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Ray's Place All the Latest Thoughts & Ideas from Ray Jul 9, 2003
Advice Column for July 9, 2003 Ray continues to answer* actual reader questions. Got an issue? Need some advice? Email ray(@)achewood.com. Serious inquiries only, please.
H E R E W E GO ! Listen to the theme to Ray's Place, by Milwaukee Youth Children's Choir, aka MC Frontalot
I try to be like you, but I look horrible in a thong. Can you recommend an exercise
regime? Dear S.B., Just like how Mr. T is the only one who can get away with his unique signature haircut, I guess I am sort of the only guy whose body lines are in unique harmony with this little black devil. I wouldn't try exercising if you don't already—it's something you either do or don't do. If you're mellow, stay mellow. Don't fake a bunch of energy.
My lady's parents hate me—partly because I am also a lady, and partly because they
are extremely rich and sophisticated, while I am more "down to earth". Do you think I
should try to get them to like me, or just figure that they never will and get on
with my life? Getting them to like me would probably involve (for starters) learning
Spanish (they are Puerto Rican), learning which of many forks one should use when at
a fancy restaurant that I could never afford to go to, and possibly becoming a
celibate nun. Dear Lady, Yeah, have you seen Six Feet Under on HBO? The Puerto Rican guy, "Rico," is also totally against gay sexuality. He hates it. It's too bad that Puerto Ricans have sort of been painted as "the future of Republicanism," but what are you gonna do. Maybe they'll take over the White House, and then it will be awesome Adobo pork sandwiches for everyone. As you probably know, I have a really soft spot in my heart for lesbians. I even have this special part of my corkboard to which I staple pictures of my lesbian readers. Send in your picture(s), you crazy holding-out chica(s)! Anyhow, as far as the parents go, don't live your life around them. They may flex, they probably won't. Why let someone who hates you determine how you feel about yourself? That sounds like a couple of male objects on the chin, and I know you aren't into that! Hm. Looking back over this advice, I guess it is not very helpful. Let's see if I can do better. Ahem! Lady, this girl's parents are ALWAYS gonna dislike whoever their daughter brings home because they aren't down with her being gay. So just do your thing! It's your lives, not theirs. You and your sexy chica should send me some photos.
I've been married for just a few months, and life in the bedroom is
swell. I was just wondering if you had any experience with Tantric Sex,
because we've got this book on the shelf we haven't pulled down yet, but
I thought I'd consult the Baron of Bone before I gave it a spin. Have
[you] tried this amazing technique or is it for the birds? Dear J., All I know about Tantric Sex is that someone told me that Sting does it. Allegedly he can do it for like nine hours or something? Anyhow, whatever. It all sounds like homework to me. If you need a book to tell you how to get a massive freak on, then you need to get a massive freak on with the idea that you are a nerd. This is my problem. My girl can't handle her liquor but she likes to drink. I'm always cutting her off because I don't want to be on Puke Patrol anymore, plus it's not good for the "bedroom activities," if you know what I mean. The thing is, she gets like one cosmopolitan in her and she's done. I'm on beer number 2 and not even clipping a buzz yet and she's slurring her speech. If I don't slam my beers or take shots, I'm on "drunk watch" before I got a buzz. I tried suggesting other drinks with less alcohol but she doesn't like beer (sigh, women) or the various Bacardi Silver type drinks, or "college drinks" like a screwdriver or rum&coke. She's classy enough to want a martini or other respectable mixed drink, and she can handle the taste of straight liquor just fine, but her tolerance isn't up for it.
This isn't a problem at home where I can just slam a few mixed drinks to
"catch up," or I can make her a weak drink. But out at bars you can't ask a
bartender to make a weak drink without looking like a chump. What I need is
a classy drink that a girl looks good holding and that she can drink a few
of in a night. I figure most dudes would be happy if their girlfriend was a
cheap date, but I really love this girl and want her to enjoy herself and
don't mind shelling out the extra money for a successful evening.
Dear D.R., Man, this girl straight up has a problem. It doesn't sound like she should be drinking at all, since she has like zero tolerance for the stuff and routinely becomes a burden to her crew, who obviously know how to handle their stuff. But I'm not going to tell you which clinic to refer her to or anything, since I am a cartoon. I think one good trick is to get the bartender to make the lady a mimosa. The best part about mimosas is that they make you take a real weird green shit the next morning, and so you kind of feel less sexy about drinking. Hope this helps.
So I do this thing where I get totally slammed and act like a big slut. I've ended up
fucking a few guys that I'm not interested in under sober circumstances (the last one
admitted he had a crush on me and now I feel crazy uncomfortable around him). So I
end up feeling shitty for being a drunken whore, but at the same time, if there isn't
a guy wanting to get in my pants I get pissed off and feel all rejected. On the flip
(non-drunken) side, the scene never changes with the guys I am interested in. Like I
get all stupid girly and lose the already minute amount of game I've got going on. I
feel like I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life and it sucks hard balls. I
think I need validation from men and it's sick. I just want a boyfriend.
Dear L.P., It sounds like you like to let loose and have a crazy hedonistic time with strangers. It also sounds like you tend to feel guilty about this behavior later. Basically, there is a whole complicated set of reasons we could look into based on your analysis of self validation and self esteem. I am going to recommend that you see a professional therapist here, because I have been around the block with your type before and I got to tell you, no dude digs to be with a lady who will hop any old "Anonymous Johnson" once she downs a 7&7. Hope you find help.
I appreciate your stance on the herbivore diet, despite it's [sic] somewhat misguided
assumptions (the human body is evolved to subsist on nuts, berries, bugs, etc.).
However, I must know, how do you feel about dishes which use felis domesticus as their
primary ingredient? Ordinary house cats, such as yourself, are consumed regularly in
many Asian and African cultures, often as part of very complex and aromatic gourmet
cusine. The (your?) meat is somewhat gamey but with a delicate flavor, I hear...I
wouldn't know because I'm a vegetarian, and would never eat you.
Dear Gabe, Way to go, playin' the big vegetarian card and sayin' that you wouldn't eat me because you are so amazing and full of advanced thoughts. I am so moved with these huge realizations I'm havin' about how your way of life is so kind and beautiful. Dude, you wouldn't eat me because if you tried I would cold drop your narrow ass! Anyhow, ain't you watched "Walking With Cavemen" on Discovery? Those cavemen went !!apeshit!! when they could get their hands on some meat! Also, there was no "emotional" distinction between a gazelle and a potato, both were just food (although the gazelle was better food and helped them live longer and produce stronger children, which eventually led to your dumb ass existing and setting things in reverse). Sure, we have the luxury of plentiful food supplies, but to deny our omnivorous instincts just sounds like kind of a college/wimp thing. Tell me your chilies don't stand at attention every time you catch a whiff of barbecue. Here's what I want you to do, Oregon Vegetarian: stand in front of a full-length mirror looking at your body, and then smile really nicely at your body as you say to it, I am so much smarter than you. That is what it means to be a vegetarian. Ray, in your column you have now twice made vodka reccomendations [sic] and both times repeated the myth that better vodkas are necessarily more expensive. Vodkas, like tequilas, can't be gauged by price. Two of my favorites, Monopolowa, an Austrian potato vodka, and Wyborowa, which is a Polish rye, price in under $20 a bottle and have both outdone Grey Goose and Absolut in tasting contests.
So, what gives? You get commission from Chopin or something? Oh man! I totally forgot about Monopolowa! It's tasty and a great deal at around ten bucks. I am not a "price fascist," (particularly when it comes to wine), but hey, up to a certain point you get what you pay for. I wouldn't go paying like three hundred dollars for a bottle of wine, because that is the height of asininity. Anyhow, Monopolowa ain't exactly stocked in every corner grocery, so I didn't mention it. Personally, I find it at my local Underground Trader Joe's. Okay, let's move on.
Lately I've been noticing that when I'm around people, awkward silences
arise and I can't think of anything to say next. I've always considered
myself a pretty good conversationalist, and it's only recently that I've had
to suffer embarrassingly long pauses around others. What kinds of things
should I be talking about to keep my conversations fresh, and what should I
do when I can't think of anything to say?
Baby, sometimes the chemistry just ain't right. If you're just being your free-ballin' self then it's the other person's fault for having a small and uninteresting brain, unable to go with your flow. There are a lot of duds out there. Just look at how many people genuinely cared about the outcome of "American Idol" this year. I heard some reports that people actually bought CDs by people who were on that show! I mean, come on! Who cares if some overgrown meat-bug re-sings an already famous song with a generic band behind him, taking all the cojones out of the music? What a waste of various types of resources. Anyhow, if you are having trouble warming people up, then just send me some photos of you and I will try to figure out how to help.
Let me set this up for you. [Readers: you do not need to start a letter this way. --Ray] I met a fine woman who enjoys a smooth single-mail [sic]
scotch (a rarity indeed!). However, she explains to me that her favorite scotch
drink (with the straightest of faces) is "scotch n' blood." My initial reaction was
perhaps the "blood" was the juice from a blood orange, which might be damn
appealing. However, I could find no evidence online about the existence of "Scotch
and Blood." Perhaps she is full of it. I'm a Chivas & Rocks man, I have no clue. Please help.
Dear Evan, There are more pet names for drinks than that Google can ever hope to hold. Let's just work with some common sense and perhaps we can arrive at the recipe which has come to be known as "Scotch 'N Blood" to this lady. My initial thought is "Bloody Mary," so perhaps she has come up with some concoction where bloody mary ingredients are mixed with Scotch instead of vodka. Given the intensely-flavored nature of a bloody mary, this is entirely believable. Give it a try and see if you can't submit a recipe next week. Maybe also send some photos of the lady (this will help me to better judge what kind of lady she is). Hope this helps.
