancer Rosero McCoy was also on this week's schedule. Dancing with Rosero and friends (including my other best friend Wallace Butts) was another moment to reflect on the meaningful things in life – and the people we have it our lives. There was one moment we were all dancing and I really took it all in – the moment, the joy, the smiles and thought this is what life's all about. Not fair weathered or superficial people who come and go at a whim but the people you know who will be there for you, appreciate honesty without holding it against you and always ready to roll through life's ups and downs, not social climbers – just friends. Laughter, music, dancing, good food, quality people and friendship – indeed another slice of paradise.
PARADISE candles are nearly sold-out! Get yours today and the music to go with it.
Shop at The Jody Watley Boutique: http://www/jodywatleyboutique.com
PARADISE iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/paradise/id901587446?uo=4
Cache Creek Resort and Casino with SHALAMAR ™ November 29, 2014
New York Private Event with SHALAMAR ™ Decemer 12, 2014
Manchester, England Charity Private Event December 14, 2014
Billboard Live Tokyo with SHALAMAR ™ December 28, 2014
Billboard Live Osaka with SHALAMAR ™ December 30-31, 2014


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SR 4-6-0's
The contents of this gallery illustrate, of course, entirely the output of R. E. L. Maunsell and are illustrated by just a few locomitive classes: Lord Nelson (LN), King Arthur (N15), Remembrance (N15X) and S15 with only the N15X being less than successful. If ever there was an example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" then that is it.Read More
I'm always on the qui vive for more material to augment this part of my collection.
Please contact me via the Add comment button at the bottom of the image page if you have anything available.


text:
T1 Beetle Safari Wind Screen Shield Wiper Holder Disengager Mount Idle Bracket, with Washer Jet
Product Code: 80070018
OE Code:
Any Questions, Please Contact Us Here
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'67 Reed Green Beetle
The two year project to build a car that was missing everything So I was at the DTA meet a few years ago Stef was selling his old car in parts, his shell caught my eye as it looked pretty solid and mostly reasonably shape. We settled on a price…Read More


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safetyequip necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 168 diseños de 26 diseñadores freelance.
Big Safety
Big Safety is an online web retailer of personal protective and safety equipment to the petroleum, mining and construction industries that ships goods throughout Australia.
Big Safety has been supplying and growing online since 2002. We have come a long way from our Dancing Construction guy that was the central brand on our website. http://web.archive.org/web/20020806…ty.com.au/ .
The dancing jackhammer guy is in the bottom left of our new website, http://www.bigsafety.com.au . However we are now starting to secure more corporate clients and the time to generate a lasting professional, corporate brand is now.
Our company is focussed on being found first on the internet, and then the website converts with very competitive prices for good quality products. This is then followed up by excellent customer service.
Our focus for the customer service team is being professional, relaxed (make the client feel comfortable), connected, and solution focussed. Also we always ensure we do what we say we will. We also provide friendly phone support as customers often want to talk to a human instead of a machine.
Our culture is of a cheaky yet strong web upstart that is challenging the old entrenched companies, that has a business model that is quicker, easier and more fun to ensure "Safety Made Easy"
We have large corporate clients in Petroleum, Mining and Construction industries. We also do a fair amount of work for Universities supplying dangerous goods storage cabinets.
Most of our clients find us on the web through Google Adwords. Therefore these clients will be happy if our brand appears strong, warm and professional.
It is time for Big Safety to update and move to the next generation of a more professional, corporate identity that displays like a modern web company.
We are an online web retailer of personal protective and safety equipment to the petroleum, mining and construction industries that ships goods throughout Australia.
Our business strengths is that we are easy to find online, we have competitive pricing for good quality products with very personal customer service.
Our new logo is to be a more corporate and professional brand that is still warm and inviting.
- Looking for a creative outside the box corporate logo,
- I like the simplicity of a lot of Web 2.0 logos.
- Mainly require the name Big Safety.
- Could try including the website address with the name, however not sure if this would give me the stylish clean, clear, simple logo I am thinking of.
- We like the environment, so a long shot could be including an image indicating support for the environment . eg a green leaf . Not essential, however if it looks good, that would be great.
- Require the logo in formats .eps and .jpg
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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BusinessBroker necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 256 diseños de 60 diseñadores freelance.
We are a new startup online jewelry store and we will be selling very high quality jewelry for a good price. We will be providing nice packaging with all merchandise. We want to come across as elegant, but trendy and contemporary. We are in need of a great brandable logo that looks great on business cards, website, jewelry ring boxes, etc.
Our name, "Karat" represents the purity of gold. For example, 24K or 24 Karat is pure gold. 18K or 18 Karat is 75% gold.
We will be selling gold, silver and platinum as well as diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds and unique gemstones such as tourmalines, tanzanites and colored diamonds.
We will be competing with Blue Nile, Tiffany & Co., James Allen, and similar sites.
16 to 80+ male and females
We are looking for something really creative and trendy, but also elegant. We want a logo that will print well while also looking great on a website and other digital media. Unfortunately, we don't know what we want other than that, so we're truly looking for your creativeness. It could be just the name in a great looking style or maybe it's the name plus some elegant symbol. Something eye-catching.
We want a logo that:
• contains our name, but possibly has an image that can stand alone
• reflects that we're involved in luxury merchandise
• is legible/readable on print material, even if printed quite small
• works as a black & white image
• must look good on a white or black background
• is original (can't violate copyright laws or use unlicensed photos)
Colors & design elements are up to the designer. We like the idea of chrome/silver, but "karat" represents "gold", so we also like the idea of gold. We also like the idea of black with gold or chrome accents. But, we're also open to any color. Once we start seeing colors that we like, we'll definitely give feedback.
The logo should be 100% vector format in Adobe Illustrator and should be able to be opened in Adobe Illustrator CS3. The AI file should utilize layers and all layers should be well labeled. A PNG with transparent background should be provided as well.
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text: Happy President's Day! In honor of today's holiday, we're celebrating some of our history's most environmentally-friendly heads of state: Image via Wikipedia Commons. Thomas Jefferson As our nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson was responsible for laying down a lot of the groundwork for the way that our country functions. In his spare time, Jefferson spent a good deal nurturing his own curiosity in nature. Did you know? Thomas Jefferson was an avid horticulturist at his Monticello home! In addition to his own personal admiration for the natural world, Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition, during which a great deal was discovered about our country's natural landscape and native wildlife! Theodore Roosevelt "There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm." - President "Teddy" Roosevelt President Roosevelt is widely-regarded as our history's most environmentally-active leader. During his two terms in office, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service and created the National Wildlife Refuge System. Did you know? Over 200 million acres of land were placed under federal protection during Roosevelt's presidency! Franklin D. Roosevelt In addition to guiding America through the Great Depression and World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt championed the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). As the country's first nationally-united conservation team, the CCC planted billions of trees, cleared up waterways and streams and constructed close to 1,000 parks across the country! Lyndon B. Johnson "We see that there is another course...Down this course lies a natural America restored to her people. The promise is clear rivers, tall forests, and clear air - a sane environment for man." - President Lyndon B. Johnson During his two terms in office, President Johnson was responsible for creating the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered Species Act of 1966 and the Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965! Johnson was also the first president to sign acts concerning clean air and water quality into law. Policies like the Clean Air Act and Water Quality Act established quality standards and government authority to combat air and water pollution. Richard Nixon Despite leaving a scandalous legacy, President Richard Nixon did many positive things for the environment during his time in office. In addition to creating the Environmental Protection Agency, Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1974 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which has successfully protected 99 percent of its listed species from going extinct in the last 40 years. Barack Obama After many decades of resource abuse and habitat degradation, President Barack Obama has been faced with many challenges when it comes to managing our country's environmental impact and policies. In addition to his plans to curb carbon pollution in the US, President Obama is responsible for creating our nation's first-ever National Ocean Policy. The goal of this policy and its corresponding implementation plan is to streamline how Federal agencies work together to manage the ocean economy, marine planning, habitat protection/restoration and research and exploration. Did you celebrate President's Day by getting out and enjoying the natural world? Tell us about it in the comments section! Tags: barack-obama, endangered-species-act, environmental-policy, environmentally-friendly-presidents, fdr, franklin-roosevelt, lyndon-johnson, marine-mammal-protection-act, national-ocean-policy, presidents, presidents-day, richard-nixon, teddy-roosevelt, thomas-jefferson Categories: Conservation Previous Post Next Post


