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Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service partnered to permanently protect, restore and enhance 1,630 acres of grassland and 294 acres of wetland as Waterfowl Production Areas in Western and Southern Minnesota. All lands acquired will be owned and managed in perpetuity by the USFWS as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System and open for public recreation.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Accelerated Prairie Grassland Restoration and Management Program had a successful first round of funding from the Legacy Funds. The program worked through the growing pains and obstacles in getting a new program up and operational and was successful in enhancing nearly 5,800 acres of prairie and grasslands in eight of the ecological subsections of Minnesota. A contractor base has been established for this type of work statewide that needs to be evaluated and expanded on for future appropriations.
This program protected 810 acres of new wildlife habitat in the Prairie, Deciduous Transition, and Southeast Bluffland ecological sections of Minnesota through fee title acquisition. Title of lands acquired are held by the State and are designated as WMAs.
This program protected and restored 734 acres of new wetland wildlife habitat in wetland complexes in Minnesota through fee title acquisition. Title of all lands acquired are held by the State and designated as Wildlife Management Area.
This program permanently protected approximately 953 acres (10.3-miles) of lake and warm water stream shoreline through fee title and permanent easement acquisition and secured 73 acres (4.8-miles) of permanent habitat management easements that include angler access.
This initiative protected 548 acres of habit in the blufflands region of southeastern Minnesota--an area that contains unique and ecologically important prairie, oak savanna and grassland habitat along with outstanding forested bluffs, woodlands, floodplains and cold water trout streams.
This program will restore and enhance in-stream and riparian fish and wildlife habitat in 11 watersheds across the state of Minnesota. The proposed projects will improve habitat for both game and non-game fish and wildlife species uniquely associated with cold water trout streams and provide expanded recreational opportunities for Minnesota anglers.
Pheasants Forever, in cooperation with partners acquired and restored five parcels totaling 1,051 acres within Southern Minnesota and enrolled the parcels into the MNDNR WMA system. In addition, 66 acres of grassland enhancement was completed on existing WMAs.


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As the nation celebrates Earth Day, there will likely be calls for increased investments in energy and water saving technologies as well as other environmentally sustainable practices, several of which are already in use at the Flagstaff KOA, according to a news release.
In addition to having two windmills, which supply 10%-25% of the electrical hookup needs for its 200 campsites, depending on the season, all of the park's outdoor lighting is solar powered, while it uses energy efficient light bulbs inside its buildings. The park also uses six 55-gallon barrels to capture rainwater, which it uses to irrigate its native landscaping. Last year alone, the park captured about 5,000 gallons of rainwater, which was significant given that 2009 was a drought year. The park also sells only environmentally friendly holding tank products.
"We started in 2009 by trying to be as green as possible," said Janyel Pitman, the park's manager, adding that the windmills are "worth their weight in gold."
"After all the tax rebates and credits, they didn't cost very much," she said, adding that the campground has used the land around the base of the windmills to create an "eco park" with educational displays that inform visitors about various recycling facts as well as things people can do in their homes to lessen their environmental impacts.
While the green initiatives undertaken by the Flagstaff KOA are exemplary, the park is actually one of a growing number of private campgrounds across the country that are making investments in a variety of energy, water and natural resource saving programs. Some are doing so on their own initiative, while others are doing so with active encouragement from the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds (ARVC) in Larkspur, Colo., which launched a green parks initiative three years ago called "Plan-it Green."
"Industry research shows that consumers like to go to parks that are environmentally friendly, which is an additional benefit to parks that invest in green practices," said Linda Profaizer, ARVC president and CEO.
Profaizer added that the association has launched a new program with the Woodall's North American Campground Directory that recognizes parks that adopt at least nine of 18 green initiatives with a "Green Friendly" icon next to their park listings on the GoCampingAmerica.com and Woodalls.com travel planning websites as well as the 2011 print edition of the Woodall's campground directory.
Here's a sampling of some of the things campgrounds and RV parks across the country are doing to help the environment:
- Carlsbad KOA in Carlsbad, N.M.: This park has installed a 2.4-kilowatt wind turbine, which helps power the campground's office, store, restaurant, bathrooms and laundry. The park has also installed a solar water heating system for its swimming pool, which paid for itself during the first season, said park co-owner Susan Bacher. The park also sells environmentally friendly holding tank products in its camp store.
- Crossroads RV Park in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa: Park operator Jeff Krug built this park with green initiatives in mind, including compact fluorescent light bulbs, motion detector light switches and a tankless water heater. "We also don't use any paper products in our bath and shower rooms," Krug said. "Instead, it's electric hand dryers." He also installed geomat under the park's gravel roadways. "This strengthens, firms and holds a solid sub-base so the rock will not be lost in the mud," he said. This year, Krug plans to provide his guests with separate bins so that they can sort their glass, plastic and paper waste for recycling.
- Hill Country Jellystone in Canyon Lake, Texas: This park recently added two energy-efficient cabins that it purchased with R-19 insulation, dual pane glass, a metal front door and R-30 roof insulation. The park also uses electronic confirmations and recently started using an online brochure, which should cut down on the park's printing costs and use of paper.
- Jellystone Park Camp-Resort, Williamsport, Md.: This park has received awards from the Washington County Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corp. as well as ARVC last year for its successful recycling initiatives involving local charity organizations. The park recycles all of its aluminum cans through Star Community, a local non-profit community for people with developmental disabilities. The park also collects plastic and cardboard on behalf of ARC Inc. of Washington County, which works to improve the lives of people of all ages with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Park owners Ron and Vicki Vitkun have also invested in motion activated lights and programmable thermostats and are exploring the merits of solar power for water heating and power generation.
- Normandy Farms in Foxboro, Mass.: This park is landscaping its grounds with plants and flowers that require less water. It's also using pressure reducing shower valves and waterless urinals to eliminate flushing and reduce water waste. In terms of its electrical consumption, the park has replaced all of its lights with fluorescent bulbs and installed motion lights in its common buildings. The park also offers single sort recycling stations, which combine cardboard, glass and aluminum into one receptacle.
- Ocean Lakes Family Campground in Myrtle Beach, S.C.: This park received a "Plan-It Green" award from ARVC last year for its successful iCare Program, which encourages guests to sort their trash into recycling containers, to properly dispose of pet waste and even to pick up trash along the beach, thereby lessening the environmental impact of the guests and the campground itself. Last year, Ocean Lakes guests and employees recycled more than 59,000 pounds of waste using five iCare stations currently available at the campground. The park plans to install additional recycle stations this year.
- Pinewood Lodge in Plymouth, Mass.: This park has installed low wattage fluorescent lighting in its buildings and street lights as well as electric light timers. The park has also equipped its restroom facilities with low-flow toilets and solar panels. "The cleaning products we use to clean these facilities, as well as our rental units, are low in harsh chemicals," said park owner Kim Saunders, adding that the park also tries to reduce its carbon footprint by having its employees use electric golf carts for transportation around the campground as well as for transportation to and from work for those employees who live nearby.
- Sacred Rocks Reserve in Boulevard, Calif.: Park owners Sharon and Dimitri Courmousis recently received a "Plan-It Green" award from ARVC for various environmentally friendly initiatives, including removing nearly 80 tons of trash from the 163-acre property when they acquired the park in 2003; recycling 850 abandoned trees that had been discarded on the property; and rescuing hundreds of 400-year-old oak trees that were vulnerable to insect infestations. The park also invested in solar powered park models, which it uses as rental accommodations and sells to individuals and families, who can place them on leased sites at the park and use them as a weekend retreat or vacation cottages.
- Sandy Pines in Hopkins, Mich.: This 2,220-site park recently invested in geothermal heating and cooling systems, which it uses to heat and cool the park's laundry, store, beauty shop and donut shop in addition to heating water for use in the park's car wash. The park has also converted two of its swimming pools from chlorine to salt water filtration systems. But the green initiatives didn't stop there. This year, Sandy Pines plans to add geothermal heating and cooling to two more buildings while adding saltwater filtration systems to two more swimming pools, said Managing Director Max Gibbs. The park has also recently installed T-8 florescent lighting and other high-efficiency lighting systems in 20 buildings, and added three instant hot water systems to its buildings, he said.
- Sugar Loafin' RV Campground and Cabins in Leadville, Colo.: "We have always been a green park – even before green was in," said park operator Don Seppi, adding that he has solar panels on a service building, which help with heating. The park also has native plants and grasses throughout the campground. Seppi also promotes and sells Eco-Save holding tank products to his guests.
- Vineyard RV Park in Vacaville, Calif.: This park has engaged in various green initiatives in recent years, including requesting water and power audits from its local utilities and investing in more efficient water and power fixtures. The resulting savings enabled the park to recoup its investment in one year. The park also uses only recycled content paper and eco-friendly paper towels, toilet paper and cleaning products. The park's owners plan to redevelop the entire property to green standards during the next two to four years. "During that time, we expect to rebuilt all buildings on the property and retrofit them with extensive solar installations," said park owner Meaghan Bertram, adding that she will apply for LEED certification for all her new buildings, whose interiors and exteriors will be designed to green standards. "The office buildings and clubhouses will be primarily powered by solar and the pool will be heated by a solar hot water heater," she said. Bertram also plans to landscape the property with native plants, and irrigate them with weather sensitive irrigation controllers, which automatically adjust their watering schedules as weather conditions change. "Our goal is to achieve LEED platinum certification for the buildings, but of course this will depend on budget and timing," she said. LEED certification is the green standard set by the U.S. Green Building Council.

