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This article is more than 1 year old
UK insurer hit with biggest ever data loss fine
£2.3m for losing customer records
Zurich Insurance must pay an enormous £2.3m fine for losing thousands of British people's personal data.
The fine was imposed not by the Information Commissioner's Office but by the Financial Services Authority.
Zurich Insurance lost 46,000 customer records including some bank details when a tape back-up went missing between two sites in South Africa. Even worse, it took a year for Zurich UK to hear about the loss.
The FSA said it found no evidence that the data had been misused or compromised, but it was clear that Zurich had no effective data protection systems in place or systems to manage the risks to "the security of customer data resulting from the outsourcing arrangement".
The FSA said it had knocked a third off the fine because Zurich agreed to pay at an early stage - the company would have had to pay £3.25m instead of £2.275m.
The FSA also holds the record for the previous largest data loss fine when it fined various HSBC tentacles £2m for losing data.
Back in 2007 it also hit Nationwide with a £998,000 slap.
The ICO got the power to impose fines in April but has yet to use them. Until that point the ICO could take an offender to court in order to get a fine imposed - a maximum of £5,000 in a magistrate's court or an unlimited amount in the Crown Court.
The ICO did get Zurich Insurance to promise not to do it again and to use encryption when shifting tapes around in the future.
The lost tape included data on half a million South African clients of Zurich, and 40,000 from Botswana.
FSA statement is here. ®


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You want your SMTP server to relay mail from arbitrary places, without creating an open relay.
Use SMTP authentication. To set up the server:
Find this line in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc:
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
and change it to:
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')
The default setting restricts sendmail to accepting connections only from the same host, for security; now it will accept connections from elsewhere.
Make sure this line in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc appears uncommented (i.e., it is not preceded by the comment symbol dnl):
If you have changed /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, rebuild your sendmail configuration file[3] and restart sendmail.
[3] You'll need the RPM package sendmail-cf installed to do this. Note also that some Linux distributions put sendmail.cf in the /etc/mail directory.
Rebuild the configuration:
# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf
Restart sendmail:
# /etc/init.d/sendmail restart
Establish an account for SMTP authentication, say, with username mailman:
# /usr/sbin/saslpasswd -c mailman Password: ******** Again (for verification): ********
Your mail server should now be ready to do SMTP authentication. To set up the email client:
Configure your mail client to use SMTP authentication for outbound email, using either the DIGEST-MD5 (preferred) or CRAM-MD5 authentication types.
Your client might also have an option nearby for a "secure connection" using SSL. Do not turn it on; that is a separate feature.
Try sending a test message via relay: address it to a domain considered non-local to your server. Instead of replying with a "relay denied" error (which you should have gotten previous to this setup), you should be prompted for a username and password. Use the mailman account you established previously. The mail message should get sent.
An SMTP server accepts Internet email. There are two kinds of email messages it may receive:
Intended to be delivered to a local user on that host. This mail usually arrives from other mail servers.
Intended to be forwarded to another host for delivery. This mail usually comes from email programs, such as Pine and Ximian Evolution, configured to use your SMTP server to send mail.
A mail server that forwards non-local mail is called a relay. Normally, you'll want your SMTP server to accept local mail from anywhere, but restrict who may use your server as a relay for non-local mail. If you don't restrict it, your SMTP server is called an open relay. Open relays invite trouble: spammers seek them out as convenient drop-off points; your machine could be co-opted to send unwanted email to thousands of people. Say goodbye to your good Internet karma... and you will shortly find your mail server blacklisted by spam-control services, and hence useless. In fact, you might come home one day to find your ISP has shut down your Net access, due to complaints of mail abuse! You really don't want an open relay.
ISP mail servers normally accept relay mail only from addresses on their network, restricting them to use by their customers. This makes good business sense, but is inconvenient for mobile users who connect to various ISPs for Net access at different times. It's a pain to keep switching email program settings to use the different required relays (or even to find out what they are).
Our recipe demonstrates how to set up your SMTP server to get around this inconvenience, by requiring authentication before relaying mail. Thus, a single SMTP server can accept non-local mail no matter where the client is connected, while still avoiding an open relay. One caveat: the email clients must support SMTP authentication, as do Evolution, Pine, the Mail program of Macintosh OS X, and others.
Our recipe depends on two lines in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc. The first, once you disable it, allows sendmail to accept mail from other hosts; by default, it only listens on the network loopback interface and accepts mail only from local processes. The second line, once enabled, tells sendmail which authentication mechanisms to accept as trusted: that is, if a client authenticates using one of these methods, it will be allowed to relay mail.
When you send your test message, if your mail client claims the server does not support SMTP authentication, try this on the server:
# sendmail -O LogLevel=14 -bs -Am EHLO foo QUIT # tail /var/log/maillog
and look for any enlightening error messages.
This configuration by itself does not secure the entire SMTP session, which is still a plaintext TCP connection. So don't use simple password authentication, as your passwords can then be stolen by network eavesdropping. By default, sendmail accepts only the DIGEST-MD5 and CRAM-MD5 authentication methods, which do not send the password in plaintext.
It is also possible to configure sendmail to use SSL to protect the entire SMTP session. If you understand the security properties and limitations of the authentication mechanisms mentioned above, and consider them inadequate for your application, this might be a necessary step to take. However, don't do it out of some notion to "protect" the content of your email. Unless you have a closed system, your email will be further relayed across other networks on the way to its destination, so securing this one hop is of little value. For more security, use an end-to-end approach, encrypting messages with GnuPG, PGP, or S/MIME (see [Recipe 8.1] through [Recipe 8.8]).
Learn more about SMTP authentication at ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2554.txt, and sendmail's particular implementation at http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/auth.html. The SASL RFC is at ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2222.txt.