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The Light Master
They often look their best from a distance, their colors merging like mist in the room so that the air almost appears to glow. We are standing in Keith Sonnier's house, looking across together to his "barn." In the window, you can vaguely make our the gleam from one of his sculptures. Fresh snow has obliterated the ground; deer glide by. A blizzard is expected for tomorrow.
All is bright inside the light artist's house, a small Victorian building on Long Island with a modern extension he added three years ago. Now the sun falls on art and plants, and masks he brought home from his many travels. Since suffering a stroke, he sometimes has problems walking, but he nevertheless appears bright, enthusiastic – and pleasure loving. This man enjoys receiving visitors.
Mr. Sonnier, you must have had plenty of electric shocks…
There were a few! But that was in the beginning, when I had just started working with neon. I was smoking too much dope… (laughs).
Why neon?
It's a trapped gas, ignited by the electrical charge… and then the light extends out into the atmosphere. I am very drawn to that perception element of it. It's much more seductive than digital lighting. It's a color that glows. Like a flame. It IS a flame!
So it's all about seduction…
When you perceive something, it washes over you. There is an emotional response that makes you aware of your five senses. I want my art to have this. I want it to imbue you.
What is more important: color? Or light?
My first neon work was white. So it was all about the glow. Then I discovered the primary triangle red, yellow, blue… What had drawn me to pigment was the thickness of the raw material, like vermillion red. But light intensifies color to such a new level, it even gives volume to it. I couldn't conceive of making new works without trying different color combinations in space and form.
Off-the-shelf neon tubes won't do for Sonnier's works: He has his light made to order. "The traditional way to make neon is flat, like writing text with spaghetti. I wanted it to bend and come out into space." Sonnier's sculptures often look fragile, appear to be in motion, rolling. Looking at them, you are more likely to be put in mind of a snapshot of a primitive organism than a sculpture for eternity.
The production studio is just a five-minute drive from his house in Bridgehampton. Each of his works begins with a sketch from which the model will later develop. Sonnier decides on the color, in other words, the gas or gas mixture, using the sample tubes in his neon charts. The model then goes to the glass blowers' workshop, where the hot glass is blown into the desired shape, corks are pushed into the ends of the tubes and they are left to cool. For some colors, the hollow glass additionally receives an inner coating before the ends are reheated, the corks replaced by electrodes, a vacuum is created and finally, the noble gas is let in – then the electrical circuit is closed.
In the studio, Sonnier finally pieces the individual components together. Once it is ready to be photographed, the finished sculpture is taken to the light-flooded barn, a second studio on his property. The entire production set-up is a well-oiled artisan operation, perfectly attuned to the needs of the art market. Sometimes, the ultimate destination of a piece influences its design: Sonnier favors the plain blue and red of the noble gases argon and neon for public spaces, for example, because they are easily replaced – a neon tube has a life of less than 15 years.
Why don't you prepare the tubes yourself?
The artisans are fabulous, I have been working with some of them for more that 30 years now. And they're always happy when they can make something that is not advertising. I don't have the time and interest to make my own neon. I would much rather see a cooking show! I'm not a good recipe follower, though… (laughs).
Your kitchen speaks volumes: You love to cook…
Yes! I have always been interested in food. Men and women from Louisiana all cook. In Louisiana, first of all, you have to know how to make a roux. It's basically poached flour that ends up being the color of chocolate. It even looks like fudge. This is the main ingredients for several of our dishes, and everytime I go to Louisiana, people still ask me: How's your sauce?
Well, how is your sauce?
I have quite perfected it! I use lemongrass now and many other herbs I have come to know through my travels. That plant at the end of the hall is a lemongrass tree. Also, I don't make my roux with actual wheat flour, I use almond or chickpea flour. And it tastes fabulous!
In food and in art – you like to be next to the flame…
Absolutely. The flame can be very soothing. And I can make myself feel better by making food. I am rarely depressed because I can rely on this as a mode to get me past things.
Sonnier's grandmother was a traiteur, as people used to say in the Louisiana patois: She was a healer who used food to cure people. Anyone could come to her and she would take them in and help them without asking a cent in return. Otherwise, she spent the whole day playing cards on her veranda, surrounded by magnificent sycamore trees. Ask Sonnier about his career and he says very little about himself but lots about his teachers. His grandmother, he says, was his first mentor. "I still remember seeing her at 77, clearing a fence in one jump – and she was a tiny woman!"
My work is a celebration. It has to celebrate perception
Sonnier was born in Mamou, Louisiana, in 1941, where he spent a happy childhood amid subtropical plants, extensive rice fields and damp, misty air – everywhere, the light was reflected and refracted in fascinating ways. But the depictions of hell and heaven on opposite sides of the Catholic church where he served as an altar boy were the only art Sonnier knew.
His favorite aunt was the manager of the movie theater in Mamou. Keith tore the tickets upstairs, where the blacks had to sit. He saw Quo Vadis around 40 times. "I knew everything about this movie. How the light affects the mood and sets the scene for perception…. And then there was Deborah Kerr in that fabulous blue gown!"
Sonnier was 15 years old when he and his aunt were involved in a serious car accident. While critically ill and running a high temperature, he had out-of-body experiences. "I remember the white light. It was bright and intense."
Was that the moment when you decided to become an artist?
As a kid I was on my own a lot. To get past my boredom, I had to be inventive. So I always made things out of twigs and bits of branches. It looked abstract, but to me it was like little scenes – the sky was made out of banana leaves. But I never thought that this could be art. Even later, when I showed my work in New York, I was still shocked that people would buy something I made.
Back then you left purist minimalism behind you with inflatable sculptures…
Minimalist art was very good, but what I wanted as an experience from my work was not the response I got from it. Aesthetically I liked it, especially a painting by Josef Albers. But I was not going to make an Albers painting. I wanted to make something that I manifested. It had to be my recipe, my sauce! (laughs).
At first glance, your pieces are abstract. But they are also lively, you could almost say: happy…
Yes and that has been a real issue. People would say: Oh, it's very decorative. I think it's just the opposite: a celebration. This is a very important aspect of my work. It has to celebrate perception.
Sounds like you're having a lot of fun at work…
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it ecstasy… (laughs). But I know a lot of artists who speak of their work as of some kind of drudgery. If I had an attitude like that towards art, I wouldn't even bother making it!
This story first appeared in Lufthansa Exclusive, the frequent traveller magazine. For more information about Lufthansa Miles & More offers, please click here.
Sebastian Handke
Sebastian Handke was born at a very early age. He spent his childhood in San Francisco and the heartland of Swabia. Once it was over, he earned his living as a director's assistant, a Flash developer, a musician and a journalist. These days, Sebastian is the editor responsible for Lufthansa Magazin Online.