Look, me and this girl have been nuts for each other for years. Recently we decided to
become a little more then [sic] girlfriend/boyfriend (ie engagement plans). And now theres [sic…] a "friend" of mine who seems to be trying to wedge his way into our relationship. He has a history of skeezing on other guys [sic… :( ] loves and keeps repeating to everyone "They come to me". What can I do to remedy the situation without injuring either party...most of all not injuring myself?
Dear Mort, This guy doesn't sound like a very useful friend to keep around! Also, if you're so close with this girl that you are considering committing the rest of your lives to each other, you should be able to talk frankly about him. By not talking to her about him you are essentially disrespecting her intelligence, because she sees things just the same as you do. One of the biggest problems in the world is that all people think the rest of the people somehow have a weaker grasp on things than they do. I think this is because we all grew up watching Leave It To Beaver sitcoms where a child always tried to perpetrate a falsehood as far as he could. TV taught us that it was okay for Beaver to help hide Eddie Haskell's stolen comic books inside a giant steaming teacup on a billboard, only to later be rescued by his father after getting stuck in the teacup, and be forgiven after a meaningless slap on the wrist. Anyhow, if some guy is trying to muscle in on an established relationship then he's just a garden-variety sociopath and should be omitted from your life. If your girl is genuinely too dumb to see him for what he is, then get rid of her too. Maybe someday after the dude goes insane and has a transsexual operation they'll both wind up in the same prison and poison each other with D-Con. Just a thought. I am 27, recently single, and about to start my 2nd year of law school. I have no desire to relive the cheap beer and sleazy hook-ups of my college days, but I am getting my J.D. from my undergrad alma mater and I find myself back at the same bars, drinking the same beer, and surrounded by the same throngs of 18-22 year olds as in the days of yore.
I have never had too much difficulty with the ladies, Ray, [over 150 pages omitted here. —Ray.] but the grad school dating pool is small and relatively unattractive. How do I approach a lady 5-8 years younger than myself? And what does a man who prefers a
diamond juice martini order in a bar where $2 pitchers are the rule?
Dear CU, Man, that was like readin' Moby Dick or James Clavell's Yokohama or something. Way too long! May I give you a tip? Please ask at least one question every sixty-five pages. Alright, let's look over what you said, which took you so long to say. Basically, you are older than the girls you're back at school with, and even though you use a lot more words than them when you communicate, you would like to date from their pool and not out of the pool of women your own age. I guess you are saying that the women your own age who are still in college are kind of "stringy-haired" and sort of "extremely messed up." Hell, I'd believe it. Any chick (or dude, for that matter) who was still going to college after the regular college part of life probably played the violin way too much as a kid, essentially locked in a room with like the Periodic Table of the Elements on the wall. Anyhow, you want to relate to younger, more sophisticated women. It may surprise you to hear that lots of younger women drink liquor instead of beer. I bet there are lots of honeys who want you to take them off-campus for a better scene than the usual on-campus Natural Light assembly line. Maybe park your car outside of the Student Union with a banner made out of your white bedsheet, on which you have written in shoe polish that you are going off-campus to buy sophisticated cocktails. I used to do tech-support alongside a man with a worse case of acute-Tourette's syndrome than had ever been parodized [sic] in any joke or movie. Having a voice like Pavarotti, he would blurt obscenities, and sexpletives, and slurs at well over 130db. Evaluating him, it seems like the disease keeps you from refraining to speak your mind. Is this why more improvisational forms of lyrical music seem to involve so much profanity, because there is not enough time to filter out inappropriate word choices? Similarly, I often find myself whispering to nobody about how a person or object is a mother-fucking-cunt and how I intend to set the entire world on fire. Man, a cussing Pavarotti! Fully belting it out! 'FUUUUUUCK AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL YOUUUUUUUUU shitFAAAAACES!" That sounds awesome…except I know that in truth it is just a depressing manifestation of an unhealthy mind. Anyhow, I think that the reason most freestyle/improvisational forms of lyrical music are plagued with profanity is because the average mind is not up to such an intensely creative task. Cuss words are perhaps the easiest way to provoke a reaction from people when you don't have an actual idea to convey. A lot of stand-ups work "blue" for this very reason. It's just a crutch. Shock value only goes so far before you get pigeonholed as a person who lacks new ideas, and instead just goes around telling people that he looked in the mirror at his own clenched purple asshole. These are just my ideas.
I have a history question for you: what ever happened to the Tiki/Polynesian lounges
of the 50s and 60s? There don't seem to be many left. I know some of them were
pretty campy, but they still seem like they would have been a good place to get your
slant on. And if you could play Nostradamus for me, can you tell me if you think
they will ever come back?
Hi TT, Tiki bars weren't ever big enough to get campily resurrected as a full-fledged nationwide "retro" cultural movement (such as what happened with disco or hippie stuff), so they'll always just be tangential. Plus, all that dried grass stuff is a fire hazard and a target for mildew. Hm. How to predict when they will come back in full fashion? I predict that they will come back in the year 55378008, the year which when, typed into a calculator and turned upside down, spells "BOOBLESS." Just a fun thought I had just now. --Ray.
I'm not really into alcohol so much, but i've [sic] found it to be both inconvenient and a little shameful to have to always get a soda. I've tried beer, vodka, and some wines, admittedly the cheap boxed kind, and i've [sic] found them mostly unpalatable. So i come to for [sic] [sic] advice, what do you advise drinking that's not too hard or bitter, but not too sweet either?
Dear T.R., It's totally cool if you don't naturally enjoy alcohol. Just like how some people can't stand the flavor of chocolate or hate the smell of a rose, so is alcohol an unpleasant substance to some. What I want to do is recommend a drink to you that will (a) not raise suspicions of you being a weirdo teetotaller, and (b) be pleasant to drink. I asked Pat what he likes to drink, since he is kind of weird and uptight about drinking, and he said (after he read the laser printout I made of your letter) that you probably haven't ever really had any good wines. I said "fine, fine, Pat, but he isn't gonna get any good wines as a totally new consumer of wines, buying by the glass at bars and restaurants," and then Pat just sort of acted the way he does and left. So! I came up with a cocktail for you to ask for. It is called a Hornsby's Cider, and it is actually a cider and not a cocktail, and there are other brands of cider usually on tap such as Wyder's or Blackthorn etc., but there you go. Slightly alcoholic, not so sweet as a soda, and you won't look too crazy ordering one. If that doesn't work out for you, just get a Guinness. There is no way that somebody doesn't like a Guinness.
Does beer really make you fat? Or does it just make you tired and lazy,
and the tired and lazy makes you fat?
Dear Tim, Life makes you fat. When you are a kid you all just run around and stuff and it is just the most wonderful time. When you get older you love that you have earned some peace and quiet and tend to overdo it on the "relaxation" thing. Beer has nothing to do with it. As I have said a hundred times before, don't blame alcohol for your problems. Blame yourself for using alcohol as the solution to your problems, which were caused by you being lazy and just drinking a bunch of alcohol, which can be a lot of fun.
Back in April, I slept with this incredible punk rock girl, took her cherry
even. No real problem so far, in fact, she was more than grateful, but she
is much younger than I. To make matters even worse she is my buddy's
ex-girlfriend and he's still way into her. I told myself that I would just
sweep it under the carpet and stop seeing her, but she seems bent on
continuing it and I am not strong enough to say no to such a super rad girl.
Now I'm seeing her several times a week and I find myself digging her more
and more. I don't want my bro to feel like I've betrayed him and I certainly
don't want to end up in trouble over her, but I really do feel something for
her and don't wanna let her go, I've been lonely too long and this girl is
everything I've wanted. What's a poor guy to do?
Dear "Country Hick Ham Bacon Meat Onion Skillet," Okay all right I will answer your question. If you really think that a girl is a piece of social wampum and that somehow this particular girl is still subservient to your friend, then you should just date an oven mitt. If you are able, at my recommendation, to respect another...ah, forget it. You kids and your problems. I really don't care and don't have the time. Basically, you'll just mess around for a few years and then eventually settle into a more stable routine where things make sense to you. Try not to get AIDS. Always use a condom on whatever part of your body you are messing around with.
do you think it's ok to pretend to be sensitive, just to get laid?
In terms of your question, I guess you should just do whatever you feel like. If you like to lie to someone in order to get some sex on, then do that. Try not to get AIDS, or to spread it. Personally, I don't have to lie to get some country-style ham-n-jam, if you know what I'm saying. Man, whoah! "Country-style ham-n-jam" was totally wrong for the image I was trying to get across just now. It's this damn "Unix" word processor I'm using while my Powerbook's in the shop. Where the hell is the "delete" key?! ^X ^C which one did he say it was ]]B ]]D ]]B ]]D SAFFAFFFFFDDDDDD I haven't had a drink for over 16 years now though I did my best to swallow all I could until then. [long boring stories omitted here --Ray.]
Anyway, it's a long time between drinks and I'm getting tired of smoking even
the best Dutch shit which is why I can't remember that hotel's name. What
else can I get high on that won't make me head for the booze?
Dear TP, So, you turned from alcohol to weed and now you are tired of weed. Hm. I guess some people get "high" by running like a triathlon or something, or by helping people who only have one leg to learn to walk again, or something. I guess if you aren't into that then just get some Scotch, that can be a lot of fun. I also understand that a few people like to get into Bondage and hit each other.