subset: commoncrawl


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DThrills (Feat. Chany) - N*ggas In Paris (UK REFIX) @DThrillsUK @ChanyUK [UK Unsigned Artist]
Young 18 Year Old Up&Coming Rapper from North London taking the underground by storm!
Management: Double L Artist Management
@GullyTGT // @_DoubleLGroup
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Erik Manassy is the founder of Jets Twit, a blog dedicated to everything New York Jets on Social Media. [http://jetstwit.com/] Erik is also the founder of the Manassy Media Group, L.L.C. a new Marketing company that helps you with your business online.
- Nick Mangold NEEDS YOU! For some help... Find out what he is looking for.
- Why all the hate towards Santonio Holmes?
- Joe Namath has a new project.
- The Sanchize spent 50 minutes in an elevator. Huh?
- Mark also went through a very tough training day last week. No it had NOTHING to do with football!
For more on the Jets, Twitter, Facebook, and Erik, check out his blog Jets Twit, http://jetstwit.com/
Follow Brian @brian_bassett and Erik up on Twitter @e_man and @jetstwit.


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The nVent RAYCHEM ArcticStep is a modular panel system for anti-icing or de-icing of walkways and deck surfaces on offshore platforms and vessels. It is designed for use in hazardous area installations in oil & gas and marine industries.
The ArcticStep consists of a robust metallic top plate, a nVent RAYCHEM self-regulating heating cable, a conductive compound and fiber reinforced polymer supports. Its
hybrid structure
ensures thermal insulation from the deck and sends the exact amount of heat where it is most needed: UP!
The ArcticStep is a
light-weight system
that comes in different sizes and power versions to suit your application. It is attached to the deck with adjustable fixations, allows for fast and easy installation and can be replaced in no time.
Durable anti-slip coating, galvanic isolation from the deck, integrated power cable channels for protection against mechanical damage and more... The ArcticStep is designed for
long life operation
in harsh corrosive environments. It is compliant with the latest international offshore standards and has
DNV-GL approval


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Credit, history help set insurance rates
Why do quotes vary from company to company?
Many people are confused when they receive vastly different auto insurance quotes from different companies.
Why should there be such a large discrepancy? How do auto insurance providers determine a rate quote?
There are several factors that can be used, and they vary from provider to provider.
Credit rating
Your credit rating does not just impact how easily you can obtain a car loan. It is also used to determine your auto insurance rate.
According to Insurance.com, many insurance providers will run a credit check based on specific parameters, such as how often you've been late paying bills.
Auto insurance companies use your credit rating because it tells them how likely you are to pay your premiums on time. A lot of late payments indicate an unstable financial situation, which means they are going to charge you more because you constitute more of a risk.
Steve Pape, an insurance agent for Midwest Insurance Group outside of Milwaukee, explained that some companies use credit scores for determining discount rates, while others use it to determine which rating tier a driver falls into.
"In determining rates, your score is used in conjunction with your claims history, driving record and other factors," he said.
Driving habits
There are several ways that your auto insurance rate can depend on your driving habits.
State Farm lists where you drive, how often you drive, how far you drive and your driving record as factors when issuing a quote.
For example, if you drive 30 miles to work every day, your auto insurance rate will likely be higher than someone who works right around the corner from his house. That's because the longer you are in your car, the higher the likelihood that you will be in an accident.
Similarly, if you live in a high-crime area where car theft is more common, you will be considered more of a risk.
Your vehicle
The next factor that is often used to determine your auto insurance rate is the type of vehicle you drive.
More expensive cars yield higher premiums in most cases, while a cheaper car will be less expensive to replace should it be stolen or totaled. It is important to consider potential insurance costs when buying a new car.
You might also qualify for discounts on your auto insurance rate if your car is equipped with certain safety features such as air bags and rear-mounted cameras. You can discuss those discounts with your insurance provider to see how much of a discount they can offer.
Type of coverage
According to FreeAdvice.com, there are five basic types of auto insurance coverage: bodily injury liability, property damage liability, uninsured (or underinsured) motorist, collision and comprehensive.
Most states require that drivers carry a minimum of liability insurance; other types are optional.
The more auto insurance you purchase, the higher your rate will be. However, paying a higher monthly premium means that your out-of-pocket costs should something happen will be considerably smaller. It all depends on what you are willing to gamble with your car and safety.
Personal data
Your auto insurance provider will also take into consideration your personal data.
Your age and gender, for example, are considerable factors. Older drivers are considered better risks because they have more experience and therefore enjoy lower quotes. And since male drivers are statistically more likely to get into an accident, they often pay higher premiums than female drivers.
Where you live also plays a part, Pape said.
Each insurance company divides the states that it covers into territories. Each territory is given a number. Base rates are often calculated using historical traffic and accident data. If there are an unusually high number of collisions in one territory, for example, the liability and collision premiums for that area will be greater than a territory that has a history of very few collisions.
Longevity with a specific insurance carrier is also an important consideration.
"We give continuous service discounts," Mike Jones, an agent with Alfa Insurance Company in Montgomery, Ala., told Bankrate.com. Those discounts wouldn't apply if you were a new customer with a new insurer.
In addition, long-term clients with Jones' company who have clean driving records are more likely to be forgiven after a claim, so they wouldn't face premium penalties.
"If that same customer switched policies, then had that same claim, they probably would have a surcharge (at their policy's renewal)," Jones said.
Having kids
While just having children won't drive your auto insurance rates up, having children who are driving will.
"If you have children, your rate shouldn't go up," said Pape. "If you have children who are driving, expect to pay much more for your auto insurance as young drivers are indeed inexperienced drivers."
But, having a child who can drive doesn't mean your rates will go sky-high. Many insurance providers offer "good grades" incentives that can offer parents some relief.
And Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger said parents should be sure to remember to notify their insurance agent once their children leave home.
"Make sure you let your insurance company know that it's just you and your spouse driving, that those reckless teenagers are gone and are not driving that car," Praeger said.
Driving history
The final factor that will be considered in an auto insurance quote is your driving history, which includes claims, accidents and moving violations.
When you receive a ticket or summons from a police officer for speeding, your premium might increase. The same goes for accidents that you report to your insurance company.
Your auto insurance rate is calculated differently depending on the provider you choose. The best way to handle this is to request quotes from as many providers as possible to find the best deal.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recommends that consumers review car insurance policies every year.
There are many benefits to annually reviewing your car policy. Either you'll confirm that you have the right coverage for your needs, or you'll gather crucial information for making smart decisions about switching providers.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian appeals court ruled Monday that leaders of the former ruling party of ousted President Hosni Mubarak will not be barred from running for elections, opening the door for old regime figures to return to the country's stifled political scene.
The decision by the Cairo Appeals Court for Urgent Matters overturns an earlier ruling that banned leaders of Mubarak's National Democratic Party from taking part in any elections.
The party was dissolved following the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011. A number of the party leaders formed new parties, while others joined existing ones. In 2012, an Islamist-dominated committee drafting the country's new constitution pushed an article in the charter that bars the NDP leaders from taking part in political life for 10 years. Following the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, the article was scrapped when amendments were made to the charter.
The appeals court said Monday the lower court had no jurisdiction to bar people from running for elections. At the time, the lower court didn't define what constituted being a party leader.
Observers are predicting former NDP members will make a strong comeback in parliamentary elections expected later this year, because they still have strong family and tribal networks and a tight system of patronage developed during the Mubarak years.
The country's other most powerful political force, the Muslim Brotherhood, was declared a terrorist organization by the government. The Brotherhood's political party is facing litigation calling for its dissolution. Security forces also went after the group's leaders, imprisoning thousands of its members and accusing it of waging a violent campaign against the government.
The Brotherhood denies it adopts violence and is keeping up protests against the government, accusing it of orchestrating a coup.
Mohammed Mahsoub, a leader of the Islamist party al-Wasat and a member of the Brotherhood-led coalition, wrote on his Twitter account that the return of the Mubarak party leaders to politics "is a restoration of the unjust and corrupt state."
Newly formed liberal parties have made only limited inroads on the political scene, failing to galvanize popular support or form alliances that can challenge the two traditional powerhouses.
Furthermore, a newly passed election law favors candidates running as individuals, not on party lists, giving former ruling party figures and local notables an advantage in the coming elections. The new election law states that 420 seats of the nearly 600-member parliament will be elected as independents, with 120 chosen from party lists.
Liberal and newly formed parties are campaigning against the law, demanding a greater proportion be chosen from party lists.
"The current electoral system is biased in favor of the rich in society, lawmakers with tribal and traditional associations in rural Egypt and businessmen," said a statement last week signed by six liberal and leftist parties and a number of public figures.
The law "marginalizes the multiparty system in Egypt because it promotes personal traits of individual candidate at the expense of political affiliation, thus impeding the country's democratic transformation," it said.
The parties said they have not received any response for the calls from the president, who currently holds legislative powers.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Brown Orders Mortgage Foreclosure Consultants to Post $100,000 Bond or Face Prosecution
Los Angeles, CA – August 12, 2009 – (RealEstateRama) — Threatening possible criminal and civil prosecution, Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today ordered 386 mortgage foreclosure consultants to post $100,000 bonds and register with his office.
He also ordered more than two dozen companies to justify suspicious loan modification claims made in "slick advertising," online and through the mail.
"Hoping to lower their mortgage payments, thousands of homeowners were instead duped by slick advertising and money-back guarantees," Brown said. "The time for accountability is at hand, and this rogue industry must clean itself up or face legal action," Brown added.
Brown also unveiled a new website ( http://ag.ca.gov/loanmod) that provides homeowners tips to avoid loan modification fraud, allows them to determine if a company is registered with his office and makes it easier to file complaints.
Brown today joined with the California Department of Real Estate and the State Bar of California in a new partnership to combat loan modification and foreclosure fraud.
Brown has sent letters directing 386 mortgage foreclosure consultants to register with his office within 10 days and post $100,000 bond, or demonstrate why they are not required to. If the consultants are required to register and have failed to do so, they are subject to criminal penalties of up to a year in jail and fines ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 per violation. Eighty-five of these consultants are based in Los Angeles County, 133 in Orange County, 47 in the Inland Empire, 68 in San Diego County and seven in the Bay Area.
Additionally, Brown sent letters today demanding that 27 loan consultants substantiate suspect claims made on the internet and in direct mail advertising. For instance:
· Brown directed Irsfeld, Irsfeld & Younger, LLP of Glendale, Calif. to substantiate its claims including: "Our team has 10 years of success in negotiating 90% of all mortgage loan modification requests to a successful outcome….For the modification requests we accept, our modification failure rate is less than 1%."
· Brown directed 21st Century Real Estate Investment Corporation of Rancho Cucamonga to substantiate its written solicitations including: "[y]our proposed loan modification is a 30 year fixed/3.5% interest rate with a monthly payment of $495. Your monthly savings is $705. Total savings over a 30-year period is $253,800. . . . Your first payment will be negotiated to begin March 2009 – payable to your current lender for $495."
· Brown directed Mortgage Modification Solutions of Irvine to substantiate its claims including: "Our services are due to the FEDERAL MANDATE which makes it mandatory for mortgagees, upon the default of a single family mortgage, to engage in loss mitigation actions" and "Why $3995.00 is nothing compared to what you can accomplish in return? #1- It's 10 times more expensive to hire a CPA or a Financial Advisor to exclusively analyze & Research your financial affairs to create a plan acceptable to the Banking standards."
· Brown directed Alliance Law Center of San Diego to substantiate its letters to consumers stating: "Final Notice: 3/11/09, our review of certain information indicates you may be a victim of federal disclosure violations and/or predatory lending violations, therefore your loan may be invalid, and you may qualify for a loan modification saving you thousands of dollars."
The State Bar of California today announced that it has obtained resignations from two lawyers and filed charges against a third for their loan modification activities. The State Bar's special team on loan modification complaints continues to investigate more than four hundred active complaints from consumers about lawyers' roles in loan modification scams.
Brown has made it a top priority to combat loan modification fraud. As part of a nationwide sweep last month, Brown filed suits against 21 individuals and 14 companies who ripped off thousands of homeowners seeking mortgage relief. In total, Brown has sought court orders to shut down 32 companies and has brought criminal charges and obtained lengthy prison sentences for deceptive loan modification consultants.
Copies of the letters and a list of consultants who have not registered are attached.
# # #
- Registry List [PDF 45 kb / 9 pg]
- Sample Registry Letter [PDF 16 kb / 1 pg]
- Substantiation Letters [PDF 15613 kb / 205 pg]
Contact: (916) 324-5500