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Leather-N-Fringe Frames
Pewter Picture Frames
Leather, Chains, & Flames 'Dream Come True'
Pewter Picture Frames w/clock
Picture Frames -
These picture frames are a favorite gift item among our customers. The Leather-N-Fringe
frames are 4"x6", and have fringe and studs for a vintage look. The cast frames are cold-cast from a heavy polyresin and
hand painted to exacting detail to highlight that favorite 4" x 6" photo.


text:
Digital presents unprecedented opportunities to adapt technology to the people that use it in healthcare—health plans, providers and consumers—to improve labor productivity, tailor interactions and empower people to use technology on their terms. Technology is all around us, but we are at the centre. And when we design technology for the humans that use it, we will define the future of healthcare.
Get ahead of the top digital trends in healthcare
How will this year's five trends impact healthcare? Listen to the discussion with moderator Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, health economist and industry advisor and blogger at Health Populi; Mike Redding, managing director with Accenture Ventures, Kaveh Safavi, senior global managing director with Accenture Health; and Lisa Suennen, senior managing director for GE Ventures.
One company that exemplifies technology for people is CVS Health. The healthcare company has transformed from the corner store that fills prescriptions to a provider of affordable basic healthcare services, deeply embedded in their customers' lives. CVS Health is taking a comprehensive approach to healthcare to enable this shift, deploying technology to put the individual's health at the centre of their focus. With the company's smartwatch-compatible mobile app, customers can set personalised reminders for taking their medication, snap pictures of their prescriptions to expedite refills and scan their insurance card so that store clerks are prepared with up-to-date information.i
At the CVS Health-operated Minute Clinics, customers can receive treatment for minor illnesses, flu shots, cholesterol screenings and more than a dozen other medical services—all of which can be booked and paid for online. For people who can't make it to a physical location, CVS Health is also partnering with various telemedicine services like Teladoc, so patients can receive care via phone or video chat. And CVS Health is even moving into preventative care: The company is partnering with IBM's Watson for data analysis to predict when a patient will need urgent care. ii
1 MobiHealth News, "CVS Health Launches Five New Digital Health Features, Including an Apple Watch App," November 18, 2015
2 Forbes, "CVS and IBM's Watson Cloud Pursue Ways to Predict Patient Health," July 30, 2015
Every year, the Technology Vision team partners with Accenture Research to pinpoint the emerging IT developments that will have the greatest impact on companies, government agencies and other organisations in the next three to five years. These trends have significant impact across industries, and are actionable for businesses today.
The research process begins with gathering input from the Technology Vision External Advisory Board, a group comprising more than two dozen experienced individuals from the public and private sectors, academia, venture capital and entrepreneurial companies. In addition, the Technology Vision team conducts interviews with technology luminaries and industry experts, as well as nearly 100 Accenture business leaders from across the organisation.
For the third year, we conducted a global survey of more than 5,400 business and IT executives in 31 countries to understand their perspectives on the impact of technology in business, and to identify their technology strategy and priority investments for the next few years. The survey was fielded from November 2016 through January 2017.


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semifor necesitaba un nuevo diseño de botón o icono y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 17 diseños de 6 diseñadores freelance.
Packrati.us (http://packrati.us) is a simple web service. We follow your twitter feed and post URLs you tweet to your delicious (http://delcious.com) bookmarks.
Ratius T. Packrat is the hero. The mascot. The rat gets the credit and the blame. He's the spokesman, the chairman of the board, and---*sigh*---he hauls out the trash.
Everybody with a twitter account. Young, old, serious or laid back.
Why a rat? A packrat in particular. Seems to fit. Loves shiny things and saves them away.
I want a FUN avatar. One that people will enjoy and remember. I want to be able to use the graphic as both an avatar/profile picture for the @packratius (http://twitter.com/packratius) twitter account and on the http://packrati.us web page.
The service is truly a kitchen table project. It's the brain child of @semifor (http://twitter.com/semifor). It generates no income, at least not currently, so I'm digging deep to pay for the hosting, the time to work on it, and yep---this graphic. Do an awesome job and I'll happily add an attribution on the website (as long as that's ok with 99's terms and conditions).
The service is serious, but there's no reason the mascot, Ratius T. Packrat can't be fun. He's a handsome rat. Near sighted and has to wear his glasses to see the screen. It's quit a stretch to get those tiny paws on the keyboard, but he manages. He loves wine, cheese, and dark chocolate. He prefers a bicycle when traveling.
The rat isn't fond of mice. He's no mouse and shouldn't be confused with one. No furry critter attached to the rat's laptop---he prefers the keyboard, and will use the touch-pad if he has to, but he won't touch a mouse---no sirree!
The rat dreams of his own line of fine T-shirts, coffee mugs, rat pads (no mice, remember!).
Need more info? Just ask.


