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Patch 6.1 arrives today, bringing a number of changes. I'll try to keep this short (ha!) and just hit the points that matter to us.
Goodbye Glyphs
- Glyph of Alabaster Shield has been removed.
- Glyph of Harsh Words is now only available to Holy Paladins.
If you haven't been following the prot DPS scene, you may not know that we were doing a lot of damage in early January. We got hit with a series of nerfs to help rein that in, including a nerf to Seraphim (down from 1000 of each stat to 750 for prot), collateral damage from a giant 80% nerf to Seal of Truth (see below), and a nerf to the Alabaster Shield glyph (from 10% per stack to 3%).
Harsh Words, while it wasn't nerfed, was also a contributing factor. Harsh Word does a fair bit more damage than Shield of the Righteous, so this glyph was a pretty significant DPS gain. Of course, the downside is that you give up a lot of defense by using it. That's a pretty fair trade-off, but it did lead to a lot of high-DPS parses in early Highmaul that ruffled the feathers of pure DPS classes.
In 6.1, both of these glyphs are off the table for Prot. That said, I don't think either of these removals were actually targeted at reducing our DPS. High-DPS parses generally rely on stacking of Holy Avenger and Seraphim with potions, trinkets, and a lucky streak of Avenger's Shield procs (ideally an AoE situation for maximum damage). Both glyphs obviously help, but they're small effects in a relative sense.
What was the point of these removals, then? Choice. Your average paladin had quite a few glyph options for DPS: Alabaster Shield, Final Wrath, Harsh Word, and situational glyphs like Focused Shield and Double Jeopardy. Since many encounters favor the Glyph of Divine Protection, we really didn't get a chance to use many other utility glyphs. There was no room for convenience or play style glyphs like Consecrator or Judgment.
In a sense, it's the same problem that we had with the old talent trees (and arguably, some choices in the new ones) – it gave the illusion of choice rather than a real choice. I think the more important issue is that it made Glyphs feel like a checklist rather than something you could use to customize your play. Removing some of the DPS options helps provide room for more individual choices.
Recharging Empowered Seals
- Empowered Seals (Protection, Retribution) has been improved. Liadrin's Righteousness now increases haste by 20% (up from 15%). Uther's Insight now heals the Paladin for 2% of maximum health every 3 seconds (up from 1% every 2 seconds).
- Seal of Truth is no longer available to Protection Paladins. Seal of Command is now replaced by Seal of Righteousness instead of Seal of Truth.
Empowered Seals is getting a buff this patch, since it was lagging significantly behind the other two options. I've included the removal of Seal of Truth in this section because Empowered Seals is the real reason Truth is gone.
The initial speculation when Seal of Truth was nerfed by 80% via a hotfix was that it was a nerf targeted at reducing our DPS. But that's really not the case – the DPS loss was at best collateral damage. The real reason was that it was a precursor to the removal of the spell. They can't remove a spell from the game via a hotfix; that requires a patch. They can, however, nerf it to the ground so that it's not attractive.
Empowered Seals suffered from a case of "too much complexity, too little fun" for Protection. Retribution only has to juggle two seals, which is pretty reasonable and led to a play style that many Rets actually enjoy. But juggling three seals was a bit too much, both in terms of buff management and GCD requirements.
The harsher GCD requirement meant you were casting fewer of your rotational spells, of which we already have a pretty full complement. So you were constantly skipping things like Consecration and Holy Wrath to swap seals. A lot of people found that to be less satisfying than hitting an actual damage spell. But regardless of whether you agree with the "fun" argument, there's a more fundamental problem with the GCD cost of the pre-6.1 version of Empowered Seals.
Spending that many GCDs on seal swaps carried a fairly large opportunity cost, both in terms of damage (obvious) and survivability (harder to refresh SS at optimal times). That meant that the buffs needed to be very strong to compensate for that loss. At the existing tuning, the talent was about right (actually a little bit low) for Ret, but far too weak for Prot given the amount of effort.
There were several ways to fix that, of course. They could make the buffs stronger for Protection, much like they made Seraphim weaker for us. They could also take seals off of the GCD, but that introduces its own issues, because you could write a macro that made the talent essentially passive. They could re-design the talent entirely, but (a) that's a lot of work, and (b) they like the theme, just not the numbers.
The solution they went with was to axe Seal of Truth for Prot and buff Liadrin's Righteousness and Uther's Insight. Since we like haste a lot more than Ret does, the buff to Liadrin's Righteousness helps the talent much more for us than it does Ret. And obviously, the buff to Uther's Insight only affects us, since Ret won't be caught dead using Seal of Insight.
Only having to juggle two seals brings the complexity requirement down to a reasonable level. for both specs. Outside of its effect on Empowered Seals, Seal of Truth's removal doesn't affect us very much, since we can use Seal of Righteousness for DPS in pretty much any situation we might've wanted Seal of Truth before.
The one downside to the new implementation is that Liadrin's Righteousness is giving a lot of haste now. In Mythic BRF gear we can easily hit the 50% haste cap with it active, which makes our stat choices a little wonky. For example, haste proc effects become significantly less valuable, and depending on exactly what gear we have, we may end up enchanting something other than haste or using a different food. This means we'll be dancing around another cap when it comes to our gearing.
In the last blog post I provided a table of the haste-rating targets for different talents. Here's an updated version of that table accounting for the new version of Empowered Seals (ES):
|Character Sheet
|No Buffs
|Raid Buff (5%)
|Emp. Seals (20%)
|Heroism Only (30%)
|Hero+RB (36.5%)
|Hero+ES (56%)
|Hero+RB+ES (63.8%)
As you can see, it only takes 1319 haste rating from gear to hit 50% haste with Empowered Seals and the 5% haste raid buff. That's not a difficult threshold to hit, and may even be attainable with an ideal set of heroic BRF gear.
In any event, we should at least briefly address how Empowered Seals performs after the buffs. First, let's note that there are really three ways to play with Empowered Seals now:
- Twist Insight and Righteousness, trying to keep both buffs up over 90% of the time.
- Just use Seal of Insight
- Just use Seal of Righteousness
I've run some quick simulations to show you how those different strategies affect your DPS output and survival with all of the different level 75 talent options:
Sitting in Seal of Righteousness is clearly the best choice for DPS, netting you around 2.5k-3k additional DPS. At the same time, it's still a noticeable loss of survival, so it may not be a great idea for progression. At the other end of the spectrum, sitting in SoI is only a minor improvement over twisting, but comes with a significant DPS loss. Twisting is clearly the best strategy for trying to optimize both DPS and Survival, which is probably good since that's what the talent is trying to encourage.
The next question, of course, is how this compares to the other talents. So let's see how that comparison shakes out. I'll include all of the regular setups, as well as a few setups where we sit in Seal of Righteousness to attain higher DPS.
These plots take a little more analysis than the previous ones. At first glance, you might conclude that Empowered Seals is still terrible. First of all, in the survival arena, it's pretty competitive with HS and Seraphim. HS has a slight edge thanks to set bonuses, and Sera lags slightly, but it's a small enough difference in each direction that any of the three talents is a reasonable choice. In practice, you'd probably choose the talent based on encounter constraints like tank swaps and the cooldown on dangerous abilities. Swapping to Seal of Righteousness hurts all of the setups, but appears to hurt Empowered Seals the least.
On the DPS side, Empowered Seals seems to be lagging the others by a fair bit. However, this sim over-values Holy Shield in two ways: the actors have 100% active time with the boss, and there's a ticking DoT that can trigger it every two seconds.
If there's an encounter where you're tanking the boss continuously from beginning to end, then these results are fairly representative (they should, for example, be a fairly good indication of how Mythic Butcher would work in T17M BRF gear). They'll still over-value Holy Shield slightly though thanks to the DoT.
If you have tank swaps, and assume you only have the boss' attention 50% of the time, Holy Shield loses about half of its procs. That's a loss of around 2k DPS, which would drop it back into the same range as Empowered Seals. Factor in the inflation due to pocs from DoT ticks and it will come out a little lower still.
In practice, that means Seraphim has a solid lead in DPS for the average encounter. However, if you're going all-out DPS and using Seal of Righteousness, Empowered Seals is not far behind at all. And as we discussed earlier, that DPS comes with a smaller cost in survivability. The other advantage is that we have more control over when we go into DPS mode and when we go into turtle mode, unlike Seraphim's fixed 30-second cycle.
Holy Shield brings up the rear for DPS, but has the best survival under most circumstances thanks to the fairly powerful T17 set bonuses (more on that below). It's still a solid contender though, and will remain strong in fights where you're tanking full time and/or you can abuse the spell and DoT blocking mechanics.
This change has really given us three solid options in the L100 talent tier. They all have strengths and weaknesses, but none are so far ahead or so far behind as to be irrelevant. I think Seraphim will still remain the preferred choice at the top tier of Mythic raiders, while Holy Shield will still be the preferred choice for the average player, but the gap has narrowed enough that I think all three talents will see use going forward.
Set Bonuses
I haven't had time to post since Blackrock Foundry came out, so we should probably talk about set bonuses. First of all, the set bonuses are good, so you'll want to pick up set items. Unlike previous tiers, set items can be warforged or socketed, so there's no inherent disadvantage to using 4-piece on paper. In fact, the only remaining opportunity cost in theory is the itemization of the pieces themselves.
Of course, in practice you'll still have to decide between the items you have on hand. So you may still find yourself deciding between a well-itemized warforged/socket off-set piece and a tier piece with neither of those features. Likewise, it's hard to nail down which four pieces you should aim for because it depends very heavily on what items you have. Legs are the weakest tier piece on paper, but if you have a warforged/socketed off-set option in one of the other four slots then you may be better off using the tier legs to take advantage of that piece.
First, let's look at how valuable the bonuses are. In this sim, I compare an actor with both set bonuses (DP_HS_4p) to one where the 4-piece is artificially disabled (DP_HS_2p) and one where both set bonuses are artificially disabled (DP_HS_0p). I repeat for an actor with the HA_Sera talent combination to see how it affects Seraphim.
Neither set bonus really affects your DPS with Seraphim, but Holy Shield obviously benefits from the extra block granted by Faith Barricade. The four piece bonus (Defender of the Light) doesn't directly affect DPS at all. The small discrepancy in the DP_HS actor appears to be a combination of statistical fluctuation and a ~1% reduction in Mark of Blackrock uptime caused by larger blocks.
On the other hand, both set bonuses are significant for survival regardless of talent choice. An improvement of 2k TMI will be better than swapping to two equal-ilvl items with better secondary stats, so there's no reason not to grab the set bonuses.
The next question is whether it's worth downgrading to pick up those set bonuses. To test that, I took a set of ilvl-685 Highmaul gear and compared it to sets where I swapped two or four ilvl-680 heroic set items in to activate the set bonuses. Here are the results:
The set bonuses are strong enough to make up for the loss of 5 ilvls in four slots if you're using Holy Shield, so grabbing four pieces of heroic tier gear is a no-brainer. With Seraphim the story is a little different. Downgrading to pick up the two-piece improves survivability, although the improvement in DPS is minimal. The four-piece bonus doesn't quite make up for the ilvl loss though, and comes with a heftier DPS cost. So it's worth downgrading to get the 2-piece bonus if you run Seraphim, but I would wait to pick up the 4-piece until you get at least a sidegrade in base item power, like a heroic warforged or socketed tier piece.
Stat Weights
One question that's come up a lot is how Mythic BRF gear affects stat weights. I set up a sim that uses the T17M gear set with a few different talent combinations to investigate that question.
The first actor uses Divine Purpose and Holy Shield, and produces a TMI scaling plot that looks like this:
Remember that on one of these plots, the steeper (i.e. more negative) the slope, the better that stat is at increasing your survival. Bonus armor is clearly still king, with haste and mastery roughly tied in effectiveness. Mastery's getting a bump from the set bonus, which may even make it slightly preferred over haste. Versatility, crit, and multistrike trail the other stats in effectiveness.
So with Holy Shield, you want
Bonus Armor > Haste / Mastery > Versatility > Multistrike > Crit
If we instead look at Seraphim, we get a very different story:
Haste's all over the map here thanks to the myriad of haste breakpoints Seraphim creates. In practice, I think we should be averaging over those effects to account for latency and player error. That would put haste somewhere between bonus armor and the pack of other stats. The set bonus isn't helping mastery as much in this talent configuration, so it sits at the back of the pack with, of all things, crit. I'm not sure why crit has lost its dominance with Seraphim here, but that may be due to the choice of Holy Avenger as a L90 talent. Crit may fare better when you pair Seraphim with Sanctified Wrath or Divine Purpose. Tough to say, but it's something I'll be investigating in the next few weeks as I have time.
For now, with Seraphim I think we want to stick with the stat priority
Bonus Armor > Haste > Versatility > Crit / Multistrike / Mastery
Empowered Seals provides a completely different scenario:
Haste performs incredibly poorly with Empowered Seals because we're bumping up against the 50% haste cap. As you remove haste (going to the left on the plot), you can see haste's value increase, but if you add haste above the cap (going to the right on the plot) it falls back in line with multistrike and crit. The standout winner here is mastery though, which seems to dominate when Empowered Seals is selected. Presumably the 91% uptime on Shield of the Righteous we get with this much haste is inflating the value of mastery's contribution to SotR mitigation.
So with Empowered Seals, the stat priority is
Bonus Armor > Mastery > Haste (to 50%) > Versatility > Crit / Multistrike / Haste
Note that "to 50%" is after all raid buffs and Liadrin's Righteousness. If you want a target to hit on the character sheet, you want to aim for 1719 rating without raid buffs, or around 19.1%.
Handier Purity
- Hand of Purity now reduces damage taken by 15% (up from 10%).
A small buff to Hand of Purity makes it a little more effective against normal (non-DoT) damage. It also makes it a little more competitive with our default choice, Unbreakable Spirit. Thinking solely of Divine Protection and Hand of Purity for the moment, choosing Unbreakable Spirit gives you 16 seconds of 20% mitigation (or 40% against magic) every minute, while choosing Hand of Purity gives you 8 seconds of 20%(or 40%) mitigation and 12 seconds of 15% mitigation. Hand of Purity actually lets you cover more seconds of combat with a cooldown, albeit weaker ones. You could definitely imagine taking it to be able to chain cooldowns through a dangerous phase in an encounter, even if you can't make use of Purity's 80% mitigation against DoT damage.
That said, I think the fringe benefits of Unbreakable Spirit are hard to pass up. A 5-minute Lay on Hands and a 2.5-minute Divine Shield are really nice, and give you a lot of flexibility in dealing with encounter mechanics. That's arguably stronger than 4 extra seconds of (weak) cooldown coverage every minute.
Still, I think having more options is better in this case, so a buff to make Purity a more viable competitor to Unbreakable Spirit is certainly welcome. And at any rate, it's a flat-out buff any time you receive it from a Ret or Holy paladin as an external cooldown.
Pardon Me, Governor
- Execution Sentence healing dealt by Stay of Execution has increased by 100%.
This buff may be targeted at Holy more than Prot. From our perspective, it looks like a buff that tries to make Execution Sentence a more interesting choice as a survival cooldown. The massive up-front healing from the first tick of Stay of Execution would quickly stabilize your health (if not top you off entirely), and the declining HoT gives you a few additional seconds of safety.
The real downside of using it this way is the sheer DPS cost. Regardless of which level 90 talent you use, they're all a large portion of your DPS – 5% or more, in general. That's a lot of DPS to give up to use Stay of Execution as a survival cooldown, especially when we already have serviceable alternatives in Lay on Hands and Word of Glory.
I'm sort of on the fence about this one. A 1-minute sort-of-LoH with a HoT sounds nice, but I'm skeptical that it's worth the sheer DPS cost. I'll have to play with it some to see how it feels, since this is the sort of thing that's hard to quantify in a sim. Still, no sense complaining about a buff.
Multistrike – Not a Buff
You may have noticed that Shining Protector's tooltip changed slightly in patch 6.1. It now reads:
All heals you receive, including multistrikes, have two chances equal to your multistrike chance to trigger Shining Protector, healing you for an additional 30% of the triggering heal.
Before the patch, it said "a chance" rather than "two chances." This may appear to be a 100% buff to the passive, but it isn't. The spell has been making two rolls since Warlords was released, which is easily confirmed by checking logs:
In this example, which was taken some time during Highmaul progression, I received two Shining Protector procs from the initial Lifebloom tick and one proc from the Lifebloom tick's multistrike. In fact, you could see up to nine healing events from a single heal if you got lucky: the base heal, two multistrikes, and two shining protector procs from each of those three events.
I was initially modeling this incorrectly in Simulationcraft based on the tooltip wording and testing I had performed early on in beta (at which point, it was only making one multistrike roll). When I noticed this, I reported the disconnect between tooltip and behavior and received confirmation that it was working as intended, which is what led to the tooltip update we see today. And of course, I've since updated SimC to handle the mechanic properly, so all of the sims in this post are modeling it correctly (hence why multistrike is performing a little better than before).
So, in short – the Shining Protector change is a tooltip update and not a buff.
WeakAura Strings
I haven't had time to make and upload a video, but I've been updating my WeakAura strings throughout the last few months. The base package contains auras to help you manage Seraphim, and I've added a separate group to help manage Empowered Seals. I've also added armor potions and healing tonics to the cooldowns group.
Fire Away
As usual, if you have any questions feel free to drop them in the comments. I'll try to follow up with and answer as many as I can throughout the day on Tuesday.


