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This article is more than 1 year old
Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM's wasted R&D billions
Put the lab coats away
Open...and Shut Over the past few decades, governments have decreased their investments in original research, with corporations taking on a greater role. There are plenty of problems with scientific research funded by private, shareholder-driven companies.
Perhaps the worst, however, is that corporate R&D, at least in the technology market, doesn't appear to work.
Some of the biggest funders of corporate R&D, including Nokia (R&D equals 14.4 per cent of sales), Microsoft (13.9 per cent) and Research in Motion (6.8 per cent), have virtually nothing to show for it. Nothing that is, except declining market share, compared to their more parsimonious peer: Apple (2.7 per cent). No wonder The Wall Street Journal declares, "[T]here's little apparent connection between R&D expenditures and successful product launches."
To put this into even sharper contrast, Microsoft spent more in R&D in 2010 than Apple spent in the last decade. Whose growth trajectory would you rather have?
Google, for its part, spends in the same neighborhood as Microsoft as a percentage of sales (12.8 per cent), but arguably its success stems not from its R&D, but rather from its early stroke of genius in advertising. Other products that yield many users, if not a comparative mountain of revenue, came through acquisition.
Nor is Google alone in this. Microsoft continues to mint money from Office, but even Office's roots extend to acquisition with Forethought.
Perhaps Microsoft and its underperforming-but-R&D-spending peers would do better to save their billions in R&D and instead invest them in M&A?
No, M&A isn't a panacea for poor performance or product development. But when it works, it helps big companies overcome their institutional inertia and bring "new" products to market. For example, high-profile venture capitalist Bill Gurley points to Android as a "freight train" that is both unstoppable and a key to Google's advertising revenue growth in mobile. But Google didn't develop Android. Google bought it.
M&A may not be the best R&D, but looking at the track record of so many tech giants' R&D spending...it can't really be much worse.
Maybe it's time to pack up the white lab coats of the corporate scientists and instead fund the corporate development executives with an eye for innovative startups. Hunch's Chris Dixon insists that "big companies...aren't nearly as successful as startups at creating new products," and urges more VC money be poured into them. Google's Ted T'so counters that startups don't actually innovate technology, but rather how to sell/distribute technology.
Perhaps. But the past decade seems to suggest that Dixon may be right or, at least, that the greater innovation returns lie with startups, rather than corporate R&D.
It's not that R&D nets the giants nothing at all. Microsoft, after all, came up with Kinect somewhere in the middle of its hefty R&D spend. But it's not clear that fat R&D budgets pay for themselves, and wouldn't be better spent snapping up startups.
Nokia has nearly 19,000 R&D employees, as Businessweek points out. That equates to nearly 5,000 four-person startups, at least one of which could probably have come up with a better idea than dumping R&D money down the Symbian rat hole and then capitulating to a Microsoft Windows Phone 7 strategy. Probably a lot more than than one.
Matt Asay is senior vice president of business development at Strobe, a startup that offers an open source framework for building mobile apps. He was formerly chief operating officer of Ubuntu commercial operation Canonical. With more than a decade spent in open source, Asay served as Alfreso's general manager for the Americas and vice president of business development, and he helped put Novell on its open-source track. Asay is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). His column, Open...and Shut, appears twice a week on The Register.

subset: commoncrawl


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Poison centers benefit patients, reduce medical costs, study finds
Patients who received help from a poison center had shorter hospital stays and lower hospital charges among those who are the most expensive to treat, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
Poison centers provide 24-hour assistance year round to the public and to medical professionals. While studies show that poison centers reduce system-wide costs, their impact on patient outcomes at the hospital level has not been clear, the study's authors report.
The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of inpatients treated in Illinois hospitals in 2010. They linked data from the Illinois Poison Center to medical record data from the Illinois Hospital Association and controlled for patient- and facility-level variables.
Nearly 10,000 hospitalized patients treated for poison exposure were included in the study, and half received poison center assistance during the course of their treatment.
"We found that if the poison center was involved in patients' care there was a cumulative decrease of $2,078 in hospital charges per 10 patients," said Lee Friedman, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at UIC and lead author of the study, which was published in the March issue of Clinical Toxicology.
Hospital emergency rooms that placed calls to the Illinois Poison Center saved $2.1 million for the 10,272 patients they admitted for care in 2010, the researchers estimate. Had all 166,949 patients who were admitted to Illinois hospitals due to poisoning received assistance from a poison center, a potential savings of $34.6 million may have been realized.
The study also found the length of stay among poison center assisted patients was .058 days shorter, after adjusting for multiple variables.
Poison centers across the nation are not securely funded and often must depend on a combination of local discretionary support and donations, despite numerous studies showing that they provide system-wide savings by preventing poisonings, reducing unnecessary hospital visits and, as shown in this study, reducing cost of hospitalizations. Many poison centers have been closed or forced to reduce services due to budget cutbacks. It is estimated that only half of the U.S. population has access to a certified regional poison center, and Illinois' poison center is slated to close in June if funding is not secured.
"This study shows that hospitals, insurance companies, and government benefit financially from poison centers," said Friedman, "and an equitable system of cost sharing should be developed to ensure that poison centers can continue to provide services to the community."
Coauthors include Alison Krajewski, Ember Vannoy and Amy Allegretti of UIC, and Mike Wahl of the Illinois Poison Center and Northshore University Health System.


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Through sharing individual experiences, this work honestly and openly portrays a community that is often overlooked, fetishized, or misrepresented. It raises a dialogue about the fluidity of gender and the ways in which our current societal structure does not allow for variations outside of the mainstream. In an effort to increase understanding, these images portray issues unique to the transgender community while also highlighting the shared experience of being human.
Title: Transcendence
Artist: Jess T. Dugan
Contributors: Dawoud Bey, essay; Anthony Scibilia, interview with Jess T. Dugan
Publisher: Griffin Museum
Date of publication: 2012
Dimensions: 8″x10″
Number of pages: 23
*Not in stock currently, but can be ordered. Expect a small delay in shipping due to print time.


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Wireless Mic Providers Evolve Tech for ENG
LOS ANGELES—As broadcasters experiment with new methods of video backhaul to the station from their ENG crews—including bonded cellular and wireless public networks—the means by which audio is captured on remotes remains, so far, largely unchanged. Meanwhile, FCC rulings over the last several years, and planned for the near future, are altering the usable RF spectrum.
Wireless microphone technology for ENG is still typically based on an analog platform and UHF frequencies. "We view UHF television spectrum as being the best suited for ENG applications," commented Karl Kussmaul, senior product manager for Sony Electronics. "We wouldn't promote the use of 2.4 GHz systems, like our new DWZ, for that purpose."
UHF offers advantages for broadcasting, where there is zero tolerance for unreliable operation, he continued, including its abilities to pass through structures, distance capabilities, and reliability.
That said, there have been some recent advances. "Sony is unique in that we're using digital modulation for transmission," said Kussmaul. "In our latest ENG product offerings we offer both analog and digital."
Sennheiser's ew 100 ENG G3 system Sony's professional entry-level product, the analog UWP system, has a street price of about $500, he noted. "In digital we have our DWX series ENG wireless," which covers an RF bandwidth of 72 MHz or a dozen TV channels.
As a manufacturer of more than just audio products, Sony is also uniquely able to integrate its DWX system into its XDCAM cameras. "Our slot-in receiver can be installed inside the camera in such a way that there is no exterior cabling and allows for an intelligent user interface," Kussmaul said. "The video shooter, while looking through the viewfinder, can manipulate the control settings of his wireless system."
Shure offers three products suitable for ENG, the UR5 portable receiver, the UR3 plug-on transmitter, and the UR1H, a 250mW transmitter that offers long distance coverage. Broadcasters need frequency options, and these analog UHF products support 2,400 selectable frequencies across a 60 MHz bandwidth.
"It is one of the few products we make that is available in the 944-952 MHz band," said Chris Lyons, technical & educational communications for the Niles, Ill.-based company. Although narrow, that band is set aside exclusively for radio station studio-to-transmitter links.
"Any broadcast engineer in a particular town either knows, or could find out, who is using which frequencies for STLs," Lyons continued. "Those are usually pretty high powered, 10 or 20 Watt, and normally very directional. So the chance of interfering on the ground with a low power wireless mic is pretty remote."
Azden Corp.'s top of the line broadcast mic system in the U.S. is its 1201 Series, according to Lewis Gerr, western regional sales manager for the Franklin Square, NY-based company.
Azden's analog UHF system is popular for teleproduction and ENG. "I would say 90 percent of systems out there are used by newsgathering organizations and other field teleproduction. They want something high quality but they don't want to spend a fortune, and they want something reliable that's beefy, too," he said.