text:
Lolo loses, leaves as foe sets USA hurdles record
- Brianna Rollins won the 100 hurdles in 12.26 seconds%3B Lolo Jones finished disappointing fifth
- Michelle Carter %28shot put%29 and Amanda Bingson %28hammer throw%29 also set American records
- Sanya Richards-Ross was sixth in the 400%2C missing out on a spot on World Championships team
DES MOINES — While a beaming Brianna Rollins basked in her accomplishment, Lolo Jones slipped out of Drake Stadium.
Rollins closed Saturday's session of the U.S. Track & Field Championships with a victory in the women's 100-meter hurdles, setting an American record of 12.26 seconds in the process.
"I was just so overwhelmed and so emotional," Rollins said. "It's just so amazing."
For Jones, a Des Moines native, it was something entirely different.
She placed fifth in 12.55 seconds, then broke event protocol by failing to exit through a media mix zone.
When an official caught up with her, Jones declined to meet with reporters. Jones has been surrounded by controversy all week since doing a on-line video where she complained about the $741 check she received for competing with the USA bobsled team last season. She is trying to qualify for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia..
She told USA TODAY Sports when she arrived in Des Moines that she tries "to make people laugh or inspire them." Some bobsled teammates were not laughing, and criticized her. Others offered some support.
Jones finished fourth in the 100 hurdles in London and lost the gold medal when she hit the next-to-last hurdle in Beijing.
Rollins, meanwhile, was asked if she could chase down the world record of 12.21 — just .05 offer her Saturday pace.
"I don't know, we'll see," Rollins said. "We'll see what God has planned for me."
Thus ended a sun-soaked and bittersweet afternoon attended by 8,638 spectators.
Rollins was one of three women to set national records, but luminaries such as Jones and Sanya Richards-Ross missed their chance to compete at the World Championships from Aug. 10-18 in Moscow.
Hampered by a sore toe, Richards-Ross was sixth in the 400. Her voice began to crack during post-race interviews.
"I really wanted to make this team," Richards-Ross said. "It's so funny. You'd think after being in the sport for 11 years, you'd get tired of this. But it's so exhilarating and so much fun to compete on this level."
Michelle Carter set a lofty standard early Saturday, winning the women's shot put with an American record of 66 feet, 5 inches.
The two-time Olympian was raised for such a moment. Her father, Michael, was an outstanding shot putter and went on to play nose guard for the San Francisco 49ers.
"We've kind of been training for a peak this time of year," Carter said. "We've been trying to put everything together, get ready for Russia."
Can she peak again at the world meet?
"I believe I can," Carter said. "I've been training really hard and working on timing, going off things I have done, good or bad, in previous years."
Amanda Bingson followed Carter with an American record of 248-5 in the hammer throw. Her trip overseas, however, may conflict with a part-time job at Panda Express, located on the Texas State campus.
"My coach's wife, she manages it," Bingson said with a sheepish grin. "And she's really been helping me out with my scheduling and stuff like that."
Brigetta Barrett won the high jump with a personal-best leap of 6-8¼, but passed on a chance to clear the American mark of 6-8¾.
"It's bittersweet," Barrett said. "I feel like I've been working for this moment since freshman year (at Arizona), to finally be able to step out there and do it."
For sprinter Allyson Felix, and others competing Sunday afternoon, the journey to Moscow continues.
Felix, the reigning Olympic champion, won Saturday's opening heat of the 200 in 22.44 seconds, securing at place in Sunday's 2:22 p.m. semifinal.
But as Saturday proved, nothing is a given.
"I want to get through this," Felix said. "Top priority is to make the team."
Andrew Logue writes for The Des Moines Register, a Gannett affiliate.


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Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has reviewed the White House logs looking for a relationship between meetings listed there and the timeline found in the Inspector General's report on the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups issued last Tuesday. Lord's work represents yet another example of alternative media scooping a lazy or negligent establishment press.
What Lord has found (single-page print version) is that President Barack Obama met with the President of the National Treasury Employees Union Colleen Kelley, on March 31, 2010. The NTEU is "the 150,000 member union that represents IRS employees along with 30 other separate government agencies." The Inspector General's report, blandly titled "Inappropriate Criteria Were Used to Identify Tax-Exempt Applications for Review," indicates that the IRS, in Lord's words, "set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America" the very next day. Lord's work is a mandatory read-the-whole-thing item. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun? President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before agency targeted Tea Party.
... According to the White House Visitors Log ... the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.
... The very next day after her White House meeting with the President, according to the Treasury Department's Inspector General's Report, IRS employees — the same employees who belong to the NTEU — set to work in earnest targeting the Tea Party and conservative groups around America. The IG report wrote it up this way:
April 1-2, 2010: The new Acting Manager, Technical Unit, suggested the need for a Sensitive Case Report on the Tea Party cases. The Determinations Unit Program Manager Agreed.
In short: the very day after the president of the quite publicly anti-Tea Party labor union — the union for IRS employees — met with President Obama, the manager of the IRS "Determinations Unit Program agreed" to open a "Sensitive Case report on the Tea party cases."
... The IG report contained a timeline prepared by examining internal IRS e-mails. The IG report did not examine White House Visitor Logs, e-mails, or phone records relating to the relationship between the IRS union, the IRS, and the White House.
... (the) 12:30 Wednesday, March 31, 2010 meeting between President Obama and the IRS union's Kelley was not unusual.
On yet another occasion, Kelley's presence at the White House was followed shortly afterwards by the President issuing Executive Order 13522. A presidential directive that gave the anti-Tea Party NTEU — the IRS union — a greater role in the day-to-day operation of the IRS than it had already — which was considerable.
... Six days following Kelley's attendance at the White House Christmas party with labor activists like herself, the President issued Executive Order 13522 (text found here, with an explanation here). The Executive Order, titled: "Creating Labor-Management Forums To Improve Delivery of Government Services" applied across the federal government and included the IRS. The directive was designed to:
Allow employees and unions to have pre-decisional involvement in all workplace matters….
However else this December 2009 Executive Order can be described, the directive was a serious grant of authority within the IRS to the powerful anti-Tea Party union.
Lord raises compelling "What did the President know and when did he know it?" questions. Read the whole thing for the matters he raises.
I'd like to add one.
Much has been made of Barack Obama's "joking" about tax audits in mid-May of 2009. A Wall Street Journal editorial rebuked Obama over it:
At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."
... This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama's remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama's "joke" might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.
He's not, of course, but as the president his words carry much more weight and he should be much more careful.
In light of the news of the past two weeks, it is reasonable to question the motivation behind Obama's admonition to graduates at Ohio State on May 5 that they should "reject these voices" who "warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner." I contended last week that he might instead have been "preparing the nation for the recent series of scandals" which "he and his cohorts already saw coming" in the hope that the American people might discount their authoritarian aspects and implications.
Similarly, what if Obama's 2009 "joke," in addition to being a clumsy attempt at humor, inadvertently betrayed his full knowledge of the fury he had already unleashed against those who might oppose him?
Curious establishment press reporters could have accessed the White House logs at any time and found what Lord has discovered. US News has even gone to the trouble of making them searchable. But either they didn't, which would be bad enough, or much worse, they saw what Lord saw and ignored it. Under even remotely similar circumstances, or even artificial ones (e.g., the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame nothingburger known as Nadagate), their zeal to get to the bottom of things would know no bounds if a Republican or conservative was in the White House.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.org.