Recently my friends and I have had a good number of drinking parties. For whatever
reason though, I just can't seem to have much fun at them. I'm not sure what bothers me or what's missing, and no matter how I approach the party as far as mood goes, I just can't
get into it. Is there something you do at parties that help[s] you get into them and really
enjoy yourself?
Dear Anonymous, It sounds like you're bored. I don't know what you are bored with, but you are bored if you are not having a good time at a thing where your friends are. You probably already know what it is you would rather be doing and you should just do that instead. Personally speaking, I always love a party, and if the party doesn't have its foot on the pedal then I mess with the stereo and start a drinking game. Every party needs a President, and sometimes I just have to swear myself in and wrest control from whoever it is that's throwin' the bloodless shindig (usually Pat).
I've got a dilemma I could use your help on. My ideal night on the town is
going to my favorite pub here in Austin and having a pint, and kicking back
with good friends for good conversation. When I go back home to visit old
friends (which I do fairly often), I'm generally roped into hanging out in
some terribly cheesey bar with disco lights and blaring "top 40" music. My
question is this: is there any way to tell your friends that you don't like
their "scene" without completely offending them, or do I have to endure
watching people in shiney clothes dance to the latest horrible Justin
Timberlake song if I want to see my friends?
Dear Fed-Up, No, they will always like this stuff because this is who they are and where they are going to stay. You will gradually evolve away from these people and create new roots in the place where you've relocated. Eventually you won't hear from your old friends so much anymore, but you won't notice. Everything should turn out awesome. I'm at a point where I have to make some decisions about my future. I have a year left in program at a "technical institution" (college). I will be certified to work in the radio industry, as an announcer, producer, writer, whatever. The problem is that I have a passion for education that I don't want to leave untapped. Everyone says "teach broadcasting!" as if they're a genius for coming up with this. I want to teach highschool English. I just don't know how I'll afford all the school it takes to be a teacher after all the school it took to be a broadcaster.
Do I go for it and hope I can afford it, or do i suck it up, do what I was trained
for and give broadcasting a shot? I think i'd be good in either field. Please give
this some serious thought.
Dear Mr. DJ, Radio broadcasting is actually pretty unimportant. Plus, you wouldn't get to do anything interesting in that field until you had like twenty years' career experience (you would mostly be selling ad space to like a place that sells you a pizza while they wash your car). You should be a teacher, particularly since you want to do that more. Radio is extremely stupid. I'm sorry to be so boldly against what you have devoted your life to, but by your very inquiry I can tell that you want to change your plans.
I started seeing my first girlfriend when I was twenty-one. Now, eight months later, we're living together, and planning to do so at least until next summer, when she graduates. That's cool with me, but I think she's planning on us being together much longer. She likes me, she says I'm smart and funny and handsome and perfect for her, but I don't know if she's perfect for me. She's attractive and I like being with her, and the sex is great, but I don't feel like we connect in any deep way. I'm an easy going guy, I could probably live with her for the rest of my life and not be unhappy, but I don't know if that would be fair to her. Maybe it's not fair to me. Being single isn't too bad, and I might find someone better for me. What should I do?
Dear K.S., Whoops! Man, are you obvious. I have never seen a clearer case of a guy who wanted to ramble the hell out of "Boring Town." Your whole letter basically says that you are unfulfilled. Man, why the hell did you write to me? You know what you want to do, but you are a few buckshot shy of a full round, if you know what I'm saying. You've latched onto a good, stable relationship, but it's not what you're looking for. Break it off, life is a long time. Simply "not being unhappy" is not enough to tie the knot. Come on, idiot. Sorry to be so rough. Pretend I am saying the word "idiot" with my arm around you, like a friend. I have always been a gentleman, and now I have a great wife and a good kid, both of whom I love a lot. Last week I was in a class where I met this lady who really swept me away. We became great friends, and our conversations where [sic] immersing. Now that I've returned home, I'm still haunted by the experience.
There were no sketchy situations between us; we are both married. I'm not
interested in getting lucky, as I'm quite lucky already. I guess what I'm
looking for is a healthy way to cherish and cultivate this friendship, with
respect to our marriage vows.
Dear S., Man, who are you kidding. You know where this is going. You think your wife is gonna be down with you having another "soul mate?" Don't be a bullshit-type guy. You're already worried about it getting out of hand. Go buy your kid some toys. You "friends with women" guys make me sick. I've found my new favorite mixed drink, Kansas City Ice Water. Fill a tall glass with ice, 3/4 oz gin, 3/4 oz vodka. Shake. Add 1/2 oz lime juice, then fill with 7-Up. Garnish with a lime or a cherry. Make sure you don't overdo it with the lime juice, as it becomes far too bitter. For hot July days, I've found a Kansas City Ice Water to be a perfect anywhere, anytime drink, should one somehow get tired of martinis. Thoughts? Dear Anonymous, That sounds tasty! I hope my readers make that drink and enjoy it. I didn't have any limes on the night I read your letter. Thank you.
I recently discovered tequila at a party, while doing shots. I usually stick to
whisky when taking shots but I would like switch over. Can you offer a suggestion
for a good chaser? Is there a particular brand that is the best?
Dear PRG, If you're shooting tequila then it doesn't really matter what you're drinking. Good tequilas are like good cognacs or scotches; they are for savoring. I think what you really like to do is get trashed fast. Always make sure that you have your address written on a laminated card in your pocket, so the cab driver knows where to take you.
Ray, I need some advice. I am a reasonably cute girl (I guess) who works at a large chain
bookstore, usually as a cashier. My problem is middle-aged men who think that my working
retail is an invitation to hit on me. These guys will come in with their kids who are my
age, all hella balding and usually sweating profusely/chuckling to themselves, and wink at
me or make bumbling, vaguely sexual conversation while buying "The Kama Sutra: For Dummies"
or "101 Erotic Haikus"- you know, just basically acting like sex-starved clowns while
implying that I should do something about it. I have pepper spray, but as I like my job I
have refrained from using it on customers. I've considered buying a fake wedding ring,
gaining 90 pounds, and/or giving up showering altogether. Do you know of any ways I could
discourage this sort of behavior?
Dear MJ, Yes, stop working at Borders. Have some dignity.
Recently I was approached by a friend of mine looking to sign me up as an
Amway distributor. It sounded like a pretty sweet deal, until any
non-Amway-supported research I did made it seem like a cult-like pyramid
scheme. Have you any experience or advice for these shady dealings? I'd
appreciate hearing it.
Dear Pete, I have no direct experience with Amway but from what I understand, most people can just buy Windex and dish soap at the grocery store, eliminating the need for door-to-door salesmen. Have some dignity. I'm dating this great woman right now and she is working in Quebec City for the summer on a short contract. While there, she is living with her parents, who from my point of view are extremely cultured (ie. European). I've met them once before and felt like it was a positive experience and I would like to continue to leave a good impression with them when I stay with them. I'm considering bringing a gift, but I'm rather at a loss as to what I should bring. Is there some sort of protocol for this? I've thought of bringing a bottle of good wine, but am not confident that my tastes are discerning enough.
Obviously I'd like to impress them, and obviously you could just say something like
"give something from the heart and they'll respect the real you" or something, but
these people are French and the rules of try your best might not necessarily apply in
this situation. However, any advice you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Whoo hoo! My last letter! Let's see what he needs. Hm. It sounds like he is all biased about the French, due to the bad press they always get. Dude, don't do the wine thing. Wine is totally a French thing, you will just look like a rookie. Give them something you actually know anything about, whether it's a picture of hockey, a six pack of Molson, or something else appropriate to your own culture. The first mistake a lot of people make when trying to impress foreigners is to give them something from the foreigner's own homeland. Would it impress you if a Frenchman came to your house and brought you a Krispy Kreme donut? What would be the point of that? Who is learning anything there? Have dignity. * A Gentle Reminder ("Disclaimer"): This is advice from a cartoon cat, and should not be taken seriously. We are not responsible for anything you do based on what Ray says, or otherwise. Do not commit suicide or otherwise interrupt the lives of others. Continue on with your life as though you had never read this column. Erase your browser history. |


text:
Lenovo Show Arcade Laptop Casemod
This is quite the thing, via Technabob: it's a case in which to place a laptop, turning it into an arcade machine. The case hooks the laptop up to arcade-style control pad and buttons, while providing an extra slide-out keyboard beneath the main cabinet so that you can still use it as a PC. Frustratingly, this doesn't yet appear to be a commercial project, and instead is simply a demo project by this chap. As casemods go, this is both practical (if you're an arcade nerd) and awesome, and totally should be a commercial thing. There's a video of it being demonstrated in action beneath the click.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Will be held at City Hall, 27 Pine Street, Lewiston 1st Floor in the City Council Chambers. This Meeting will be broadcast LIVE over Spectrum Cable TV Government Access Channel 7 and streamed LIVE through the city's YouTube channel http://www.lewistonmaine.gov/YouTube. Archived copies of this meeting will be available immediately after broadcast on the City YouTube Channel and within a day or two after broadcast, for viewing for up to 60 days, at the Great Falls Television web site.


text:
This article was written for the Unz Review: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-eus-suicide-by-reality-denial/
What had to happen did happen. The EU, being the chain of weak links it is, did eventually give in, and the Dutch people were the first one to vote against the association with the Ukraine. Of course, the Euroburocrats can now find some reason to declare the vote invalid, they can declare that some law was violated, they can even negotiate some minor change the to association agreement, or they might even decide that they can simply ignore this vote. But none of that will make any difference: the undeniable truth is that the Ukrainians are not welcome in the EU, not as associates and even less so as members. So no EU, no NATO no "European future" for the Ukraine. The entire hot air balloon which has been fueling the naïve and ugly hopes of the Euromaidan has burst and the Euro-Ukrainian project is crash and burning like the Hindenburg.