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Hi all,
Several meetings ago we had some speakers present to us from the Albany branch of USCRI (The US Committee for Refugees and Immigration). One of the ways they thought our RPCV community might be able to help was with language skills. They sometimes need volunteers to help translate. I will compile a list of people who are willing to possibly help and then I will share the information with USCRI.
If you are interested please send me your full name, phone number &/or email, and languages. Also please specify your language level – beginner, intermediate or fluent.
You can send your information to: firstname.lastname@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com
Let me know if you have any questions.
Sara Poggi

subset: commoncrawl


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I've been scratching my head over this post for the last several days, because there's not much I can tell you about my trip to San Francisco. Despite the fact that I publicly announced it (oops), it was a SECRET trip. Filled with EXCITING THINGS that I CANNOT TALK ABOUT.
Just kidding.
It really, truly, honestly was a secret trip, but unless you count hanging out in hallways like this EXCITING:
Then you are not missing much.
I'm not even going to tell you about the time I got caught taking pictures in a public restroom. (I HAD A REASON.) Or tell you about the look on the woman's face who caught me. (I HAD A REASON, LADY!!)
The trip coincided with my ten year day-we-met anniversary with Jarrod. And since we still consider San Francisco our city — we met online while living in different cities, but we moved together to SF — it turned out to be a perfect celebration.
A perfect celebration of taking secret pictures of public restrooms.
Well. We also did a few non-secret things. For instance, WE ATE.
We couldn't afford the Fog City Diner when we lived there (Ramen Cup Noodles were more our budget), so it was wonderful to finally taste their famous gourmet diner food. Like this lemon meringue pie:
And then there was this . . .
My husband is seriously (seriously) addicted to the Food and Travel Networks, and Boccalone has been featured on multiple programs, so it was a must-visit. We especially loved their sign:
And to answer my family and longtime friends' question, NO. I did not partake in the tasty salted pig parts. (True story: I gave up pork when my mother read me Charlotte's Web as a little girl. I don't care how delicious he is, HOW COULD ANYONE EAT WILBUR??)
But there was still plenty for me to snack on. Like . . .
And chocolate orange macarons from Miette!Here are two more awesome non-secret things found in (non-Chinatown) window displays:
Is there anything more heavenly than a macaron?
But enough foodage. How about . . .
This dastardly machine combines two of my husband's great loves, the King and pinball. Of course he couldn't resist.
And I always love the window displays in Chinatown:
But enough foodage. How about . . .
This dastardly machine combines two of my husband's great loves, the King and pinball. Of course he couldn't resist.
And I always love the window displays in Chinatown:
But it was not all SECRETS and FOOD and WINDOW DISPLAYS. I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with fellow 2010 YA debut authors and Bay Area residents, Heidi R. Kling (author of Sea, coming out next June) and Daisy Whitney (The Mockingbirds, next fall).
Not the best quality picture, but it totally doesn't matter when we (L to R: Heidi, Steph, Daisy) look this cute!
I've said it before, but it's always worth saying again. Being a writer is a strange, lonely business. Any time I'm given the chance to spend time with other writers — writers who understand exactly what I'm going through — is the equivalent of a child's birthday party at an American Girl store.
We met up at Bittersweet, a chocolate café. Okay. Maybe a *little* food was involved. But LOOK:
We met up at Bittersweet, a chocolate café. Okay. Maybe a *little* food was involved. But LOOK:
Spicy (pepper, cinnamon, & rose) drinking chocolate.
We talked non-stop for two hours, and it felt like two minutes, and I cannot wait to do it again. Daisy and Heidi were both amazingly kind, hilarious, and FUN. I'm excited to read their books next year!
[2010 . . . so close, but so far away.]
It's time to wrap up, so I'll leave you with one final picture. There are hundreds of reasons to love this city. But this? This is one of the best:


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158 members3 Likes
570 members9 Likes
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Myra Balvin has not received any gifts yet
hi myra,how are you?have you been playing a lot?
take care!
Hi Myra- We connected last year, but didn't get a chance to play due to my leg injury. I'm all better now and would love to hit with you if you are still interested. Let me know. I usually hit at Ben Davis and am trying to start a regular meet up there on Monday or Tuesday's. Give me a holler if you want to get on the courts.
© 2020 Created by Mark / The Mayor. Powered by


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PSY has speculated his new single features Justin Bieber.
The South Korean 'Gangnam Style' hitmaker - who took home Best Video for the track at the MTV Europe Music Awards last night (11.11.12) - said his next single will feature more English lyrics and a huge guest star.
When asked by BANG Showbiz if he would work with Justin, as they share a manager, Scooter Braun, PSY said: "So, I already have done with the next track already, so it's gonna be... I cannot tell you about who its gonna be with but I'm working with someone else right now and it's going to be huge.
"I'm working on my next album and single, and it has more English so you
can get it. I feel happy and sorry because when I perform the song they
look so happy, but they don't have any idea what I'm talking about. So
we're gonna have some English in it."
Speaking about performing a skit with Heidi Klum, where she joined in
with his trademark Gangnam Style dance at the awards bash in Frankfurt, Germany, the 34-year-old singer added: "She was pretty and she danced pretty, so it was pretty."
Talking about the phenomenal success of the track, he said: "I've done this for 12 years in South Korea, I did the exact same thing I did before, and it just happened so what can I say? Its so great, so great."
The pop sensation performed his huge hit single - which took home the prestigious Best Video prize and is now officially the most popular video in history - at the event alongside an army of look-a-like dancers. The high-energy performance also featured a special cameo by David 'The Hoff' Hasselhoff.
tagged in David Hasselhoff Heidi Klum Justin Bieber PSY


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Carrot-Spice Cake with Caramel Frosting
Total TimePrep: 45 min. Bake: 25 min. + cooling
Makes12 servings
- 1 package spice cake mix (regular size)
- 1 package (3.4 ounces) instant vanilla pudding mix
- 4 large eggs
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- 1 can (8 ounces) unsweetened crushed pineapple, drained
- 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 1/4 cup raisins
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
- 6 cups confectioners' sugar
- 1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping
- 1 to 2 tablespoons 2% milk
- In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, water, sour cream and oil; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Fold in the carrots, pineapple, coconut, pecans and raisins just until blended. Pour into two greased and floured 9-in. round baking pans.
- Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.
- For frosting, in a large bowl, beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add the confectioners' sugar, ice cream topping and enough milk to achieve desired consistency. Spread frosting between layers and over the top and sides of cake. Store in the refrigerator.
Nutrition Facts1 slice: 846 calories, 40g fat (19g saturated fat), 150mg cholesterol, 701mg sodium, 118g carbohydrate (88g sugars, 2g fiber), 8g protein.
Recommended Video
Nov 16, 2015
This is the first time I've made this cake. I made it in a 13 X 9 pan didn't hurt the flavor at all. The cake was sooo good. I gave 1/2 to our neighbor and they raved about the cake, and said it was the best carrot cake they had ever tasted and said the frosting was to die for. In the frosting I did make two small changes I used Maple flavoring instead of Vanilla. I think Maple does taste better with cream cheese frosting. The second change was I added a dash of salt to the frosting to bring out the flavor more. I am adding this recipe to my Thanksgiving dinner menu.( This is a cake that can and should be cooked a day or two before serving )
May 20, 2015
Made this for a cake auction (made as per directions, changed nothing) Cake came out great! Cake sold for $100!!!! The gentleman and wife that bought it said it was the BEST they ever had. Of course I didn't get to taste it, but the frosting was delicious. The combination of caramel with the spice cake blended beautifully. I will save that frosting recipe to use on other baked goods as well. Thanks for sharing a great recipe!!!
Apr 15, 2014
This cake is really good, so good my husband (who never gives many opinions about food), has gotten seconds every night! He said last night, "I just have to make sure it is still good"! LOL. I did make this a little differently. I used Pillsbury Sugar-free yellow cake and added cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice to it. Used Sugar-free vanilla pudding, low fat sour cream, and 2 1/2 cups splenda powdered sugar (3/4 cup splenda with 2 T. cornstarch) and 3 1/2 cups sugar, along with sugar-free carmamel topping. The icing was too soft, but tastes delicious - we just scrape it off the sides and onto the cake slices. Didn't add the raisins or coconut, as we don't care for those. It was still very, very good, but a heavy cake.
Mar 20, 2013
This is requested by my sister every Easter! Wonderful cake and easy to make.
Mar 20, 2012
Best carrot cake I have ever had/made. I have made it on special occasions. It seems like too much work to make it often.
Oct 24, 2011
This is a good cake, but it is very high in calories. Very moist and yummy.
Sep 15, 2011
Best carrot cake I've ever made. Love the frosting (and the calories : ) )
Sep 10, 2011
Five stars all the way! This will be my carrot cake recipe from here on out. The frosting is THE BEST cream cheese icing I've ever tasted.
May 23, 2011
Tasted great! Looked like a mess! I need to learn how to layer cakes. Frosting appeared to be thick enough to spread, but slowly slipped down the sides of the cake. Sure am glad I was only serving my family when I made it.
May 4, 2011
This cake is delicious. The icing was the best I've tasted. I later iced an angel food cake with it. Melts in your mouth.


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|Allegro CL version 10.0
Unrevised from 9.0 to 10.0.
9.0 version
Arguments: chart-or-plot
Returns the value of the body-background-color property of a
chart-or-plot. The value
may be set at creation time by passing
:body-background-color initarg, or any time
later by calling (setf body-background-color).
The background color for the body of a
chart-or-plot inside the axes and labels. (The
usual background-color
property of the widget is used only for the part of the widget outside
this area.)
The value is either an RGB object (see make-rgb), or
nil to
use the widget's default-background-color,
t to use the parent window's
background-color. The default
value is the value of
chart-widget and
also cg-chart-widget.htm.
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Honeywell posted earnings and revenue a shade above expectations as the diversified manufacturer grew despite global economic weakness.
The Morris Township, N.J.-based company showed a $1.10 a share profit for the quarter on revenue of $9.58 billion. Wall Street had expected Honeywell to report earnings excluding items of $1.09 a share on $9.51 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters consensus estimates.
Shares rose in premarket trading.
What is Honeywell stock doing now? (Click here for the latest before-hours quotes.)
Sales fell 1 percent from the same period a year earlier in aerospace and transportation but grew in performance materials and technology.
Overall profit margins rose to 15.6 percent of sales from 15.1 percent a year earlier as Chief Executive Officer Dave Cote has been pushing to boost productivity across the company's four divisions, including consolidating businesses into fewer locations.
The company's performance materials unit, whose products include chemicals and equipment used in oil and gas production, notched the strongest sales growth in the quarter, up 8 percent. At the transportation systems unit, which makes products that include automobile turbochargers, sales fell 11 percent, reflecting weak European demand.
The company confirmed its full-year profit forecast of $4.75 to $4.95 per share and said it expected earnings to rise 6 percent to 11 percent in the first quarter.
Honeywell shares have risen about 18.5 percent over the past year, outpacing the 13.6 percent rise of the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index.
-Reuters contributed to this report.


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By the time you read this I should be just about reaching home from my lovely holiday and will be dreading the pile of washing and ironing I will have to do – don't you just hate that after a holiday?
It's challenge time at ATC Challenge Blog but as I've been away I've not got an ATC to share. The time the theme is:
Pop over to the ATC Challenge Blog to see what the rest of the design team have made.
Bye for now.


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The Grove
"I still remember the first time I came here on my official visit. Walking through The Grove, the whole atmosphere was just UNBELIEVABLE."
"I can say in definitive terms that there isn't a better place to spend a college football Saturday"
Regarded as one of the world's top sporting traditions, tailgating on football Saturdays at Ole Miss is one of those activities that every sports fan should take the opportunity to indulge in at some point in their life. Ten acres of lush green grass, watched over by majestic oak trees in the middle of the Ole Miss campus, are transformed from a tranquil picnic spot into tailgating paradise when thousands of football fans crowd into every corner of the land. Weaving through the myriad of red and blue tents, one is bound to encounter a few of the most extravagant set-ups in all of tailgating - fine china, chandeliers, big-screen satellite TVs. Of course, many tents are a bit simpler, but the unique atmosphere still encourages sundresses and high heels for the ladies and coats and ties for the men. Food and drink are abundant. "Hotty Toddy" can always be heard chanted among the trees. Champions walk through it. There is nowhere else like it. It is ... The Grove.