subset: commoncrawl


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Chris Christie to Endorse GOP Senate Nominee
Gov. Chris Christie says he anticipates endorsing the Republican candidate in the special U.S. Senate election being staged in October.
Christie said Wednesday that he will support either Republican who wins an Aug. 13 primary. The GOP race is between former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan and Piscataway physician Alieta Eck.
Christie will offer the primary winner his help in campaigning. But how much help he gives will depend on his own race -- Christie is seeking a second term in November.
The Republican candidate will vie to serve the last 15 months of the term of Frank Lautenberg, who died in June.
Four Democrats are running in the primary, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver. Representatives Frank Pallone and Rush Holt are also seeking the nomination.
(Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Character Designer
Both of us were supposed to demonstrate what we do in front of live cameras. The only problem was that there was only one drawing table, and somehow I was signed up to do a digital demo. That would have been a laugh.
So I asked John if he would take the drawing table and let me set up alongside him and draw him at work.
It was a real pleasure to watch John draw. He was completely absorbed in the world of his imagination. He drew figure after figure cascading from the page, just rolling straight out of his head, full of action and expression.
Thanks, John, and thanks to everyone who hung out with us and asked great questions while we drew pictures.
If you're interested in animation, character design, storyboarding, or concept art, I recommend this expo. It's a relatively small gathering, but all the insiders from the industry are here. It's a great place to meet like-minded people.
By the way, I've met current and former students here from a lot of the art schools I've visited recently: SJSU, LAAFA, CSUF, LCAD, ACCD, A.of A.SF, CCAD, IMC, RIT, RMCAD, Art Institute, Watts, Korpus, 3Kicks, Ringling, Otis, CalArts, and Hartford. (Links take you to my blog posts about those visits.) A shout-out to the students back at those schools: you'll be creating the next great animated films.
For those here at CTN, I'll be doing a signing today at noon. And I'll be on a creature design panel at 2:30 with William Stout, Terryl Whitlatch, Greg Baldwin and Dave Thomas from Creature Box, and Sue Nichols.
John Nevarez's blog
Interview with John on Character Design
12 comments:
- Andrey Koval said...
fun :)
- November 20, 2011 at 2:03 PM
- Aaron said...
Sounds like it was a blast, maybe I will try to make it out next year, Burbank is a long way from Virginia, (not that that is an excuse, it's just as far from New York). Johns work definitely captures that wonderful movement Disney is known for. As much as I love Pixar and the like, I really miss the high quality hand-drawn movies Disney used to do.
- November 20, 2011 at 3:27 PM
- Aaron said...
I also thought I'd post a link, reading about John's work reminded me of an acquaintance of mine, named Saul Blinkoff, who worked on Kronk's New Groove. His website has a lot of nice animation work and clips he's done. It's http://saulblinkoff.com
- November 20, 2011 at 3:33 PM
- arturoquimico said...
James... First of all thanks for a great blog where all the art "happenings" are communicated! I visit a portrait studio once weekly with a mix of hobbyists, retires, and recent art school grads... everyone complains about there being no market... can't make money, etc. I just tell them if they are really serious... go on Gurney Journey blogspot... he knows where it's happening...
- November 20, 2011 at 6:30 PM
- Aaron said...
Art, I can say that I do know how some of them feel, I have been trying to move into full-time illustration since July, and so far zero calls, e-mails, or hints of interest. I'm keeping the faith but it does seem awfully thin, and like you said finding a blog you like, networking, etc. that's a great help. I planned on going to Illuxcon this year and ended up sick, so it's on my list for next year.
- November 20, 2011 at 10:19 PM
- Tom Hart said...
Another really intersting post. If only I could have looked over both of your shoulders!
I'm familiar with the practice of using two pencil colors, espcially in animation figure design, but I'm not sure exactly why it's done, and that makes me wonder about the use of same in John's drawings. James, can you shed any light on that? Thanks! - November 21, 2011 at 9:03 AM
- James Gurney said...
Great question, Tom. I'm sure some animators can shed further light on this, but basically, animators like to use the Col-Erase erasable blue or red pencils to rough out poses, and then refine the lines with a black pencil. That way they can stay loose and experimental while starting the drawing.
Then in the tracing and cleanup stages, traditionally done by other people, only the important lines register. I used to use those blue pencils in pre-digital graphics because they were invisible to the copy camera. - November 21, 2011 at 11:08 AM
- Tom Hart said...
Thanks James. That makes perfect sense. I've often thought that practice might be helpful in my regular (or irregular) figure drawing practice...or maybe I just want to pretend to be an animator :^)...
John's blog is very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing that. - November 21, 2011 at 11:20 AM
- Nam Nguyen said...
Thank you James for coming to CTN this weekend. It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for signing my book. I also followed up on your recommendation on getting Rockwell on Rockwell. I found it at the local library and I'm reading through it. It's surprising how similar his techniques are part of your recommendations in Imaginative Realism.
- November 22, 2011 at 1:34 AM
- Roca said...
I agree! Thank you so much for coming to CTN! It was a pleasure to meet you, and especially to make all of my art friends jealous. :D Here is the cartoonist I mentioned that sketched the New York Marathon. There are several news articles on it also which you can google. http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/new-york-city-marathon/
Thanks again! I hope to meet you again sometime!
-Meredith Randazzo - November 22, 2011 at 10:34 AM
- Chris Oatley said...
JG! I never got a chance to meet you at CTNX and that is my only regret from the weekend! GAH! I had a booth of my own and it was just nutty - and awesome.
John Nevarez and I worked together about 6 or so years ago at DTS. He actually works at Pixar now. He is one of the most talented artists and one of the nicest guys I have ever met in my life.
And yes, actual non-photo blue pencils are like the vampires of drawing tools - they don't show up on camera. But as time goes by and technology advances that's less and less consistent - non-photo blue pencils show up lots of places where they previously didn't.
As a side note, vampires seem to have evolved in a similar way. Maybe even more so. Seems like any time anybody points a camera anything these days it ends up being a vampire. ...maybe now that they've found a way to show up on camera they're making up for lost time?
And a lot of artists in the animation industry (at least a lot of the ones I know) still use the non-photo blue pencils - not for the camera-proof bit but because it's old school and awesome. ...and also, it's just a light color. - November 22, 2011 at 6:31 PM
- admin said...
Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us at CTNx. It was a pleasure having you.
- November 26, 2011 at 1:27 AM


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Apple inadvertently teases iCloud.com banner notifications, pings your browser iOS 5-style
Apple already made clear that it was expanding iOS 5-like notifications to the desktop with OS X Mountain Lion, but it now looks as though that's extending to your web browser, too. Some visitors to iCloud.com have reported seeing notifications show at the top of the page that were both based on iOS' look and which were clearly not ready for prime time -- not unless Default Title for English is a new iCloud feature, at least. There's no indication of how advanced notifications might become in Apple's web portal, or if they'll transition from development cocoon to public butterfly at all. In the meantime, though, keep an eye on the top of your browser and let us know if you see anything leap out in the near future.