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The Complete History Of Art References In The Simpsons
Complex has compiled a great list of historical art references that have appeared in The Simpsons over the years. You would be surprised how many great painters and artists have appeared in one way or another in the show.
Included are Pablo Picasso, Jaques Louis David, Edvard Munch, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Edward Hopper and the list just goes on.
Take a look at some of our favorite references after the jump.
If you want to know which reference happened in which episode and more behind the scenes info, then head over to Complex.


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The Children's Hospital of Georgia's Level IV (highest level) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit offers some of the most advanced technology and skilled physicians in the Southeast. As a leading regional perinatal center, the unit treats patients who need highly specialized care that many other regional perinatal centers cannot provide. Its staff gives the tiniest patients a fighting chance at life by delivering skilled and coordinated care to meet the complex needs of premature babies and their families. The NICU offers:
More NICU nutritional information available here.
For more information, call 706-721-KIDS (5437) or toll-free at 888-721-KIDS (5437) to speak to a member of our care team.


text: Loop1 Systems provides in-depth on-site or remote training for your staff on SolarWinds' Orion Network Performance Monitor. We provide the following course outline as a guide to what will be covered. Our training is always tailored to meet your specific needs and maximize the benefit of our time spent together.


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IP Commerce, a software company that develops tools for on-demand access to commerce services, has released a new version of its Commerce Toolkit for Applications (formerly known as the "IPPF Secure Payments SDK"). The new version includes tutorial applications and usability enhancements to make application development more intuitive. The toolkit eliminates the need for .NET developers to build new connections to service providers everytime they develop a new payment application.
"Using Commerce Toolkit for Applications, we integrated bank card processing services with our point-of-sale application in less than three weeks and with no prior payment integration experience," said Martin Jaramillo, president of Buildernet Software. "The Toolkit also made bank card security requirements easier to navigate."
The security of commerce applications is becoming more regulated, and software companies are expected to bear the cost of developing applications that meet Visa's Payment Applications Best Practices (PABP) guidelines for card data security. Commerce Toolkit for Applications is designed to reduce the burden on software developers by providing a number of components that address the functional requirements necessary for PABP compliance including secure user authentication, data encryption, key management, and activity logging.
Toolkit features include:
- Simple Integration to Service Providers: The Toolkit provides single-point certification and access to more than a dozen major bank card processors, several ACH providers and numerous stored value, and electronic check providers.
- PABP Compliance: The Toolkit addresses stricter bank card security mandates that come in to effect this year. The Toolkit provides the fastest, most-effective route to Visa's PABP compliance by including best practice implementations of PABP recommendations.
- Open New Sales Channels: Through the IP Commerce open Network of top-tier payment processors, acquiring banks, retailers, and value-added resellers, software companies can easily distribute their products to other members of the IP Commerce Network and explore new channel distribution opportunities while increasing their return on investment.
For more information or to download the free Commerce Toolkit for Applications, visit the IP Commerce website.


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The London Beer and BBQ Show – Poster Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Name * Email * Website Comment You may use these HTML tags and attributes:   <acronym title="">
      <q cite=""> <s>   Current ye@r * Leave this field empty Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.


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On Thursday's edition of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart laid into President Obama for invoking executive privilege—the White House's power to withold documents—amid the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the federal government's "Fast and Furious" gun-trafficking operation, which sent weapons to Mexican drug lords.
"During the Bush administration, executive privilege was seen by the Democrats as a refuge of scoundrels, a method of obstruction," Stewart said. In fact, as Stewart pointed out, President Bush's reliance on executive privilege was harshly criticized in 2008 by an up-and-coming Democrat named ... Barack Obama. (And Stewart had the video clip to prove it).
U.S. & World
Why won't the White House turn over the documents in question? On Wednesday's episode, Stewart offered his take.
"They need the papers to gift-wrap other weapons for an exciting new prison program: Christmas Guns for Convicts."
"You know, I'm sure there's a lot of ... partisan-type investigations that go on on Capitol Hill, many of them designed to merely tie up or damage the administration, but here's the thing: the ATF did send a bunch of guns to Mexican drug gangs! And one of those guns was used to kill a U.S. border agent."