This disaster did not have to happen, it was entirely man made. In a saner world, the EU, Russia and the Ukraine could have negotiated a tripartite deal which would have given the Ukraine the role which geography and history have given it: to be a bridge between Russia and the EU. But the EU categorically rejected this option, several times, simply declaring that "the Ukraine is a sovereign state and Russia has no say in Ukrainian matters". This zero sum game was forced on Russia against her will but now it is the EU which has lost it all, even if this is by no means a victory for Russia either. The sad reality is that everybody has lost. Now the EU has to accept the total defeat of its Ukrainian policy, Russia is now alone looking at a dying failed state right across her border, while the Ukraine is simply falling apart and dying a painful death. Will the Eurobureaucrats accept this outcome?
Probably not.
They will do what they have always done. They will lie, deny, minimize and, most importantly, pretend like nothing has happened. They will say that 60% of 30% of a small EU nation do not get to make decisions for the entire continent. Or they will declare that instead of just an old fashioned "association" the EU will offer the Ukraine something much better – a "heartfelt friendship" maybe. Or a "love eternal". Or even a "continental brotherhood". But that will all be in vain because the people of Europe are clearly weary of the Ukronazis, even their Polish "friends" are now considering building a wall of their own, to keep their "Ukrainian friends" out of Poland; feel the love!
Consequence one: financial costs
But it is way too late for the Europeans. The really bad news for them is that they will have to pay most of the costs of more or less rebuilding the Ukraine. Russia simply cannot do it. Her economy is way too small, and she is already struggling with trying to restore law and order in Crimea (which is proving very hard, as the local mob is already trying to return the way it operated under Ukrainian control). Furthermore, Russia will have to pay for the Donbass, that is pretty obvious. So Russia is really maxed out.
The US could pay, but won't. Even if Hillary is elected (aka appointed by the US 'deeps state'), such a huge economic rescue program for the Ukraine will never pass Congress, not when the US themselves are in need of a similar program to rebuilt their own decrepit and neglected infrastructure and economy.
But most importantly, Russia does have the means to close her borders. The newly created Russian National Guard will now take over the responsibilities of several ministries and agencies including the Federal Migration Service. Russia already has a very capable Border Guard Service which is subordinated to the Federal Security Service (ex-KGB). It is estimated that the Border Guard Service currently includes 10 regional offices, 80+ border units, 950+ outposts, 400+ checkpoints. Every day the service conducts 11,000 patrols. In total, the task of preservation and protection of borders of the Russian Federation carried out by about 200'000 border guards. This service has its own air force, coastal navy, UAV, intelligence directorate, armored units and even its own Spetsnaz forces. The reality is that the Russian Border Guard Service is more powerful than most EU armies. And now it will have the full power of the National Guard to back it. Make no mistake, Russia can, and will, if needed, lock and protect her borders.
As for the USA, they have the best border protection on the planet: the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
So when the Ukraine turns into a black hole (the process is well under way) the only ones who will not be able to protect themselves but who will have the means to pay to fix this mess will be the Europeans. Yes, sure, the US and Russia will also have to help, and they both will, for different reasons. But the bulk of the costs will go directly to the European taxpayer. That is the price the EU will have to pay, sooner or later, for its arrogance and incompetence.
Second Consequence: security
There will also be another price to pay, this time a price in security. All the NATO saber-rattling along the Russian border did, eventually, wake up the "Russian bear". Not only has Russia now deployed her formidable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, she has now doubled the size of her already formidable Airborne Forces. Here is what I wrote about that in December 2014:
"the Russians have no fear of the military threat posed by NATO. Their reaction to the latest NATO moves (new bases and personnel in Central Europe, more spending, etc.) is to denounce it as provocative, but Russian officials all insist that Russia can handle the military threat. As one Russian deputy said "5 rapid reaction diversionary groups is a problem we can solve with one missile". A simplistic but basically correct formula. As I mentioned before, the decision to double the size of the Russian Airborne Forces and to upgrade the elite 45th Special Designation Airborne Regiment to full brigade-size has already been taken anyway. You could say that Russia preempted the creation of the 10'000 strong NATO force by bringing her own mobile (airborne) forces from 36'000 to 72'000 . This is typical Putin. While NATO announces with fanfare and fireworks that NATO will create a special rapid reaction "spearhead" force of 10'000, Putin quietly doubles the size of the Russian Airborne Forces to 72'000. And, believe me, the battle hardened Russian Airborne Forces are a vastly more capable fighting force then the hedonistic and demotivated multi-national (28 countries) Euroforce of 5'000 NATO is struggling hard to put together . The US commanders fully understand that".
But that is not all Russia did. Putin has ordered the re-creation of the ultimate Cold War Russian armor threat: the First Guards Tank Army. This Tank Army will include two Tank Division (the best ones in the Russian military – 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division and the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division), and a total of 500+ T-14 Armata tanks. This Tank Army will be supported by the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army.
Make no mistake, this is a huge, heavy and powerful force whose purpose will be very similar to the famous Soviet "Shock" Armies during WWII and the Cold War: "overcome difficult defensive dispositions in order to create a tactical penetration of sufficient breadth and depth to permit the commitment of mobile formations for deeper exploitation".
Bravo Europe – you just painted a giant crosshair on your forehead!
Very little of that is reported in the western media, of course, and so the general public is utterly unaware of the fact that while NATO and western politicians pretended to play tough and tried to scare Russia, the Russians decided to take these threats seriously and took real, practical action.
For somebody like me who lived through the Cold War and who used to monitor the Soviet Forces in Eastern Germany, it is both distressing and sickening to see that the West has literally forced Russia into a new Cold War she neither wanted nor needed. Of course, I am absolutely confident that there is no "Russian threat" in East, and the only way to get this entire military power to strike would be to attack it first, but the sad reality is that the EU/NATO countries are now directly targeted by Russian forces.
To make it all much worse, there is now a strong possibility that Hillary and her Neocon gang will soon take over the White House. God only knows what these people are capable off. Hillary, whose only "success" in life seems to have push Bill to bomb the Serbs and making a ugly mess out of Libya, will have something to prove: that she is more of a man than Putin. She will try to scare and bully him into some kind of submission and nevermind that the Russian people now see the West as a degenerate, if arrogant, society of Conchita Wurst like poseurs who simply don't have what it take to fight a real fight and who can only pick on the weak and humble. It is not fear which the Neocons inspire in Russians, but disgust. At most, they can elicit a sense of concern due to their seemingly infinite arrogance and self-defeating lack of foresight. As I have written many, many times already, Russian do fear war, no doubt about it, but, unlike the AngloZionists, they are nevertheless ready for it.
As for the Europeans, they are now slowly coming to realize that they are in for a long and very painful war against Wahabi terrorism. The attacks in Paris and Brussels are just the opening shots of a war which will last many years. It took Russia over a decade to finally crush the Wahabi terrorists in the Caucasus, and that was with a man like Vladimir Putin at the helm of the country. One look at Francois Hollande or Angela Merkel and you can feel in your guts that these two sad clowns will never prevail. Just contrast the reaction of Vladimir Putin to the downing of the Russian airliner over the Sinai with Frederica Mogherini's sobbing following the bombings in Brussels.
Now imagine that you are a Wahabi terrorist leader, and a hardcore lifelong sexist, would I add, and that you are looking at these two photos on the right. Would this influence your selection of targets?
Of course it would.
The same goes for the comparison of the US/NATO operations in Syria with the outcome of just under six months of Russian Aerospace forces. States, just like people, have their own "body language" and while the body language displayed by Russia is one of confident and formidable power, the body language of the EU and, to a marginally lesser extend, the USA is one of weakness, hubris and incompetence, often bordering on the suicidal (like Merkel's policy towards immigration).
The Bottom Line
The bottom line of this mess is this: what the US and the EU did in the Ukraine (and elsewhere, really) was fantastically stupid. But the US can afford such mistakes, while the EU clearly cannot. As for Russia, yes, she most definitely has been hurt by these policies, but this pain has been channeled by the Kremlin to make Russia stronger on many levels, from the political, to the military and even the economy, although here the progress has been minimal and the 5th column is still very much in charge, though I remain hopeful of a much needed purge.
What the EU has done is essentially a form of "suicide by reality denial". What follows next will have to be regime change, not for one country, but for the entire continent. I think that such regime change is inevitable, but the big question is how long this slow and painful EU agony will last. Alas, this could take many years, I think. EU leaders will not elegantly apologize and resign, there is an entire class of parasites which now lives from the EU structure which will desperately resist any meaningful reforms, nevermind regime change, and which will always put their narrow comprador class interests above their people or even common sense.
As for the people of the EU, they will find out that they don't have the means to impose political change by the ballot, that they live in a pretend-democracy, and that everything they have been told and promised is just an empty, ugly, lie. The Ukraine did not become Europe, but Europe became the Ukraine.
Welcome to the real word, EU!
The Saker


text:
Install Claws mail (Mail Client) in Ubuntu
Sponsored Link
Claws Mail Features
- Quick response
- Graceful, and sophisticated interface
- Easy configuration, intuitive operation
- Abundant features
- Extensibility
- Robustness and stability
Install Claws mail (Mail Client) in Ubuntu
Open a terminal. Download and register the signing key for the Claws mail sources
wget http://colino.net/colin.publickey
sudo apt-key add colin.publickey
Change your /etc/apt/sources.list to include the Claws mail sources
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
Go to the end of the file and add which source list is suitable for you
For Dapper Users
deb http://www.claws-mail.org/ubuntu/dapper/ ./
For Edgy Users
deb http://www.claws-mail.org/ubuntu/edgy/ ./
Save the file and exit.