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Concluding our week of Radiohead-related content, here's another first-hand account of touring with the band, this time from Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier.
Somehow I'd been convinced by people who don't know Radiohead that they'd be pretentious and stand-offish. We arrived for soundcheck the first day in Berkeley, and Colin Greenwood walked up with a big smile and apologised for missing our last show at some hole in the wall in Oxford. I was like, 'uh, this is not what I was expecting'. It was like we were old buddies. He wanted to take pictures with us, and next thing I know our faces are on DeadAirSpace!
The whole tour was like that. They each went out of their way to make you feel at home. And such jokers, I mean you couldn't get them to be serious if you tried! In L.A. our dressing rooms were particularly far apart, but Phil made a special trip down to the basement to deliver us some cupcakes. When Thom thanked Deerhoof on stage, Colin would always start jumping around in an imitation of Satomi [Matsuzaki, Deerhoof vocalist]'s dancing.
In San Diego, just as we were moaning about how pathetic our tiny and broken setup looked in front of theirs (which by the way is only half of it - they had duplicates of everything behind the stage in case something broke), Ed O'Brien walked up and asked how we got our guitar tone, because he wanted to steal it!
In Amsterdam I noticed Jonny quizzing the lighting designer during our soundcheck, and later during our show I noticed the lights were going crazy with all manner of strobes and nonsense. Yet everything was perfectly timed to our music. It was Jonny back there in a hoodie secretly doing our light show!
In Dublin we had a day off and decided to book our own Deerhoof club show. After soundcheck we happened upon this vegan restaurant, and who was sitting there but Jonny and Thom, who invited us to join them. Radiohead's Irish tour manager had drafted Jonny in to play a traditional Irish music concert at some pub, and in turn Jonny had drafted Thom in to watch it. When we mentioned that we had a show tonight too, Thom turned to Jonny and said that's it, he's going to ours instead.
I figured he was just pulling everyone's leg, since tonight was his only chance to not hear Deerhoof. But then as I was coming off the stage after we played, someone in the audience patted me on the back and it was him. And he was almost as sweaty as I was. Turned out he was there making a scene with his nutty dancing. After watching us from the side of the stage so many times, he was the only one who could follow our songs!
There were a lot of great memories and it was hard to say goodbye. Perhaps one of the best impressions was of Radiohead's crew, the likes of which I had never seen in years of touring. They had no reason to take care of Deerhoof but they did. Every day they'd be lending their expertise and moral support, not to mention their tools. Jim Warren, their genius sound engineer since the early 90s, even did our mix for the Europe leg since he already knew all our songs and we couldn't afford to bring our own guy. Anybody can put on a happy face when needed, but in a way it was their crew, behind the scenes, that for me really showed what Radiohead was made of.


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Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,
This is a bit unconventional, but I have launched a front-port campaign to be nominated Public Printer of the United States. I'm inspired by Gus Geigengack, a working printer who convinced FDR to name him to the post.
I am thrilled to have such a distinguished committee backing my efforts, including the Honorable Cory Doctorow and the Honorable Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing.
To endorse my nomination, simply comment on any blog post (like this one!), tweet me, or send me email. The endorsements will be harvested, set into a book, and released as a free PDF file with paper copies dispatched to the White House Office of Personnel.
Thank you for your support.


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Michel Foucault was born in Poitiers, France, on October 15, 1926. From the 1970's on, Foucault was very active politically. He was a founder of the 'Groupe d'information sur les prisons' and often protested on behalf of homosexuals and other marginalized groups. An early victim of AIDS, Foucault died in Paris on June 25, 1984. In addition to works published during his lifetime, his lectures at the Collège de France, published posthumously, contain important elucidations and extensions of his ideas.
Foucault's first major work was: 'The History of Madness in the Classical Age' (1961). This book originated in Foucault's academic study of psychology and his work in a Parisian mental hospital. A study of the emergence of the modern concept of 'mental illness' in Europe, 'The History of Madness' is formed from both Foucault's extensive archival work and his intense anger at what he saw as the moral hypocrisy of modern psychiatry.
According to Foucault, the new idea that the mad were merely sick ("mentally" ill) and in need of medical treatment was not at all a clear improvement on earlier conceptions (e.g., the Renaissance idea that the mad were in contact with the mysterious forces of cosmic tragedy or the C17th-C18th view of madness as a renouncing of reason).
Moreover, he argued that the alleged scientific neutrality of modern medical treatments of insanity is in fact a cover for controlling challenges to a conventional bourgeois morality. In short, Foucault argued that what was presented as an objective, incontrovertible scientific discovery (that madness is mental illness) was in fact the product of eminently questionable social and ethical commitments.
'In Discipline and Punish' (1975) Foucault studied development of the "gentler" modern way of imprisoning criminals rather than torturing or killing them.
While recognizing the element of genuinely enlightened reform, Foucault particularly emphasizes how such reform also becomes a vehicle of more effective control: "to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better".
He further argues that the new mode of punishment becomes the model for control of an entire society, with factories, hospitals, and schools modelled on the modern prison.
To a great extent, control over people (power) can be achieved merely by observing them. So, for example, the tiered row of seats in a stadium not only makes it easy for spectators to see but also for guards or security cameras to scan the audience.
The examination (for example, of students in schools, of patients in hospitals) is a method of control that combines hierarchical observation with normalizing judgment.
It is a prime example of what Foucault calls power/knowledge, since it combines into a unified whole "the deployment of force and the establishment of truth".
It both elicits the truth about those who undergo the examination (tells what they know or what is the state of their health) and controls their behaviour (by forcing them to study or directing them to a course of treatment).
Bentham's Panopticon is, for Foucault, an ideal architectural model of modern disciplinary power. It is a design for a prison, built so that each inmate is separated from and invisible to all the others (in separate "cells") and each inmate is always visible to a monitor situated in a central tower.
Monitors will not in fact always see each inmate; the point is that they could at any time. Since inmates never know whether they are being observed, they must act as if they are always objects of observation.
As a result, control is achieved more by the internal monitoring of those controlled than by heavy physical constraints.
Courtesy of Lee Bryant, Director of Sixth Form, Anglo-European School, Ingatestone, Essex