A major flagship TV station in Los Angeles is the largest customer of Azden's 1201, Gerr added. "They looked at it and said, 'It works for us, why should we spend three times the amount of money to get the same results?'"
Sennheiser's ew 100 ENG G3 system, which includes bodypack transmitter, handheld transmitter, plug-on transmitter and camera receiver components, operates across 1,680 frequencies and a 42 MHz bandwidth. The ew 100 ENG G3 system has been shipping since mid-2009.
In addition to banks of presets, the system includes a provision for the user to freely program in 25 kHz steps. In the U.S., where wireless systems may operate from 470-698 MHz, or TV channels 14 through 51, the system is offered in three frequency ranges: A (516-558 MHz), G (566-608 MHz), and B (626-668 MHz).
Kussmaul believes there is a trend for broadcasters to focus on the low end of the UHF spectrum, from channel 14 through 20. "That spectrum is desirable because it offers them protection from consumer devices that will be utilizing the UHF TV spectrum," he said. "The consumer devices that will be rolling out will be operating from Channel 21 up to and including Channel 51, treating that entire spectrum as white space."
The 900 MHz unlicensed band and 2.4 GHz band are all well and good, but products operating in those ranges typically support limited RF systems. "The 900 MHz product that we sell, for instance, lets you use five systems; the 2.4 GHz system, the GLX-D, is limited to five," said Lyons.
"Our ULX-D systems can do up to 17 in one TV channel in normal mode, and up to 47 channels in the high density mode," he added. Being relatively new systems, it remains to be seen if they will be widely adopted for broadcast, Lyons said.
In addition to spectrum in the 900 MHz band, Kussmaul observed that there are other bands available for the operation of wireless audio equipment: "There's now a new system in place whereby the first free unoccupied channels below UHF Channel 37 and the first unoccupied channel above 37 are, in major metropolitan areas, exclusively reserved for wireless microphone use."
FCC policy has established databases administered by Spectrum Bridge and Telcordia that enable wireless mic users to register and protect their equipment from interference from unlicensed TV band devices. "You can type in your address and see what are the two channels that are exclusively reserved for wireless microphone use in your area, as well as other unoccupied TV channels that are available to use," said Kussmaul.
Consumer TVBDs, slated to begin rolling out this year (there are a couple of one-off scientific devices already in operation), could potentially start crowding the available spectrum. With that in mind, said Kussmaul, "Moving forward, a desirable aspect of a wireless system is being able to select from a larger number of frequencies," offering the user more choice and flexibility.
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Steve Harvey began writing for Pro Sound News and Surround Professional in 2000 and is currently senior content producer for Mix and a contributor to TV Tech. He has worked in the pro audio industry—as a touring musician, in live production, installed sound, and equipment sales and marketing—since November 1980.


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Show All Answers
We accept cash, check, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. You can register in person, phone, fax or online.
179 acres
No. There are charcoal grills at Manhattan Park and they can be used by the public. People renting the Manhattan Park pavilion can request a gas grill permit and if approved may be allowed to use gas grills.


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Smelly Pets and Seven Ways to Deal with Them
By Patricia Khuly, DVM
Got a pet who's conditioned you to believe that his loving presence is worth all his foul odors? If your pet smells nasty then you probably know exactly what I'm talking about (though some of you may be in denial). Everyone else thinks he stinks and stays away. But you? You love him, aroma and all.
Nonetheless, there is something you can do about her chronic malodor, especially if she falls into one of the following categories of stinkiness. Read up on the concern and, for best results, internalize their listed solutions.
1. The skin sufferers
If the surface of your pet's skin's smell is reminiscent of rotting fruit, something freshly dug up from deep underground, or just plain dogginess, you'll know what I mean.
Solution: Whether this happens year-round or is limited to certain seasons, pets with certain skin conditions such as allergic skin disease and keratinization disorders (characterized by greasy and/or flaky skin), treatment of the underlying disease is generally effective in reducing or eliminating the odors associated with skin infections that accompany it.
Medicated shampoos and antibiotic and/or antifungal treatments are often necessary, at least at first and/or periodically, to tamp down the offending bacteria and/or yeast.
2. The gaseous ones
You know who you are.
Solution: Determining whether your pet has a condition such as intestinal parasitism, IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) or a pancreatic malfunction (as in EPI or "exocrine pancreatic insufficiency") is crucial. But most pets who suffer excessive flatulence are merely exhibiting a mild intolerance to one or more ingredients in their diets.
Treatment of the primary dysfunction depends on the disease process, of course, but for those who suffer simple digestive intolerances may be helped either with probiotic supplements or through a process of trial and error with respect to diet choices. Carefully switching diets with varying ingredients until a minimum of flatulence is achieved is often fruitful in this regard.
3. The wildlife devotees
These are the pets that stop, drop and roll at the sights and smells of a rotting carcass or raccoon feces (the foulest smelling scat on the planet). Maybe she's a chronic, stray cat poop consumer (like my Sophie), or a skunk tracking wonder-dog.
Solution: Restriction of a pet's yard-based or hiking activities is usually not advisable. They need an outlet for their natural drives––and the exercise, of course. Picking up scat in your yard is helpful, as is special fencing to reduce encroachment by certain wildlife species (if you must).
Alternatively and/or additionally, treating the resulting foul odors can be achieved through an excellent, freshly brewed mix of hydrogen peroxide (1 quart), baking soda (1/3 cup) and a dash of a grease-cutting dish soap like Dawn (my favorite).
4. The bad-breath breakfast club
Oral breath, usually secondary to periodontal disease, can lay low a whole crowd of dinner party guests who might otherwise truly enjoy your pet––and their meal.
Solution: Regular brushing (at least twice a week, but daily for some pets) and routine anesthetic dentistry (as often as every few months for severe sufferers) is the mainstay of bad breath resolution.
But some pets just have bad breath that arises chronically from their mouths and/or stomach gases––not necessarily from their teeth. These latter pets may be helped by adjusting the ingredients in their food and possibly by adding parsley to their diet (available in capsules). "Fresh breath" water supplements are not helpful, in my opinion, but some pet owners beg to differ.
5. The anal gland leakers
The two anal glands, found on either side of the anus in dogs and cats occasionally have the propensity to fill up and spill out when over-full. The characteristic stench is perhaps the nastiest odor pets are capable of emitting.
Solution: Getting this under control is usually achieved by expressing the anal glands manually on a regular basis. Veterinarians and experienced groomers are best suited to this task, though many of my owners are willing to learn and manage quite well on their own.
A hydrogen peroxide wipe to the backside is very helpful once the odor becomes apparent.
6. The otic stink-bombs
Ear infections are almost always skin infections. But their specific challenges mean very specific odors distinct from that of the rest of the skin. A fruity-smelling yeast infection that may or may not progress to a stinking bacterial infection is the usual finding.
Solution: Allergic skin disease is the primary cause of external ear infections in both cats and dogs. Infections can be dealt with by treating the underlying condition. Antibiotics and antifungals are used to tackle the infection––and the stink––but it will return (I promise), sometimes even after treating the allergy. After all, not every allergy is 100% treatable.
Cleaning the ears regularly with a mild disinfectant solution is always advisable.
7. The wet dog crowd
Does your dog spend his life in the pool? Here in Miami that's not uncommon––especially with Labs. Problem is, that also means wet dog smell that chronically lingers.
Solution: Keep your outdoor dog indoors, fence off the pool or invest in a proper canine blow-drier. Additionally, I recommend that you "Furminate" your dog daily to relieve her of some of the undercoat that traps moisture.
Have any more examples and their solution? I'm all ears.
This was originally published on Fully Vetted, a petMD blog.
Image: lucianvenutian / via Flickr


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Metric Finished Hex Nuts
Metric Hex Nuts (DIN934) are available in classes 6, 8 and 10 with a zinc finish; and in 18-8 stainless steel with a plain or black oxide finish. We carry sizes M2 through M20. Descriptions and details are available on each part page and spec sheets are linked if you require additional information.


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I'm sure you've anticipated our subject tonight, as we come to the last message in the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelation and we look at part three in our series on man's last day in God's court. This very powerful, frightening text sets forth for us the final judgment of all the ungodly of all the ages.
This is what John writes, starting in verse 11: "And I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."
It's a passage that ultimately consigns all of the ungodly of all the ages to eternal hell. Hell is, of course, as it's taught in the Scripture, distinctively a Christian doctrine. But Christianity is not the only religion in the world that speaks about punishment after death. In fact, virtually every major religion in the world teaches some form of punishment after death for sins committed in this life.