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Hamilton Medical has a worldwide network of direct sales offices in addition to well established distribution partners in around 100 countries. Our relationships with distribution partners are long term. Thus, we have only very limited opportunities to add new distribution partners to our network.
In most countries, Hamilton Medical provides only exclusive distributor rights. Thus, Hamilton Medical applies high standards in the selection process of distribution partners. We select well established and financially stable distribution partners that have a focus in the medical device business – particularly in intensive care. Distribution partners need to have a strong work force in sales and clinical applications. Potential distribution partners will be assessed in detail.
Click on the link below to email us your distributor application.


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- Description
Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder why you're sitting in this particular meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is)
What's on this page:
Meeting Madness afflicts almost every organization. And as we make more use of dispersed teams and outsourcing, we become increasingly dependent on meetings, because of the more limited opportunities for casual communication. If we ever find our way out of this meeting mess, we can be sure that making meetings more effective, less numerous and shorter will be features of the solution. This tip book shows you how.
In my own experience, and in the course of working with clients in my consulting and coaching practices, I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when we try to make meetings more effective. Some of what I've learned is just good practice and has appeared in the literature over the years. But much is very new, developed in response to the rapid structural and technological change that has swept through today's office.
This tip book is both like and unlike many other collections of ideas for effective meetings. Like others, it's packed with ideas and suggestions that will reduce the time you spend in meetings, and make the time you do spend in meetings much more productive and less stressful.
Unlike others, this tip book also provides suggestions for organizational leaders — ideas for adjusting the organizational culture to support meeting effectiveness, while at the same time reducing the need for meetings.
What's on this page:
Here's a sample:
- Have a Not-Agenda
- Include with the agenda a not-agenda: a list of topics that are off limits for this meeting. Indicate when these items might be expected to be on a future agenda.
- Stay away from your subordinates' meetings
- Rarely is visiting a subordinate's meeting a good idea. The risk of disrupting the meeting is high, but your visit can even disrupt relationships between the meeting participants.
- Manage the burden of meetings
- People who ordered this item also ordered 21st Century Business Travel: Tips for the e-Enabled Business Traveler and 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams.Measure the average percentage of time that people in your organization spend in meetings. Use cleverness, creativity and brainpower to try to drive it lower.
- Have too many conference rooms
- If you have too few conference rooms, people feel compelled to book them far in advance, which creates a false need for regular meetings, which in turn increases the demand for conference rooms. If you ever notice that all the conference rooms are booked, create more.
- Limit presentations to 15 minutes
- Since no meeting should go more than 90 minutes, presentations that run longer than 15 minutes significantly cut into the time available for discussion. If you want people to hear a longer presentation, schedule a presentation, not a meeting.
Click the folder icons to reveal (or hide) chapter content summaries.
Reveal all chapter content summaries.
Manage the agenda
- Poll for agenda items before you announce the agenda
- Circulate the agenda in advance
- Focus the agenda
- Have a Not-Agenda
- Clearly define the meeting's objectives
- Post the agenda during the meeting
- Make the first item "Review Agenda"
- Use a parking lot
Invite the right people
- Invite everyone you need
- Don't invite people you don't need
- Consider inviting a facilitator
- Consider inviting interpreters
- Have some people on call
- Stay away from your subordinates' meetings
- Beware ex-officios
- Manage the burden of meetings
Configure the room
- Give each person enough space
- For small meetings, use a round table
- Chair from a central location
- Chair from the sweet spot
- For large meetings, use a mic
- Consider movable furniture
- Set an appropriate temperature
Manage time
- Choose the day of the week carefully
- Choose the start time carefully
- Start on time
- Use multiple media to announce changes or cancellations
- Eliminate lunch meetings
- Avoid the hour right after lunch
- Try to get 11:00 am
- Limit the length of your meetings
- Limit presentations to 15 minutes
- Limit discussions to 30 minutes
- Stay out of the rabbit hole
- Designate someone as a Digression Detector
- Learn from digressions
- Allocate time for puzzles
- If an item runs over, suspend it or review the agenda
- Hold some time in reserve
- Schedule the next meeting in email
Respect one another
- For a regular meeting, have ground rules
- Consider special needs
- Take personal responsibility
- Halt all sidebars
- Don't characterize the positions of others
- Value some kinds of interruptions
- Value opposition
- Be creative in resolving debates
- Accept suggestions without strings
- Have too many conference rooms
- Avoid "serial-status-report"
- Circulate handouts well in advance
Have constructive conversation
- If things get heated, declare a three-exchange dialog
- If you get near the boiling point, take a brief silent break
- If you see a pile-up, call a halt
- Watch for trips to Abilene
- Ask the tough questions
- Stop sidebars
- Take milling-about breaks
- Distinguish problem solving from problem defining
- For handouts, print at least two slides per page
- Know when to halt
Manage technology
- Use technology appropriately
- Think before you PowerPoint
- Avoid playing PowerGeek
- Check your hardware at the door
- Ban texting
Tune for teleconferences
- Expect to get less done
- Recognize that teleconferences have limitations
- Set alternate times, places, and phone numbers
- Send support materials ahead
- Say your name whenever you speak
- Use the name of the person you're addressing
- Leave the food behind
- Have a networked computer handy
- Consider using a scribe at every site
- Follow the "anchor handoff" protocol
- Speak slowly
- If your site is just listening, mute the phone
- Mute your cell phone
- Mute your speakerphone
- If you use the hold button, mute the music
- Get teleconference training
For dispersed teams
- Use Zulu time in meeting announcements and reminders
- Rotate the meeting site
- Choose site names carefully
- Distribute the travel
- Rotate the location of the chair or facilitator
- Beware excessive focus on travel costs
Keep and distribute minutes
- Circulate minutes within a day
- Circulate minutes to stakeholders
- Use the attendance list to thank participants
- Use a flipchart for minutes
- Capture the meaning, not the words
- Look in the rear-view mirror
Follow through
- Reach a conclusion on each agenda item
- Track action items
- Have an owner for each action item
- Set a date for each action item
- Use a three-state status system for action items
- Treat late action items specially
- Track open issues
- Capture the parking lot
This item is also available by the single copy (USD 7.77 per copy), in 50-copy packs (USD 5.40 per copy), in 100-copy packs (USD 4.99 per copy) and in 500-copy packs (USD 3.99 per copy).
101 Tips for Effective Meetings, 10-pack is in Acrobat format, which gives you several advantages. You can print it, and read it like any book. Or in electronic form, you can use the search capability of Adobe Reader to find passages of special interest to you. If you load it onto your laptop, tablet, or other mobile device, you can read it anywhere — and it's weightless, too. 18 pages.
File size: 629 KBytes Print length: 18 pages ISBN: 978-1-938932-10-6 Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited per user, maximum 10 users Publication date: December 30, 1899 Sold by: Chaco Canyon Consulting Language: English
This item is available only in downloadable format.
To avoid shipping charges, be sure to select "downloadable" for the shipping method.
Last modified: 02 Sep 2016 04:14 Eastern Time
- Reviews


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The health of your body depends on the health of your gut. We recommend this product because, unlike many probiotic supplements on the market, Probiotic Blend was designed and clinically tested to be absorbed in your gut at maximum strength. From yeast overgrowth and halitosis, to acne and gastrointestinal issues, Probiotic Blend is essential when it comes to your overall health and sense of well-being.
Why you'll love it:
- Supports overall gastrointestinal health
- Aids in controlling yeast/candida overgrowth in the gut
- Promotes skin health
- Essential for the yeast-free eating program
- May boost the immune system and improve allergies
- Freeze-dried and clinically tested to ensure optimal absorption
- Vegetarian formula
- Dairy Free
- 4 billion strains per capsule plus FOS (pre-biotics)
- 120 capsules
How to take it: Take 1 capsule 1-2 times daily, or as recommended by your healthcare professional.
Customer Reviews
- by Tina
- Great for keeping digestive track intack Been taking for years and my tummy issues are under control. (Posted on 9/6/2017)
- by Linda
- Great for candida Before I started the Candida diet, I searched online to see what probiotics contained the recommended bacteria. Most other blends didn't even have it listed or weren't specific in the amount. Of the ones that seemed comparable, the pricing was also comparable. (Posted on 7/5/2017)
- by EVELYN
- Probiotic Blend perfect immune system boost I have tried other Probiotic products and did not feel any better or different, but when I started taking this Dr. Hotze's Probiotic Blend I noticed a huge difference in my digestive and immune system. (Posted on 10/18/2016)


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Almost a month after touting on-air their poll finding that 61% of Catholics supposedly backed President Obama's controversial birth control mandate, CBS failed to mention their most recent poll that found that 57% are now against the regulation. The network devoted an article to the new poll statistic on their website, but failed to cover it on their morning and evening newscasts Monday into Tuesday.
Instead, CBS Evening News and CBS This Morning did some damage control on behalf of the President, downplaying his "all-time low" approval number and claiming that "there's little that he [Obama] can do...in the short term to affect gas prices, and gas prices hurts his political chances," as anchor Charlie Rose put it. Their poll partners at the New York Times also buried the finding in their front-page article on the poll, and spun it by suggesting that women were "split" on the controversy.
Writer Lucy Madison explained in the Tuesday CBSNews.com article, "Poll: Most say employers should be allowed not to cover contraception," that "most Americans believe there should be an exception for employers who may have a moral or religious objection to covering birth control for their employees....When asked specifically about religiously-affiliated employers, 57 percent of Americans said they should be able to opt out of the mandate if they have religious or moral objections. Thirty-six percent said such organizations should have to cover birth control."
The poll's question in March asked, "What about for religiously-affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university? Do you think their health insurance plans should have to cover the full costs of birth control for their female employees, or should they be allowed to opt out of covering that based on religious or moral objections?" Back in February, however, the media outlets omitted the religious liberty component to the issue in their question: "What about for religiously-affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university? Do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that their health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees?"
The February 14, 2012 edition of CBS Evening News, along with CBS This Morning the following day, played up how "61% overall told us they approve of that policy [the HHS mandate]. The number was exactly the same for Catholic respondents." On the other hand, a poll released the same week by the Pew Research Center, which mentioned the First Amendment/conscience issue in its question, found that "55% of Catholics who have heard about the [mandate] support an exemption to it...[and] Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, 63% support an exemption."