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Google will no longer let users play with its prototypes in Google Labs, part of a company-wide initiative so the Internet titan can focus on fewer products.
The Official Google Blog called the announcement "More wood behind fewer arrows," referring to chief executive Larry Page's statement at the company's earnings call last week, "Greater focus has also been another big feature for me this quarter--more wood behind fewer arrows."
We've decided to wind down Google Labs. While we've learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead. . . . In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments—in others we'll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Google will still maintain Gmail and Maps labs and has no plans to end those channels.
While Google Labs was an interesting offering, the problem was that many of its projects never made the jump to a standalone product. It makes sense that Google would scrap public experimentation and put its engineers on more important projects.


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Hold on a second … there's a problem with the impressive claim made by Chevrolet last week of 230 miles per gallon for its electric Volt model (which is still under development). Actually, two problems.
The first is how to measure the miles per gallon of an electric car. As has been noted in a number of other blogs such as EcoGeek and Good Math, Bad Math, using mpg for electric cars is "far from ideal" (remember — the Volt still uses electricity from coal-fired power stations to recharge its battery).
There's also the the troubling assumption that, for the first 40 miles after a charge, the Volt doesn't use any gas — and so gets an infinite mpg! Kinda silly. A true estimate of mpg for the Volt is probably around 100 mpg (which is highly dependent on the length of your commute and whether you can be bothered to plug it in every night).
But even at 100 mpg, should we be SO impressed? And if not, why? That gets to my second problem — the measurement of car mileage itself. And this issue goes for all cars — normal, hybrid and electric.
Basically, the U.S. auto industry (and those who regulate it) are using a misleading measure of fuel efficiency. Instead of miles per gallon, we should be using the more logical gallons per (10,000) miles. (The rest of the world measures fuel efficiency this way, although generally in liters per x number of miles.)
Why? It's really simple: For every apparent "doubling" in mpg, you are really only using half the amount of gas. Although this is still impressive, let's not get sucked into believing the extravagant hype. I will use examples to illustrate the misleading part:
At 12.5 mpg (in your great-big-huge SUV) you will use 800 gallons to go 10,000 miles (and incur the wrath of tree-huggers);
At 25 mpg (a friendly sedan) you will use 400 gallons to go the same distance; and
At 50 mpg (a super-green eco-loving hybrid) you will use 200 gallons.
While 200+ mpg is impressive (50 gallons per 10,000 miles), the REAL SAVINGS (yes, more shouting) are at the lower end of mpg — in other words, getting the great-big-huge gas-guzzlers off the roads. This is because a vehicle that does 12.5 mpg versus 25 mpg saves 400 gallons of gas! While going from 25 to 50 mpg ("doubling") only saves 200 gallons. To get even close to that original 400 gallons saving, we would have to go from 25 to 800 mpg!! (387.5 gallons of saving.) See?
So, with SUVs averaging 18 mpg (versus 24 mpg for regular cars), it's much more important to get the 99 million SUVs and pick-ups off U.S. roads (or drastically increase their fuel efficiency) than it is to pour all this effort into producing super-high-fuel-efficient cars (that in reality barely sell in comparison to SUVs).
-- Text by Timothy Boucher, Cool Green Science Blog
For more: Read our transportation blogger Jim Motavalli's post, 'EV MPG showdown: Volt vs. Leaf vs. Mini E.'


text:
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text:
You find a book, let's say you randomly pick it up at the library while browsing the shelves for something new to read, or you do it at the bookstore, and its from a author that you never heard of, and more than likely, most people hadn't heard of either, but the book's description makes it sound like something you'd want to read. So you read it. You find that you enjoyed it so much, you tell your friends, family, co-workers, and others about it. Eventually, you read every book this author puts out. You might like some of the novels, you might dislike others, but this once unknown author to you now has a loyal reader all because you decided to try something new.
Or, like many others these days, you see a book mentioned on Facebook, Twitter, or on some message board somewhere online(unless its mentioned on TV and then its an instant bestseller, especially if Oprah mentions it), you ignore what seems like spam a few times, but one day you're convinced to try it out. You read it, like it, and then tweet about it, like the book's page on Amazon, like it enough to review it, and even share your new find on one of your many social networks. You do the whole digital word of mouth thing without going anywhere and your small amount of influence convinces others to take notice of those books, who influence others, and so on. Plus, you like the author so much, that you sign-up for the author's newsletter or blog, follow them on Twitter, and join their Facebook page, where you buy every single novel hereafter.
For a lot of authors, Word of Mouth is the only way they find readers.
Here are a couple of ways to spread the word about a novel you enjoyed and helping the author out at the same time (which you've probably seen in one form or another on various authors' blogs):
1. Mention the book online, like on Myspace (if you're still there), Twitter, Facebook, message boards, or wherever you frequent that allows you to mention books, and include a link to the store or author's site.
2. If you have Pinterest, create a board, like a "Favorite Books," or "Book You Read Recently," and link it to either the author's site of store where you bought it from. The author might even be on Pinterest, so you could also follow their boards and "like" the book board they created for that particular book.
3. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, church members, etc through e-mail, phone, text, or talk to in person about the book. Include what you liked and why you think they might enjoy it. If you want, give them a copy of the paperback to read if you have a paperback copy, or even lend them the ebook version, depending on your e-Reader.
5. Leave a review on Amazon, B&N, or wherever you bought it from, you can even leave a review on all the sites if you want. If you're on Goodreads, Shelfari, Librarything, etc, you can leave a review there.
So reader, how have you been influenced to buy a book? Through Word of Mouth or by way of something else?


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Amsterdam – One city, two faces
There's lots to do in Amsterdam when the sun shines, but the weather isn't always good. Luckily, there's also lots to do on rainy days. We check out the sunny side and the rainy side of the Dutch metropolis
Amsterdam on skates
How about touring the city on inline skates? Friday Night Skate takes place once a week, and anyone can join. The longest route so far was 26.2 kilometers long.
Popular haunt
Café Noorderlicht is an outdoor beer garden in a former shipyard, where bands play on sunny days. An old greenhouse provides shelter when it rains.
Bicycle tours
It may sound like a cliché, riding a bike in Amsterdam, but it's one of the best ways to get around and see the city. For couples there's also the option of renting a tandem bike.
Breeze off the lake
How about a little windsurfing in the trendy new district of IJburg on IJ lake? It's a windsurfer's mecca, and just 15 minutes from the center of Amsterdam.
All aboard
Feel like exploring the canals by paddle boat? Paddle boats are fun and almost impossible to capsize. And anyway, the shore is always just a couple of meters away.
Beer tour
Check out the interactive Heineken Experience in an old brewery building. Cheers!
Stylish strippers
The burlesque shows at Winston Kingdom Nightclub are definitely worth seeing.
Museum visit
Amsterdam has lots of famous museums (Rembrandt, van Gogh) as well as a Tulip Museum.
Arthouse and art deco
Cineasts and design fans will love it: The Movies, Amsterdam's oldest movie theater, shows arthouse films in their original language. It also boasts an art deco interior.
Mileage bargain for Amsterdam
Book a Lufthansa Business Class flight to Amsterdam in March for only 20 000 instead of 45 000 Miles & More award miles. The offer is valid for all flights departing from German airports. Earliest departure: May 1. Latest return flight: June 15, 2016.