For example, one strand of Islamic doctrine says that each individual is questioned by two angels, one named Munkar and the other Nakir, before walking across a bridge that stretches over hell. The faithful then cross safely into paradise, while unbelievers fall into a place with seven grades of punishment, including being roasted, boiled, and afflicted with pus. Other Islamic teaching says that they will be burned until their skins are destroyed, at which point they will be given new skins so the process can be repeated.
Buddhism mentions many hells to be endured on an unpleasant journey toward Nirvana, a kind of blissful nonexistence. Classical Buddhists' teaching has seven hot hells, each surrounded by torture chambers, which include fiery pits and quagmires, while other versions of hell speak of cold hells, which have less traumatic punishment for minor offenders. According to certain Chinese Buddhists, devils in human form inflict all kinds of gruesome torture, including pulling out slanderous tongues with red-hot wires and pouring molten lead down liars' throats.
In Taoism the god of walls and moats sends the wicked to one of several hells where they are punished for a fixed period of time. Hinduism has twenty-one hells tailor made to match a person's behavior on earth. Hinduism says if you fail to feed the hungry while you were living, you might be chained to a rock where birds come to eat your stomach. An adulterer might be forced to embrace a beautiful woman whose temperature is white hot, while the worst offenders face incarceration in a series of lower hells where they are scorched in hot sand, boiled in jars, or eaten by ravens. Jainism, a spinoff of Hinduism, has no fewer that eight million four hundred thousand hells, as well as a bottomless abyss where the worse sinners are kept forever.
What does all this signify? It signifies that people have an innate sense of justice. They have an innate sense of retribution, a feeling that somehow, some day, some way they will pay; that perhaps on the other side of the graves wrongs will be righted, and evil will finally be punished and crushed. Those grotesque guesses are certainly not representative of biblical truth, but they do point to the conscience and its activity in the human heart that stirs up a sense of culpability, shame, remorse, regret in view of future, and perhaps eternal accountability. And this is a stubborn instinct in man, that he may be punished for his sin.
What does Christianity say? Well, for example, Jesus Himself who is the author of Christianity, in Luke 12:5 said this: "I warn you who to fear. Fear the One, who after He has killed you, has the authority to cast you into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!" Don't fear those who kill the body, Jesus said, fear the one who can destroy body and soul in hell. That is to fear God.
God is the one who ultimately will send everyone to hell who is on the way, who is going there. The Bible tells us that hell is a place of eternal punishment where God will forever incarcerate the wicked. Hell is that realm of life where just punishment is exacted, not by any means with the warped and ignorant and weak prejudices of human justice, but with perfect execution alongside the standard of a holy God who alone is perfectly just, and the violation of whom knows no satisfaction. Unsaved sinners therefore will spend forever punished in hell, and that is what Christianity teaches.
Truth, frankly, is not popular. The doctrine of hell is more popular among Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, their warped doctrine, than the true doctrine of hell is among Christians. You say, "What do you mean by that?" Just this; here's a sample.
In 1977 a poll was published in Des Moines, Iowa, and it showed that only five percent of those interviewed believed they were going to hell, sixty-five percent thought they would go to heaven, and thirty percent were not sure or had absolutely no opinion. One year later, in 1978, a sampling in Minnesota revealed that just four percent felt they were on their way to hell. Ten years later in 1988 a Newsweek magazine survey suggested that seventy-six percent of Americans thought they had a good or excellent chance of going to heaven, while only six percent felt they were on their way to hell. In 1991 a Gallup Poll taken for U.S. News & World Report produced almost identical results: seventy-plus percent thought they were headed for heaven, and four percent for hell.
Those percentages over that rather lengthy period of time are significantly consistent and they yield to us the understanding that most people think that if hell exists, it is for somebody else and not for them. Maybe there is such a place as hell, but it's for Hitler, or Stalin, or Charles Manson, but not for just plain people, good people. That's kind of popular opinion.
Beyond the popular opinion, it is amazing to me that even theologians who call themselves evangelical, theologians who would affirm belief in the veracity of the Bible reject eternal hell. For example, it wasn't many years ago that I read a book written by a well-known evangelical writer by the name of John Wyndham. The title of the book is The Goodness of God. It is a book that tries to deal with the anger and the wrath of God and eternal punishment, and deals with it, basically, by saying it isn't going to happen.
John Wyndham spoke in August of 1991 at the Fourth Edinburgh Conference on Christian Dogmatics. This is what he said, quote: "I believe that endless torment is a hideous and unscriptural doctrine which has been a terrible burden on the mind of the church for many centuries and a terrible blot on her presentation of the gospel. I should indeed be happy if before I die I could help in sweeping it away." End quote.
Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, a very astute commentator on New Testament books, has written a book called The True Image. In that book he says this, quote: "The everlasting existence side by side of heaven and hell would seem to be incompatible with the purpose and effect of the redemption achieved by Christ's coming. The renewal of creation demands the elimination of sin and suffering and death." End quote. No hell.
Now some decide to believe in universalism – everybody's going to be saved in the end. Others decide to believe in annihilationism, as these two writers I have quoted, that ultimately all sinners will just go out of existence. Some believe in soul sleep, which is a permanent state of unconsciousness; and others would believe in a temporary period of punishment. But no one can accept Scripture as true and deny eternal punishment. The same terms that describe eternal punishment describe the eternal God. The same phrases, the same original terms, the same words that describe eternal punishment describe eternal life. So if there is not eternal punishment, then there is not eternal life and there is not an eternal God. If the ungodly are not punished forever, then the righteous do not live forever, and God does not exist forever either. But God is the eternal God, heaven is the eternal dwelling of the righteous, and therefore hell is also eternal.
For example, just to illustrate the point I made, in Matthew chapter 25 and verse 46 it says, "These will go away into eternal punishment, the righteous into eternal life." You can't have eternal life, same term, and not have eternal punishment. And one is as long as the other, and both will last as long as God lasts, and He is the Eternal One.
And the issue of hell is not to be decided by a poll, it is not to be decided by emotion, it is not even to be decided by reason; it is to be decided by revelation. No one really likes the doctrine of eternal punishment, it is a horrifying thing. All of us could wish from a human perspective it didn't exist, but it does. And we have to take the Bible at face value.
The text I just read to you sets the reality of eternal punishment in place. It tells us about the lake of fire. And this lake of fire is described back in verse 10 as a place where the occupants will be tormented day and night forever and ever. The event that we just read in verses 11 to 15 is that event, the end of which is the ungodly being cast into eternal punishment. Here is the vision that God gives John of the final divine judgment on all sinners from all human history since creation.
All sinners will be raised, they will be given new supernatural bodies suited to eternal torment in the time of the great white throne, as it is called. This is the last act of judgment, and involves the ungodly of all ages coming before the final throne of God for their final sentence. And God is rightly to be their judge, because it is against Him that they have sinned, as Psalm 51:4 says, so that God is justified, says the psalmist, when he speaks, and blameless when He judges them, because they are genuinely guilty.
Now remember the chronology. The Bible teaches that the Lord will come and take His church. Then will be a period of tribulation. Then the Lord will return, set up His thousand-year kingdom. At the end of the thousand-year kingdom, all the ungodly of all the ages are brought before the great white throne.
You say, "Well, where have they been since they died?" And the answer is, they've been in a place of torment and a place of punishment in their spirits, but not joined with a final supernatural body fitted for their punishment in the eternal hell, which is another kind of punishment from that which they are now experiencing. We use the illustration, it's like a prisoner who hasn't had his trial yet, he's still incarcerated. He's incarcerated in a jail until his trial, at which time he is sent to the penitentiary to serve out his life sentence. They are incarcerated now in a place of torment away from God. They will be brought before the tribunal of God. They will be given a new body, a resurrected body fit for their eternal incarceration in the final hell called the lake of fire.
Now as this passage unfolds, let's remind you. First of all, we saw the scene in verses 11 and 12: the great white throne, the one sitting on it, of course, God in the form of Jesus Christ to whom has been given all judgment; and then there is the dissolving of the entire universe. Heaven and earth flee away and no place is found for them. And John sees the dead, the great and the small; they're all there standing before the throne. That's the scene.
Secondly, we saw the summons. In verse 13, "The sea gave up the dead which were in it, death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them." The sea, of course, representing just that; death and Hades representing all the graves over the whole world through all of its history will yield up bodies. It doesn't literally mean that out of every grave is going to come a body right through the dirt, it just means that those locations represent human lives, and there will be a body to come to join every eternal spirit of the ungodly.
As the universe passes away then, all the ungodly come out. This is what Jesus called "the resurrection of damnation" or "condemnation" in John 5:29. This is the resurrection that the apostle Paul is referring to in Acts chapter 24 and verse 15, the resurrection he calls "the resurrection of the wicked."