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|System: X360, PS3
|Review Rating Legend
|Dev: Game Republic
|1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid
|4.0 - 4.4 = Great
|Pub: Namco Bandai Games
|2.0 - 2.4 = Poor
|4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
|Release: July 27, 2010
|2.5 - 2.9 = Average
|5.0 = The Best
|Players: 1-2
|3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
|ESRB Rating: Teen
|3.5 - 3.9 = Good
by Adam Brown
When going into a game based on a movie license, one generally knows what to expect. Despite the often-hurried developers best intentions, the end product is typically a sloppy, repetitive, and second rate (or lower) experience. Only when a licensed game is true to its source material, looks good, and plays well is anyone actually surprised. Unfortunately, there is nothing surprising about Clash of the Titans.
The game puts you into the role of Perseus, the human son of Zeus. Tensions are high between the gods and humanity, with many folks trying to break away from the gods-worshiping days of the past. Despite their devotion to the old ways, Perseus adopted family and village are destroyed by Hades. With a newfound hatred of the gods, Perseus is tasked with helping humanity survive their attempt at breaking away from the gods who seemingly care so little about them.
In many ways, Clash of the Titans is essentially a poor mans God of War. The two clearly share a similar backdrop full of gods and mythology and are both hack-and-slash action games. They also both involve playing as a man seeking vengeance for the wrongdoing of the selfish gods. However, while describing Clash of the Titans as a poor mans God of War may be somewhat accurate, I believe it to be insulting to both God of War and poor men everywhere. In fact, a far more accurate way to describe almost every inch of this game is awkward and poorly done.
When a game has as many problems as this one, it can be difficult to know where to start. I suppose the overly complicated and unsatisfying combat is as good a place as any. Perseus has the ability to perform light, heavy, and sub weapon attacks. Light and heavy attack buttons can be mashed and alternated to create combos, although you will only find a few variations. Sub weapon attacks, on the other hand, require souls to use, which limits their effectiveness. In order to gain the souls you need to perform sub weapon attacks, you will need to drain the soul power from enemies.
Youll typically find yourself in fights against multiple enemies; however, you are able to lock onto a single enemy to make things easier. When this works correctly, which isnt always the case, you are able to see an aura around the foe you are focused on. This aura will let you know what state your enemy is in and whether you can perform a soul seize or sub weapon seize on it.
When an enemy turns light or dark blue, you will be able to drain its soul energy and add it to your meter. However, if a foe is flashing orange, you can perform a sub weapon seize. This attack will thrust the player into a quick-time event (QTE) where theyll simply have to time a few button presses (which buttons you choose to press doesnt matter). If completed successfully, youll often gain your enemys weapon as well as a random gift. As a result of these attacks, most battles involve focusing on one enemy, slashing them until they glow, using a seize attack, and then moving on to the next foe. Considering each type of enemy also only has one type of QTE for these seizes, this gets tedious and boring almost instantly.
There are actually a good number of weapons to be had in this game but most are rather similar. These weapons can be upgraded using the gifts you receive from seizes and defeating enemies. Unfortunately, rooting through the menus of this game is a painful experience in itself. Just trying to find out what you are upgrading and what is needed to do so takes much longer than it should.


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Warning: The following ridiculously creative videos of guys proposing to their ladies are probably best watched with some tissues at the ready. We may or may not have already gone through half a box as we scoured the internet for new and old best wedding proposal videos.
We think these should be requisite viewing material for anyone thinking of popping the question. After all, what's one of the most-asked questions of new brides-to-be? It's: "How did he propose." Here are a handful of our favorite, inspiring proposal stories–they're high bars to match and worth every minute of watching.
A snowy mountain scene and time-lapse filming make for one short, but very sweet engagement story.
We predict big things for this new gem posted just last month.
Over 17 million views, and we can see why; it's definitely worth watching again and again.
Another lip-dub proposal…plus about 500 friends and a classic beach setting.
A proposal in the middle of a Glee-style flashmob just across from our very own Seattle Flagship Store.
Scavenger hunts are a popular way to propose…this is a good example of why.
A holiday-theme proposal complete with a Christmas tree park, a thoughtful groom-to-be and one excited pup.
One creative guy's stop-motion film proposal. Who knew crayons could be so romantic?
Our congratulations to all the happy couples. After proposals like this, we can only imagine what's in store for their wedding day!


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Bow Tie Go-To Guide
The bow tie is the elegant accessory you should include in your outfits, and is a go-to piece for all seasons.
The bow tie first entered in the beginning of the 19th century and was a modification of its predecessor, the necktie. Pierre Lorillard designed a new style of formal wear, which became known as "black tie" attire, and wore it to a formal ball. Ever since, the bow tie has been a go-to piece and has experienced many changes in form, design and function, going from a piece for formalwear to a piece that is also used for everyday style.
A bow tie is an easy way to add personality to your look, and it adds a visual dimension, which a classic necktie cannot compete with. Go for a solid colored option before moving to prints and patterns, and style not only with suits but also other jackets, such as a leather jacket or denim jacket.
As the bow tie has a smaller surface it goes well with pinstriped or checked suits but make sure your bow tie is not too large as the key is to keep clear of clown comparison. If you are going for one versatile bow tie choose one in a solid color or fabric, such as chambray, as it pairs easily with the rest of your closet.
When tying your bow tie there are endless possibilities but keep these three in mind: pointed, batwings, or hourglass. In the video, we give you our guide to the perfect go-to bow tie look.
If you need advices for the classic tie, watch our How-to guide for neckties.


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Our Luxury Property Selection is growing rapidly. Through research and advertising abroad, we brand properties to targeted marketplaces so a property will get the best possible exposure. Nowadays, clients want to find a property that corresponds to their lifestyle. Luxury is defined by the lifestyle. Location is a key element and what is a better place in the world to purchase a property than on the Costa del Sol, a very cosmopolitan area, where the sun shines almost every day!
The Costa del Sol offers a selection of 60+ golf courses, luxury harbors, fine dining and clubbing, modern hospitals, international schools, museums, exclusive boutiques and much more. Please see our property selection below and make an appointment to get a taste of what life in Spain could be like.
Found 195 Luxury properties for sale on the Costa del Sol.


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Hal Foster, in his chapter "The Crux of Minimalism" in The Return of the Real, positions Minimalism as both the crowning apogee of Modernism and also the break from it. According to Foster, Minimalism completes Modernism only to exceed it. He writes:
"We arrive, then, at this equation: minimalism breaks with late modernism through a partial reprise of the historical avant-garde, specifically its disruption of the formal categories of institutional art. To understand minimalism – that is, to understand its significance for advanced art since its time – both parts of this equation must be grasped at once." (Foster, Return of the Real, p54)
Foster recognizes some of the complexities and contradictions in Minimalism (particularly the extent to which Minimalism claims both phenomenological and epistemological traits). He also warns of anachronistic interpretations. Nonetheless, he draws on a series of binary oppositions to show how Minimamalism is a break from the Modernist ideals championed by Clement Greenberg.
I found myself analyzing Foster's text in terms of these binary oppositions. I wrote down all the pairings I could find. Looking at the list, I thought others might find it useful:
|Greenbergian Modernism
|"Expansive" and "vanguard" (Greenberg)
|"Reductive" and "retardaire" (Greenberg)
|Participated in cultural regressions of Reagan-Bush era
|Opened up a new field of art
|Apparent freedoms
|Apparent restrictions
|Transcendental space of modernism
|Immanence of Dada readymade or constructivist relief
|Anthropomorphic images and gestures
|Presence of objects
|Siteless realm, standing apart on a pedestal or as pure art
|Repositioned among objects and redefined in terms of place
|Safe, sovereign space of formal art
|The here and now
|Topographical mapping of the properties of a medium
|Perceptual consequences of a particular intervention
|Essential qualities of art
|"Extraneous effects" (Greenberg)
|An ideological model of meaning and of consciousness
|Called "reductive" and "idealist" but complicates the purity of conception with the contingency of perception
|Formal essence and categorical being
|Perceptual conditions and conventional limits of art
|Private meaning and subject
|Public meaning and subject
|Mental space of idealism conception
|Physical interface with actual world
|Strictly spatial, entirely present, grasped in a single glance, a transcendental moment of grace
|Concern with time and reception, and the temporality of perception.
|Literal readings
|Objects set in relation to one another
|Nonhierarchical ordering of objects to "take relationships out of the work and make them a function of space, light and the viewer's field of vision" (Morris)
|Structural linguistics
|Phenomenology (but with a structural underpinning)
|I express
|I perceive
|Categorical imperatives, historicist tendencies
|"linear history has unraveled somewhat" (Judd)
|Objective painting
|Not painting, but a creation of objects
|Quality – judged by reference to the canon of Old Masters and great Moderns
|Interest - provoked by testing aesthetic categories and transgressing set forms
|Normative criticism and aesthetic refinement
|Epistemelogical disruption, aesthetic play
|Artist as existential creator and formal critic, with access to transcendental sublime
|Death or the author, birth of the viewer
|Aims to defeat or suspend objecthood
|Aims to discover objecthood as such
|Discover the essence
|Transgress the limits (there is no way you can frame it)
|Formal autonomy
|You just have to experience it
|Sublime "instantaneousness" "which at every moment is wholly manifest", individual "grace" (Fried)
|"theatrical", "as it happens it merely is" , "the negation of art", only literalism (Fried)
|An act of faith and devotion that compess conviction (Fried)
|Avant-gardist atheism (Fried)
|Autonomy, belief, conviction, a secret substitute for religion (Fried)
|Saps, disrupts, corrupts autonomy, belief, conviction (Fried)
|Self critical objectivity
|Specific objects
|Modernist autonomy based in formalism and disciplines
|Literalism, gestalt, perception, situation
|Purify art of life
|Sublate art into life
|Posits aesthetic norms and normative examination
|Posits functional analysis: investigation of the social and institutional
|Secure a transcendental conviction in art
|Undertake immanent testing of discursive rules and institutional regulations
|Seek the essential
|Reveal the conditional
|Compel conviction
|Cast doubt