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When writer Alexandra Robbins returned to Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, ten years after graduating, she discovered an awful trend. The kids were miserable. She remembers her high school years as a grind of study and homework, but lots more, too, including leisure times that allowed for "well-roundedness." Not for Whitman students circa 2005. The teens in The Overachievers, Robbins's chronicle of a year spent among them, have only one thing on their minds, SUCCESS, and one thing in their hearts, ANXIETY. Trapped in a mad "culture of over-achieverism," they run a frantic race to earn an A in every class, score 750 or higher on the SATs, take piano lessons, chalk up AP courses on their transcripts, stay in shape, please their parents, volunteer for outreach programs, and, most of all, win entrance to "HYP" (Harvard-Yale-Princeton).
As graduation approaches, their résumés lengthen and sparkle, but their spirits flag and sicken. One Whitman junior, labeled by Robbins "The Stealth Overachiever," receives a fantastic 2380 (out of 2400) on a PSAT test, but instead of rejoicing, he worries that the company administering the practice run "made the diagnostics easier so students would think the class was working."
Audrey, "The Perfectionist," struggles for weeks to complete her toothpick bridge, which she and her partner expect will win them a spot in the Physics Olympics. She's one of the Young Democrats, too, and she does catering jobs. Her motivation stands out, and she thinks every other student competes with her personally, so whenever she receives a graded test or paper, "she [turns] it over without looking at it and then [puts] it away, resolving not to check the grade until she [gets] home."
"AP Frank" became a Whitman legend when as a junior he managed a "seven-AP course load that had him studying every afternoon, sleeping during class, and going lunchless." When he scored 1570 on the SAT, his domineering mother screamed in dismay, and her shock subsided only when he retook it and got the perfect 1600.
Julie, "The Superstar," has five AP classes and an internship three times a week at a museum, and she runs cross-country as well. Every evening after dinner she descends to the "homework cave" until bedtime and beyond. She got "only" 1410 on the SAT, though, and she wonders where it will land her next fall.
These kids have descended into a "competitive frenzy," Robbins mourns, and the high school that should open their minds and develop their characters has become a torture zone, a "hotbed for Machiavellian strategy." They bargain and bully and suck up for better grades. They pay tutors and coaches enormous sums to raise their scores a few points and help with the admissions process. Parents hover and query, and they schedule their children down to the minute. Grade inflation only makes it worse, an A- average now a stigma, not an accomplishment. They can't relax, they can't play. It's killing them, throwing sensitive and intelligent teenagers into pathologies of guilt and despair. The professional rat race of yore—men in gray flannel suits climbing the business ladder—has filtered down into the pre-college years, and Robbins's tormented subjects reveal the consequences.
The achievement chase displaces other life questions, and the kids can't seem to escape it. When David Brooks toured Princeton and interviewed students back in 2001, he heard of joyless days and nights with no room for newspapers or politics or dating, just "one skill-enhancing activity to the next." He calls them "Organization Kids" (after the old Organization Man figure of the fifties), students who "have to schedule appointment times for chatting." They've been programmed for success, and a preschool-to-college gauntlet of standardized tests, mounting homework, motivational messages, and extracurricular tasks has rewarded or punished them at every stage. The system tabulates learning incessantly and ranks students against one another, and the students soon divine its essence: only results matter. Education writer Alfie Kohn summarizes their logical adjustment:
Consider a school that constantly emphasizes the importance of performance! results! achievement! success! A student who has absorbed that message may find it difficult to get swept away by the process of creating a poem or trying to build a working telescope. He may be so concerned about the results that he's not at all that engaged in the activity that produces those results.
Just get the grades, they tell themselves, ace the test, study, study, study. Assignments become exercises to complete, like doing the dishes, not knowledge to acquire for the rest of their lives. The inner life fades; only the external credits count. After-school hours used to mean sports and comic books and hanging out. Now, they spell homework. As the president of the American Association of School Librarians told the Washington Post, "When kids are in school now, the stakes are so high, and they have so much homework that it's really hard to find time for pleasure reading" (see Strauss). Homework itself has become a plague, as recent titles on the subject show:
The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning (Etta Kralovec and John Buell); The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (Alfie Kohn); and The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It (Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish).
Parents, teachers, media, and the kids themselves witness the dangers, but the system presses forward. "We believe that reform in homework practices is central to a politics of family and personal liberation," Kralovec and Buell announce, but the momentum is too strong. The overachievement culture, results-obsessed parents, out-comes-based norms…; they continue to brutalize kids and land concerned observers such as Robbins on the Today show. Testing goes on, homework piles up, and competition for spaces in the Ivies was stiffer in 2007 than ever before. A 2006 survey by Pew Research, for instance, found that more than half the adults in the United States (56 percent) think that parents place too little pressure on students, and only 15 percent stated "Too much."
Because something is wrong with this picture, and most people realize it. They sense what the critics do not, a fundamental error in the vignettes of hyperstudious and overworked kids that we've just seen: they don't tell the truth, not the whole truth about youth in America. For, notwithstanding the poignant tale of suburban D.C. seniors sweating over a calculus quiz, or the image of college students scheduling their friends as if they were CEOs in the middle of a workday, or the lurid complaints about homework, the actual habits of most teenagers and young adults in most schools and colleges in this country display a wholly contrasting problem, but one no less disturbing.
Consider a measure of homework time, this one not taken from a dozen kids on their uneven way to the top, but from 81,499 students in 110 schools in 26 states—the 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement. When asked how many hours they spent each week "Reading/studying for class," almost all of them, fully 90 percent, came in at a ridiculously low five hours or less, 55 percent at one hour or less. Meanwhile, 31 percent admitted to watching television or playing video games at least six hours per week, 25 percent of them logging six hours minimum surfing and chatting online.
Or check a 2004 report by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research entitled Changing Times of American Youth: 1981–2003, which surveyed more than 2,000 families with children age six to 17 in the home. In 2003, homework time for 15- to 17year-olds hit only 24 minutes on weekend days, 50 minutes on weekdays. And weekday TV time? More than twice that: one hour, 55 minutes.
Or check a report by the U.S. Department of Education entitled NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress. Among other things, the report gathered data on study and reading time for thousands of 17year-olds in 2004. When asked how many hours they'd spent on homework the day before, the tallies were meager. Fully 26 percent said that they didn't have any homework to do, while 13 percent admitted that they didn't do any of the homework they were supposed to. A little more than one-quarter (28 percent) spent less than an hour, and another 22 percent devoted one to two hours, leaving only 11 percent to pass the two-hour mark.
Or the 2004–05 State of Our Nation's Youth report by the Horatio Alger Association, in which 60 percent of teenage students logged five hours of homework per week or less.
The better students don't improve with time, either. In the 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement, a college counterpart to the High School Survey of Student Engagement, seniors in college logged some astonishingly low commitments to "Preparing for class." Almost one out of five (18 percent) stood at one to five hours per week, and 26 percent at six to ten hours per week. College professors estimate that a successful semester requires about 25 hours of out-of-class study per week, but only 11 percent reached that mark. These young adults have graduated from high school, entered college, declared a major, and lasted seven semesters, but their in-class and out-of-class punch cards amount to fewer hours than a part-time job.
And as for the claim that leisure time is disappearing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues an annual American Time Use Survey that asks up to 21,000 people to record their activities during the day. The categories include work and school and child care, and also leisure hours. For 2005, 15- to 24-year-olds enjoyed a full five and a half hours of free time per day, more than two hours of which they passed in front of the TV.