Now remember, the godly of all the ages have already been raised: the church at the rapture, the Old Testament saints at the end of the tribulation, the tribulation saints at the end of the tribulation with the Old Testament saints. The kingdom saints are transformed when they die during the kingdom. So all the godly have already been glorified, they've already received their glorified bodies, and they were all a part of the first resurrection, which is a resurrection unto life and a resurrection unto righteousness. Now comes the resurrection of the rest of the dead, as they are identified back in verse 5.
Then we saw not only the summons, but the standard by which they are judged. Go back to verse 12. "Books were opened," – it says – "and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds." At the end of verse 13, "They were judged everyone of them according to their deeds." And then in verse 15, "Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire."
Judgment then is made against an absolute standard. What is the standard? Perfect holiness. And anybody who ever violates the law of God one time falls short; and Paul says in Romans, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's none righteous; no, not one." We're all cursed. "Cursed is everyone who breaks the law at any point," he says in Galatians chapter 3.
So the standard is perfection. Nobody meets the standard, so all are damned by the record of their own failures. And God has kept exacting books which contain every sin of every ungodly person ever committed; and it's with that record, that literal indictment that they will be sentenced to final hell. The only hope would be if their record of sin was overruled because their name was written in the Lamb's book of life, indicating they belonged to God through faith in Jesus Christ. And if their name is not in the book, they are cast into the lake of fire.
The tragedy is that none of the folks at this judgment have their name in the book, and so all they're left with is the record of their sins. When the name goes in the book, when we put our faith in Christ, the list of sins against us in Colossians 2, it says, is erased, or blotted out. But if one never comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, then the list of sins is intact and becomes the standard of judgment.
Thus the Lord will pass the verdict guilty. And that leads to the final point, the point that we want to look at for just a brief time tonight: the sentence, the sentence. The scene, the summons, the standard we've seen, now let's look at the sentence. And I don't want to beg the issue, but I do want to be faithful to what the Bible teaches, to plant this in your mind.
Let's look at verses 14 and 15: "And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."
Now he starts out by saying, "And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." What are death and Hades? Well, it's just the grave and the place of the ungodly dead, terms that any student of the Old Testament would be familiar with and any student of the New would be familiar with. They just represent the place of the dead which is a place of torment and incarceration in flames of remorse, guilt, sin, and pain.
And when he says they're thrown into the lake of fire, he simply means they go out of existence, they're swallowed up by the final hell. This is the eternal realm of punishment. And people who are suffering now are suffering in their spirit only because there's been no resurrection of their body, so that when the resurrection occurs and they have some kind of a supernatural body joined to that spirit, the conditions of their suffering have to alter. That's why the eternal hell has to be different than the current Hades.
It's amazing how specific Scripture is. This is the hell that is utterly separate from and outside the prior created universe in which exists the prior Hades. When the universe goes out of existence, Hades goes out of existence with it, the place of the ungodly dead goes out of existence, and a new place is prepared – something outside and beyond this created order as we know it. You remember I told you that creation as we know it, matter as we know it will cease to exist. It will turn into energy; and that divine energy again will recreate a new heaven and a new earth not like anything we've ever understood or even comprehend.
You say, "Is God preparing hell now?" Yes. Hell is prepared for the devil and his angels. We could assume that it's prepared. There is an eternal heaven already prepared outside the universe as we know it; it would have to be, because the universe is touched with sin and fallenness. And why not already a place for the devil and his angels to occupy? But hell at this point is unoccupied.
The first occupants are indicated, as you know, back in chapter 19, when it says in verse 20, "The beast" – that's the Antichrist – "and the false prophet who perform signs in his presence and so forth, these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone." Technically they become the first occupants of the eternal hell. And then a thousand years later, verse 10 of chapter 20 says, "The devil is thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also." We can assume the devil and all of his angels go together into that place.
Now, while there is no one at the current time occupying the final hell and the first occupants appear to be – and this is just the best we can ascertain it, you don't want to be overly dogmatic. But it seems as though the final hell is not occupied now until the Lord throws the beast and the false prophet alive into it and transforms their bodies somehow to suffer eternally. And until Satan and his angels go there in their spirit forms, they too will suffer.
And though hell is not currently occupied – and it wasn't occupied any time in the past, even during the life of Christ. Jesus referred to it, because it is the final place. And the New Testament uses a particular word, and that's the word gehenna (g-e-h-e-n-n-a), the clearest and most vivid of the New Testament words which refer to the eternal and final realm of punishment for the ungodly. It is a place that includes soul and body in hell.
And that is the place that ultimately they will be cast. And that's why in Matthew 10:28 Jesus said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; fear Him" – follow this – "who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." So that the eternal state is both soul and body, whereas now the temporary thing called Hades is only a place for the spirits of the ungodly dead. That's why there has to be a resurrection of damnation, a resurrection of the wicked.
So those who die now – follow this – in their sins, in the created world of time and space, will die a second death in a world where there is no time and there is no space, and then enter into eternal punishment. They have no part in the first resurrection, so they will experience a second resurrection, and with it a second death, a second death, as verse 14 says. This is the second death. They died once, and their spirit went into torment; and they will, in a sense, die again when spirit and body go into torment.
The first resurrection is the resurrection of life, the resurrection of justification, the resurrection of glory. All believers are in that one, including Christ, the church, the Old Testament saints, tribulation saints, millennial kingdom saints. All believers are in the first resurrection, and none of them experience the second death. All unbelievers are in the second resurrection, and all of them experience the second death.
And what is the second death? He says, "This is the second death," – what? – "the lake of fire, the lake of fire." And he says it again in verse 15 at the end of the verse, "the lake of fire."
Now when you talk about the final punishment, most commonly fire is referred to. More than twenty times the New Testament refers to the fires of hell, most of those times the words of Jesus Himself. And people always ask the question, "Will it be a literal fire as we understand a literal fire?" And the answer is, it's not like the fire you see on a match, or the fire you light in your house, or the fire you see when something burns, because you have a totally different environment. The created order as we know it is gone; whatever this fire represents will be something that is as real as the eternality in which it exists. It's enough to know that it's like a lake of fire, that conveys what the Lord wants people to understand.
It exists outside the created universe as we know it, outside time and space. It is a place of fearful, frightening, horrifying pain, agony, and torment, illustrated by the concept of being thrown alive into a lake of fire in which you can burn forever but never die. And our Lord used the word gehenna because it was such a good way to illustrate the suffering.
Southwest of the city of Jerusalem – and I have seen this place on numerous occasions and never look at it without being very much aware of what the Bible says about this. But southwest of the city of Jerusalem there is a valley called the Valley of Ben-Hinnom. The Valley of Ben-Hinnom was for a long time the city dump of Jerusalem. The garbage, the refuse of the city was taken to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, and it was then thrown into that valley. And there was a fire there that never went out, it was being burned all the time.
And that valley was known for fire and smoke and maggots. Dead bodies were thrown there; the corpses of criminals were thrown there; the people who were not worthy to be buried, strangers and so forth, were thrown there. And what you had in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom was a filthy stench, an unending fire, maggots eating the garbage and the filth and the refuse and the corpses. It was the most frightening and fearful place. And when Jesus looked at that indescribable, horrible place where the worm never died but fed on a constant flow of refuge, and the fire never went out, He said, "That's hell, gehenna," a very vivid term to describe the indescribable.
And the New Testament describes that place as the place that is prepared for the devil and his angels, the place that is prepared for the ungodly. And the Bible says, as you notice there in chapter 20 and verse 10, that the torment goes on day and night. That means all the time, constantly, unrelentingly, forever and ever. In other words, it never ends, and there's never any relief. It's constant forever. It's not intermittent, it's constant forever.
Back in chapter 19 and verse 20, that fire, that lake of fire burns with brimstone, the indication that it is extremely hot. And what Jesus is trying to do and what, of course, the vision the Holy Spirit gives to John here is trying to do is to let you understand what awaits the ungodly in frightening, paralyzing, terrorizing pain and suffering.
Now let me just talk briefly about the elements of hell that are outlined for us in Scripture. And I don't need to say a lot, but I just want to be fair to give you what the Bible says. I need to discharge my responsibility before the Lord in that behalf.
First of all, it describes the place called hell as a place of darkness. In Matthew 8, verse 12; Matthew 22:13; Matthew 25:30 it is called outer darkness, outer darkness. I'm sure night, after night, after night, as the sun would go down on the hill, the mountain, or the plateau that is Jerusalem – and, of course, there would be no lights in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, because no one would live there. There would be no candles, there would be no torches; there would be nothing there but the smoldering burning refuse, and the black billowing smoke. There would be nothing to light the place, because there would be no life there. That was the picture of the outer darkness of hell – darkness that is penetrating darkness you can almost feel.