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When I posted about how I made my fabric markings and queried whether I was using the best or most efficient methods of transferring pattern markings, I was completely unprepared for the wealth of knowledge and expertise that came my way. Y'all are machines of efficiency!
To summarise, I explained my slow-coach method of marking everything with tailors tacks, separating the fabric, snipping the threads and then slooooowly going over the tacks with chalk cos I was SCARED of losing said threads… YAWN. My life force was literally ebbing away with every rethread…
The general reaction in the comments was, to paraphrase, "*!%$ that *!$£& Joanne, get with the programme and put a pin in it". Well, not just that. You guys also shared some fantastic tips on what tools work best for you, how you mark and sew darts, how you notch (or don't notch). I learned more in a single post than I think I would in a dressmaking course and I hope some of you also learned some great new time-saving techniques.
I've done a bit of a round up of all the comments here, feel free to add even more!
Choosing your weapon
Having dissed my tracing wheel and carbon paper as fully unsatisfactory, I found a few of you do actually use this method, and it works for you. Shivani uses hers to mark up muslins; RedSilvia uses hers on everything except sheer fabric; Clare recommends using one with a cutting mat so the colour takes better and TJ says you're better off with a bumpy (rather than a spoked) wheel to stop any bunching. TJ also gave a top tip on choosing carbon paper: wax-based for soft or coloured fabric and carbon-based for firmer or lighter fabrics.
Tailor's chalk was one of the more popular marking tools, but it came in a myriad of forms. Standard chalk 'triangles' are deemed too inaccurate for some marking (although VeraVenus keeps hers sharp with a craft knife); chalk wheels are by and large approved although some have found it 'drags' delicate materials, The winner by far is the chalk pencil – easy to sharpen and maintain accuracy. Shivani and Mikhaela recommended getting a refillable one that comes with lots of colours for different fabrics. Here's a link to it in case you fancy treating yourself. It's just under £8. And for anyone who's interested in trying something completely different, Linda recommends drying slivers of soap on radiators and shaving to a sharp edges for a washable marker!
Many of you are fairly agnostic when it comes to tools – with some naughty beggars using anything that comes to hand! Over to Elisalex! "Don't tell anyone, but I usually just fold back the pattern paper and grab whatever I have to hand – a chalk pencil, pins, my son's crayons, God-forbid sometimes even a Sharpie…" Sorry Elisalex – you've been outed! You may join my sewing slattern club if you wish.
But hooray! There are still some tailors tacks aficionados out there. Sorbetsurprise, Chris and Alison all use this method, although sparingly. Methinks I can probably rest up on using them for absolutely everything.
The wonder of pins
So why have I been using tacks all this time when pins do just as good a job, albeit a more temporary one. Sandy shared a great video showing how you can mark and fold darts with just a few pins. Lauren, Chris, Clare, Sandy, Symondezyn and Sorbetsurprise (and that tool-floozy Elisalex) all push pins through the pattern pieces and fabric, then separate the fabric to mark where the pin went through. Like durrr, why didn't I think of that?
Picking your battles
So how do you guys decide what to transfer onto your fabric? Well… that depends on what's important to you when it comes to fitting. Shivani does mark the waistline, hip and bust points on her muslins, Lauren only marks what is strictly necessary to get the job done. I guess it's whatever works for you.
Dart attack!
I gleaned some very useful tips on sewing darts too. Sandy shared a fantastic time-saving tip: snip the dart legs in the seam allowance and mark the dart point, then simply fold the dart at the point until the legs match up. When you come to sew, do a few stitches leaving a long tail, then pull that tail towards the snips – giving you a handy guide for your dart line. Another tip from Karen was to shorten the stitch length as you reach the pointy bit of the dart to give a neater finish (and I imagine a stronger stitch too). Who knew!
Thank you
Thank you all so much for sharing your tips and tricks. It's been unbelievably helpful. The most reassuring thing I discovered from all the comments was that there's no actual right way to do it. Well, some people might insist there's a right way but we're not listening to them, are we? So it's OK to take short cuts if they're tried and trusted methods. It's OK to just push back that pattern paper and draw a line instead of labouring over loops of thread. We are not going to sewing hell! Hooray!


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Discover Local Diving Courses
Welcome to the World of Scuba Diving !
We are an independent professional Scuba Diving Club called Heroexplore Scuba Divers & Adventurers Club !
Currently based in Glasgow, Scotland, we are determined to bring you the best quality service that you can have in terms of Scuba Diving courses.
If you want to really learn to Scuba Dive, want to learn the skills so well that you don't have to think about them anymore, your life is important to you, you want safety and enjoyment in the same time, professional service throughout with professional equipment being used throughout your training, you found the right place !
Course name: Open Water Scuba Diving
Course length: 1 days
Price: £ 105.99
What's included: professional equipment
Extra fees that apply: pool entrance and pool line rental fee, registration and certification fee, payment for manual, video, etc. (depending what student wants to buy extra)
Min. age requirement: 12 years old
If you based around Glasgow, you're welcome to come up here for the period of the course and alternatively we can also offer accommodation for a reasonable fee.
For bigger groups, such as between 5 to 10 people, we can travel to your place and deliver the course there. (Extra fees apply).


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April 13, 2010
IPC to Provide Low-latency Exchange Interconnection Solutions as First GeoReachSM Participant for Switch and Dataâs Toronto's Financial EcoCenter
TAMPA, FL - April 13, 2010 - Switch and Data (NASDAQ: SDXC), a leading provider of network-neutral data center and Internet exchange services, announced today that IPC, a industry leader in voice and data communications for financial services has expanded its participation and now provides low latency GeoReachSM interconnection solutions in Switch and Data's Toronto and New York Financial EcoCentersSM. IPC has extended its highly respected Electronic Connectivity Services (ECS), Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) and private line Trader Voice products to Switch and Data's newest Financial EcoCenter located at 151 Front Street in Toronto, Canada.
IPC's ECS provides secure, dedicated, and real-time electronic connectivity, which market participants can leverage to support their increasing electronic trading and execution requirements. In addition to enhanced connectivity to global trading venues, Canadian firms can also take advantage of IPC's EVS platform, which enables uninterrupted delivery of Trader Voice services to a single- or multiple- trading floors and facilitates interoperability with existing services at trading counterparties.
IPC's resilient, mission critical, voice and trade data communications network is the backbone of many of the industry's leading financial firms. IPC's financial extranet, comprised of 4,000 global trading firms, vendors, and venues, links 200 cities in 60 countries across six continents. "We are excited to be part of Switch and Data's Financial EcoCenter expansion in the Canadian marketplace. We recognize the strategic importance 151 Front plays in Canada's financial community," said Lou Marchese, Vice President, Network Services Americas, IPC. "By leveraging the ECS and EVS platforms, our clients are able to rely on high-speed, dedicated connectivity to exchange venues, alternate trading facilities, and counterparty firms in Canada and gain access to global markets."
Switch and Data's GeoReach program is a select group of providers, such as IPC, who have engineered their networks to meet the demands of the high-frequency trading community.
GeoReach participants have engineered optimum paths from Switch and Data's Financial EcoCenters to each of the regional liquidity providers to satisfy the requirements of the most latency-sensitive infrastructures. Firms can focus on their core operations and add each new alternative trading system (ATS) or exchange using a cost-effective, minimal footprint, while still maintaining ultra low-latency communication across the financial markets.
"IPC's expansion within Toronto's Financial EcoCenter provides both Canadian and U.S. customers alike with instant access to the world's trading markets. Bridging gaps between regional markets and providing an efficient central location to cover the dispersed liquidity within a market are the core values of our GeoReach partners and Financial EcoCenters," said John Panzica, Vice President of Switch and Data's Financial Services Practice. "Both IPC and Switch and Data deliver the highest levels of customer service and satisfaction, together we provide a competing solution for the Canadian financial services market."
GeoReach participants are a critical element of Switch and Data's Financial EcoCenters, which provide mission-critical infrastructure to meet the security, bandwidth and low-latency requirements of the electronic trading community. Switch and Data's Financial EcoCenters aggregate an ecosystem of the pre- and post-trade service providers, buy-side and sell-side communities into the geographic centers of the major markets of New York and Toronto. The Toronto Financial EcoCenter's extensive connectivity combined with residing only 13.9 miles from the main market's location and less than a mile from the ATS' infrastructure make it unmatched in the industry.
About IPC
IPC is a leading provider of indispensable financial trading communications solutions to the world's top financial services firms and global enterprises. With 35 years of expertise and innovation, IPC provides its customers with global systems and solutions, as well as a suite of products and enhanced services that includes advanced Voice-over-IP technology and integrated network and 24x7x365 management services in more than 60 countries. Based in Jersey City, N.J., IPC has approximately 900 employees throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions. For more information, visit www.ipc.com.
About Switch and Data
Switch and Data is a premier provider of network-neutral data centers that house, power and interconnect the Internet. Leading content companies, enterprises and communications service providers rely on Switch and Data to connect to customers and exchange Internet traffic. Switch and Data has built a reputation for world-class service, delivered across the broadest colocation footprint and richest network of interconnections in North America. Switch and Data operates 34 sites in the U.S. and Canada, provides one of the highest customer satisfaction scores for technical and engineering support in the industry, and is home to PAIX® — the world's first commercial Internet exchange.
Important information about Switch and Data is routinely posted to the investor relations section of the company's website www.switchanddata.com. For copies of all Switch and Data press releases and SEC filings, please visit the website. To automatically receive Switch and Data financial news by email, please visit the website and subscribe to Email Alerts. Investors are encouraged to check Switch and Data's website frequently to access the most up-to-date information.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix services; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenue from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see Equinix's recent quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.
Equinix and IBX are registered trademarks of Equinix, Inc. International Business Exchange is a trademark of Equinix, Inc.