The findings of these and many other large surveys refute the frantic and partial renditions of youth habits and achievement that all too often make headlines and fill talk shows. Savvier observers guard against the "we're overworking the kids" alarm, people such as Jay Mathews, education reporter at the Washington Post, who called Robbins's book a "spreading delusion," and Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, whose 2003 report on homework said of the "homework is destroying childhood" argument, "Almost everything in this story is wrong." One correspondent's encounter with a dozen elite students who hunt success can be vivid and touching, but it doesn't jibe with mountains of data that tell contrary stories. The surveys, studies, tests, and testimonials reveal the opposite, that the vast majority of high school and college kids are far less accomplished and engaged, and the classroom pressures much less cumbersome, than popular versions put forth. These depressing accounts issue from government agencies with no ax to grind, from business leaders who just want competent workers, and from foundations that sympathize with the young. While they lack the human drama, they impart more reliable assessments, providing a better baseline for understanding the realities of the young American mentality and forcing us to stop upgrading the adolescent condition beyond its due.
This book is an attempt to consolidate the best and broadest research into a different profile of the rising American mind. It doesn't cover behaviors and values, only the intellect of under-30-year-olds. Their political leanings don't matter, nor do their career ambitions. The manners, music, clothing, speech, sexuality, faith, diversity, depression, criminality, drug use, moral codes, and celebrities of the young spark many books, articles, research papers, and marketing strategies centered on Generation Y (or Generation DotNet, or the Millennials), but not this one. It sticks to one thing, the intellectual condition of young Americans, and describes it with empirical evidence, recording something hard to document but nonetheless insidious happening inside their heads. The information is scattered and underanalyzed, but once collected and compared, it charts a consistent and perilous momentum downward.
It sounds pessimistic, and many people sympathetic to youth pressures may class the chapters to follow as yet another curmudgeonly riff. Older people have complained forever about the derelictions of youth, and the "old fogy" tag puts them on the defensive. Perhaps, though, it is a healthy process in the life story of humanity for older generations to berate the younger, for young and old to relate in a vigorous competitive dialectic, with the energy and optimism of youth vying against the wisdom and realism of elders in a fruitful check of one another's worst tendencies. That's another issue, however. The conclusions here stem from a variety of completed and ongoing research projects, public and private organizations, and university professors and media centers, and they represent different cultural values and varying attitudes toward youth. It is remarkable, then, that they so often reach the same general conclusions. They disclose many trends and consequences in youth experience, but the intellectual one emerges again and again. It's an outcome not as easily noticed as a carload of teens inching down the boulevard rattling store windows with the boom-boom of a hip-hop beat, and the effect runs deeper than brand-name clothing and speech patterns. It touches the core of a young person's mind, the mental storehouse from which he draws when engaging the world. And what the sources reveal, one by one, is that a paradoxical and distressing situation is upon us.
The paradox may be put this way. We have entered the Information Age, traveled the Information Superhighway, spawned a Knowledge Economy, undergone the Digital Revolution, converted manual workers into knowledge workers, and promoted a Creative Class, and we anticipate a Conceptual Age to be. However overhyped those grand social metaphors, they signify a rising premium on knowledge and communications, and everyone from Wired magazine to Al Gore to Thomas Friedman to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation echoes the change. When he announced the American Competitiveness Initiative in February 2006, President Bush directly linked the fate of the U.S. economy "to generating knowledge and tools upon which new technologies are developed." In a Washington Post op-ed, Bill Gates asserted, "But if we are to remain competitive, we need a workforce that consists of the world's brightest minds…; First, we must demand strong schools so that young Americans enter the workforce with the math, science and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the knowledge economy."
And yet, while teens and young adults have absorbed digital tools into their daily lives like no other age group, while they have grown up with more knowledge and information readily at hand, taken more classes, built their own Web sites, enjoyed more libraries, bookstores, and museums in their towns and cities…; in sum, while the world has provided them extraordinary chances to gain knowledge and improve their reading/writing skills, not to mention offering financial incentives to do so, young Americans today are no more learned or skillful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture. They don't know any more history or civics, economics or science, literature or current events. They read less on their own, both books and newspapers, and you would have to canvass a lot of college English instructors and employers before you found one who said that they compose better paragraphs. In fact, their technology skills fall well short of the common claim, too, especially when they must apply them to research and workplace tasks.
The world delivers facts and events and art and ideas as never before, but the young American mind hasn't opened. Young Americans' vices have diminished, one must acknowledge, as teens and young adults harbor fewer stereotypes and social prejudices. Also, they regard their parents more highly than they did 25 years ago. They volunteer in strong numbers, and rates of risky behaviors are dropping. Overall conduct trends are moving upward, leading a hard-edged commentator such as Kay Hymowitz to announce in "It's Morning After in America" (2004) that "pragmatic Americans have seen the damage that their decades-long fling with the sexual revolution and the transvaluation of traditional values wrought. And now, without giving up the real gains, they are earnestly knitting up their unraveled culture. It is a moment of tremendous promise." At TechCentralStation.com, James Glassman agreed enough to proclaim, "Good News! The Kids Are Alright!" Youth watchers William Strauss and Neil Howe were confident enough to subtitle their book on young Americans The Next Great Generation (2000).
And why shouldn't they? Teenagers and young adults mingle in a society of abundance, intellectual as well as material. American youth in the twenty-first century have benefited from a shower of money and goods, a bath of liberties and pleasing self-images, vibrant civic debates, political blogs, old books and masterpieces available online, traveling exhibitions, the History Channel, news feeds…; and on and on. Never have opportunities for education, learning, political action, and cultural activity been greater. All the ingredients for making an informed and intelligent citizen are in place.
But it hasn't happened. Yes, young Americans are energetic, ambitious, enterprising, and good, but their talents and interests and money thrust them not into books and ideas and history and civics, but into a whole other realm and other consciousness. A different social life and a different mental life have formed among them. Technology has bred it, but the result doesn't tally with the fulsome descriptions of digital empowerment, global awareness, and virtual communities. Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has contracted their horizon to themselves, to the social scene around them. Young people have never been so intensely mindful of and present to one another, so enabled in adolescent contact. Teen images and songs, hot gossip and games, and youth-to-youth communications no longer limited by time or space wrap them up in a generational cocoon reaching all the way into their bedrooms. The autonomy has a cost: the more they attend to themselves, the less they remember the past and envision a future. They have all the advantages of modernity and democracy, but when the gifts of life lead to social joys, not intellectual labor, the minds of the young plateau at age 18. This is happening all around us. The fonts of knowledge are everywhere, but the rising generation is camped in the desert, passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, living off the thrill of peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are up to now.
This book explains why and how, and how much, and what it means for the civic health of the United States.
|Preface to the Paperback Edition
|p. vii
|p. 1
|Knowledge Deficits
|p. 11
|The New Bibliophobes
|p. 39
|Screen Time
|p. 71
|Online Learning and Non-Learning
|p. 113
|The Betrayal of the Mentors
|p. 163
|No More Culture Warriors
|p. 205
|p. 237
|p. 245
|Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.