text:
Tatort CUT. Die Spur führt nach Xanten.
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text:
Last weekend, as you know, the Church celebrated the Easter Triduum — Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. I led the services at our Cathedral, which were very well attended.
Holy Thursday is such a sacred day in the Christian calendar. It's the day when Jesus bids farewell to his disciples and at the same time assures us he will be with us always through the Eucharist. He also gives us the gift of the priesthood to be able to perpetuate the sacrament.
The celebration at the Cathedral is always a moving one. It's always a bi-lingual celebration, we have one Eucharist bringing together the English and Spanish-speaking communities.
In my homily, I noted how it had been my great privilege to have recently celebrated the Eucharist at the Cenacle in Jerusalem, where the Last Supper was celebrated.
Celebrating Mass in the Cenacle in February
Mass concludes by taking the Sacrament to the repository. At our Mass, we had the joy of singing traditional Spanish Eucharistic hymns.
The vigil continued until midnight. There were scores of students from Boston University who were with us during the vigil, as well as seminarians and others who were making the traditional visit to seven churches.
During the last hour, the students sang songs of praise and we ended with Compline at midnight, fulfilling Jesus' intention to watch and pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
– – –
During the day on Friday, before the Good Friday liturgy, I received two groups at the Cathedral who were completing their respective Stations of the Cross processions.
The first were a group of pro-life Catholics who were making a procession as a witness to the Gospel of Life and to prayerfully promote a respect for life.
They were followed shortly thereafter by a group from Communion and Liberation.
At 3 o'clock, we held the first of our Good Friday liturgies, which was in English.
We brought out the Relic of the True Cross for veneration by the people during this service.
Father David Couturier preached a beautiful reflection.
The choir members sang the Passion — and I always love when it is sung.
When I was a young friar, it was sung in Latin, and it was very beautiful. In fact, I had never heard it sung in the vernacular until I came to Boston, and I really enjoy it.
When Bishop Chris Coyne was here, he used to sing the Christus for us. He has a beautiful voice. Now, three members of the choir do it.
The Passion consisted of three parts (the chorus, which is more commonly known as the narrator; the Christus, which is the words of Christ; and the Synagogus, which is the assembly). The choir took the synagogus.
It was a very beautiful celebration. For those of you who could not be with us, I invite you to watch the videos of the Triduum liturgies available on the CatholicTV website.
– – –
In the evening, we gathered with the Spanish community for a second Good Friday service.
Afterward we do the Stations of the Cross going through the housing developments around the Cathedral, I was so pleased to see so many young people participate.
Gregory was dressed as Christ carrying the cross. He was flanked by the altar servers, who were carrying candles. Each of the stations were being carried by a different member of the youth group. The stations were bi-lingual because a number of English parishioners joined us.
We had a very large group.
– – –
Saturday I went to lunch with Memores Domini, consecrated layman of the Communion and Liberation movement, who live at Sacred Heart in the North End. I was very happy to be with them.
They gave me the world's largest Easter egg!
They also have a wonderful poster with John the Baptist pointing to Jesus the Lamb of God.
– – –
Also Saturday, I had a visit from Father Miroslaw Bartos, the provincial of the Warsaw province of the Conventual Franciscans. The province has friars working at Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish in Boston.
With him was Father Marek Iwamski from the province and Father Andrew Urbaniak, the pastor of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
The provincial had never seen the Cathedral so I gave him a tour. I proudly showed him our magnificent image of Our Lady of Czestochowa. It is in Our Lady's chapel where we have many different images of the Blessed Mother exhibited, but certainly one of the most beautiful is this one, which was a gift from a Polish bishop for the Cathedral.
– – –
The Easter Vigil celebration was that night, and as always, it was a beautiful occasion.
We received five people into the Church from the Hispanic community this year — two baptisms and three professions of faith.
Father Jonathan Gaspar sang the Exultet, and did a wonderful job.
The church was decorated beautifully. It was a very uplifting celebration.
– – –
From there, I went to the Greek Orthodox community's Easter Vigil liturgy. There, I read an Easter Gospel and gave a reflection, a greeting to the Greek Orthodox community.
From there, I went to celebrate with the Ethiopian community at the Cathedral.
The next morning, I had the 11:30 Mass at the Cathedral, which was full.
– – –
On Monday, I had vespers and dinner with the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master, who work at the Pastoral Center and Regina Cleri.
We were joined by Father John Ronaghan and his cousin, Father Daniel Wilson,
who was visiting him from Prince Edward Island.
– – –
Periodically, I gather with my staff at the Pastoral Center, and this past Tuesday was one of those meetings. It gave me an opportunity to express our Easter best wishes and to thank all of them for the very hard work and dedication that makes the ministry of the Archdiocese possible.
– – –
I leave you having recently arrived in Rome for some meetings and to participate in the beatification of Pope John Paul II, which will take place on Divine Mercy Sunday.
I will share my thoughts and reflections on it in next week's post, so be sure to tune in!
Until then, peace be with you!
Cardinal Seán


text: During the course of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, an original monumental architecture style emerged in Etruscan cities, taking in both the public sphere,with the erection of sacred buildings richly decorated in multi-coloured terra-cotta, and the private sphere, with the coming of houses with articulated structures and luxurious decors. The layout of the cities is seen in the arrangement of their necropolises. Those "cities of the dead", which typically featured broad avenues lined with huge chamber tombs as in Cerveteri, or funerary chambers with a wealthof painted decorations as in Tarquinia, or full-blown urban structures as in Orvieto, reflect the sumptuousness of real-life rooms in their architecture and interior ornamentation, thus giving us a window onto a civilisation that thrived over two thousand five hundred years before our own time. The exhibition of some 170 artefacts focuses on the period between the ninth and third centuries BC, when the civilisation was spreading throughout most of Italy, including Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The artefacts on display come from specialist museum collections in Florence, Rome and Vatican City, as well as the Louvre in Paris.


text:
When used within a servlet container (Jetty/Tomcat/JBossAS/Immutant/etc), the thread locals Var.dvals (used to store dynamic bindings) and LockingTransaction.transaction (used to store the currently active transaction(s)) prevent all of the classes loaded by an application's clojure runtime from being garbage collected, resulting in a memory leak.
Cause: The issue comes from threads living beyond the lifetime of a deployment - servlet containers use thread pools that are shared across all applications within the container. Currently, the dvals and transaction thread locals are not discarded when they are no longer needed, causing their contents to retain a hard reference to their classloaders, which, in turn, causes all of the classes loaded under the application's classloader to be retained until the thread exits (which is generally at JVM shutdown).
Solution: I've attached a patch that does the following:
Var.dvals is initialized to a canonical TOP Frame
Var.dvals is now removed when the thread bindings are popped to the TOP
The outer transaction in LockingTransaction.transaction now removes the thread local when it is finished
There is still the opportunity for memory leaks if agents or futures are used, and the executors used for them are not shutdown when the app is undeployed. That's a solvable problem, but should probably be solved by the containers themselves (and/or the war generation tools) instead of in clojure itself.
This patch has a small performance impact: its use of a try/finally around running transactions to remove the outer transaction adds 4-6 microseconds to each transaction call on my hardware.
Providing an automated test for this patch is difficult - I've tested it locally with repeated deployments to a container while monitoring GC and permgen. All of clojure's tests pass with it applied.
The above is a condensation of:
Patch: threadlocal-removal-tcrawley-2013-11-24.diff
Screened by: Alex Miller - the new patch (since prior screening) has no changes in the LockingTransaction code but has been updated in Var to address the regression logged in CLJ-1299.


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Looks like Microsoft is turning game show Hole in the Wall, the Western take on Japan's Nōkabe (aka Brain Wall or colloquially "Human Tetris"), into an Xbox 360 game. And, yes, that does seem like a very natural fit for Kinect...
Microsoft is listed as the publisher of heretofore unannounced Xbox 360 game Hole in the Wall by Germany's ratings board Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle. GameSetWatch spotted the rating in advance of E3 2011, where the company is reported to have more than 10 Kinect games on hand to show for the first time.
Hole in the Wall started its American game show existence on the FOX network and has since been picked up by Cartoon Network.
Microsoft Publishing Hole In The Wall For Kinect [GameSetWatch]


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Saturday, December 27, 2008
The Giant Schnauzer, CH Galilee's Pure Of Spirit, has won Best In Show at today's Salinas Kennel Club show in San Mateo CA. The win put Spirit 1500 points closer to regaining the number one spot in the 2008 rankings. We also have reports that the Affenpinscher, CH Tamarin Tug, and the Brussels Griffon, CH Cilleine Masquerade, were entered, but absent and the Scottish Deerhound, CH Jaraluv Ouija, managed a Hound Group first over the country;s numbr one Hound, the Harrier, CH Downhome Family Tradition. More details to follow.
Posted by Billy Wheeler at 7:18 PM
3 comments:
- AnonymousDecember 27, 2008 at 7:48 PM
Yay Spririt!!!! So happy to hear this, thanks for posting.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 28, 2008 at 7:18 PM
Round Two: Spirit!!!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 28, 2008 at 7:29 PM
giant best.. holly group 1ReplyDelete
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text:
Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 17:39 - Latin Words - Meanings and Definitions, Learn Latin LanguageJust added a new page:
Posted by Administrator
Posted by Administrator
300 most common Latin words
300 words is not a lot, but they go a long way! Typically, around 2000 words in any language is enough to be able to figure out simple texts with the use of a dictionary. A much shorter word list of 300 entries may be a good start for an absolute beginner or someone who merely wants to understand mottos and basic Latin quotes.