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Iron Empires, Iron Fists, Iron Domes By Thomas L. Friedman
Countries did not correspond to the ethnographic map. So Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Druze, Turkmen, Kurds and Jews found themselves trapped together inside national boundaries that were drawn to suit the interests of the British and French.
I went to synagogue on Saturday not far from the Syrian border in Antakya, Turkey. It's been on my mind ever since.
Antakya is home to a tiny Jewish community, which still gathers for holidays at the little Sephardic synagogue. It is also famous for its mosaic of mosques and Orthodox, Catholic, Armenian and Protestant churches. How could it be that I could go to synagogue in Turkey on Saturday while on Friday, just across the Orontes River in Syria, I had visited with Sunni Free Syrian Army rebels embroiled in a civil war in which Syrian Alawites and Sunnis are killing each other on the basis of their ID cards, Kurds are creating their own enclave, Christians are hiding and the Jews are long gone?
What is this telling us? For me, it raises the question of whether there are just three governing options in the Middle East today: Iron Empires, Iron Fists or Iron Domes?
The reason that majorities and minorities co-existed relatively harmoniously for some 400 years when the Arab world was ruled by the Turkish Ottomans from Istanbul was because the Sunni Ottomans, with their Iron Empire, monopolized politics. While there were exceptions, generally speaking the Ottomans and their local representatives were in charge in cities like Damascus, Antakya and Baghdad. Minorities, like Alawites, Shiites, Christians and Jews, though second-class citizens, did not have to worry that they'd be harmed if they did not rule. The Ottomans had a live-and-let-live mentality toward their subjects.
When Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire in the Arab East, they forged the various Ottoman provinces into states — with names like Iraq, Jordan and Syria — that did not correspond to the ethnographic map. So Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Druze, Turkmen, Kurds and Jews found themselves trapped together inside national boundaries that were drawn to suit the interests of the British and French. Those colonial powers kept everyone in check. But once they withdrew, and these countries became independent, the contests for power began, and minorities were exposed. Finally, in the late 1960s and 1970s, we saw the emergence of a class of Arab dictators and monarchs who perfected Iron Fists (and multiple intelligence agencies) to decisively seize power for their sect or tribe — and they ruled over all the other communities by force.
In Syria, under the Assad family's iron fist, the Alawite minority came to rule over a Sunni majority, and in Iraq, under Saddam's iron fist, a Sunni minority came to rule over a Shiite majority. But these countries never tried to build real "citizens" who could share and peacefully rotate in power. So what you are seeing today in the Arab awakening countries — Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen — is what happens when there is no Iron Empire and the people rise up against the iron-fisted dictators. You are seeing ongoing contests for power — until and unless someone can forge a social contract for how communities can share power.
Israelis have responded to the collapse of Arab iron fists around them — including the rise of militias with missiles in Lebanon and Gaza — with a third model. It is the wall Israel built around itself to seal off the West Bank coupled with its Iron Dome antimissile system. The two have been phenomenally successful — but at a price. The wall plus the dome are enabling Israel's leaders to abdicate their responsibility for thinking creatively about a resolution of its own majority-minority problem with the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
I am stunned at what I see here politically. On the right, in the Likud Party, the old leadership that was at least connected with the world, spoke English and respected Israel's Supreme Court, is being swept aside in the latest primary by a rising group of far-right settler-activists who are convinced — thanks, in part, to the wall and dome — that Palestinians are no threat anymore and that no one can roll back the 350,000 Jews living in the West Bank. The far-right group running Israel today is so arrogant, and so indifferent to U.S. concerns, that it announced plans to build a huge block of settlements in the heart of the West Bank — in retaliation for the U.N. vote giving Palestinians observer status — even though the U.S. did everything possible to block that vote and the settlements would sever any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, with a few exceptions, the dome and wall have so insulated the Israeli left and center from the effects of the Israeli occupation that their main candidates for the Jan. 22 elections — including those from Yitzhak Rabin's old Labor Party — are not even offering peace ideas but simply conceding the right's dominance on that issue and focusing on bringing down housing prices and school class sizes. One settler leader told me the biggest problem in the West Bank today is "traffic jams."
I am glad that the wall and the Iron Dome are sheltering Israelis from enemies who wish to do them ill, but I fear the wall and the Iron Dome are also blinding them from truths they still badly need to face.


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NEW YORK -- A new storm was expected to hit the New York-New Jersey region still shivering and cleaning up after last week's Superstorm Sandy, bringing the threat of 55 mph (89 kph) gusts and more beach erosion, flooding and rain by Wednesday.
Temperatures dipped toward freezing early Monday, and tens of thousands of people without power along the ravaged Atlantic coastline faced the growing certainly that they would have to find somewhere else to stay. Especially hard hit were the thousands in public housing, who often have no place to go and barricade themselves in darkened apartments for the 12 hours of night.
"Nights are the worst because you feel like you're outside when you're inside," said Genice Josey, a Far Rockaway resident who sleeps under three blankets and wears long johns under her pajamas. "You shiver yourself to sleep."
As more than a million students joined the morning rush hour Monday for the first time since the storm, commuters continued to wait — and sometimes sleep — in their cars in long lines for gas. Other commuters packed the limited-service Long Island trains so tightly that some people couldn't get on.
"We're a gallon away from turning into a Third World country," New York commuter Scott Sire said Monday.
And with the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, New York City's mayor was asked if the city would be ready for it. "I have absolutely no idea," Michael Bloomberg said.
The new storm worried the large swaths of the region that were returning to something resembling normal.
"Prepare for more outages," said National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina. "Stay indoors. Stock up again."
Sandy left more than 100 people dead in 10 states. Half a million people in New York state remained without power, and more than 800,000 were without power in New Jersey a week after the storm.
With temperatures sinking into the 30s Fahrenheit (1 to 4 degrees Celsius) overnight, New York City officials handed out blankets and urged victims to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centers.
But government leaders began to wonder where to find housing in the densely developed area around the largest U.S. city for the tens of thousands whose homes could be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
Bloomberg said 30,000 to 40,000 New Yorkers may need to be relocated — a monumental task in a city where housing is scarce and expensive — though he said that number will probably drop to 20,000 within a couple of weeks as power is restored in more places.
"We're not going to let anybody go sleeping in the streets. ... But it's a challenge, and we're working on it," Bloomberg said.
One option is setting up Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer camps of the kind that existed after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, said George W. Contreras, associate director of the emergency and disaster management program at Metropolitan College of New York.
Contreras speculated that large encampments might be set up at a stadium, in a park or in some other open space in the city — something he couldn't recall being done in New York ever before.
"The amount of actual units the city might have in buildings is probably very limited, so I think people will be in FEMA shelters for a while," he said.
In a powerless and heavily flooded Staten Island neighborhood, Sara Zavala sleeps under two blankets and layers of clothing. She has a propane heater but turns it on for only a couple of hours in the morning.
"When I woke up, I was like, 'It's freezing.' And I thought, 'This can't go on too much longer,'" she said Sunday.
Nearly 1 million homes and businesses were still without power in New Jersey, and about 650,000 in New York City, its northern suburbs and Long Island.
Sue Chadwick, who left her Long Island, house ahead of the storm, said Sunday night she and others were told to leave their Extended Stay America hotel rooms in Melville that she had booked through the end of next week — to make room for other storm victims.
Chadwick's own house remained uninhabitable. She found her way to neighboring Vermont to stay with family.
"It's not like I'm there on business and could catch the next plane out," she said. "There are people in worse shape, but I just feel like when people are in these dire circumstances, you don't want to make it worse."
The phone rang unanswered at the hotel Sunday night.


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Jack Davis is, of course, the former Democrat trying to run in NY-26, which is up for a special election this spring (the Republican/Conservative Party candidate, equally of course, is Jane Corwin). Davis, having been completely unable to get any traction in getting elected thus far, has decided to go one step further than such Democratic party luminaries such as Michael McGuinness and Alan Grayson; instead of putting up a phony Tea Party candidate, Davis is running as a phony Tea Party candidate himself. Fortunately, Davis is apparently not particularly bright, because his campaign manager (one Curtis Ellis) is on the record as writing things like this:
The [Tea Partiers] are essentially replaying the '60s protest paradigm. (We're aging boomers ourselves, so we know it when we see it.) They fancy themselves the vanguard of a revolution, when in fact they are typical self-absorbed, privileged children used to having their way — now — and uninhibited about complaining loudly when they don't. It's the same demographic Spiro Agnew called "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."
Spiro. Agnew.
Ellis – who is a progressive and former Talking Points Memo diarist – is now claiming that he's matured since then – ha! Just kidding; he's precisely the same, but it's the Tea Party that's apparently grown up, so now he can deign to use them for the glorious vision of getting a long-time rich guy with a taste for a Congressional seat firmly ensconced in Washington, all for the greater glory of… well, I guess Curtis Ellis. Jack Davis himself is kind of… well, crazy. As in, "Let's bus African-Americans out to the farms to pick crops!" crazy, which is a major reason why Jane Corwin is the official Republican/Conservative, and frankly best, nominee.
And I have to say: in addition to being crazy, Jack Davis is kind of arrogant in his assumption that Tea Partiers are idiotic enough not to notice any of this. In that he is well matched by his campaign manager, I guess.
Moe Lane (crosspost)