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USDOT: No New Safety Regulations for Farmers [AUDIO]
A South Korean nuclear power plant operator is buying into a uranium mining project in Wyoming. Doug Randall has the details. An official with the U.S. Department of Transportation says they have no plans to imposed new safety regulations on Agriculture producers. Click past the jump to listen to Wyoming Radio News.


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The Locks Grill and Visitors Center are closed until April 3rd, 2020 in response to COVID-19 — Statement.
The Locks Waterfront Grill is part of the Visitors' Center in Marine Park, Port of Cascade Locks off Highway 84 at exit 44.
Our menu by Grill Chef Travis King and Portland Spirit Executive Chef Armin Pinto features fresh, local and organic selections including fresh cut french fries, fish and chips, Painted Hills Organic ground beef burgers and much more prepared in our state of the art kitchen.
The Grill operates full time with expanded waterfront seating directly overlooking the Columbia River and plenty of free parking for all. The Visitors Center is packed with information and history about the Cascade Locks, the Columbia Gorge and activities available to you during your visit.
The Columbia Gorge Sternwheeler Vessel boards at the Visitors Center, and we have an extensive Gift Shop full of arts, crafts, literature, and food from the Pacific Northwest.
Free WiFi


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We are the Official Distributor for Hot Toys in North America and Europe
Based in Hong Kong, Hot Toys Limited is a production company specializing in sixth scale collectible figures featuring actual likenesses of film based characters including Batman, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, and more. Sideshow Collectibles is the official distributor of Hot Toys figures in the US, North and South America, Europe, Australia and select Asian countries. We are proud to add Hot Toys collectibles to our diverse line up of figures and statues!


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Nycra Fishtail Parka Web Exclusive Colourway
ArticoliMagazine 510605
- Title:
- Nycra Fishtail Parka
- Subtitle:
- Web Exclusive Colourway
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- /upload/208/cms/510605/default/16266/sm_header_ok.jpg
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Even though dyeing is a thousand-year-old technique, garment dyeing is a modern concept. Up until the mid-seventies, the method of dyeing fully fashioned garments after manufacturing (as opposed to the conventional method of manufacturing garments from pre-dyed fabrics) was not used for commercial clothing production. Occasionally, it was used domestically to overdye old and faded clothes and resellers of used or surplus military clothing also used the technique. Garment dyeing wasn't as an important part of the fashion industry as it is today.
Then came C.P. Company who changed the game completely, thanks to an idea from Massimo Osti. He began experimenting with the garment dyeing process in the Seventies until he became the first designer to dye a finished garment in a single bath of colour, constructed from multiple fabric or fibre types (nylon and cotton, or linen, nylon and polyurethane coated cotton, rubber, leather). Before Osti, garment dyeing hadn't been successfully applied but it became the first part of the C.P. Company revolution – something that wasn't easy!
The complexity of developing both a practical and chemical understanding of how each fabric responded differently to the dye, how much it would shrink, how much colour it would absorb, required painstaking, expensive research and prototyping work. Fourty years on from when the brand was created, C.P. Company still has a love for garment dyeing, something they continue to perfect. Through this process, unique nuances of colour are applied to the garment, making it also unshrinkable, but above all giving it a worn-in look, which is in complete contrast to pieces made from stiff fabrics. Garment dyeing is a difficult art to master, but it's definitely worth the hard work.
C.P. Company celebrates a long history of love with garment dyeing, creating an ultra-limited edition jacket dyed in a special red colourway, available exclusively on line.
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- 01
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- 4