In fact, in 2 Peter 2:17 and Jude 13 it is called the blackness of darkness, as if to say it's not just dark, but it's black dark. And both Peter and Jude say it is reserved for you, again indicating that it isn't occupied, it's reserved – darkness. It's not going to be a place of light. And light speaks of life, and fellowship, and communion, and socializing, and variety, and being able to see things and have different experiences. In the blackness of darkness, nothing.
Secondly, it talks about the worm. Isaiah started that when he said in Isaiah 66:24, "Their worm will not die." And Mark 9:48 picks it up in the New Testament, "The worm will never die." In other words, the refuse will burn forever; and the maggots, as it were, will eat forever.
Some feel that the gnawing worm is emblematic of the conscience. And as I told you in the series we did on the conscience and in the book that I wrote on The Vanishing Conscience, I really do believe that one of the greatest components of eternal suffering is going to be a fully informed accusing conscience that is absolutely relentless. It could well be depicted in the worm that never dies but just gnaws away.
Some feel the black darkness is the absence of anything good, and the absence of anybody else to see or be with. So you're all alone with a chewing conscience forever. In addition to darkness and the worm, the Bible as we noted talks about fire. The psalmist spoke of the wicked in Psalm 11, verse 6, coming to fire and brimstone. Isaiah said fire will devour their enemies.
In Isaiah chapter 30, let me have you look at that passage, Isaiah chapter 30. I just want to read you a verse there that I think is important. As Isaiah is talking about the judgment of God, he says in verse 30, "The Lord will cause His voice of authority to be heard," – chapter 30, verse 30 – "and the descending of His arm to be seen in fierce anger, and in the flame of a consuming fire." In other words, God is going to come in the judgment of fire.
Then down in verse 33, further describing, he says, "For Topheth has long been ready." And that again leads me to believe that hell is already in place, it's just not occupied, because the word "Topheth" is a very interesting word. You know what Topheth refers to? It refers, would you believe this, to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom. It refers to the Valley of Ben-Hinnom before it was the city dump.
You say, "What was it before it was the city dump?" I'll tell you what it was: it was the place, the place where – you won't believe this – people offered children as sacrifices, burned alive to the pagan god Molech. You say, "You mean the children of Israel did it?" Yes. The pagan nations in the land of Canaan had done it, and some of the children of Israel joined in that unbelievable worship. It was the Valley of Hinnom where the altar to Molech was. That's one of the reasons that the Jews put the city dump there, because it was such a vile and foul and desecrated place.
And so, Topheth has long been ready. Indeed, it has been prepared for the King; He has made it deep and large. Who's the King? God. A pyre of fire with plenty of wood, the breath of the Lord like a torrent of brimstone sets it afire. Once the pagans made a fire there to offer babies as living burnt offerings to the god Molech, and the day is going to come when God uses it as a place to give the resurrected ungodly to burn in the fires of punishment forever and ever. That Valley of Ben-Hinnom has some history, doesn't it? Gehenna.
From the very beginning of the New Testament you're introduced to the promise of eternal punishment. The first preacher that ever arrives in the New Testament, who is it, before the Messiah? John the Baptist. And what does John the Baptist say? He promises when the Lord comes He will burn up the ungodly with unquenchable fire, Matthew 3:12.
Jesus follows John, and in Matthew 5:22 Jesus warns of the fiery hell. And Jesus tells the parables in Matthew 13, and He talks about how the angels are going to gather the people from all across the world, and they're going to sort out the righteous from the unrighteous, and they're going to turn the unrighteous over to be burned. So is the angels in Matthew 13:40 to 42, and again in verse 50, gathering the ungodly for burning. And Jesus in Matthew 18:8 and 9 says the fire is eternal.
Darkness, gnawing, unrelenting guilt, the worm that never dies, an unquenchable fire of torment. And there's more. The lake of fire is also associated with some other things. It is associated with banishment. In Matthew 8:12, in Matthew 22:13 the term is used: "Cast out. Cast out." The idea being that they are banished. Being cast out of a society or a city, a town, or a country meant you were banished. There's also the idea of separation. When they are banished they are banished into outer darkness, which implies that this banishment separates them completely. Luke 16:24 says they will be tormented.
And then there's one other phrase that is used many times, and that is "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." And that indicates sorrow. The darkness, the worm never dying, the fire, in a place of banishment and separation and torment produces absolutely unbelievable and, I'm certain, immeasurable sorrow.
And this is repeated a number of times in the record of the gospels, this idea of the undying sorrow. In Luke 13:28, all the evildoers are cast out. The Lord says, "I don't know where you're from. Depart from Me, you evildoers. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves being cast out."
You know what that says? That somewhere, somehow before they're cast out, they're going to get a glimpse of the glory of the saints as a last vision before they're cast into hell, so that they will know exactly what they forfeited. And hence, the weeping and the wailing. You find it in Matthew 8, Matthew 22, Matthew 13, Matthew 25, Matthew 24.
What about gnashing of teeth? What is that? Well, I don't want to read anything into this, but if you just look at the expression "gnashing of teeth" in the Bible, it is associated with anger.
Back in Job chapter 16, verse 9 says, "His anger has torn me and hunted me down, he has gnashed at me with his teeth." It is an uncontrollable anger. You can see that expression, can't you? It is that grinding, gnawing anger and hatred and hostility, gnashing of teeth.
With whom are they angry? Perhaps with Satan, demons. In fact, in Acts 7:54, you remember the great sermon by Stephen. What was the reaction of the crowd after he preached? What emotion? Anger, right? What did they do? They were so angry they stoned him to death.
But notice how their anger – they rushed on him with one impulse, verse 57. But notice how their anger is described, verse 54: "When they heard this, they were cut to the quick." What does that mean? They were convicted, right? They were convicted of their apostasy, and they began gnashing their teeth at it – anger, anger over conviction. They'll be angry at anything that causes them to feel the conscience striking blows against them. Every cause there ever is in eternal hell for their remorse and their guilt and their shame will be a cause for anger. They'll be angry about everything.
And so, when you think about hell you think about banishment, separation, torment, sorrow, anger. There's one more thing. There's one more term, and it's here in verse 15 of Revelation 20, and that is the word "thrown, thrown." And it's used back in chapter 19, verse 20 to speak of the beast and the false prophet who were thrown. And it's used in chapter 20, verse 10, and talks about the devil who was thrown.
Why does that term find its way? Because that is precisely what's going to happen. Hell is God's cosmic dump. It's where you throw the garbage. You don't place it there, you don't set it there; you throw it there. You stand on some higher place and throw it there.
We even talk about that in the vernacular today. We say, "Throw out the garbage," or, "Throw out the trash." It has the idea of discarding it at a distance from where it's going to land. It speaks of its despicable quality. Hell is God's cosmic dump, and all who go there will be the burning garbage of eternity.
Now all of this is not happy to think about; but what it reminds us is that God is not always the God of immediately justice, but He is the God of ultimate justice. And Amos had it right when he said in Amos 4:12, "Prepare to meet your God. Prepare to meet your God," because you're going to meet Him. You're either going to meet Him in the glory, or you're going to meet Him at the great white throne. It's your choice.
Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10, and we'll close. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26: "For if we go on sinning," – we could put it another way – "if we go on rejecting willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins." Did you hear that? If you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you have heard the truth concerning judgment, and you reject the gospel and you reject that message, there is no other way to deal with your sins. Do you see that? There's no other sacrifice, other than the one that Christ made.
"If you go on sinning willfully" – and what that means is rejecting the gospel – "after you have heard the truth, there's nothing else that can offered to you to deal with your sins. So," – verse 27 says – "what you have to look forward to is a certain, absolutely certain, terrifying expectation of" – what? – "judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries."
Make a choice. Say no to God and no to Jesus Christ, turn your back on the sacrifice that Christ has made, there is therefore no sacrifice for your sins, and with absolute certainty, you will be looking forward to a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.
And then he says this: "Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses." Severe enough; you violate the law of Moses, you die without mercy. In other words, even in the Mosaic law there was capital punishment. When two or three witnesses stood and affirmed and you indeed had violated that law, you died without mercy, that was the law.
You think that's severe? Verse 29: "How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?" You think it was severe to break the law of Moses; wait till you see how severe it is to trample Jesus Christ, to ignore Jesus Christ, to step all over Him, to reject the blood of the covenant by which He – that should be a capital "H" – by which Jesus Christ was set apart as the only Savior.
If you want to insult the Spirit of grace who offers salvation, insult the Son of God who was set apart as the only sacrifice, insult the One who gave His blood, insult the Son of God; then you can be sure that you will receive a severer punishment than anybody who broke the law of Moses.
You say, "Well, who is going to exact that punishment?" The same God who offered grace, verse 30: "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." And again the Lord will judge His people. "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
The judgment of the great white throne is coming. But only those who choose to be there will go, because to be there you have to reject the Lord Jesus Christ.