text:
Elizabeth Crawford is Associate Professor of Clarinet at Ball State University. In addition to teaching studio clarinet, pedagogy and literature, she is also a member of the Musical Arts Quintet. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she holds a Bachelor of Music, magna cum laude, from Furman University, the Master of Music degree from The University of Michigan School of Music, and a doctorate from The Florida State University College of Music. A member of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for ten years, she has also worked with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony, the Monterey Symphony, the Colorado Music Festival, Baltimore Opera Orchestra, and currently performs regularly with the Indianapolis Symphony and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. While living in the United Kingdom from 2002-2005, she was a finalist for several bass clarinet orchestra positions and performed extensively with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the City of Birmingham Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. She has recorded for the BBC, the Philharmonia Orchestra with Robert Craft, and in sessions at Abbey Road, Angel, and Olympic studios in London. She was co-producer of the Musical Arts Quintet's new CD of works by American composers, American Breeze, recently released on the Albany Records label (TROY 1369).
In 1995, her performance at the International Clarinet Association's conference was included on a "Highlights from ClarinetFest '95" CD, one of only a few performances selected from the conference. Dr. Crawford continues to perform frequently at ICA conferences and, in addition, is the Indiana State Chair for the International Clarinet Association and the coordinator of the High School Clarinet Competition. She has also performed at conferences of the International Double Reed Society, the National Flute Association and been a soloist with the Ball State Symphony Orchestra, the Ball State Wind Ensemble, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the prestigious Robert Marcellus master classes.
She has performed in some of the worlds' major concert halls such as the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the Royal Albert Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Zurich Tonhalle, La Scala, and for the Maggio Musicale in Florence. Her teachers include David Breeden, Dr. Robert Chesebro, Dr. Frank Kowalsky, Dr. John Mohler, Theodore Johnson, and Fred Ormand. Dr. Crawford has taught clarinet at the Florida Community College at Jacksonville; Jacksonville University; the University of North Florida; the Robert Louis Stevenson School in Monterey; the Hill House School in London; the Blue Lake Fine Arts camp; and the Music for All summer program.
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
TAG: Trends
Know the Trends
TheFunded.com Advice
Posted by Anonymous on 2007-04-02
Tags: Preparation Strategy Trends
Venture capitalists tend to invest around trends in the various investment sectors that they cover, which makes sense from a capital concentration standpoint in a given sector. You may be pitching a business that is not related to the current trends, since the trends change every few months, but it is important to understand them. The partners and associates will be actively researching the trends, so a lot of the questions in a pitch meeting will be influenced by the current trends. Questions that may appear irrelevant to you as an entrepreneur may be influenced by the current sector trends. Be prepared.PRIVATE: Members Only (438 Characters)


text: Science of Cannabis Learn the facts about cannabis In partnership with the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research and the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research, McMaster is excited to announce ?one of the first evidence-based, post-secondary programs focused on the science behind the substance. Learn More Advanced Strategic Marketing Techniques Elevate your marketing. Enhance your strategy. Build the skills to translate complex marketing challenges into comprehensive market-ready strategies. Enhance your ability to plan, scope, execute and measure with this exciting new program! Learn more Big Data Analytics Master digital data for meaningful insights. The certificate in Big Data Analytics gives adult learners the tools and techniques to help guide organizations in the exploding field of data analytics. As more ways of collecting data are being developed, professionals are needed who can turn that data into useful business insights. Learn More Conversations That Matter Civic Engagement Speaker Series This October, McMaster University Continuing Education, the Hamilton Public Library, and the City of Hamilton will, once again, host Conversations That Matter, a speaker series focused on voter education and dialogue. October 2, 2019 - Canada's Environment: From National Policy to Local Impact October 9, 2019 - Canada's Rich and Diverse Cultural Fabric LEARN MORE


text:
October 31, 2010
UW losing 60-year tradition of salmon returning to campus
New directions in fisheries research, along with budget cuts, led the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences faculty to decide to discontinue the research salmon run created some 60 years ago at the campus. Gone will be the decades-long tradition of salmon returning to campus each fall, just as the students do.
Ending the run will take place during the next four autumns as young salmon released each spring from 2006 to 2010 grow to adult size in the open ocean and return to the pond located next to Portage Bay, behind the UW Medical Center. These returning salmon will not be spawned so no more young salmon will leave the UW to grow in marine waters.
The UW run currently numbers between 1,500 and 2,000 salmon. Issaquah's hatchery, in comparison, has returns of 10,000 to 20,000 fish. At the UW the run is about 80 percent chinook and 20 percent coho salmon. In the past, fish that returned to the UW pond would be artificially spawned, the eggs incubated in the hatchery and young fish released in the spring.
"The school intends to continue a variety of freshwater programs at the hatchery facility, including salmon research, but will obtain fish from other sources," said David Armstrong, director of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. "The expense of maintaining the run in the face of repeated permanent state budget cuts could not be justified, given that there are less expensive alternatives that still provide research and teaching opportunities for faculty and students."
Savings in four years, once the run is eliminated, will be approximately $58,000 a year.
Classes for students interested in careers in fisheries management are no longer conducted using the pond or fish run, as they once were. Currently the UW hatchery is supplying eggs and young fish to a couple federal fisheries research groups, and ending the run may disrupt the data sets they've been building, but no UW faculty member has used the run since 2005.
Still there's a large body of published work by UW faculty past and present based on findings from the run and hatchery.
Fish returning to the pond were routinely weighed, measured and notes taken on such things as their ages, egg size and potential to produce abundant offspring. UW professor Tom Quinn found funding in the early 2000s to pull together all that data that had been committed to paper, computer punch card and digital records over the decades.
"My colleagues and I wrote four papers looking at the long-term trends in survival, growth, age at maturation and return timing of the run," Quinn says. They looked at such things as whether releasing smolts when they were larger increased their chances of survival — it did not — and if years of preferentially spawning the first-returning salmon leads to runs that return early — it does. The latter is particularly interesting, Quinn says, because the advancement in timing came in the face of increasingly warm fall water temperatures, which favors the fish that arrive later in the year.
"I am trying to publish two more papers," Quinn says. "These were studies that 30 years ago Ernie Brannon conducted, one of them with my help. Both involve experimental groups of chinook salmon released from the UW hatchery and I am looking at patterns of migration. One was a hybrid cross between UW and Elwha River salmon. I doubt that such an experiment would even be permitted today so it is important to go back and look at those data."
Part of what's being lost is that ability to manipulate a run for experimental purposes, said Jon Wittock, hatchery manager. The intention of most state and federal hatcheries is to bolster runs for conservation or fishing. Consequently, the managers of those hatcheries may be reluctant to let scientists alter the way some young fish are raised in order to study the effects of, say, higher water temperatures on the survival of the fish.
Further back, the UW run and hatchery were used for such things as studying salmon olfactory and homing abilities, work done by Brannon and then-grad-student Quinn, as well as investigating genetic variation, research done by Bill Hershberger.
The run of salmon was started in 1949 and the fish pond completed in 1961. The idea for the run came from Lauren Donaldson, who joined UW fisheries program 1932. After WWII, war department researchers who were concerned about the effects of nuclear weapons testing over aquatic environments asked Donaldson to consider the effects on salmon. That work would "be greatly facilitated if the fish were cooperative enough to return to the university," Robert Stickney, former director and author of a book on the history of UW fisheries, wrote about Donaldson's impetus to start the run.
"As many of us know, salmon spawn in the gravel of streams. They find their home stream by detecting the characteristic odor of the water in which they hatched," Stickney wrote. "Detractors, many of who undoubtedly thought Donaldson was a candidate for a rubber room, were, to say the least, skeptical that the fish could survive the trip past the polluted areas [polluted because of heavy industrialization] and through the locks and, once the fish reached the campus, there was no stream for them to climb."
Undeterred, Donaldson made plans to pump lake water through the hatchery and release it into Portage Bay, as a way for the hatchery fish to find their way back, as well as erecting a fish ladder. He released 23,000 chinook fingerlings into Portage Bay in 1949. In 1953, 23 adults jumped up the fish ladder and entered the raceway as four-year-old adults.
In 1989, when his book was published, Stickney wrote, "Fisheries professionals from the globe over pass through Seattle in an almost continuous stream. Many of them visit the School of Fisheries, and most are interested in viewing the return pond to observe, if their time is right, the spawning activity. 'So this is the pond made so famous by Dr. Donaldson,' is the familiar statement."
There's also been a traditional autumn trek of school teachers and their classes to the pond to learn about the life cycle of salmon and watch the fish being spawned, which has been cancelled this year. Last year about 30 students visited.
That's down from 3,000 in the early 2000s when Seattle City Light was providing most of the funding for what was called the "Salmon in the Classroom" project. When Seattle City Light stopped paying its portion, the fisheries faculty decided to discontinue the program because of the cost and partly because of concerns by some faculty that youngsters might get the idea that fish from hatcheries is an acceptable alternative to protecting habitat so natural runs can thrive, although the school kids were always informed about the difference when they visited.
In the wild, salmon die naturally after spawning. As part of the artificial spawning conducted at the pond all these years, the adult fish were first killed so that eggs and milt could be collected. The fish are killed in a humane fashion following protocols accepted by the UW's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. To end the run, the fish will be killed but no eggs or milt will be collected. Fish that are ready to spawn are generally not good to eat and, as in past years, the carcasses will go to a composting facility.
Wild fish in area streams could be harmed if fish from the UW's run were to start competing with them for spawning sites or intermingle with them, which is a reason the fish need to be eliminated and not left to stray into other waterways.
For more information:
Armstrong, 206-543-4270, firstname.lastname@example.com
For technical information: Jon Wittouck, hatchery manager, 206-543-4267, firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
An almost sinful obsession of mine (other than genealogy) a few years ago was watching Gunsmoke [formerly on TVLand, most weekends; also early mornings during the week.] Some weekends, it seemed as if the time passed and little got done except hours of Gunsmoke. Let me tell you about one of those days.
At the first strains of the compelling theme music of the day's first episode, I could feel myself being drawn in. By the time George "Smokey the Bear" Walsh had solemnly and ritualistically intoned, "Gunsmoke . . . starring James Arness as Matt Dillon," I was captured. To mitigate the situation, I tried to think of some genealogical angles to Matt Dillion, Festus, Doc, and Kitty that I could blog about. I was still pondering that when the fifth episode of the day began. An obviously very ill woman was being tended by three black nuns. The woman's two children were nearby. The nuns agreed to see that the children made it to the farm their father was supposed to be preparing for the family near Dodge City [Episode #14, Season 15; first aired 12/29/1969]. Having already seen four episodes that morning, I was actually about to turn the television off and get down to some real business when
one of the nuns mentioned that they were members of the "Oblate Sisters of Providence."
I sat back down to watch the rest of the show.
[The children's father (Jack Elam, as despicable as ever in his Gunsmoke recurring role as Pack Landers!) turns out to be a drunk layabout and petty criminal who offers to help the nuns build a school so as to get his hands on the funds donated for that purpose. It's a sort of bizarro version of Lilies of the Field]1, 2.
What re-captured my attention was the mention of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, which is an actual order of Roman Catholic nuns headquartered in Baltimore. Founded in 1829, it was the first religious order for African-American women. The first Superior General, Mother Mary Lange, started the order for the benefit of Haitian immigrants. The order has concentrated on child development and education.
On the 1920 federal census for Baltimore, there is a two page section for the St Francis Convent and Orphanage, operated by the Oblate Sisters of Providence. Listed in that section is 16 year old Emma Micheau, born in llinois. She's the last and youngest "assistant inmate" listed before several boarders ranging from 38 to 94 years old, and then the orphans. "Assistant Inmate" appears to have been the description given to all the nuns and novitiates except the "Superior General" of the Order, who in 1920 was the Reverend Mother "M. Frances."
Emma Micheau was the daughter of Marshall and Sophronia Micheau of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois. Marshall Emmanuel Micheau was the son of George Micheau, who had been born in Missouri in about 1852 and George's wife, Mary Emma Roy, born in Prairie du Rocher in 1855. George was one of five sons of George [1813-1907] and Margret [1834-?] Micheau.
As a religious, Emma was known as Sister Philomena. After her initial stay in Baltimore, she returned to Missouri and later became the Superior at St Frances Girls School in Normandy, Missouri.
In taking Holy Orders, Emma Micheau was following the example set by her aunt, Adelaide ("Addie") Micheau, who was the daughter of George and Mary Emma Micheau. Addie, born in 1885, became Sister Celestine, OSP, and was resident at the Order's mission school in St Louis and later, at the Normandy, Missouri, orphanage.
Sister Celestine was my wife's first cousin once removed and Sister Philomena was my wife's great-aunt.
Mother Mary Philomena (nee Emma Mary Micheau)
Research Tip: The Oblate Sisters of Providence maintains an Archives and Special Collections Library at the Our Lady of Mount Providence Convent in Baltimore, Maryland. The collection is accessible by appointment only between the hours of 9am and 4pm Monday through Friday. Photocopying and photograph scanning services are available. Some of these records contain the names of orphans and students who resided at the various OSP facilities. Many other religious orders have similar archives.
A tip to search for Catholic religious persons is to use the words "father," "mother," "brother, or "sister" as either a first or last name. For example, if you search the 1850 census for Maryland for "sister" as a first name, you come up with about 185 members of the Sisters of Charity in Frederick and Baltimore. Catholic dioceses and archdioceses also have records of their personnel as well as worshippers. For more information on Catholic genealogical records, see the guide at http://home.att.net/~Local_Catholic/.