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DAMARALAND, Namibia - Churning through the bone-dry Huab River bed, our clay-caked Land Cruiser chases the setting sun and some of Africa's most elusive inhabitants.
"We're extremely lucky to run into such a large herd of desert-adapted elephants," shouts guide Tristan Cowley over the roaring engine of what is likely the only safari vehicle within fifty kilometres in this remote northwestern region of Namibia called Damaraland. After mounting a huge dune, we drop down to join Namibia's legendary desert survival specialists on their long march to water.
Desert-adapted elephants are so behaviourally attuned to the hyper arid conditions of the Namib Desert that they routinely travel more than 200 kilometres without drinking en route to watering holes near ancient, ephemeral riverbeds. They are also far gentler on the fauna they ingest than most elephants, perhaps innately understanding that knocking over the precious few trees and bushes that sustain them will be their ecological undoing.
One would think that having more than 20 of these mythical behemoths virtually to ourselves would be a rare treat. Only about 500 desert-adapted elephants remain in Namibia, the only place besides the fringes of the Sahara in Mali where they are found.
But in this safe and serene country with more wildlife than people — along with spectacular desert landscapes, a ghostly coastline of sand, fog and shipwrecks, ancient artistic treasures, authentic tribes and some of the best safari camps and lodges in Africa — the exceptional is the norm. Which can mean refreshingly uncharted adventures for even the most seasoned of safari connoisseurs.
Space is Namibia's ace. Twice the size of California, this former South African protectorate that finally attained independence in 1990 after a protracted guerrilla war contains only 2.3 million people.
Only Greenland and Mongolia have fewer inhabitants per square kilometre. And with around 200,000 square kilometres (a remarkable 25 per cent of its total land area) constitutionally set aside for nature reserves, Namibia feels like one giant super safari park.
In a continent where nature is demarcated by fences and reserves, often turning locals into trespassers and in some cases, poachers on their own ancestral lands, Namibia's conservancy program is a rare conservation success story. In one of the few places in Southern Africa that is completely unfenced, desert-adapted animals can move and migrate unhindered and in relative safety because the local people are no longer their relentless adversaries.
The happy result? In stark contrast to the rest of Africa, poaching has decreased to nearly negligible levels in Namibia.
It's currently the only country where free-roaming lion populations are actually increasing. It has the world's largest population of black rhino, many of which are being transferred out of National Parks and into communally held conservancies. And it is home to more than 50 per cent of the world's remaining cheetahs, making Namibia the cat's meow for carnivore lovers.
"Namibia is unique due to the fact that we have more predators and more prey outside our national parks than any other country," says Africat Foundation director Donna Hanssen as she feeds resident orphaned cheetahs their morning pound of bovine flesh.
One of Africa's most progressive large predator research and rehabilitation centres, Africat is located in Okonjima Nature Reserve, three hours drive north of Namibia's compact, laid-back capital of Windhoek. Since opening in 1993, the foundation has rescued more than 1,000 cheetahs and leopards on Namibian farmland, successfully reintroducing more than 85 per cent of them back into the wild.
Tall, blond and packing a pistol, Hanssen shows me around 22,000-hectare Okonjima, carved from land her family once farmed. On these open plains, occasionally broken by the remnants of ancient sandstone outcrops, rehabilitated big cats hone their hunting skills before they're reintroduced into the wild. Volunteers from around the world help the Hanssens restore habitats and care for dozens of cheetahs and other rescued wildlife. And Okonjima guests can opt to stay in spacious traditional thatched chalets a short stroll from the original Hanssen-family farmhouse. Or splurge on the Grand African Villa, the ultra-luxurious bush hideaway overlooking a watering hole deep within the reserve where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stayed during the birth of their daughter Shiloh.
Space (as in seen from space) certainly applies to the massive burnt orange dunes near Sossusvlei (pronounced SOSS-oo-vlay), a day's drive west of Windhoek. Rising out of the Namib Desert like silent, star-shaped sentinels, they tower as high as a 60-storey skyscraper over Namib Naukluft Park, Africa's largest conservation area.
I reach the summit of one dune just in time to catch the rising sun casting shadows on rows of silicon pyramids that mark the entrance to an ocean of sand flowing all the way to Namibia's notorious Skeleton Coast, graveyard of countless ill-fated ships throughout the centuries. Surreal as it is serene, this vast alien landscape feels like the enormous backdrop of a sci-fi movie, which it has portrayed in numerous Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters.
Later that day I feel like the star of my own sci-fi epic, cruising through vegetated dune belts and endless stretches of golden grassy savannah on a quad bike in NamibRand Nature Reserve as ostrich and gemsbok race alongside in the distance. Probably the largest private nature reserve in Southern Africa at more than 170,000 hectares, NamibRand was created to help protect and conserve the unique ecology and wildlife of the southwest Namib Desert, one of the world's driest ecosystems.
Out here amid some of the planet's most beguilingly unspoiled desert vistas, visitors can enjoy utter tranquillity and pampering at five-star retreats like Sossusvlei Desert Lodge and Wolwedans, a selection of small and elegant safari camps, proceeds from which go toward maintaining the reserve. Retiring after a gourmet "bush dinner" to the veranda of my spacious wooden Wolwedans suite elevated above the dunes, I contemplate the darkest, most starlit sky I've ever seen and strain to hear the lonesome call of a lone jackal serenading me from across the otherwise silent surface of this magical moonscape.
If Sossusvlei and NamibRand feel like restorative desert isolation chambers, the UNESCO World Heritage Site Twyfelfontein is ancient art therapy. Located in the barren Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia, it contains possibly Africa's largest and finest collection of petroglyphs, etched in stone thousands of years ago by resident Bushmen (San), the original inhabitants of southern Africa.
Hidden amid craggy sandstone mountains, their multicoloured rock strata and minerals exposed to the elements in fantastical shapes and colours, Twyfelfontein's 2,500 prehistoric engravings depict handprints and abstract circular motifs, along with elephant, giraffe, kudu, lion, rhinoceros, zebra and ostrich.
Admiring these alfresco galleries painted in blood, clays, ochre and plant extracts on boulders and slabs of red sandstone scattered about the hillside, I picture the ancient artists who created them — perhaps during shamanistic rituals while their wild models followed age-old migration routes across the surrounding countryside — a tableau that has changed little in the thousands of years since.
Today, thanks in large part to Namibia's pioneering program of land conservancies that have handed back control over wildlife management and tourism to the local indigenous communities, the descendants of those prehistoric animals immortalized at Twyfelfontein remain very much in the picture.
Their freedom still largely unhindered, desert-adapted black rhinos, lions, elephants and cheetah continue to roam across the breathtakingly beautiful open spaces of this African anomaly — a desert rose by any other name.
When to go:
Late winter until the beginning of summer (June till November) is the best time to go to Namibia. Winter (May to September) temperatures in the interior range from 18 C to 25 C during the day. Summer (October to April) average interior temperatures range from 20 C to 34 C during the day.
Getting there:
Air Namibia (www.airnamibia.com.na) flies to Windhoek from Frankfurt, as well as offering frequent daily connections for passengers arriving in Johannesburg aboard daily South African Airways (www.flysaa.com) flights from New York and Washington. Air Namibia also operates a limited internal service.
Getting around:
Navigating Namibia is remarkably easy for all levels of travellers. Roads are generally good for self-driving and routes well marked.
Namibia is a reasonably safe, peaceful country and is not involved in any wars.
If you are alert and take some common sense precautions, you should have no problems.
Should you require medical assistance, Namibia's hospitals are modern and capable of attending to whatever needs you may have.
Where to stay:
The Olive Guesthouse is an intimate luxury boutique hotel in a tranquil corner of Windhoek. It features seven deluxe suites, each individually decorated to reflect a different region of Namibia. (www.theolive-namibia.com)
Home to the Africat Foundation (www.africat.org), Okonjima (www.okonjima.com) offers four different styles of luxury accommodation ranging from a sumptuous private villa and traditional thatched roof suites to an exclusive self-catering campsite.
The Wolwedans Collection features a selection of small and elegant safari camps, each set against a backdrop of exquisite desert scenery in the heart of the NamibRand Nature Reserve. (www.wolwedans.com)
Also set in the heart of the NamibRand Nature Reserve, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge offers spacious and serene five-star suites complete with dramatic skylights for late night stargazing, as well as a selection of experiences ranging from quad biking to ballooning. (www.andbeyondafrica.com)
Recommended outfitters:
Vancouver-based Heritage Safari Company (www.heritagesafaris.com / 1-888-301-1713) and Seattle based African Safari Company (www.africansafarico.com / 1.800.414.3090) can both arrange complete luxury Namibia itineraries, including the locations and accommodation featured in this story.
More info:
For more on Namibia, visit www.namibiatourism.com.na.


text: Thursday, December 29, 2011 New Hospital Guidelines Have Significant Implications for PTs This article has been temporarily removed. An update will be provided the week of January 2. UPDATE: Please see the article titled "New Medicare Conditions of Participation Guidelines for Hospital-based Outpatient Settings" posted January 4 for information on these new guidelines. Comments Do the new CMS rules regarding PT in the hospital must be ordered by a physicians with privleges in the hospital apply to outpatient settings of the hospital therapy department? Posted by Linda on 12/29/2011 1:35 PM


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Tomorrow, The Blog will
do an honest day's work for the first time in his life be bagging groceries for a good cause. We would love to witness this, but we have to work. So we'll pay good money offer bumper stickers and/or other cheesy junk from the office prizes for photos of The Blog bagging your groceries.
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008, Whole Foods Market Coral Gables (6701 Red Road) will donate 5% of the day's sales to America SCORES Miami, a youth development organization whose mission is to empower students in urban communities using soccer, writing, creative expression and service learning. With teamwork as the unifying value, they inspire youth to lead healthy lifestyles, be engaged students and become agents of change in their communities. Syndicated columnist and America SCORES Miami supporter Dave Barry and North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns will kick off the event at 2 p.m.
Disclaimer: We are not responsible for any broken or mashed food products.


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Brooks Simpson over at Crossroads has just posted an excerpt from U.S. Grant's Memoirs, in which Grant discusses what he saw as the causes of the Civil War. From the excerpt Simpson provides, it is clear that Grant believed that slavery in the South was increasingly incompatible with the modernizing society of the North, and when white Southerners after Abraham Lincoln's election believed they could no longer control the national government sufficiently to defend the institution of slavery they seceded from the Union which brought on the Civil War. To read the Grant excerpt over at Crossroads, <click here>.
In short, U.S. Grant believed slavery to be the principal cause of the Civil War, along with economic modernization in the North.