Father, as we conclude this most serious, sobering portion of Scripture that shakes us to the very core, we just ask that Your Holy Spirit would help us, first of all, to examine our own lives. And, O God, if there's anyone hearing this message who does not know Jesus Christ, who is not genuinely forgiven, who is not genuinely redeemed, bought back out of sin and headed for heaven, may they know that. May Your Spirit make it abundantly clear to them, so that they aren't self-deceived, and end up saying, "Lord, Lord," and hearing, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."
And, Lord, if there's anyone who hears this message who is indifferent, who thinks you can just kick back and not take this seriously, Lord, may they be shaken out of such apathy and made to realize that they are dealing with their eternal destiny. And this is reality. And may they look at the future and make the only reasonable, sane judgment that heaven is the place to be and not the lake of fire. And may they come to Christ, and repent of their sin, and turn from their wickedness, and put their total trust and faith and confidence in Jesus Christ to save them. And, Lord, for those of us Christians who know this is true, and are apathetic toward the lost, forgive us, and shake us, and awaken us, and help us not to kid ourselves about how we care, unless we care enough to snatch people as brans from the burning.
Lord, we thank You too, finally, that You've rescued us, due to nothing which we have done, and nothing in us worthy. By Your mercy and grace alone You have saved us from the great white throne, from the second resurrection and the second death; and we give You praise. And if our praise is genuine and our thanks is genuine, then it must show up in the way we live. True gratitude means obedience, obedience out of sheer thankfulness and a desire to love and honor the One who so graciously saved us from hell.
Father, I just ask that You work in every heart, whatever it is that You need to do in the light of this. Save some; challenge others to a new and a fresh zeal for the lost. And fill us with gratitude, overwhelming gratitude. Because we're in Christ, we'll never know this condemnation. We thank You and praise You for that. In our Savior's name we ask these things, Amen.
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How to Add a Wet Effect to Walls With Glossy Paint
Materials Needed:
- satin latex paint
- high gloss clear coat
- HVLP paint sprayer
- painter's plastic
- roll of craft paper
- painter's tape
- ladder
- dust mask or ventilator
Test Paint Colors
To achieve the wet look effect, dark paint colors work best. Pick up several test size paint containers in different tints and shades of the same hue from the local home improvement store, then apply all colors near a window. Depending on how the colors read based on lighting, choose the best fit for your space.
Remove Furniture & Fixtures
Since the wet look effect is achieved through a sprayed application, it's important to remove all furniture and fixtures from the space to protect them from overspray. Remove furniture, flat panel TVs, drapery hardware and lighting fixtures before starting paint preparation.
Remove & Tape Off Outlet Covers
Remove switch plates and outlet covers, then wrap any permanent covers such as phone jack plates or cable plates with painter's tape. Once all outlet covers are removed or protected, use painter's plastic and painter's tape to mask off any doors that lead to other interior areas of the home.
Protect Moldings, Baseboards & Floors
There are two ways to approach the wet look effect in regard to moldings and baseboards: minimizing their presence by spraying them the same color and finish as the walls, or making them prominent by keeping them as is. When moldings are basic contractor-grade, it's best to spray them the same color and finish as the walls to minimize their presence. Spaces with custom high-end moldings are usually a better fit for taping off so that the custom work remains a key feature of the decor. Mask off any moldings or baseboards by cutting craft paper to size, fitting it over the surface, then securing in place with painter's tape. Next, protect floors and windows by masking them off with painter's plastic and painter's tape.
Apply Base Coat to Ceiling
If the intended look involves adding a wet look to the ceiling in addition to the walls, it's important to spray the ceiling first. When walls are painted before the ceiling, overspray markings can occur. Following manufacturer instructions, load an HVLP paint sprayer until the tip puts out a fine mist of paint. Keeping the tip 8" from the ceiling surface, stand on a ladder and apply a base coat to ceiling, moving back and forth in a slow, controlled manner. For best coverage, start in one corner of the ceiling and work your way from one side of the room to the other in full runs, overlapping each run slightly.
Apply Base Coat to Concentrated Wall Areas
The best way to avoid overspray markings and/or paint drips is to spray the walls in concentrated sections. If a room has portions of walls that are separated with trim and molding, start there, then work your way into larger, more expansive wall surfaces. Keeping the sprayer tip 8" from the surface of the walls, apply a base coat, moving back and forth in a slow, controlled manner.
Apply Base Coat to Full Walls
Once smaller portions are covered with a base coat, use the HVLP paint sprayer to cover larger, more expansive walls. To avoid overspray markings, start in one corner, then make your way left and right in 4- to 6-foot sections, starting low, then working upward. After several sections are complete, step back and assess the wall to make sure it's properly covered. If there are any gaps in the sprayed paint, the walls may require a second base coat before the clear coat can be applied.
Apply Clear Coat
The wet look is achieved by spraying a clear coat of gloss over the base coat. To do that, empty the base coat paint from the HVLP paint sprayer in a well-ventilated outdoor area. Once all paint is flushed out with water (follow manufacturer instructions for proper cleaning and loading), load clear coat into paint sprayer until tip puts out a fine mist. Starting with the ceiling, apply the clear coat by beginning in one corner, then making your way from one side of the room to the other, slightly overlapping each run. Next, apply clear coat to walls by starting in one corner, then making your way left and right in 4- to 6-foot sections, starting low, then working upward.
Remove Tape & Craft Paper
Once clear coat is dry to the touch, remove the painter's tape and craft paper slowly, ensuring no tears in the clear coat occur. Next, remove all painter's tape and plastic from windows and floor as well as outlet covers. Replace all fixtures and switch plates.


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Wizards beat Timberwolves in John Wall's first start
WASHINGTON -- At the midpoint of their season, and with John Wall back in the starting lineup, the Washington Wizards finally lifted themselves off the bottom of the NBA.
Wall had 14 points and five assists in his first start of the season, and Washington finally hit double digits in wins Friday night with a 114-101 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Wizards have won four straight at home and no longer have the league's worst record, their 10-31 record a half-game better than the Charlotte Bobcats' 10-32.
"You're not going to hear any good thing about your team or organization if you're not winning games, and that's all we're trying to do -- is just win," Wall said. "You don't want to end up as the last team."
Wall, who came off the bench for the first seven games after his return from a knee injury, had assists on the Wizards' first two baskets in a game in which Washington never trailed. He wowed the crowd with a nice spin move for a layup late in the first half and went 6 for 10 from the field in 21 minutes, his playing time still limited after missing 33 games with a stress injury to his left knee cap.
"I think I'm still trying to get in basketball shape," Wall said. "And it's still tough, but I think I'm getting closer and closer."
The Wizards are 5-3 since Wall's return after going 5-28 without him. He's one of several Wizards players who missed chunks of games in the first months of the season because of injuries, giving coach Randy Wittman an appreciation for a record that still doesn't look very good.
"If you had told me we'd play half of them without our top players, I might say 'Give me 10-31," the coach said.
Jordan Crawford added 19 points, and Bradley Beal had 16 points and a career-high four blocks for the Wizards, who shot a season-high 58 percent. Beal had the best sequence for anyone not named Wall: The rookie chased down Luke Ridnour to block a fast-break layup, crashed into the front row, got up and hit a jumper at the other end to make the score 70-51 in the third.
The Timberwolves, meanwhile, are starting to look like the early-season Wizards, with too many injuries, ugly losses and even a star player recovering from a knee injury. Minnesota has lost six straight on the road and eight of nine overall.
Ricky Rubio had four points on 1-for-8 shooting, six assists, five rebounds and five turnovers, another trying day in a difficult week that included an apology to acting coach Terry Porter for getting upset over playing time in the team's loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday.
With head coach Rick Adelman away tending to his sick wife, Porter and Rubio met Thursday to clear the air.
"I don't think it ever was really an issue," Porter said. "He was frustrated like any player would be who wants to be playing the fourth quarter."
Rubio had been on a strict limit of 28 minutes per game since returning last month from reconstructive left knee surgery, but he played 31 minutes Friday night because the game went for a while without a whistle in the fourth quarter.
"I'm still missing the power of my legs," Rubio said. "But I feel good, but it's hard to find my rhythm during the season."
Derrick Williams had 18 points and 11 rebounds, and Andrei Kirilenko scored 17 points for the Timberwolves, who are missing Kevin Love, Brandon Roy, Malcolm Lee, Chase Budinger, Nikola Pekovic and Alexey Shved.
The Wizards know the feeling.
"We need to build up like a good team," Washington forward Nene said. "And to be good we need to lose, we need to learn."
"So we did it," he added with a laugh.