Then update your sources
sudo apt-get update
Install Claws Mail
sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2
This will pull down whatever is necessary to install the basic application.
Install extras. Sylpheed has very many extensions and plugins. Take a look at them all by doing this
sudo apt-cache search sylpheed-claws-gtk2
Take a look at this list (note the spamassassin plugin, the trayicon plugin, the html viewer, etc.). You can get quite
a few of the plugins by installing the plugins packages
sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2-plugins sylpheed-claws-gtk2-extra-plugins
Or, you can get them individually, by specifying them on the apt-get command line, eg:
sudo apt-get install sylpheed-claws-gtk2-spamassassin
Open Claws mail. You will find it (in gnome) under Applications --> Internet --> Sylpheed Claws gtk2
Claws Mail Themes
Spend a few minutes looking around and setting things up. If you like, you can customize the interface (as well as
many other things) to use various themes.
Claws Mail Themes can be downloaded from here
To use a theme, download it, unpack it, and navigate to the unpacked directory in sylpheed under Configuration -->
Preferences --> Themes. Install the theme, then select "Use this".
You may also be interested in various scripts for use with claws mail (address conversion etc.) from here
The feature set of sylpheed is very rich, flexible, and functional. You might find that it becomes a little addictive.
Claws Mail Plugins
You can download Claws Mail Plugins from here
Claws Mail & S/MIME plugin
If you want to work claws mail & S/MIME plugin check here
If you want to know more about claws mail check here


text: Takes a body of expressions and yields a future object that will invoke the body in another thread, and will cache the result and return it on all subsequent calls to deref/@. If the computation has not yet finished, calls to deref/@ will block, unless the variant of deref with timeout is used. See also - realized?.


text:
US prison inmates returning to society: How will they be received?
| Los Angeles
Jason Corralez donned a freshly pressed collared shirt. He had shaved neatly around his salt-and-pepper goatee. He looked like a man about to go on a job interview, which he was. It was a job he desperately wanted, but one question gnawed at him: Would they be willing to hire a convicted murderer?
Mr. Corralez had one advantage as he applied for the position at Trader Joe's in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Both his brother-in-law and nephew worked at the grocery store. But as his wife drove him to the interview, Corralez was worried about that question on the application that asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony. He had written: "Will discuss during interview."
When he arrived at the store, the manager queried him about his résumé. Corralez went through his work experience, which all happened to be from his time in prison, where he had been since he was 17: upholstery work, yard maintenance, small engine repair, clerical tasks. "I explained my job experience," he says. "All the courses I took – anger management, morals and values."
Corralez didn't leave out why he went to prison, either. "I'm an ex-felon for the offense of second-degree murder," he told the manager. A former member of The Mob Crew, an East Los Angeles gang, he served 24 years for killing a member of the rival MS-13 gang in a drive-by shooting. "This is the person I was," he said, "and this is the person I am now."
According to Corralez, the manager stepped back, stunned. "Thank you for being honest," Corralez recalls him saying. As the ex-prisoner walked to the bus stop, he knew what it meant. "I took everything that I had accomplished, everything that I had to do to get a second chance," he says. "But I could see it in his reaction. It was like the nail in the coffin."
Corralez's struggle to transition from prisoner to free member of society is one that thousands of inmates across the country are going through as states trim their prison populations on a scale unseen in American history.
From California to New York, Texas to Michigan, a record number of convicted criminals are either being released from cells or serving time in community-based programs as states, under pressure to cut costs, adopt new philosophies on how to handle nonviolent offenders and many inmates incarcerated in the 1970s and '80s near the end of their terms. In some cases, lawsuits designed to reduce overcrowding are forcing authorities to open prison doors as well.
These days roughly 700,000 ex-cons are hitting US streets each year – a new high, according to Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. While the vast majority of the inmates are nonviolent, some, like Corralez, served sentences for serious crimes and are now winning parole in higher numbers.
The result is an unprecedented test – of authorities' ability to monitor the newly released prisoners, of social service groups' capacity to help them forge new lives, of the inmates' willingness to start over, of communities' tolerance to let them do so.
Nowhere is this social experiment playing out with more intensity than in California, the nation's largest jailer. It is looking to move as many as 33,000 prisoners out of state penitentiaries over the next year alone, many of whom could end up on the streets. It will provide the country's clearest look at how ready many criminals are to be on the outside – and society's readiness to have them there.
* * *
America's arc in getting to this point involved a lot of clanking cell doors. From 1973 to 2009, the US prison population grew by more than 700 percent – the result of an uptick in crime, huge numbers of drug arrests, and tough sentencing laws. At the end of that time more than 1.6 million people sat behind bars in federal and state penitentiaries, the largest inmate population in the world.
Yet in 2010, for the first time in 38 years, the US prison population declined. Experts cite myriad reasons for the modest (0.3 percent) drop: a decrease in crime in many cities, more use of alternative sentencing, and fewer people put back in prison for parole violations. Early release of inmates for good behavior was also a factor.
Half the states in the country reported a decrease in their prison populations last year. The number of inmates in Michigan, which hit a peak of 51,500 in 2006, now sits around 43,500. The state has closed down 17 penitentiaries and prison camps as a result.
Similarly, New York State has emptied more than 15,000 prison beds over the past decade, mostly through sentencing reform. New Jersey's prison population has dipped, too, in part because of early parole grants. Even rawhide-tough Texas gave up plans five years ago to build eight new prisons, channeling the money instead into probation programs, outpatient treatment, and drug courts.
"We're starting to see a triumph of sound science over sound bites," says Adam Gelb, who studies criminal justice issues at the Pew Center on the States, a Washington research group. "State leaders from both parties are adopting research-based strategies that are more effective and less expensive than putting more low-risk of-fenders into $30,000-a-year taxpayer-funded prison cells."
While states are emptying cell beds for different reasons, the one common motive is the high cost of keeping so many people behind bars. States now spend more than $51 billion a year on prisons – the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Syria. Prisons represent one of the fastest-growing items in state budgets at a time of pressing fiscal penury. Many states face fraught decisions over whether to spend money on classrooms or concertina wire.
Reducing prison budgets, in part by sentencing nonviolent offenders to programs outside prison walls, is one of the few issues many groups on the left and right now agree on. "There's more cooperation on this topic than on any other that I can think of right now," says Marc Levin of Right on Crime, a conservative group whose supporters include former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, antitax crusader Grover Norquist, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
California faces the same pressures as other states and some unique to itself. It has long taken a tough stance on sentencing, which has contributed to a ballooning prison budget. It doubled during the eight-year tenure of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) alone, reaching $9.5 billion.
Yet the immediate impetus for the state's sudden push to reduce its prison population comes from the courts. Overcrowding in the state's 33 prisons had reached more than 200 percent of designed capacity. In some cases, prisons were housing inmates in gymnasiums on bunk beds stacked three high.
Ruling in a prisoners' rights lawsuit, a federal court ordered the state to cut overcrowding to 137.5 percent of capacity. At first the state resisted. But then, last May, the US Supreme Court upheld the ruling. The result is a far-reaching and controversial "realignment" plan – a move to reduce the state prison population by shifting thousands of inmates to local facilities and ordering others to serve time in community-based programs.
Under the plan, those convicted of "non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenses" will serve their time in county jails instead of state prisons. People on parole or probation who violate their release conditions will serve their new sentences in county facilities, too. Already, since last October, corrections officials say they have reduced the state prison population by 20,000. California expects to save about $1.1 billion by the realignment's completion, which officials recently admitted will extend beyond the court-mandated June 2013 deadline.
Yet the shift is putting new burdens on counties, many of which don't have the money or jail beds to cope with the influx. They are being forced to release some inmates early.
Los Angeles County, which runs the largest local jail system in the country, with 17,200 inmates, is expected to receive another 8,300 prisoners under realignment. Despite reducing sentences and allowing some inmates to serve their time in the community, the county's jail population has gone up by 2,000 since October.
Still, the man in charge at the local level, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, insists the system will be able to handle the additional prisoners.
"What makes the difference is if you have education programs like we're doing in the Los Angeles County jail system," he says, referring to drug treatment and other programs. "If you have to resort to early release, at least they're better off than when they came in."
* * *
John Cadogan typifies those who will help determine the success of California's plan. A burly former tradesman with a sleeve of tattoos, Mr. Cadogan sits in a conference room at the men's state prison at Chino, one hour east of Los Angeles. He faces a quandary.
He is within weeks of being released from the minimum-security wing of the prison, where he has been serving time on drug charges. In a counseling session, he asks his therapy group what to do about his ex-girlfriend. She wants to get together with him when he gets out, but she's using meth, Cadogan says, which is his former drug of choice. Should he do it?
Cadogan says he'd like to see her briefly and then concentrate on his drug-treatment program. "I'm going to come back clean, I guarantee you that," he says, stroking his mutton chops.
The 14 inmates in the room – a rare assemblage of African-Americans, Hispanics, and whites in a prison where people of different races won't even mingle to play softball – are skeptical.
"What if she don't agree with what you're talking about and she starts some [stuff] with you and the police come?" one prisoner asks. Other inmates nod.
Cadogan says she wouldn't do that: She's the mother of his daughter. Members of the group press him. How can you be sure? One man in prison blues leans forward and intones in Cadogan's ear: "It's like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun."