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Oppose Notre Dame's Honoring President Obama
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Statement Of: The Officers and Board Members of The Sycamore Trust together with associated Notre Dame Alumni and other members of the Notre Dame Family
Addressed To: Father Jenkins and the University Fellows and Members of the Board
We wish to express our astonished dismay at, and deep disappointment in, the decision to invite President Barack Obama to deliver this year's Commencement Address and to confer upon him an honorary degree.
President Obama's statements and executive and legislative actions identify him as unremittingly hostile to the moral claims of the unborn and accordingly to a central teaching of the Catholic Church. By virtue of his position, he is now the nation's leading champion of virtually unrestricted abortion rights.
Notre Dame is the nation's leading Catholic institution. Its action will be publicized widely by enemies of the Church and by pro-abortion advocates as a sign that the pro-life position is too "inflexible." Notre Dame will be praised by condescending secularists and anti-life advocates for its display of "tolerance." But to those who honor steadfast commitment to principle and respect for the lives of the unborn, the University's action will be seen as the sacrifice of fundamental moral values in an opportunistic grasp for secular acclaim and, perhaps, federal favor.
This is not, we stress, a question of whether to interdict the President of the United States at the gates of the University or of withholding the respect to which he is entitled. It is, rather, a matter of according honor to one whose views on abortion are morally repellant to the Church to which the University claims fealty, to the Church's faithful members, and to countless loyal alumni of the University and others of its extended family.
No matter any disclaimers by the University or what President Obama says, the ineradicable facts that will stamp this occasion are the University's decision to inscribe in the University roll of honorees the name of the most pro-abortion President in the nation's history and its choice of him as the person to speak to the 2009 graduates about the values they should hold dear.
This compromising action gravely diminishes Notre Dame. It profoundly wounds its claim to be a Catholic institution. It strikes with incalculable cost at the pride of its graduates.
We protest.
Sycamore Tust provides a source of information, a means of communication, and a collective voice to Notre Dame alumni and others in the Notre Dame family who are concerned about preserving the Catholic identity of the University.
More at http://www.sycamoretrust.org
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This article is more than 1 year old
NASA wants space washing machine for ISS, Mars bases
'Nauts stinky knickers cram station for months on end
NASA have moved at last to tackle the problem of dirty astronauts by commissioning a microwave with air-jets to clean underwear in space.
There are no washing machines on the International Space Station so grime-encrusted nauts will wear underwear for 3-4 days and other items of clothing for months, before disposing of the dirty laundry by hurling it into the atmosphere to burn up in old Progress cargo capsules, attempting to wash it in a plastic bag or even - yuck - using it to grow plants in.
The costs of sending anything into space - between $5,000 and $10,000 per 500g - limits the amount of clean knickers that can be sent up in the first place.
NASA have selected small disinfectant business UMPQUA to make a prototype of a low-water, low-power washing machine that could enable the laundry to be done 250 miles above the earth's surface - or much further afield, on deep space craft or in bases on the Moon or Mars. The new NASA research contract is to produce:
Flight Hardware for long duration human missions beyond low Earth orbit ... The system is suitable for use in any long term space mission where resupply logistics preclude routine delivery of fresh crew clothing and removal of disposable clothing articles. While the proposed laundry system is microgravity compatible, the system will be completely functional in reduced gravity environments.
The machine proposed by Oregon-based company would use jets of vapour, air and microwave rays to clean clothes. The proposal indicate that it achieves "greatly enhanced softness" over the traditional low-water vacuum pressing methods.
The laundry microwaves could be useful on Earth too the manufacturers suggest, saying they'd work well in isolated military outposts, research stations and on ships.
UMPQUA also have a second potential contract with NASA - for an efficient poo-burner or a Highly Efficient Fecal Waste Incinerator. ®