Game notes
Washington's 60 first-half points tied a season-high. ... The Wizards used their 15th starting lineup of the season. ... Wolves C Greg Stiemsma committed two fouls in 9 seconds in the first quarter, and then picked up another quick one in the second quarter. He played only 18 minutes -- but he finished with a career-high six assists.
Regular Season Series
WSH leads 1-0
Game Information
- Referees:
- Bill Spooner
- David Guthrie
- Scott Bolnick
2023-24 Northwest Standings
Team | W | L | PCT | GB | STRK |
Minnesota | 41 | 17 | .707 | - | W2 |
Oklahoma City | 41 | 17 | .707 | - | W6 |
Denver | 39 | 19 | .672 | 2 | W3 |
Utah | 27 | 32 | .458 | 14.5 | L1 |
Portland | 15 | 42 | .263 | 25.5 | L9 |
2023-24 Southeast Standings
Team | W | L | PCT | GB | STRK |
Miami | 33 | 25 | .569 | - | W5 |
Orlando | 33 | 26 | .559 | 0.5 | W1 |
Atlanta | 26 | 32 | .448 | 7 | W2 |
Charlotte | 15 | 43 | .259 | 18 | L1 |
Washington | 9 | 49 | .155 | 24 | L12 |


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'You can absolutely count me as a fully-paid-up supporter of the "World Fantasy Award for Deanna" campaign. There is no one who deserves a WF award — or any other award going — more than Deanna.' — China Miéville
'If novelists are a bit like small children running busily around a room trying to stick forks into electrical sockets (just ask any editor), copyeditors would be the people chasing after us with endless vigilance, forever smacking the silverware out of our hands just before we electrocute ourselves. It's inconceivable to me that there could be anyone who does this better than Deanna. There are hundreds of novels on the shelves right now that are finer things because of her attention, and two of them are mine.' — Scott Lynch
'Deanna came so highly recommended as a copy editor, that it was hard to believe she could live up to her star billing, but we quickly found out that she deserved all the praise accorded her. Of course she has the technical skill, to which she adds an ability to sense what the author wants ... what he doesn't want .... when he needs some help ... when to leave things alone. She is personable, professional, and sooooo easy to work with. We both hope she will get the recognition that (or should we say 'which'? Deanna would know!) she deserves.' — Stephen Lawhead and Alice Lawhead
This year's World Fantasy Convention takes place in Saratoga Springs, New York, on the 1st to 4th of November. I'm hoping to persuade those of you who've bought memberships this year, or to either of the last two World Fantasy Conventions, to use your nominations and, later, votes in the World Fantasy Awards to honour one particular person. And thus, an entire group of people.
Deanna Hoak is a freelance copyeditor specialising in fantasy and science fiction. She's widely acknowledged as the leading light in her field. She is highly valued by those authors with whom she's worked. SF and fantasy novels Deanna has copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards.
Authors whose books she has copyedited include... deep breath here... Toni Anzetti (Ann Tonsor Zeddies), Fiona Avery, Steven Barnes, Stephen Baxter, Michael Blumlein, Keith Brooke, James Clemens, Storm Constantine, Josh Conviser, John Darnton, Tobias Druitt, Jeanne DuPrau, David and Leigh Eddings, David Louis Edelman, Charles Coleman Finlay, Gaelen Foley, Alan Dean Foster, Judith French, Janeane Garofalo, Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear, Barbara Hambly, Tara K. Harper, Nalo Hopkinson, Greg Keyes, Jay Lake, Scott Lynch, Scott Mackay, Wil McCarthy, Ian McDonald, China Miéville, Michael Moorcock, Kim Newman, Cherie Priest, Chris Roberson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, R. A. Salvatore, Charles Saunders, Martin Sketchley, Dean Wesley Smith, Jenna Solitaire, Wen Spencer, Ben Stiller, Matt Stover, N. Lee Wood and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. (Phew.) And that's not by any means a complete list.
The copyediting process is fascinating, and little understood, even by those of us who most benefit from it. Here's Deanna's take on what she does, from which I think one gets a flavour of why her work in particular is deserving of recognition:
I have no personal or professional association with Deanna. (Although she is, in a rather abashed way, aware of my efforts on her behalf.) But from attending conventions over the last few years, I've come to realise that she's someone who's taken her craft to a higher level.
It was during one particular convention bar conversation that a group of us were shocked to realise that while we — as editors, writers and artists — were enjoying the possibility of being nominated for all sorts of different awards... there was almost nothing the brand leader in Deanna's line of work could aspire to. There is no Hugo Award for copyediting. However, as we worked out a few days later, there is an award which, though it's never been used for this purpose, Deanna can win.
The only honour in the SF and fantasy world for which Deanna is eligible is the World Fantasy Awards category: Special Award — Professional.
I think it's important to recognise Deanna with it, and I also think it's important to thus create a precedent. Because the skills of such 'back room' workers in the publishing industry, the likes of whom are recognised with their own awards in other media, are sorely neglected in our field.
So please, I ask this of you, use your ballots accordingly in the World Fantasy Awards, and —
Nominate Deanna Hoak for Special Award – Professional.
Oh, and get your ballot in by June 30th!
Thanks very much for reading.
Paul Cornell
More quotes in support of Deanna:
'Deanna Hoak's work in the field, as a copy editor, as a writer, as a reader, and as a critic, is unparalleled. She did a fantastic job on the copy edit on my Tor novel, Mainspring, catching an unbelievable number of details I had completely glossed over. At the same time, she reached out to me at one point to ask me a personal question about the deaths of some secondary characters. Their fate had bothered her as a reader, and so, once she was done with the assignment from my editors at Tor, she wanted to ask me in that capacity what I'd intended. That kind of engagement across so many levels is rare. Deanna accomplishes it with grace and wit and a keen eye for the work we all do.' — Jay Lake
'In the months leading up to the publication of my first novel, I was preparing for the Proverbial Bad Copy Editing Experience. You know, the experience where your transcendent prose is mangled beyond repair, your metaphors are scrambled, and your characters' names are shortened to two syllables to fit in with some pinhead's idea of marketability. But surprisingly, I got exactly the opposite when Deanna Hoak copy edited my book. During the copy editing process, she became both my biggest advocate and my biggest critic. Deanna found the flaws that the Muse had left in. She went beyond mere fact- and grammar-checking and provided me with several concrete suggestions to improve the quality of the book. And she remained in constant contact with me over instant messaging throughout the entire thing. Thanks to Deanna, my book received the thorough, professional, intelligent treatment I had been hoping for.' — David Louis Edelman
'Deanna Hoak is one of the unsung heroes of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and it's high time that people started to sing about her. A more careful, thorough, and attentive copy editor you won't find, and many is the book that's benefited from her Midas touch.' — Chris Roberson
'Deanna Hoak is a masterful copy editor. She worked with me on my first book and her contribution was invaluable. She was able to address both the smallest details in my prose and the larger themes of my novel with equal facility and attention. Her efforts made Echelon a far better book. Beyond that, she has an energy that's contagious. I value Deanna both for the quality of her work and as a great friend.' — Josh Conviser
'Deanna is a phenomenon. I was astounded by how much she puts into each job from the first time we worked together. Well above and beyond what was expected. She's one of the people whose work is invisible but indispensable, and it's high time she gets recognized for the treasure she is.' — Lou Anders, Editorial Director, Pyr Books
'I've worked with Deanna Hoak over the course of five books (my "Banned and the Banished" series). Being a new author at the time, I had heard horror stories of copy editors, so when it came time for final edits, I didn't know what to expect. But I was happy to discover that not only was Deanna extremely brilliant, but she had a keen eye for details that had escaped everyone else. But best of all, she recognized that she was dealing with a new author, and like a mother with a child, she took me by the hand and guided me through the process with barely a scratch. And even now with seventeen books under my belt, I still have fond memories of "my first"...copy editor, that is.' — James Clemens (James Rollins), author of Shadowfall and Hinterland.
'Deanna turned the ms. around in the exact amount of time she said she would, and edits in such a way that the author's voice remains, which is so hard to come by. After the final edit she even took the time to discuss the ms. in detail on the telephone. She is a great writer herself, which lends itself to her editing skills. Love her.' — Vinnie Penn.
'My only reservation in writing to praise Deanna's abilities is that the more people hear how great she is, the harder it will be for her to spare the time to copyedit books for me. Deanna is an SF&F editor's dream.' — Liz Gorinsky, Associate Editor, Tor Books.
'Deanna is not only the best copyeditor I've ever worked with (and I've worked with dozens), but actually the only copyeditor I trust implicitly, to leave my text better than she found it. Usually the copy editing process is an exercise in frustration - for every valid correction I'll typically write "stet" 10-15 times, for stuff the copyeditor either doesn't get, doesn't "hear", or wants to impose his/her own style on. Deanna has an eerie knack for absorbing an author's style and marking the places that don't match it. The actual errors, in other words. Oddly enough, she has also been known to correct my science when I punch the numbers incorrectly, an editorial feat she shares with Analog's Stan Schmidt, and basically no one else.' — Wil McCarthy.