Discussion leader Mona Velasquez, a counselor with the Amity Foundation, a rehabilitation group, reinforces the dangers. Cadogan has a common problem, says Ms. Velasquez. "What do you do when you run into that old friend that's using?" She runs through a list of "social skills" outlined on a white board. The last point: "Make a plan."
Cadogan will, in fact, have to defy some hard arithmetic. A recent study by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) found that about two-thirds of former inmates return to prison within three years. This doesn't mean they all commit serious crimes. The biggest group of them – 45 percent – return because of simple parole violations.
Social workers who deal with inmates believe drug treatment, counseling, and other programs like the one at Chino greatly improve the chances of prisoners becoming productive members of society. They see such programs as better than keeping offenders locked up, or locking up low-risk prisoners to begin with, which can just harden inmates.
Yet many of the social service groups will now be doing their work with less money, even though the number of prisoners they'll be dealing with will likely rise substantially. When the latest funding cuts came down from Sacramento, Amity had to reduce its staff at Chino from 14 to 10. That means the counseling program there will have room for 130 inmates this year instead of 150, though the group expects the funding to be restored eventually.
The realignment process will also be watched closely by critics. Many worry that too many pris-oners are being released before they should be. Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, says flatly that realignment will be a "public safety disaster."
He cites the case of John Folinsky, a Los Angeles drug dealer. Mr. Folinsky pleaded no contest last November to a cocaine possession charge. He was already out on parole for committing the same offense two years earlier. He was sentenced to six years in the county jail, but wound up serving less than a month and was released with electronic monitoring.
The crime rate, says Mr. Cooley, is at a 60-year low "because we've done a good job of incarcerating those who commit crimes. Some of us believe incarceration for serious criminals is important. It's how you protect the public."
In the politicized world of criminal justice, one misstep can cause big repercussions. Illinois released a large number of pris-oners early a few years ago, some of whom ended up committing serious crimes. Facing an uproar, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) in 2009 reversed a policy of allowing inmates early release for good behavior.
While California's decision to open some of its prison doors has been forced on it to a certain extent by costs and the courts, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) will likely be judged uncompromisingly by its success or failure. Governor Brown himself seems confident with the realignment.
"We're not going to have a revolving door in the prison," he said recently outside an interfaith prayer breakfast in Los Angeles. "We're going to strengthen local law enforcement."
Others are less optimistic. "We always see a real serious crime committed [by someone who gets out early] and then everything gets repealed and we go back to being tough on criminals again," says Christine Ward, executive director of Crime Victims Action Alliance, a victims' rights group. "Unfortunately, that case is coming."
* * *
Mark Faucette is one who will be trying to prevent "that case" from happening. With his trimmed beard, crisp suit, and combed-back hair, Mr. Faucette looks as if he could be a Hollywood agent. He is a vice president of the Amity Foundation, the group that runs the treatment program at Chino and operates a residential facility in Los Angeles for released cons.
After 25 years of working in prison systems in Arizona and California, Faucette combines a policy wonk's understanding of criminal justice issues with prison-yard savvy. He's as comfortable in front of a microphone as he is around people with serious rap sheets.
On this day, he walks over on his lunch hour to Amity's 150-bed residential facility to check on new arrivals. He stops Alfred Medina Jr., whose face is covered in a pastiche of tattoos, on his way into the building. The two sit down in a living room with a large fish tank, where they talk about Mr. Medina's experience at Amity.
Medina recalls the day in late November when L.A. sheriff's deputies dropped him off in chains, after he had been picked up for not reporting in with his parole officer. They gave him the option of doing a stint at Amity instead of going back to prison. Before Oct. 1, 2011, when realignment went into effect, he would not have had a choice. "I want to stay out," he says. "I feel comfortable here."
Medina was an active member of the East Side Stoners gang, dealing drugs out of a house in East Los Angeles he shared with his father, who was also a dealer.
Intergenerational gang membership, drug addiction, and violence are all he has known most of his life. One of the tattoos on his face, a constellation of six stars, originally stood for the six rival gang members he says he stabbed in prison. Medina admits that after he was released last time, he went back to taking heroin and speed, this time in the bathroom of a halfway house.
But he's sought to make changes. He has volunteered with a scared-straight program, delivering lectures to teens caught shoplifting. Now, he says, the stars on his face represent his six children. "My heart is softening up; it's not as hard as it used to be," he says.
Faucette and Medina shake hands as they part. "When we opened this place originally, they wouldn't take these guys," says Faucette. The worst of the worst were thought to be beyond help. Residential programs like Amity's try to bring stability to the chaotic lives of these former prisoners. No one here, though, least of all Faucette, dismisses the magnitude of the challenge.
"It's not about just getting somebody back in the job force. They've never had a job before ... it's not about giving them three hots and a cot. It's about how can they live in a place like this," he says, referring to the group home and the community.
Still, Faucette believes the realignment represents a chance for a new approach after decades of lock-'em-up policies. "We already know the formula that keeps people out of jail," he says, citing drug treatment, counseling, and skills training. "This is an opportunity for us to do some things right."
But he is also aware of the number of inmates who are going to have to be dealt with – and what might happen if a lack of funding or failure for some other reason results. "If this doesn't get done right in L.A., it's going to bring down the whole state," he says.
* * *
Allen Thorne represents another dimension of California's prison experiment and will help determine whether it will work. He is a former inner-city gang member who killed a rival gang member with a shotgun when he was a teenager. A judge sentenced him to 15 years to life, a term he started serving when he turned 20.
While Mr. Thorne isn't the type of "nonserious" offender who would be locked up in a county jail under realignment, he is someone more likely to win eventual freedom in the new climate in California. Already, since Brown became governor, parole boards have become more flexible: The number of lifers granted parole rose from 119 in 2007 to 463 last year, CDCR statistics show.
For Thorne, the time he spent in prison may have been more violent than his time on the streets. Once incarcerated, he says, he quickly became an enforcer for a Mexican gang. "They said at the time I was one of the best for assaults – staff, inmate, it didn't matter," he says.
Thorne wound up in a ward with the most vicious prisoners, segregated from the general population for 10 years. Then, one day, he says, "I just woke up. I think I had just stabbed somebody in our yard." He picked up a legal pad and drew two columns. In one, he totaled the number of assaults his crew had committed; in the other, the assaults inflicted on them. After listing 36 he had carried out alone, he put the pad down. "That was a sign – I'm done," he says.
Thorne started attending self-help groups, learning computer skills, and working as a clerk. At 31, he got the equivalent of a high school degree. Later, the state transferred him to a prison known for offering vocational work.
There, he heard of a program run by Roman Catholic Sisters Mary Sean Hodges and Teresa Groth. In California, parole boards won't release prisoners serving life sentences unless they have an outside address. The nuns offered him housing and the promise of a job.
It took 13 official hearings for Thorne to win parole. On Oct. 17, 2011, he was handed a temporary ID and $200 in an envelope. Several guards shook his hand. He was free after 32 years.
Today he says he's ready to do anything to move forward in life. "I'll mop, sweep, floss – it doesn't matter to me," he says.
* * *
The nuns who helped Thorne get paroled didn't set out with the goal of freeing lifers. But that's where they've ended up. Hodges, a tall, pragmatic woman with mercury-colored hair, began offering housing to ex-inmates – specifically sex offenders – in an old warehouse near downtown Los Angeles in 2006. The place had once been an adult bookstore. Her group home didn't last long.
"The gentlemen's club next door got concerned that with that many sex offenders in the area there would be police around, and they didn't want police around the gentlemen's club," she says, with a laugh.
Hodges was visiting prisons to pray with inmates. She met Ron Anderson, who was serving a life sentence at Avenal, a state prison in central California. He told her his predicament: He couldn't get paroled without housing, but he couldn't get housing without being released. She promised him he'd have a place to live.
Since then Hodges and Groth have argued on behalf of some 2,000 prisoners. While only a fraction have been freed, lifers now get released in higher numbers than at any time in recent history. Hodges credits Brown for trusting the parole boards' judgments. "He's letting out probably 80 percent, whereas before probably 10 percent were released," she says.
The sisters' reentry program, the only one in the state that provides housing and jobs for lifers, receives about five parolees a month. They housed 10 men in March 2010; today they shelter more than 60.
Frustrated with how hard it can be for ex-inmates to find work, Groth one day entered the lifers' skills on a spreadsheet. She noticed a pattern. Almost all had done upholstery work in prison. With the help of David Velasquez, a paroled lifer, the sisters opened a reupholstering shop in 2010. It has since expanded into a cleaning business that prepares homes to go on the real estate market under the name Starfish Services LLC.
On a sun-splashed afternoon, Corralez does some final stitching on a retro-looking brown sofa at the upholstery shop near downtown L.A. He never heard back from Trader Joe's. "It's not stopping me from looking," he says. He's had a couple of phone interviews for other jobs. In the meantime, he's grateful for the upholstery work.
After his release in March 2011, Corralez says his first few months were hard. He wouldn't leave his house alone because he felt, as in prison, he needed permission – permission to go outside, to eat, to exercise. He's making some money now to help support himself and his wife. He's feeling more confident, too.
"I just didn't get out," he says. "I had to achieve this freedom."


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Undoubtedly, the most important aspect that is considered while ordering remedies from the Web is to make a good choice. It isn't arduous for Americans to buy remedies online. How it is possible? Medicines, sure thing, is going to improve your life. If you're concerned about sexual disorder, you have to read more about "how to buy viagra online" and "viagra pill". What do you know about "viagra for sale"? Also, think about "viagra pills for sale". Sex drive diseases are so commonly a product of what you've experimental that there is slightly to that "headache" saying after all. Generally medications can cause side effects. So, purchasing remedies online can save money, but keep these safety tips in mind.