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On DZone.com today there's a new interview by Lyndsey Clevesy with Jason Gilmore looking at the Zend Framework and some of the general things to expect in coming versions.
This week's DZone Refcard is about Getting Started with the Zend Framework. The card introduces you to the basics of the Zend Framework and sets you on the path to creating your first project. I met the author, Jason Gilmore, to find out more about the topic.
They talk about some of what the framework currently has to offer developers, what kind of involvement he's had with it, who it supports as far as advanced PHP features and what's to come in version 2.0. The Zend Framework RefCard mentioned can be viewed or downloaded here - a six-page quick reference for some of the more common Zend Framework tasks.


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Here's what our card looks like this year. If only you could see the outtakes...
And here's a book i ordered that i think will be super fun. I mean, how could it get any better- the title alone was meant for Handy Andy! :)
The kids also painted some big cards for Dad.
Do you have any favorite father's day traditions?


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Our goal is to provide the best information on local places for locals.
pentalocal is 5x local.
Local people, just like you, sign up to promote their community and connect with their neighbors. After their address is verified, they use the pentalocal app to highlight the best of their neighborhood.
pentalocal has information on all the places you want to know about: restaurants, parks, schools, dentists, hospitals; even beaches, streams and forests. Everything you might find in a neighborhood.
We currently have information on 60,380,469 places in United States of America.


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Statement of Non-Discrimination
Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1972
The District does not discriminate against any person the basis of gender, race, color, religion, national origin, ethnic group, actual or perceived sexual orientation, marital or parental status, physical or mental disability. The District will take steps to assure that the lack of English will not be a barrier to admission or participation in District programs. Complaints alleging noncompliance with this policy of nondiscrimination should be directed to Sergio Mendoza. A copy of the District's Uniform Complaint Policy is available at 559.793.2452.
The District's Title IX Coordinator at 559.793.2445 or the District's 504 Coordinator at 559.793.2473.


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Singer/songwriter JJ Cale has died at the age of 74.
The musician passed away at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, California on Friday (26Jul13) after suffering a heart attack, according to an announcement on his personal website.
Born John Weldon Cale in Oklahoma, he adopted the name JJ Cale to avoid being confused with John Cale of the Velvet Underground and helped create the Tulsa Sound, a musical style which combined blues, rockabilly, and country.
He became famous in the 1970s, when Eric Clapton covered his songs After Midnight and Cocaine and the pair collaborated on 2006 album The Road To Escondido, which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album in 2008.
Cale released 14 studio albums but enjoyed greater success as a songwriter than a singer, penning popular tracks for Tom Petty, Carlos Santana and Johnny Cash.
tagged in Carlos Santana Eric Clapton Johnny Cash Tom Petty