'It's a truism of the 9 to 5 world that good work goes unnoted while the boss and the customers only single out bad work. More or less the same happens in speculative fiction publishing. We even have a sort of horror subgenre based on the reported misdeeds of editors, agents, copyeditors, and writers themselves. Competent people with a high degree of professionalism aren't praised nearly enough. One of these is Deanna Hoak, the copyeditor for my novel coming out from Pyr in July 2007. She did an impressive job. Deanna's work was astute, meticulous, and fair. She posed excellent questions when the MSS was unclear, and when it was perfectly clear but merrily contradicted itself. So she caught scads of typos and worse. As John Gardner says in The Art of Fiction, a writer's mistake can abruptly and unpleasantly snap the reader out of the "vivid and continuous fictional dream". That's not, not, not what I want for my novel, and at a number of points where it won't happen, I'll have Deanna to thank.' — Alexis Glynn Latner.
Here's Fiona Avery on why Deanna deserves this win:
And Deanna's website can be found at:
If you're someone who's worked with Deanna, and/or would like to offer your own support for her nomination, please feel free to leave a comment. We'll also be adding more quotes to the page as they come in, and updating with any news.
Thursday 24 May 2007
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Plane crash puts Russia's airline industry in spotlight - again
| Moscow
A Russian airliner flying without passengers broke into pieces after it slid off the runway and crashed onto a highway outside Moscow upon landing on Saturday, killing four of the eight crew on board and leaving smoking chunks of fuselage on the icy road.
The crash during peak holiday travel ahead of Russia's New Year's vacation, which runs from Sunday through Jan. 9, cast a spotlight on the country's poor air safety record despite President Vladimir Putin's calls to improve controls.
Television footage showed the Tupolev Tu-204 jet with smoke billowing from the tail end and the cockpit broken clean off the front.
Some witnesses told state channel Rossiya-24 they saw a man thrown from the plane as it rammed into the barrier of the highway outside Vnukovo airport, just southwest of the capital, and another described pulling other people from the wreckage.
"The plane split into three pieces," Yelena Krylova, chief spokeswoman for the airport, said in televised comments.
Police spokesman Gennady Bogachyov said: "The plane went off the runway, broke through the barrier, and caught fire."
The pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, and a flight attendant were killed and the other four crew members aboard – all flight attendants – were in a serious condition in the hospital with head injuries, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Officials said earlier that there were 12 crew on board.
The mid-range Tu-204 was operated by Russian airline Red Wings and was traveling from the Czech Republic, Krylova said.
Wreckage from the crash was scattered across the highway and the plane's wings were torn from the fuselage, witnesses said.
"We saw how the plane skidded off the runway ... The nose, where business class is, broke off and a man fell out," a witness, who gave his name as Alexei, said. "We helped him get into a mini-bus to take him to the hospital."
Another witness described pulling four people from the wreckage when he arrived at the scene before emergency service workers. "We could not get the pilot out of the cockpit but we saw a lot of blood," he told Rossiya-24.
Russian investigators said preliminary findings pointed to pilot error as the cause of the crash.
Russia's aviation authority said it had sent state-owned Tupolev a warning ordering it to fix problems that may have caused a Tu-204 with 70 aboard to go off a Siberian runway on Dec. 21 after suffering engine and brake trouble on landing. It said similar problems had occurred before.
The billionaire owner of Red Wings, Alexander Lebedev, said the airline had already carried out the order on its Tu-204s. Red Wings' website said it operated nine of the aircraft.
Lebedev said the Tu-204 in Saturday's crash was built in 2008 and that the pilot was experienced, with 14,500 hours of flying time. He offered condolences to the victims' families and promised financial compensation and other help.
Russia and other former Soviet republics had some of the world's worst air traffic safety records last year, with a total accident rate almost three times the world average, the International Air Transport Association said.
A passenger jet crashed and burst into flames after takeoff in Siberia in April, killing 31 people, and an airliner slammed into a riverbank in September 2011, wiping out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team in a crash that killed 44 people.
The Russian-built Tu-204, which is comparable in size to a Boeing 757 or Airbus A321, is a Soviet-era design that was produced in the mid-1990s but is no longer being made. There have been no major accidents reported involving Tu-204s.


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How do I create a backup of a SQL Server 2008 in a mirrored setup without any logs?
We need to do this so that when we restore our local development databases, we would have the most up to date data, but we don't necessarily have the space for all the transaction logs. (we're all using ssd's).
Currently, because it is mirrored, I can't create simple backups, it must be full backups.


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Wedding organization
Wanaka, New Zealand
Criffel Station Package Details
Nothing beats the relaxed, romantic and memorable feeling of a country wedding. The challenge is to find an authentic setting with the sophistication and style to ensure it's a great event. These elements come together at Criffel Station Woolshed.
Situated on a 2000-hectare high country deer farm just seven kilometres from Lake Wanaka town centre, in New Zealand's Southern Alps, Criffel Station Woolshed provides an idyllic rural venue. Lovingly converted, our authentic Woolshed with its undeniable character provides a charming location for an outstanding wedding.
Our packages are designed to be bespoke to your needs to ensure that the planning is seamless and enjoyable.
The Woolshed's natural charm is the perfect backdrop for a memorable wedding. For those wanting to extend a country theme, we have an extensive range of props and stage setting items for hire. Check out our hire catalogue . We have also taken our most popular hire items and put them together into our 'favourites bundle' to give you a great starting point for the styling of your wedding.
We offer a full range of wedding planning and event managing services using local people alongside our dedicated experts. If you have a wedding planner, or your own team planning the wedding, then venue hire alone is available.
Included in all confirmed bookings is our complimentary guide to planning your wedding that provides details of our fantastic preferred vendors and handy tips on making the most of our stunning Central Otago location.
If you're considering a wedding in Central Otago, please take the time to explore what Criffel Station Woolshed has to offer to make your wedding day a warm, romantic and spectacular occasion. We would love to show you around and talk through any requirements you may have.
One Day Hire
Perfect if you have limited time and are happy to set up and pack down on the day of your wedding.
One-day hire allows access for 24 hours from 9am on the day of your event.
Two Day Hire
Ideal if you want to take the stress out of your wedding day or would like to have a post-wedding gathering.
Two-day hire allows access for 48 hours from 9am on your chosen first day of hire.
Prop Hire
From mason jars to shearers huts, festoon lights and everything in between, our extensive hire catalogue will have all that you need to complete your perfect look. Check out our pinterest page for some inspiration or browse through our catalogue. To make everything easier for you we have hand picked our most popular items, put them all together and taken 10% off the price to create our 'favorites bundle'.
Planning & Coordination
Perfect if you would like additional help – our experienced event planners are more than happy to assist you with coordination and planning of your big day.
Make the most of our expertise and get our team to help you with five hours assistance.
Set up & Styling
Not sure how to get the look you want? Need a hand to hang your decorations?
Whether it's finding the best vintage chair or hanging paper lanterns, our friendly stylists are on hand for five hours to help bring your look together.
Best of Both
If what you would like is a bit of extra help with coordination and styling, we have the perfect bundle for you.
Two and a half hours of planning assistance and three hours help on the day.


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Katrina and Soldiers' Angels
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Because many of the Soldiers from the Louisana Army National Guard will be returning home in the next few weeks, Soldiers' Angels is mobilizing some efforts to help. It'll take a bit to get ramped up so please stay tuned.
All I can say is that I can't imagine what those troops are going through right now - after a year in a combat zone to come home to this disaster - it will be tough on them.
Update: Here's the link-
Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans and South Louisiana. The homes and lives of an untold number of our friends and families have been decimated. Included in the ranks of victims are the family members of our soldier's serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Many of these soldiers will be returning home in the next few weeks to find that their families have been displaced and their homes and businesses destroyed.
Soldier's Angels has established a relief fund to help our soldiers and their families cope with and recover from this devastation. Your donation will help these families obtain essential personal items, temporary shelter and any other needs that can be met. Soldier's Angels will also work to provide information to the soldiers concerning their families whereabouts and needs. Now is the time to help protect those who have given up so much to protect us.
If you can help, please do so.
* Call us at 626 398 3131
* Email us at [email protected]
For monetary donations, please mail a check or money order made out to Soldier's Angels to:
Soldier's Angels Foundation
Operation Katrina Relief
1792 East Washington Blvd.
Pasadena, California 91104
Update 2: Be sure to also check Instapundit's list/carnival of relief charities and NZ Bear's message to blogs and charities.