- 2021.05.16.
- モンストって楽しいよね!
- 2021.02.13.
- 重要なお知らせがございます!
- 2020.11.30.
- スタンスネーション


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The Forsyth County Board of Elections will hold a Canvass Meeting for the 2013 Municipal General Election on Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at 11:00 AM. The canvass of the official election results and the mandatory hand/eye audit will be conducted. The meeting will be held at the Board of Elections office at the Forsyth County Government Center, 201 N. Chestnut Street, Winston-Salem, NC.
Please contact the Board of Elections office at (336) 703-2800 for more information.


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NEW YORK (AP) — Robert Griffin III beat out preseason favorite Andrew Luck for the Heisman Trophy, dazzling voters with his ability to throw, run and lead Big 12 doormat Baylor into the national rankings.
The junior quarterback known as RG3 became the first Heisman winner from Baylor on Saturday night by a comfortable cushion over the Stanford star.
Griffin started the season on the fringe of the Heisman conversation, a talented and exciting player on a marginal team, while Luck was already being touted as a No. 1 NFL draft pick.
Draft day might very well still belong to Luck, but Griffin diverted the Heisman to Waco, Texas, to a school that has never had a player finish better than fourth in the voting — and that was 48 years ago.
Right before his name was called, Griffin took a deep breath. When it was announced he broke into a bright smile. Then it was hugs all around, for his coaches, his parents, his sister and his fiance.
He took a few long strides up to the stage and let out a laugh when he got there, making a joke about the Superman socks — complete with capes on the back — he was wearing before going into his acceptance speech.
"This is unbelievably believable," he said. "It's unbelievable because in the moment we're all amazed when great things happen. But it's believable because great things don't happen without hard work.
Griffin received 405 first-place votes and 1,687 points.
"Everybody associated with Baylor has a reason to celebrate tonight," he said.
Luck received 247 first-place votes and 1,407 points to become the fourth player to be Heisman runner-up in consecutive seasons and first since Arkansas running back Darren McFadden in 2006 and '07.
He was also first to congratulate Griffin
"Very much well deserved," Luck said.
Alabama running back Trent Richardson was third with 138 first-place votes and 978 points. Wisconsin running back Montee Ball (348 points) was fourth and the other finalist, LSU cornerback Tyrann Mathieu (327) was fifth.
Griffin's highlights were simply spectacular — his signature moment coming on a long, cross-field touchdown pass with 8 seconds left to beat Oklahoma — and he put up dizzying numbers, completing 72 percent of his passes for 3,998 yards with 36 touchdown passes and a nation-leading 192.3 efficiency rating.
More importantly, he lifted Baylor (9-3) to national prominence and one of the greatest seasons in school history. The 15th-ranked Bears won nine games for the first time in 25 years, beat the Sooners for the first time ever and went 4-0 in November.
That was after winning a total of four November games in their first 15 Big 12 seasons. And the last three games? Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Texas.
Luck was the front-runner from the moment in January he surprised many by returning to Stanford for one more season instead of jumping to the NFL to become a millionaire. He didn't disappoint, with 3,170 yards receiving, 35 touchdown passes, a completion percentage of 70 percent and a rating of 167.5.
Griffin put up better numbers and, essentially, out-Lucked Luck, who became a star by lifting a forlorn program at a private school out of the shadows of its powerful conference rivals.
Luck made a sensational one-handed catch early in what turned out to be a blowout victory against UCLA. Nice.
Griffin made a 15-yard reception in traffic to convert a key third down on the game-winning drive in Baylor's opening 50-48 victory against TCU. Better.
The 6-foot-2, 220 pounder with sprinter's speed — he was an all-American in the 400-meter hurdles — grabbed plenty of headlines and attention with that first Friday performance against the Horned Frogs and ended the first month of the season with more touchdown passes than incompletions.
He was an early Heisman front-runner, but he faded in October as Baylor lost three of four. Griffin continued to pile up video game numbers, but not enough to compensate for the Bears' leaky defense.
He finished with a kick and shot up the Heisman charts on Nov. 19, when Baylor beat Oklahoma 45-38. Griffin passed for 479 yards and four touchdowns against the Sooners, including that sensational 34-yard, game-winner to Terrance Williams in the closing seconds.
He stated his case one last time — emphatically — on championship Saturday, capping his season with 320 yards passing and two TD passes and two touchdown runs in a 48-24 victory against Texas. It was the second straight year Griffin led the Bears past those longtime bullies from Austin.
At that point it become obvious that quarterback Don Trull's fourth-place finish in 1963 would no longer be the Heisman standard at Baylor.
Landing Griffin, the son of two U.S. Army sergeants who settled in central Texas, was a recruiting coup for Baylor, though it was something of a package deal.
Griffin had committed to Houston and coach Art Briles, but when Baylor hired Briles away, Griffin switched up and followed the coach to a program that hadn't even played in a bowl game sinve 1994.
He started 11 games as an 18-year-old freshman in 2008 and tore a knee ligament three games into the 2009 season.
He returned last year as good as new and with a newfound commitment and love of football. He threw for 3,501 yards and led Baylor to a 7-6 record and its first bowl appearance since 1994.
This season, his passing has improved and he's still a dangerous runner (644 yards and nine DS). He has left little doubt that he's a pro prospect, though he's got one more game — the Alamo Bowl against Washington on Dec. 29 in San Antonio — to show his stuff.
An aspiring lawyer who is working on a master's degree in communications, he holds 46 school records and adoring Bears fans are praying he comes back for more.
Griffin III wins first Heisman Trophy for Baylor player
Professional Sports
Kansas State guard Markquis Nowell signs with Raptors
Kansas State star Keyontae Johnson continues his comeback story as NBA Draft pick
From Wichita to KU, and now NBA, Gradey Dick aims to rep Kansas well
Sam McDowell: How Patrick Mahomes has forever changed the game — and his legacy — in Kansas City


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Ethical concerns about cloning may be broadly divided into two categories: concern about the effect of cloning on animal and human welfare, and objection to the principle of cloning, ie, to producing an animal by a means other than fertilization.
Currently, cloning is associated with an increase in animal suffering when compared with production of animals by standard breeding methods. This is due to surgeries performed to obtain oocytes or transfer embryos, pregnancy losses, sickness and death of neonates, low-level abnormalities in surviving young, and possible distress from disease in animals produced as disease models. These concerns are somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of these findings are not unique to cloning; they are also associated with other procedures that have been generally accepted as worthwhile, such as in vitro fertilization and embryo production, oocyte transfer, and embryo transfer. In addition, the accepted normal fate of many species being cloned is to be housed for maximal production and then be slaughtered and eaten. A compelling argument for cloning is that the potential benefits of the procedure to the understanding of life processes and animal disease, to human health, and to food production outweigh the cost of the procedure in terms of animal welfare.
Additional concerns rest with the effect of cloning on the entire animal population, most commonly related to the genetic variation of the species. This is a legitimate concern in some species and for some uses, such as in dairy cattle, in which one bull may sire thousands of offspring. However, this is more related to the technology of semen freezing and distribution than to the fact that a bull itself was cloned. In companion animals, it is improbable that the few pets likely to be cloned will have an effect on the population in general. In horses, cloning may in fact increase genetic variation, because a major proposed use is to clone geldings that have been found to be superior competitors, thus rescuing genetic types that would otherwise have been lost.
Concerns about human health focus mainly on consumption of food produced from cloned animals. After years of study, the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority concluded that consumption of meat or milk from cloned animals poses no public health risk. Therefore, remaining concerns about consumption of food from cloned animals is likely based more on principle than on actual potential for harm. Because cloning is used to produce transgenic or gene-edited animals, many perceived concerns regarding cloning are actually concerns about these genetically altered animals, which present a completely different set of potential hazards to animal and human health and the environment. In the EU, although the lack of evidence of a human health risk is recognized, marketing food from clones requires authorization. There are calls for EU rules to prohibit cloning for farming purposes and to ban the marketing of food from clones.
A key ethical question regarding the principle of producing animals by cloning is whether this technique is violating some moral prohibition, ie, that people are "playing God" by producing embryos without using fertilization. Similar questions have arisen with each new reproductive technique that has been developed; however, many people feel that cloning is a special case. This general moral aversion of the public to the concept of cloning is enhanced by the portrayal of cloning as a malevolent force in science fiction books and films.
Counter-arguments to these moral concerns are that cloning occurs in nature in the form of identical twins; that people have been producing plants and animals by "unnatural" means from the first time they planted a seed in a new area or bred a cow to a selected bull, and that this is simply a new development in the same line. Embryonic cloning was being performed for more than 10 years before the birth of Dolly with essentially no public attention, and even the birth of two lambs cloned from cultured cells of embryonic origin, announced a year before Dolly, had no public impact. Thus, it appears that the main moral issue of public concern is not the production of embryos without fertilization, but the production of embryos from cells of an existing, known animal.
Arguments against cloning of companion animals have focused on the cost of producing a clone—tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars—when millions of unwanted dogs and cats are killed each year. However, people currently buy purebred dogs and cats for thousands of dollars when they could get animals for no or low cost. American culture supports the concept that people can spend their own money on whatever they wish.
A related argument is that cloning turns animals into a commodity or an object, rather than a sentient being, and that producing an animal in this way shows a lack of respect for the animal as an individual. However, animals have been bought and sold since they were domesticated; currently semen and embryos are frozen, shipped across the country, and used to produce desired young. Cloning does not seem to offer any unique distinction in this area.