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A Maryland man died from a transplanted, rabies-infected kidney that came from a donor who wasn't known to have the disease, a rare death that has prompted authorities to treat three other transplant patients, federal health officials said Friday.
The man who died had received the kidney more than a year ago. The recipients of the donor's other kidney, heart and liver are getting anti-rabies shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a news release Friday. Those patients live in Florida, Georgia and Illinois.
The donor died in Florida in 2011 after moving there from North Carolina.
The CDC said it's working with public health officials and medical facilities in all five states to identify people who were in close contact with the donor or the four organ recipients. Those people might also need treatment, the agency said.
The Maryland patient's death more than a week ago prompted an investigation by state health officials that led to the announcement Tuesday of the state's first human death from rabies since 1976. Such deaths are rare, with typically just one to three cases diagnosed per year in the U.S., the CDC said.
The investigation revealed that the Maryland recipient had no reported animal exposures, the usual source of rabies transmission to humans. Investigators then confirmed that both the Maryland recipient and the Florida donor had died from the same type of raccoon rabies virus, the CDC said.
This type of type of rabies virus can infect not only raccoons, but also other wild and domestic animals. In the United States, only one other person is reported to have died from a raccoon-type rabies virus, the CDC said.
The organ transplants occurred more than a year before the Maryland recipient became ill and died, a period much longer than the typical rabies incubation period of one to three months. There have been other cases of such long incubation periods, however, the CDC said.
The donor died at a Florida medical facility. At the time of the donor's death, rabies wasn't suspected as the cause and testing for rabies was not performed, the CDC said. Rabies was only recently confirmed as the cause of death after the current investigation began in Maryland, the agency said.


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A decision by the New Bern Historic Preservation Commission and New Bern Board of Adjustment to grant demolition of property and construction of a townhouse development at 313 E. Front St. is being appealed in Craven County Superior Court.
A decision by the New Bern Historic Preservation Commission and New Bern Board of Adjustment to grant demolition of property and construction of a townhouse development at 313 E. Front St. is being appealed in Craven County Superior Court.
Six people are petitioning the court to conduct a judicial review of decisions made by the two city boards to allow demolition on the site and construction of the townhouses.
The six petitioners are Amanda Johnson, Judy Harkin, Lorelei Schaffhausen, Nancy Hollows, Micoletta Ingianni and Marorie Preis. Robin Currin, a land use attorney in Raleigh, is representing them.
The appeal stems from proceedings by the New Bern Historic Preservation Commission on Nov. 28, 2012, Dec. 12, 2012 and Jan. 9, 2013 while considering a request for a Certificate of Appropriateness allowing demolition and new construction of the townhouse development.
This year a small office on the property was demolished to make way for four townhouses on an 11,000 square foot lot.
The New Bern Historic Preservation Commission approved the Certificate of Appropriateness Jan. 9.; and it was issued Jan. 11, allowing demolition of the old law office and redevelopment of four attached single family townhouses.
The petitioners are contending they filed a timely appeal of the decision of the New Bern Historic Preservation Commission to the Board of Adjustment. The Board of Adjustment held a hearing on June 3 and affirmed the HPC decision to grant the COA.
On Tuesday, the petitions� attorney filed a writ of certiorari challenging the city, the owners of the proposed townhouses (313 East Front Street LLC) and Sarah Afflerbach, architect of the townhouse project and chairman of the Board of Adjustment.
A writ of certiorari is an order a higher court issues to review the decision and proceedings in a lower court, in this case the New Bern Board of Adjustment.
Afflerbach removed herself from the Board of Adjustment when the townhouse project was being discussed and voted on.
The 313 East Front Street LLC members are John and Susie Ward, Clark Wright Jr., Scott Davis and Robert Edwards.
Davis is also the city attorney. In the application for the certificate of appropriateness, it was stated Davis did not represent the LLC or the city in the townhouse project. Davis, who is also attorney for the Board of Adjustment, had to excuse himself from the board during the townhouse decisions.
According to the writ, Afflerbach presented the Certificate of Appropriateness to the Historic Preservation Commission on Nov. 12, 2012.
Plans were attached to the COA but �failed to include many required application elements and components per the Land Use Ordinance, the city of New Bern Historic District guidelines and Handbook� and the Rules of Procedure for the New Bern HPC,� the writ says.
Some of those required elements and components, including driveway and roof materials and dimensions for doors, windows and the rooftop gazebo, were not submitted to the HPC, the writ contends.
Other elements and components not included in the COA application were later presented to the HPC at subsequent hearings, the writ says.
Petitioners are challenging the city for not following procedures to notify the public of the meetings about the townhouse, not giving adequate notice about the proposed project to nearby property owners, and not following procedures or following rules of the Land Use Ordinance.
The New Bern�s city manager, director of Development Services and the petitioners� attorney could not be reached for comment.
According to the writ of certiorari, Johnson, a petitioner who owns property located at 205 Broad St. that is adjacent to the proposed townhouses, said the townhouses would diminish the value of her property and result in a loss of enjoyment. She said the townhouses would impact her property �with increased traffic, loss of privacy, increased noise, interference with the light and air, adverse visual impacts and adverse impact on aesthetics.� Her property is in the historic district.
The other petitioners basically cited the same.
Harkin, who lives at 519 Johnson St. in the historic district, four blocks from the proposed townhouses, said in her petition, �The approval and issuance of the COA is inconsistent with the purpose of the historic district and causes a deterioration of the integrity of the district as a whole.� It would also cause a loss of enjoyment and value to her property, the petition says.
Schaffhausen, who lives at 511 Metcalf St., five blocks from the proposed townhouses, cited the same reasons as Harkin.
Hollows, who lives at 4438 Rivershore Drive and owns property at 519 Metcalf St., 622 and 624-628 Hancock St. and 413 Queen St.; Ingianni of 210 New St., a block from the proposed townhouses, with property at 515 Queen St. and 800 Howard St.; and Preis of 1203 National Ave. who owns property at 1511 N. Pasteur St., all petitioned on the same grounds.
According to the clerk of court, no date has been set for the appeals hearing in Superior Court.
Eddie Fitzgerald can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at firstname.lastname@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @staffwriter3.


text:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Kroger Co, the biggest U.S. supermarket operator, faces a lawsuit claiming it deceived consumers by marketing a store brand as humanely raised chicken products when the animals were raised under standard commercial farming.
The complaint, filed late Tuesday in Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, is seeking class-action status against Kroger for allegedly misleading California consumers with claims about the grocer's "Simple Truth" premium-priced store brand of chicken.
The "Simple Truth" chicken products are packaged with labeling that stated the animals were raised "in a humane environment" and "cage free," according to the lawsuit.
However, standard industry practice for broiler chickens is to house them inside large buildings, not cages, according to industry experts. The "Simple Truth" chicken products are produced by Perdue Farms, which has followed industry practices such as electric stunning birds prior to slaughter, according to the lawsuit.
Kroger spokesman Keith Dailey said Wednesday that the company had not seen a copy of the complaint and had no comment on the case.
The case highlights the growing tension between food retailers and U.S. consumers, who have become more vocal over how food is produced and marketed to the public.
"Looking to profit from growing consumer awareness of, and concern with, the treatment of farm animals raised for meat production, Kroger engaged in a deceptive and misleading marketing scheme to promote its 'Simple Truth' store brand chicken as having been sourced from chickens raised 'cage free in a humane environment'," according to the complaint.
"In fact, Simple Truth chickens are treated no differently than other mass-produced chickens on the market."
Consumer demand over food production practices has led to numerous product changes in recent months by major food companies. Subway plans to eliminate azodicarbonamide from its dough and Kraft Foods has said it will remove the preservative sorbic acid from some individually wrapped cheese slices.
Chick-fil-A announced Tuesday that, within five years, it would stop selling poultry products from chicken raised with antibiotics.
The case is Anna Ortega v. The Kroger Co., Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, No. BC536034.
Reporting By P.J. Huffstutter; Editing by Cynthia Osterman


text: Cartoonist Lynda Barry appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Lynda Barry is a writer and cartoonist who lives in rural Wisconsin. She's authored 19 books and received numerous awards and honors for her work, including two William Eisner awards, the American Library Association's Alex award, the Washington State governor's award, the Wisconsin Library Association's R.R. Donnelly award and the Museum of Wisconsin Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Newsweek, Time, Salon, Mother Jones, Poetry Magazine and Tin House. She is currently assistant professor in interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Discovery Fellow at the UW Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Her new graphic novel is "The Freddie Stories."