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The tragic killing of the villagers is likely to complicate US efforts to negotiate future bilateral relations with Afghanistan. It's also a potential stain on Obama's foreign policy record.
The mass slaying of Afghan villagers by a US Army sergeant would be a tragic stain at any time, but it hits the Obama administration at a particularly bad moment.
Not only is the US in delicate negotiations with the Afghan government over the scope of future bilateral relations, but the horrific events risk souring Americans generally on what has been a solid plus for President Obama's reelection bid: foreign policy and national security.
Sunday's shooting spree, in which 16 Afghan civilians – mostly women and children – were hunted down and killed in their homes, is only the latest in a string of incidents involving US soldiers in Afghanistan. The killings, the recent Quran burnings by US soldiers destroying what they thought were subversive materials, and previously the videotaping of US soldiers urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters, are straining relations just as the US is negotiating a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan for a continuing US role after the hand-off of all combat duties.
The Obama administration is trying to complete the planning for the full turnover of responsibilities from NATO to Afghan forces, which is to take place by the end of 2014.
The massacre of the villagers seems likely to place further strain on relations between the US and Afghan militaries, and thus on the crux of Mr. Obama's strategy for a US military drawdown: the training of, and joint operations with, Afghan soldiers, so they can take over combat duties from their American colleagues.
And rising tensions could make Afghanistan a reelection liability by upending what until now has been more or less a pass for Obama. While a majority of Americans have for the past couple of years said the 11-year-old war is not worth the price the country is paying, many Americans have also recently said the president is doing a "good or fair" job of managing the war.
In a TIPP/Monitor poll taken last week, 46 percent of Americans said Obama is doing a "good" job on Afghanistan, a number that hardly changed from February (47 percent) even though the recent poll encompassed the Quran-burning tensions during which a number of US soldiers were attacked and killed by Afghan soldiers.
"The issue of Afghanistan is one of a very few where [Obama] does better than his overall performance rating," says Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP, a unit of Technometrica Market Intelligence in Oradell, NJ.
In the most recent TIPP/Monitor poll, for example, Obama earned an over-all approval rating of 44 percent.
Afghanistan shifted to a better-than-the-overall-rating issue for Obama last June, following the successful strike by special operations forces against Osama bin Laden, Mr. Mayur says, and has remained a bright spot for the president since.
But that could change if the cascade of negative events continues.
Despite a call from the Afghan Taliban for retaliatory acts to avenge the killings, Afghans appeared to remain calm Monday. But some Afghan politicians quickly responded by saying the brutal acts put into deeper doubt any long-term arrangement for the US to retain a counterterrorism role in their country.
In the Afghan parliament Monday, representatives demanded a halt to the ongoing negotiations with the US on a strategic partnership agreement, at least until the US soldier responsible is brought to justice.
"We said to [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, 'If you sign that document you are betraying your country,' " Shikiba Ashimi, a member of parliament from Kandahar Province where the killings occurred, told the Associated Press. "The US should be very careful. It is sabotaging the atmosphere of this strategic partnership."
Both Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called President Karzai Sunday to convey their condolences, but the president refrained from offering Karzai an outright apology, as he did over the Quran burnings. Some Republican leaders had criticized Obama for too quickly apologizing.
Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich lost no time in ramping up the heat on Obama over Afghanistan, saying on Fox News Sunday that the US mission there "may not be doable" and suggesting the country should speed up its troop drawdown. That position stands in stark contrast to Republican hawks and other presidential hopefuls such as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, who on the contrary have criticized Obama for adopting the end-of-2014 handover date.
But renewed calls for ending the war were also coming Monday from outside the Republican Party.
"We need dramatic action to bring this war to an end," says David Cortright, director of policy studies at Notre Dame University's Institute for International Peace Studies. "Suspend combat operations. Intensify negotiations for a political solution. Announce a timetable for withdrawal."
Professor Cortright, author of "Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan," questions whether the "winning of hearts and minds" that is key to winning a counterinsurgency war is "even remotely possible now" in light of recent events. "Why," he adds, "do we continue to put our troops in this impossible situation?"
Other Afghanistan experts, without taking such a firm position, say the weekend's events provide the opportunity for a much-needed reevaluation of a strategy that is clearly in trouble.
The US "needs to look beyond the latest incident" and "to realize that its current strategy is becoming a façade that can only make things worse," says Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Concluding that the time, money, and training manpower simply aren't available for the US and its NATO allies to stick to a strategy of turning over responsibilities to trained and equipped Afghan security forces by 2014, Mr. Cordesman says the US can either deny reality and follow the current course, or shift to something different.
Two options he gives: an "honest exit" under which the US is up-front about the resources available and is realistic – particularly with the Afghans – about what can reasonably be accomplished; or what he calls the "most challenging" alternative, a "real transition" that he says would mean significant spending and involvement until at least 2020.
But neither the current environment, nor the intensifying campaign season, seem conducive to consideration of an even deeper commitment to Afghanistan.
Monitor/TIPP Poll, Sample size = 875 adults nationwide, Conducted 3/4/12 - 3/11/12
Q: I'd like you to rate President Obama's PERFORMANCE SO FAR on handling different issues. We'll use the familiar letter grading system from A through F, where A is Excellent, B is Good, C is Average, D is Poor and F is a failing grade.
How about: ON HANDLING THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN?
15% A=Excellent
30% B=Good
24% C=Average
14% D=Poor
13% F=Unacceptable
3% (Not sure)


text:
This what I'm talkin' 'bout boy (Hey bitch!) Looka here
(This the A ho! This the A ho! Yeah This the A ho!) It's Alabama!
Fuck talkin' get to it boy looka here
Rich Boy really do it boy looka here
We can buy the bar all night looka here
I can show you what a stack like looka here
Boy looka here, boy looka here
Looka here, Looka here
Off top I'mma tell ya this some playa shit
A real nigga here now, better get ya bitch
Yeah, 'cause big pimpin' in the house now
If ya real then you know what I'm talkin' 'bout
Rich Boy, I don't know what these niggas thankin'
Bet a thousand shoot a thousand what you niggas bankin'?
Comin' down like snow in the winter time
I don't know about you but I'm gettin' mine
D-I-P never, cold nigga, hell yeah
Zone 4, gon' pull up in the atl
Gettin' money already know what it is
Huh, don't stop bitch what the business is
Get mo' ass then a lazy boy sofa
Keep my toaster, warm in my holster
See you got ya lil' jewelry but I'm chunked out
All the hatin' playboy, get ya stomped out
[Chorus 2:] x2
Fuck talkin' get to it boy looka here
Rich Boy really do it boy looka here
We can buy the bar all night looka here
I can show you what a stack like looka here
[Verse 2:]
Naw I don't wear tight shirts wit' the cuff links
See them big vs stones make ya eyes blink
Say I talk slow, and I rhyme funny
But I ain't thinkin' 'bout nothin' but the big money
Big cake, big shrimp on a big plate
Nigga so iced out like a snowflake
Don't hate, big crib wit' the big lake
Say she wanna taste, some of that milkshake
Put'cha money where ya ass at and run that
Just gettin' started nigga we done done that
What you know about them folks that was shootin' it off?
While y'all was lyin', runnin' and movin' ya moss
Homeboy we ain't goin' for the okie doke
'Cause we'll pop it off quick wit' the gunsmoke
See what I tote? Keep it in my lap
If these hollow points hit'cha nigga it's a wrap
[Chorus 2:] x2
[Verse 3:]
Yeah I ain'tsta... Don't die naan nigga
Rich Boy, Alabama ex-figure
Stack quicker, drank good hard liquor
Fuck a squad, better have God wit'cha
Cool like a muh'fucka wit' a pimp cup
All my folk gettin' money put'cha rank up
Yeah real deal playa, gon' ball out
Come drank what'cha drank 'til ya fall out
Where my girls at baby, make 'em pay mo'
Gon' show a nigga how you make it shake slow
Yeah, represent tell 'em who ya click
Throw 'em up nigga gon' show 'em who ya wit'
[Chorus 2:] x2


text:
It's clear that all sewing machines are not equal. What is not clear is how to determine which sewing machine is the best.
We worked hard, finding the best way to answer the question of which machine is The Best Sewing Machine.
We went to sewing classes and interviewed instructors and students. We went to Sewing Machine stores and interviewed the store owners, the stores expert sales people, and some of the shoppers.
All of this work led to a huge quantity of, most times, conflicting information. What we got out of all this work is people's opinions of what they thought would be the best sewing machine and why they had arrived at such an opinion.
When we tried to quantify the data collected, it was a mess. Sewing Machines that started out as really great prospects were later dropped because of our various groups conflicting opinions. It looked as if we needed to scrap the entire project and start from a significantly different perspective.
So, We did just that.
This method, we decided, represents the best possible answer to the questions posed about the Best Sewing Machine.
Fortunately, our site has assisted a great many people in the purchase of a sewing machine. We kept meticulous records about the types of machines purchased and what, if anything, the buyers said about the machines they purchased.
We discovered that our site visitors put their money where their mouth is and voted for the best sewing machines by their purchases.
We felt this information would do the best job of ranking the different Brand Names and Models in the order of preference of our shoppers and provide future purchasers a great guideline to compare and make their own purchasing decisions.
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Clicking on the Model Name Link will take you to Our In Depth Review Pages, (We intend to flesh out all of these pages so as to increase, significantly, the information available to you. Clicking on the Grab It At Amazon Link will take you to Amazon's Page for that Model where you can complete your purchase:
Price Range is representative of the Purchase Price obtained by our visitors over the past 18 months. The prices do fluctuate over the year and holidays and special offers that are offered by Amazon from time to time most likely will result in a lower purchase price.
If the Model in the list doesn't have a link, don't worry, we are working on getting a thorough review finished soon.
It is important for you, OUR CUSTOMERS, to know that if you click through from this site to Amazon's pages, and purchase anything, we will most likely earn a fee. This fee is paid from Amazon and does not affect your purchase price. With this fee we are able to provide better sites with significantly greater information value. This, after all, is how we make our living. We thank OUR CUSTOMERS for the confidence they have thus far displayed in us, we intend to earn an ever greater degree of confidence, while providing, WE HOPE, the best possible user experience possible.
Copyright 2016-2017