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I'm not the only one who thinks the late model Simplex were the best friction dérailleurs ever made. I wrote this post about the famed Super LJ model, but as I continue to use the dérailleurs it becomes obvious the the later drop parallelogram models are even better. We have sold many new-old-stock SX610 models since I introduced them here. Sadly our supply is running low and we've not been able to find more. We did, however, find a stash of slightly later model Simplex, the 440 in both regular and long cage versions. They are not as pretty as the SX610s, but they shift just as well.
The second photo is of the prototype new VO bell mount. It'll be nice to be able to mount classic bells on older frames.
Finally I've posted some new mixte frame photos here. This is one of Ahren Rogers' VO city bike frames.
24 October, 2007
A Few New Parts
Posted by Velo Orange at 3:29:00 PM
19 comments:
- Anonymous said...
What's the max cog the 440 RD will handle?
- Anonymous said...
What about modern derailleurs? Are you going to stock any acceptably ugly modern bits? What have you been using on the Randonneurs? What do you imagine using on the camping and city bikes not built with vintage parts?
I'd like to see a XT rapid rise with the finish of an Ultegra rear (are those polished or annodized silver?) but then I've been dead for decades and no one cares what I think.
- Anonymous said...
Dead Andre-
The XT's are painted. Worse, the 2008 XT RD is just hideous. 2007 XT and LX RD's were some of the nicest looking MTB RD's to come down the line since the early 90's then Shimano had to go and ruin them one year later (although the LX may be unchanged - it's hard to tell from Shimano's fairly crappy website).
If you want a decent looking silver MTB RD - especially one that looks OK on a road bike - pick up a 2007 XT while they are around.
If I were to nominate some modern RD's for VO to stock, I'd suggest 9 speed era Ultegra and 105 RD's and the aforementioned 2007 XT.
It's a shame the bike industry is in full-tilt "upgrade" mode and has to "improve" their product line every single year. This means we get uglier and uglier components every spring in an industry-wide attempt to make bicycles look like they arrived on the mothership. Thank god there are still very good apples like Nitto, Tektro, MKS, Honjo etc...
- Velo Orange said...
Annon. I can't find a spec sheet on the 440, but the short cage will handle at least 28t. I'd guess the long cage is good for 36t because that was the capacity of the preceding model.
Andre, I still drive one of your Deux Chevauxs with the gearshift sticking out of the dash and you're asking me about modern dérailleurs ;<)
Seriously, one of the reasons that we don't stock modern dérailleurs is that I have not decided which ones to stock. I use modern Campy dérailleurs on two of my bikes and feel that their shifting and, especially, their brifters are superior to Shimano. I recommend Chorus or Centaur dérailleurs to VO customers who want index shifting.
BTW, I fixed the link to the SX610 post.
- Anonymous said...
I use modern Shimano derailleurs with friction shifting. They work perfectly, are easy to source and the models I mentioned above (105/Ultegra/07xt) are as good looking as anything made in the last 15 years. Well, maybe not the XT - it's a little too futuristic. I don't ride Campy because friction shifters shift Shimano as well as one could ask for and the Campy stuff, IMO, is both too expensive and somehow too showy. I guess I have always associated Campy with pretentious racers who wouldn't be caught dead with "Shima-no" bits. Yes, a stereotype but I've met my share. Also, I just simply have a love of Japanese stuff. Why not just bring in whats good and what you can source reasonably whether it be 105 and/or Centaur or something else?
- Anonymous said...
Shimano parts have a slightly endearing tendency to look much better later than they do at first. I remember thinking, when they reinvented the crank, going to outboard bearings, that I would NEVER ever use anything so ugly, but I usually get over it and I do use the stuff and, as for the crank, it's really a better design. By better I mean simpler and stronger and better. The 10 spd shifters are really, really great. Up thru 9 spd, the shifters tended to be not quite as ergo as Campy, in my opinion, but on long hard testing I generally found that Shimano shifting was a tiny bit slicker, though both were always great.
I use lots of fantastic rear derailleurs such as a Suntour Superbe Pro in friction, a Campy SR in friction, a Mavic 840 in friction, as well as several other Suntours and a complement of oh, a bunch of modern Shimano derailleurs. I consider myself quite well stocked for derailleurs, and would be hard pressed to even pick a favorite. Oh I also have a Huret Jubilee I use from time to time. I have fond remembrances of Simplex, but that's the extent of my interest in Simplex, sorry.
- Anonymous said...
I agree, to an extent, with mw. It's interesting how 9 speed Ultegra hubs or a 9 speed Dura Ace crankset suddenly look so clean, classic and handsome. They were (by my standards) quotidian and "simply OK" looking just a few years ago. When compared to a modern outboard Shimano crank or current XT/XTR stuff, the Shimano of just a few years ago looks classy if not classic.
Where I disagree with mw is on the some of current Shimano stuff. I seriously doubt I'll ever come around to liking a 2008 XT derailleur or a 2008 Dura Ace crankset. It's also interesting that what largely distinguished the hierarchy of Shimano components of the past was aesthetics and level of finish. I find that with current Shimano, some of the lower grade components (Tiagra, Alfine, Nexave) are the best looking in their entire line-up.
- Anonymous said...
Ideally any discussion about derailleurs would not be limited to aesthetics or shift quality. The issue of gearing needs to be addressed. How low can yours go?
What sort of lower gears are people getting out of their modern road derailleurs with larger sprockets not approved by party central committee? 32 with an Ultegra? What about the shiny campy derailleurs? We surely wouldn't want to stick to the party line when equipping a camping bike would now we? Or is this the wrong place to ask, a blog frequented only by athletes who weigh 4 stone and live in Jytland?
How modern of a hub could a 440RD be used with?
- Anonymous said...
I'd like to request a Velo Orange cigarette halter for my Gauloise bleu
- Anonymous said...
Just out of curiosity, do you have any pictures of the VO Camper yet?
- Anonymous said...
i've pushed a 105 rear mech to 30 teeth by replacing the b screw with a limit screw to back the jockey a bit further off the cogs. friction of course, although i havnt even bothered to try index. the outboard bearings are bad not good design. i have seen 4 way premature bearing failures from 3 different companies in less than 2 years. LX, XT, extralite, and record. I had previously seen only 2 bottom brackets fail prematurely, and they were cases of serious user error (power washing mud into the bearings) as to stronger, maybe, but frankly who cares? who is doing 3 foot drops on dura ace cranks? who is 400lbs and riding off road? stiffness and strength are obv over rated, look how long it took for campy to say screw it and drop the square taper. the only cranks i have ever ridden that werent stiff or strong enough were machined american cranks from the early 90s. too light with too many stress points. at least they looked nice.
current shimano and campy cranks look out of place on traditional diameter lugged bikes. they look semi wacky on larger diameters, but just plain tarantula on angel food cake on classically oriented bikes. getting used to something doesnt make it good or right. its called getting used to something. you can ignore the smell of a sewage treatment plant if you live next to it long enough, and the really bad song on the radio will get in your head if you listen long enough. that doesn't make either right or desirable.
- Anonymous said...
I can only speak for modern Shimano road RD's but it seems that most folks I know that have tried can always run 28 max rear, almost always run 30 and occasionally 32 depending on RD hanger length, RD position and probably a few other variables, etc.
I have a 9 speed Dura Ace RD that I'll be setting up with an 8 speed 11-30 cassette in a few weeks and we'll see...
Shimano REALLY needs to make an elegant, shiny, silver road-style RD that can handle 34 rear. I won't hold my breath.
- Anonymous said...
Not to get too far off topic, but - Johnson, when I got back into riding a couple of years ago I was just shy of 400 pounds. The first bike I used to lose weight was a mountain bike. It's just easier for a fat person to hoist a leg over one. And they are generally beefier built so should be able to handle the weight.
So it can happen. Anything to help get us fat(ter) folks back to riding.
For present rear derailleur, I do like the Shimano LX reverse rise. On both my bikes they handle 32 cogs quite well and triples up front. So I end up with a nice low gear on each.
The way I ride, my main complaint is actually the big chainring on modern bikes. With an 11t cog on back the front only needs a 38 or 36x24 in to get enough enough range.
For looks, my favorite was still the old SunTour XC. But that's my own bias showing.
- Anonymous said...
ok, eric, apologies, but i think its safe to say still, that the current emphasis on stiffness and strength is over blown. i built 2 bikes for fellas who were 350 plus, a surly instigator and a long haul trucker, and both used square taper cranks. their purchases came with lifetime tune-ups, and i saw them semi annually for tune-ups. in 3 years there was no failures. keep the cranks tight, cold forge them, and you're set, generally.
- Anonymous said...
well, I still use Phil square bb's on my classic lugged bikes, and will most likely for the rest of my life. On my Merlin, and on one or two other bikes, I use the new Shimano stuff, and it's terrific. Everything goes in more easily, in seconds, with simple hand tools; the crank is more solid when standing or shifting, doesn't come loose. That's a nice crank for me; your mileage may vary. The premise of the system, as it appeared years ago from Bullseye, was legendary for being bulletproof, and Shimano's design works really well, and that's why the bicycle industry has converted.
Campagnolo didn't imitate Shimano in this regard because they are foolish, craven, or have no interests other than the commercial. No, they supply the world's best riders and the world's most demanding venues, and they research their products exhaustively, and their livelihood depends on finding the most efficient design.
Most of what Shimano introduces in its groups has a way of working out, it seems, and after all this time they often do win me over, even though I was always one of the old dyed-in-the-wool, friction-and-single-pivot-caliper types. It isn't because of the way anything looks, it's how it works.
Everything in its place: if aethetics is the main priority, fine, get something old and polished and be happy. I do that sometimes too.
Prioritizing function is a different matter. Putting in lots and lots of hard miles, and doing most of my own maintenance, on all sorts of components, separates the wheat from the chaff for me--how things work--and there is no other criteria or relevant opinion most of the time.
michael white
- Anonymous said...
Don't worry about it. I totally agree with your overall premise. Both my current bikes have square taper BBs. And so did all my previous bikes. I find it the best method out there. Because you can change components and not worry.
- Anonymous said...
That mixte frame looks wonderful.
By the way, I arrived home to find a large box full of VO parts in the mail.
Despite being half-dead after three straight days of very little sleep in the newsroom, I struggled to cut open the box.
Seeing sealed bags of Japanese parts and the lovely chrome rack really made my week.
Thanks Chris, and all those at VO who packed and shipped my order.
- Anonymous said...
The mixte really is quite lovely.
Is that a generator mount on the seatstay (with nice wraparound cluster)?
Reinforced(!) chainguard mounts, too?
Kickstand plate?
That's a nice set of extras, although necessary for a quality city bike.
I am getting more and more appreciative of these sort of colors too.
- Anonymous said...
i think i'm a bit late for this, but i was doing some research on Simplex RD 440. Would they mount on Simplex drop (those without thread)?