Commercialization of cloning brings with it the possibility of fraud and of preying on the emotions of bereaved pet owners. Cloning companies should state clearly that the technique will produce another individual with the same genetics as the original animal; it does not "resurrect" an animal or create an animal identical to the donor (eg, with the same coat pattern or personality). The best simile to draw is to that of an identical twin born later in time; just as with naturally occurring identical twins, they will be very similar but also different in many ways.


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Our burning passion for fishing has helped us produce lures that are second to none. No expense has been spared in the build quality or parts used. We don't cut corners ever in our production methods and import our swivels directly from the Owner factory along with top quality holographic stickers, paints, and phosphor also from Japan. We are constantly working on developing new designs and products that produce results for our customers.
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View your shopping basket or browse other items.


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New great photos of naked female athletes – ESPN Body Issue 2015.
Natalie Coughlin, Swimmer. Sadena Parks, Golfer. Paige Selenski, Hockey. Aly Raisman, Gymnast. Khatuna Lorig, Archer. Leticia Bufoni, Skater. Amanda Bingson, Track & Field hammer thrower. Chantae McMillan, Heptathlete. Gabrielle Reece, Volleyball. Ali Krieger, Soccer. Dallas Friday, Wakeboarder. Brittney Yevette Griner, Basketballer.
See also
#NakedAthletes #Naked #Nude #icloudleaked #ESPN


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Sharing Content Areas
Sharing a Content Area is easy! First, click on the "Advanced" button at the top of any LiveEdit Area:
The Shared Content window will open. By default the Shared Content drop-down field is set to "No." If you change the value to "Yes," the content becomes
sharable and two more fields will appear:
- Share Label: This is the title for the content that will appear to those with whom you have shared the content. Be descriptive! if you're setting up multiple shared content areas, develop a consistent and repeatable naming convention so that you can differntiate one piece of shared content from another.
- Share Key: This is the special key that allows you to embed Shared Content within an Aurora template.
Authorizing An Aurora Site To Use Your Content
Before another Aurora site can use your content, you must authorize them.
- Click on More > Dashboard
- From the Dashboard, choose SharedContent
- In the Overview tab, copy the Share Token. Send this Share Token to the administrator of the site that will use your content. They will need to enter this into their Get Authorized tab.
- You can see a list of sites that have used your Share Token in the Content > Authorized Sites tab.
If you need to remove access from a site, simply click the Deauthorize link.
Accessing Shared Content
To access Shared Content, you will need a Share Token from another Aurora website. Enter the Shared Token into the Shared Content Service.
- Click on More > Dashboard
- From the Dashboard, choose SharedContent
- In the Get Authorized Tab, enter your Share Token and click "Get Authorized."
Using An Aurora Template
Users experienced with HTML can place shared content on a Page Template. By placing this code in a template, it will appear on every page that uses this template!
Before you begin, you will need a Share Key for a specific piece of Shared Content.
- Go to a page that uses a template on which you would like to place Shared Content.
- Choose the Design button.
- On the right-hand side of the window, choose the Advanced Editor link.
- You are now editing the template used by your page. Place the following code in the place you want the content to appear, where "VALUE" is the Share Key for the content you want to place.
{sharedcontent share_key="VALUE"}
Using the Content Element
- Go to the page where you would like to place the Shared Content.
- Click on the Edit button.
- Drag the Shared Content Element icon to a Content Area.
- In the Shared Content window that appears, select the site from which you want to share content.
- In the Shared Content pull-down menu, select the content you want to place.
- Click on the Save button. The Shared Content will now appear on your page!
Note: Elements associated with a LiveEdit integrated partner such as MINDBODY or Icon Systems, will not render as Shared Content even if they are in a Content Area that is being shared.
Shared Content Tab
If you have connected with another Aurora Site, and Shared Content is available, you can select it from the Shared Content tab.
- Select the site whose content you would like to use.
- Choose a piece of Shared Content that this site has allowed you to use.
- Save, and the shared content will appear on your site!
Advanced Tab
Display: This pull-down menu determines the devices upon which the shared content will display.
- All Devices: Displays your content on full and mobile versions of the website.
- Full Version: Prevents the content from displaying on mobile versions of the website.
- Mobile Version: Prevents the content from displaying on full versions of the website.
- Align: Determines how the content is aligned within its content area: left, center, or right.
- Class: Assigns a cascading style sheet (CSS) class to the Shared Content Element. Using an assigned CSS class provides you with greater control over how the element displays.
- Title: The title, more commonly known as a tool tip, is text that appears when you hover over the element. You can place instructions or other helpful content in this field.
- Cache for: To speed the time in which it takes your website to load, some elements can be cached. This means the server that stores your website will keep a copy of the content for a set amount of time before it checks for changes.


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By American Medical Association
Optimized for medical necessity and reimbursement understanding, this all-in-one resource focuses on the most important CPT® and ICD-10-CM codes for ophthalmology, plus medicine and ancillary services codes chosen by experts who have taken into consideration utilization, denial risk and complexity. CPT® Coding Essentials optimizes both CPT® and ICD-10 code selection with helpful CPT®-to-ICD crosswalks and detailed explanations of anatomy, physiology, and documentation. Other than the AMA CPT® Professional Edition codebook, this is the only book in the market with verbatim CPT® Editorial Panel–approved guidelines and parenthetical information specific to ophthalmology. This is the ideal daily companion featuring useful, definitive specialty-specific coding information beyond what is normally provided in procedures/services codebooks. Ophthalmology coding and billing knowledge available in a single volume, conveniently superseding the need for multiple resources or years of experience. FEATURES AND BENEFITS
- A subset of specialty-specific CPT® codes chosen by experts based on utilization, denial risk and complexity
- Official AMA coding guidelines pertinent to the specialty and not available in any other specialty codebooks in the market
- Official code-specific CPT® parenthetical instructions
- Plain English descriptors clarify the details of procedures/services represented by the CPT® code
- CPT® Assistant citations
- Procedural illustrations
- Crosswalks from CPT® to ICD-10-CM
- National Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits to identify bundled and separately billable codes
- CMS Pub 100 billing guidance citations
- Facility and non-facility relative value units (RVUs), including global surgery days, practice/ malpractice expenses and those modifiers that can affect payments for CPT codes
- Additional chapters on terminology and anatomy, HCPCS Level II codes, CPT® modifiers and ICD-10-CM coding and documentation practices
- Appendixes offering correct coding principles, NCCI Edits Table, clinical documentation checklists for common diagnoses/conditions using ICD-10-CM categories/codes and evaluation and management (E/M) documentation guidelines
- Call outs regarding additional information available in the CPT® QuickRef app (requires in-app purchases)
Product Details
- Publisher : Amer Medical Assn; 1st edition (January 1, 2022)
- Language : English
- Spiral-bound : 900 pages
- eText ISBN: 9781640161511


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Boxfish TV Guide from Boxfish is free at Google Play.
Here's an app that re-invents the TV guide — yet is about as far from the newspaper TV listings of old as you can get. Boxfish shows what's trending on TV by indexing every spoken word on TV — live. In theory, this lets you see trends in events, news and sports.
The idea behind the app is that you should be able to find out what's happening on television live and then choose what to watch rather than guessing or working off a classic TV guide grid.
It's an important app because it brings an almost Twitter-like urgency to television watching, which is something we've not see before.
The Boxfish app consists of a classic guide, but you can create favorites, and there's also a remote control for Google TV. The most interesting elements, however, are Trending and Search.
Cable or Satellite
I had mixed results, which I'm going to suggest are teething problems caused by an overly ambitious launch. This is a large project, and Boxfish would have been smart to have made sure it could handle the number of local TV stations.
Still, they're on to something, and I can see why the enthusiasm could have gotten them carried away. If it works as they say it does, it changes everything.
Firstly, despite what Boxfish says, it doesn't appear to function with plain-old local over-the-air broadcast television as a source, so you'll have to pretend to have a cable or satellite television setup to play with Boxfish.
However, Boxfish does appear to do what it says it does.
I performed my testing a few hours after the devastating mile-wide tornado had just ripped through Moore, Okla., by placing a search term alert for the word "Oklahoma."
As expected, Boxfish correctly indicated that live mentions of the word were appearing on MSNBC, the Weather Channel and CNN.
Live Search
I was especially interested, however, to see how fast Boxfish would pick up mentions as the late afternoon news shows came on air — things could get busy as the first batch came on at four o'clock.
My test was the early news show on KABC in Los Angeles. As you might expect, KABC mentioned Oklahoma early in the first minute. I had to use the Time Warner cable stream, rather than over-the-air.
Boxfish was spot-on, though, and alerted me of the mention well before the first minute ended. Not immediate, but within seconds. A slew of outlets followed. Well done, Boxfish.
TV Wall
The TV wall worked well with news too. Nine still screenshots captured periodically from the major news channels are represented on a tiled wall.
As the Oklahoma tragedy unfolded, I could see the devastation on a half-dozen of the tablet-displayed tiles at one time, complete with red banners and serious-looking anchors.
With one glance you could see the current top story: the Moore tornado.
I can see that there would be the same benefit for the Boxfish Sports TV wall in that you should be able to see which games have started, are on commercial break, and so on. Maybe afternoon soap fans could use a wall too?
Boxfish needs to work out its issues, which are almost irrelevant and make me feel nit-picky, because this idea is an important second-screen concept.
Boxfish is right. Why use classic channel lineup-type listings ever again? In the days of time-shifted, on-demand drama and soaps, we logically search for programs now by name, not time of day; then why not search news shows by trending topic if you can?
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Please send your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Android app review.