text:
Updated Sept. 19, 2011 and Feb.14, 2013
Pope Benedict XVI
As the scandal over pedophile priests rocks Roman Catholic dioceses around the globe, a lawsuit filed April 10, 2010 in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee names Pope Benedict XVI as a defendant. And with good cause.
By Don Fulsom
Update: Pope Benedict XVI's startling decision to resign at the end of February 2013 may put him at even greater risk of prosecution. Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson notes that, in retirement, Benedict's absolute immunity from legal action as a head of state vanishes. "There are many victims of priests permitted by (then) Cardinal Ratzinger to stay in holy orders after their propensity to molest was known, and they would like to sue the ex-Pope for damages for negligence," Robertson writes in the British newspaper The Independent.
"If he steps outside the Vatican," Robertson adds, "a court may rule that (the victims) have a case." The legal expert contends Benedict's "command responsibility" goes back to 1981 – when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he took over the Vatican body that punishes errant priests.
Another major critic of Benedict – the first pope to quit the papacy in nearly 600 years – describes the outgoing pontiff's record on sex abuse as "terrible." David Clohessy, executive director of the 12,000-member Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, tells The Guardian: "He knows more about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups than anyone else in the Church, yet he has done precious little to protect children."
Update: The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in The Hague on September 13, 2011, urging the prosecution of Pope Benedict XVI and three Vatican cardinals for abetting and covering up the rape and sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.
A spokesperson at the court said the complaint would be examined "to analyze whether the alleged crimes fall under the court's jurisdiction."
The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed after July 1, 2002, the date the court was created.
The 80-page complaint cited five cases involving priests accused of sexually abusing minors in the United States and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The priests referenced are from the United States, India and Belgium.
Pamela Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said she hoped to persuade the International Criminal Court that the sexual abuse cases are within the court's jurisdiction because they involve crimes that were "systemic and widespread." She said the filing of the complaint was necessary because all the investigations and prosecutions of sexual abuse by priests in various countries had not worked to prevent continuing crimes and cover-ups by the Catholic Church.
In the complaint, two victims are cited who say the priests who abused them were moved by church superiors to other countries and are still in ministry and working with children.
"National jurisdictions can't really get their arms around this," Spees said. "Prosecuting individual instances of child molestation or sexual assault has not gotten at the larger systemic problem here. Accountability is the goal and the International Criminal Court makes the most sense, given that it's a global problem."
Rev. Federico Lombardi, spokesperson for the Vatican, told The New York Times he had no comment about the filing. Legal experts quoted in the newspaper said they doubted the ICC would take up the case.
As the scandal over pedophile priests rocks Roman Catholic dioceses around the globe, a lawsuit filed April 10, 2010 in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee names Pope Benedict XVI as a defendant. In some ways, the suit is reminiscent of the Halloween morning in 1517 when an obscure Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther had the temerity to protest the Vatican's rampant corruption by nailing 95 written complaints to the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral.
The lawsuit had good reason to name the Pope personally. Prior to being elected pope in April of 2005, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had served since 1981 as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a role that placed him in charge of the Vatican's dealings with all priests accused of sexual abuse. As a result, no one in the Catholic Church hierarchy had more influence on how the hundreds, if not thousands, of sexual abuse violations were handled by the Holy See.
In addition to the Pope, the Milwaukee suit names as defendants Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Cardinal Angelo Sodano and the Holy See. Bertone was deputy to Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, at the time of an allegedly inadequate investigation of a Milwaukee priest in the mid-1990s. Cardinal Sodano was the Vatican's secretary of state.
The lawsuit claims that Ratzinger, Bertone and Sodano, now the dean of the College of Cardinals, all knew about the child abuse allegations against the priest, but kept them secret.
The 55-page suit, filed by lawyer Jeff Anderson, asks the church to release all of its files on abuse cases against priests—including the names of the offenders. Those names would be turned over to law enforcement authorities.
The lawsuit blames the 83-year-old pontiff for helping hide a particularly revolting chapter in the widening scandal. It charges that Pope Benedict—while the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—helped cover up the sexual abuse of minors by a Wisconsin priest. That priest, the late Father Lawrence Murphy, admitted molesting at least 200 defenseless children at a school for the deaf in suburban Milwaukee from 1950 to 1974.
The suit also seeks a jury trial. And it requests unspecified monetary damages for an unnamed victim of Murphy. The plaintiff has pledged to donate any monetary award to a fund to be shared by Murphy's victims.
Described by columnist Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic as "an unrepentant multiple rapist of deaf children," Father Murphy preyed on schoolboys on camping trips and in dark dorms—and even in the sanctity of the school's confessional booth.
Anderson, an attorney based in St. Paul, Minn., told the BBC that the Vatican has been negligent. "What we want the Vatican to do is step up to disgorge the secrets that they have in their files." The suit against the Pope claims the Vatican has a secret "centuries-old practice" of ignoring or suppressing abuse charges, and of refusing to cooperate with police.
"Until and unless all of those things are done, there is a grave and serious problem, and all trails and responsibility for that leads to one place, to the Vatican, to the pontiff," Anderson adds.
The Vatican quickly brushed off the suit as a publicity stunt lacking any merit—a suit that merely rehashes theories that have already been rejected by U.S. courts when other plaintiffs have attempted to tie the Vatican to several other priest-pedophilia cases filed in the United States. Attorneys for the Vatican claim that the Pope is immune from arrest or punishment as a head of state because of a Vatican pact with Mussolini.
According to the National Law Journal, Anderson has two ways to get around that defense: "Under a tort exception, he [Anderson] plans to argue that because the Catholic Church allegedly engaged in systematic activity that injured a large number of people in the United States, it subjected itself to the jurisdiction of the United States and can be held liable here. Under a commercial activity exception, he plans to argue that the Catholic Church is a massive business organization, commercially present in the United States, and therefore not immune from litigation."
Jeffrey Lena, a U.S. attorney for the Vatican, said Murphy's victims deserve sympathy—but that the Vatican knew nothing of the crimes until decades later, and isn't responsible for the abuse, according to the Associated Press.
Lena called the Milwaukee suit, "Simply the latest attempt by certain U.S. lawyers to use the judicial process as a tool of media relations." What Lena meant by "certain U.S. lawyers" is not clear.
After nearly two decades of committing sex crimes against deaf boys in Milwaukee, Murphy was finally moved to another diocese in 1974. He was still allowed to serve in the ministry and work with children in another Wisconsin diocese into the early 1990s. There were no further allegations of abuse against him.