text:
New MD-1 will be based on Tuscan convertible
TVR's 'rebirth' could happen in the spring of 2012, according to the comments of the company's owner, Nikolai Smolenski, in an interview for Swiss car mag
Revue Automobile
The new car will be called MD-1 and, as we revealed back in April, the new TVR will indeed receive a 6.2-litre V8 Corvette motor with 638bhp. The MD-1 is based on the Tuscan convertible, but is a little lower and a little wider. It will run on 19-in wheels and there have been various other aesthetic tweaks and technical changes, though the fabric hood and windscreen are carried over unchanged.
But despite its technical relationship to the Tuscan, the MD-1 marks a clear departure from TVR's past, a point that the use of the 'Vette engine neatly illustrates. "We have stopped making our own engines," says Smolenski. "And I would like to draw a line under the Wheeler era once and for all!"
The TVR MD-1 had been scheduled for a launch at the Goodwood Moving Motor Show in July, but a falling-out between Smolenski and the company overseeing car's development put a stop to that. The car's development will now be finished in the UK by Brooklands-based AC Heritage, and should be completed by then end of the year. The car may not be produced in the UK, however.
"Production will be outsourced," Smolenski tells Revue Automobile. "We have received offers from Jimmy Prize in South Africa and plenty of others from England. [...] I would naturally prefer to work with firms such as Caterham or Lotus, but it's unlikely that the former would be able to do it, and the latter wouldn't represent good value for money. But it's equally possible that I wouldn't go back to the UK at all, and could set myself up somewhere in Germany."
Smolenski is sanguine about Revue Automobile's suggestion that a German-built TVR would disillusion a large part of its fan base: "Without doubt British fans will [be disillusioned]. Over there, everything is a bit odd. Within the European community, nobody asks for your passport at border crossings [...] it isn't very important whether you're based in Lancashire or Saxony. What's important is to remain faithful to your brand values: I'm a fan of the classic two-seater. I feel it's important that there is still a mechanical feel and the driving sensations that go with it. I respect the image of TVR."
But the MD-1 isn't the only new TVR in the works... a three-seat MD-2 is apparently on the drawing board, and Smolenski has plans for something "totally different and more imposing" called MD-3. As for the MD-1, it will arrive on sale in spring 2012, and roll out at a rate of 250 cars per year.
So, the new TVR is nearly here? "I've got nothing left to do but build it," says Smolenski. That's kind of the important part, Nikolai...


text:
Come Work With Us
Continental is successful because we challenge our employees to be innovative and creative. We provide our employees with the necessary tools to be successful, and we reward them for their hard work. If you want to work in an environment that encourages teamwork and putting your ideas into action, consider joining Continental Resources.
Who We Are
Our employees are directly involved in making Continental even more of a leader among U.S. independent exploration and production companies. Our talented professionals bring to our teams energy, insights and enthusiasm for discovering and harvesting America's energy resources and fueling our economy's growth.
Available Positions
Employee Benefits
Continental is a company full of talented, professional and upbeat people. We value innovative thinking, a strong work ethic and a commitment to safety, and we compensate our team with competitive salaries and benefits packages.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Continental Resources Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status or any other basis protected by local, state or federal law.


text: Monday, July 18, 2011 WCPT Announces Art and Health Competition Finalists The World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT) recently announced the finalists of its Art and Health competition, launched in October last year. Outstanding pieces of artwork were sought representing the role of physical therapy within the congress theme of Movement for Health, including: human movement in health and disease people with functional limitations in action physical therapy practice across the lifespan An overall winner of the competition was chosen in addition to finalists and runners-up from each of the 4 categories (photography, painting, drawing, and sculpture). Details of the finalists and photographs of the artwork are available at this link.


text:
The twofish encryption algorithm: a 128-bit block cipher
J. Wiley, Apr 5, 1999 - Computers - 186 pages
The first and only guide to one of today's most important new cryptography algorithms The Twofish Encryption Algorithm A symmetric block cipher that accepts keys of any length, up to 256 bits, Twofish is among the new encryption algorithms being considered by the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) as a replacement for the DES algorithm. Highly secure and flexible, Twofish works extremely well with large microprocessors, 8-bit smart card microprocessors, and dedicated hardware. Now from the team who developed Twofish, this book provides you with your first detailed look at:
* All aspects of Twofish's design and anatomy
* Twofish performance and testing results
* Step-by-step instructions on how to use it in your systems
* Complete source code, in C, for implementing Twofish
On the companion Web site you'll find:
* A direct link to Counterpane Systems for updates on Twofish
* A link to the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) for ongoing information about the competing technologies being considered for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for the next millennium
For updates on Twofish and the AES process, visit these sites:
* www.wiley.com/compbooks/schneier
* www.counterpane.com
* www.nist.gov/aes
Wiley Computer Publishing Timely.Practical.Reliable Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/ Visit the companion Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/schneier
From inside the book
14 pages matching weak keys in this book
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Results 1-3 of 14
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Common terms and phrases
16 rounds 32-bit words active S-boxes addition Advances in Cryptology analysis batch bits of key block cipher Blowfish byte sequences chosen plaintexts ciphertext clock cycles compute Counterpane Systems CPUs cryptographic define difference sequence differential attack differential characteristic Differential Cryptanalysis differential patterns differential probabilities DPmax DWORD encryption and decryption endif F function family key Fast Software Encryption Feistel network fixed S-boxes four S-boxes guess Hamming weight hardware hash function implementations input difference International Workshop Proceedings key bytes key length key material key schedule key setup key sizes key-dependent S-boxes linear cryptanalysis LPmax MDS matrix MDS matrix multiply number of rounds output difference p#efine pair of keys Pentium performance permutations possible PPro/II precomputed properties qo and q random related-key attack right pair round function round subkeys smart card speed Springer-Verlag structure Table Twofish Twofish variant weak keys whitening XOR difference XORed zero
References to this book
Codes: The Guide to Secrecy From Ancient to Modern Times
Richard A. Mollin
Limited preview - 2005
Crittografia pratica
Niels Ferguson,Bruce Schneier
Limited preview - 2005


text:
Posted on April 23, 2012
The Scholl Center is currently accepting proposals for next year's seminar series. We encourage graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars interested in presenting their work during the 2012-13 academic year to view the Call for Papers on the individual seminar pages:
- Borderlands and Latino Studies
- Early American History
- Labor History
- Urban History Dissertation Group
- Women and Gender
Seminar proposals are due April 25. Any questions about submitting a proposal or attending a seminar can be directed to firstname.lastname@example.com.
We hope to see you at the seminars!
By Carmen Jaramillo


text:
The findings are reported in the December 22/29, 2004, Journal of the American Medical Association* and are based on data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multi-site survey of women going through the menopause transition. This study is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"Throughout a woman's reproductive life, there are not only age-related changes in estrogen levels, but also differences in how her body responds to given levels of estrogen. Researchers have been trying to understand how and why these changes take place," says Sherry Sherman, Ph.D., project director of the SWAN study, National Institute on Aging (NIA). "Hormone patterns found in this study could mean that, with age, a part of a woman's brain which regulates reproductive hormone levels may become less sensitive to estrogen. Other study findings suggest that the decreases in sensitivity can lead to significantly increased hot flashes and night sweats."
The analysis was led by Gerson Weiss, M.D., New Jersey Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), who with his colleagues from the SWAN study reported the findings. UMDNJ is one of seven SWAN sites supported by the NIA, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the Office of Research on Women's Health, all parts of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the Department of Health and Human Services.
SWAN follows more than 3,300 women, ages 42-52 at the beginning of the study in 1995, as they experience the changes associated with approaching menopause. The data for this report came from the Daily Hormone Study, a substudy that involves the daily collection of urine samples and completion of a questionnaire about symptoms, for a period of one menstrual cycle or a maximum of 50 days (if no menstruation occurs).
Through this sampling, the study characterized the fluctuations in hormones such as estrogen, which is produced by the ovary, and fluctuations in other hormones such as luteinizing hormone (LH), which is produced by the pituitary, a gland at the base of the brain. These reproductive hormones are needed for normal menstrual cycles and to prepare the body for pregnancy.
In this study, the hormone levels in some of these middle-aged women reflected a likely insensitivity to estrogen in the brain. The data showed three different patterns of hormone fluctuations in women who did not ovulate: the first group of women had a surge of LH--an "appropriate" response to increases in estrogen. In a second group, the same increases in estrogen were not associated with a surge in LH. In the third group, estrogen levels early in the cycle were similar to those of groups 1 and 2, but, unlike those two groups, did not show further increases. The LH levels in this group did not show a surge and were higher for most of the cycle than in the other groups. The hormonal patterns in groups 2 and 3 suggest different kinds of reduced sensitivity to estrogen (or abnormal estrogen "feedback") in the brain.
Interestingly, the women in the third group had significantly more hot flashes and night sweats than women in the other two groups. These findings suggest that the hormonal pattern associated with increases in symptoms reflects alterations in the sensitivity to estrogen in the brain. Additional follow-up of the women as they experience their final menstrual period and become postmenopausal is needed to further clarify the hormonal changes underlying the menopause transition as well as those causing hot flashes.
The findings in these women are the first to describe hormone patterns reflecting changes in responses to estrogen and are consistent with previous studies in other mammals that have described similar central nervous system insensitivity to estrogen with aging. A better understanding of the role of changing responses to reproductive hormones including estrogen in causing menopause-related symptoms is needed to develop new approaches for managing symptoms occurring at this time.
Because of the need to identify treatment options for women experiencing symptoms such as hot flashes during the menopause transition, the NIA and NIH's Office of Medical Applications of Research are sponsoring a State-of-the Science Conference on Management of Menopause-Related Symptoms, March 21-23, 2005, in Bethesda, MD. This meeting will bring together experts in the field who will present information on the biology of the menopause transition, common symptoms during this time, and possible treatments to an independent panel. This panel will prepare a state-of-the-science statement to provide guidance to women and their doctors, as well as to suggest future research directions.
Further information is available at www.consensus.nih.gov.
The NIA, www.nia.nih.gov, conducts and supports research on aging and age-related diseases. For more information on menopause, please visit the NIH's Menopausal Hormone Therapy page at http://www.
*Weiss, G, Skurnick, JH, Goldsmith, LT, Santoro, NF, and Park, SJ, Menopause and Hypothalamic-Pituitary Sensitivity to Estrogen. JAMA. 2004; 292: 2991-2996.