The Vatican first learned of Murphy's alleged crimes in a 1995 letter from the unnamed victim in Anderson's suit to then-Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano. The letter alleged that Murphy molested him for a number of years. That letter, and a subsequent one from the victim, went unanswered.
Then, in 1996, the Vatican got yet another serious warning about Murphy, this time from inside the church. Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland himself directly informed Cardinal Ratzinger, in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of the accusations against Murphy concerning the deaf boys. Weakland even specified that Murphy had solicited and performed sex in the confessional—an especially grievous canonical crime.
This type of charge, made by an archbishop, should have led to Murphy's immediate suspension, a thorough review of the charges, and his subsequent defrocking. Civil authorities should have been informed of the findings and Murphy prosecuted as a multiple felon. But none of these things happened. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took no known action against the pedophile priest.
Neither did Cardinal Ratzinger, as the archbishop of Munich in 1980, stand in the way of a Vatican decision to send a separate pedophile priest back to work only days after the priest began therapy for his pedophilia, according to a memo reported in The New York Times. That priest—a German—was later convicted of molesting boys in another parish.
The case of that priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, according to the Times, "has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, as archbishop of that priest's diocese, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children." Instead, Cardinal Ratzinger allowed Hullermann to undergo therapy in Munich and to resume his pastoral duties almost immediately. Hullermann worked with children in Garching.
In 2008 Hullermann was transferred to a pilgrimage church in Bad Tölz, where, until 2010, he was an active priest. Following news reports this year that Hullermann had gone on a camping trip with some youths in Bavaria, the church finally suspended him.
Hullermann was convicted of molesting boys in 1986. He was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence, and the church said he was "forbidden from any work with children.'
Unlike Hullermann, Murphy was never prosecuted … or even defrocked. Court documents suggest that the Vatican refused to discipline the priest because he was a prolific fundraiser.
Murphy died in 1998. He was buried from head to toe in priestly attire. At graveside, a bishop praised the father's good works here on earth.
An outraged Andrew Sullivan observed: "Murphy was buried in full vestments, and his victims never got justice, and the church had more sympathy with an elderly and dying priest than with the raped souls and bodies of countless children."
An advocate for abuse victims, Peter Isely, is equally upset with the church—telling a Milwaukee news conference: "This is the only organization working with children that I know of, on the planet … as a credentialed class (that is) allowed to commit these horrible acts, these crimes against children, and remain in that credentialed class."
The priest pedophilia scandal has engulfed the Catholic Church for years, costing dioceses throughout the Western World millions of dollars in payments to victims. New revelations of priest abuse continue to surface, rocking the very foundations of the 2,000-year-old religion. For the last 30 years, no one more so that Pope Benedict XVI has been at the center of the maelstrom or should feel more responsibility for all the harm its thousands of victims have suffered.
Not dealing with that responsibility has allowed the priest sex-abuse scandal to become the defining issue of the first five years of Pope Benedict's papacy. The bunker mentality within the Vatican itself has only served to exacerbate the problem for the Pope, exposing him to unrelenting criticism from abuse victims and their supporters. Instead of using the immense power and wealth of the papacy to confront the scandal and make amends to its victims, the Vatican hierarchy has dug in its heels to ward off attacks against the Pope, measures that have allowed the cancer that is priest pedophilia to pile up in a godforsaken heap at the Pope's door atop St. Peter's Basilica.
Just how tone deaf the Vatican is to this viral issue was demonstrated twice during Holy Week. During a Good Friday sermon on April 2, the Pope's personal preacher, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, likened "the scrutiny of the church about the sex-abuse scandal to the persecution of the Jews," the Wall Street Journal reported. At Easter Mass in St. Peter's, with the Pope in attendance, Cardinal Sodano "dismissed scrutiny of the Pope as 'petty gossip,'" according to the Journal.
Those two off-key statements were in contrast to what Pope Benedict himself had said about the scandal earlier in 2010 when he admitted that the Vatican made grave errors in dealing with sexual abuse among its priests, saying that the church should "do penance" to address its "sins."
The Pope came out of his bubble even further on April 17 when he traveled to Malta to meet with abuse victims. According to Anthony Grafton, writing in the April 28 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Pope "was reportedly tearful in this private encounter, experiencing 'shame and sorrow' over what 'the victims and their families suffered.'"
The embattled Pope would make a stronger statement on May 11 in flight to Lisbon when reporters on board asked him about the sexual abuse scandal. According to Vatican Radio, the Pope responded to a reporter's question about the crisis by saying, "the church has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn, on one hand, forgiveness, but also the need for justice."
According to an article in The New York Times on May 12 that bore the headline "Pope Issues Forceful Statement on Sexual Abuse Crisis," the Pope told the reporters that the crisis brought on by the scandal was "truly terrifying." The article further reported that the Pope, "in a marked shift in tone, suggested that its origins lay with abusive priests and with highly placed church officials who for decades concealed or minimized the problem."
John L. Allen Jr., a Vatican expert and columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, told the Times that the Pope's in-flight comments to reporters were "as clear an example of the Pope changing the Vatican's public tone as you're going to see."
Maeve Lewis, director of One in Four, a support group for abuse victims in Ireland, told a Wall Street Journal reporter that the Pope's in-flight remarks marked the "beginning of a shift" toward accountability, a shift away from what she called "a culture of cover-ups which places loyalty and obedience above the interests of child victims."
While Pope Benedict at long last was showing signs of getting on top of the sex-abuse scandal, the Vatican's U.S. attorney, Jeffrey Lena, was telling the Journal that the Pope's in-flight admissions were an "important statement to the world," but in his opinion they carried no legal implications in terms of lawsuit pending in the United States. In reality, what is admissible in court is what a judge rules is admissible.
One way or the other, as a result of his actions as archbishop of Munich or in his long role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict will remain at the center of the priest pedophilia crisis until he finds a way to resolve it. This is the central challenge of his papacy and all other initiatives he may have in mind will be consigned to backburners until he faces up to it.


text:
Why is this night different from all other nights?
Because on this night we make a meal, literally and metaphorically, of our unique story. Via mouthfuls of bitter herbs, salt water, nuts and raisins mixed with wine, and unleavened bread, we promote the damaging mindset that tells us that we are the world's eternal victims.
I expect an immediate challenge to my liturgical liberties.
"Enough already with your iconoclastic itch! How can you say such things? Surely, Passover is the quintessential expression of our physical and spiritual liberation. Hasn't the escape of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery become the biblical paradigm of freedom from oppression that has brought hope to countless peoples across the centuries?"
I know, I know.
But my fifth question and answer is true none the less.
This is the night when we are most at risk from locking shut the Jewish capacity for empathy and blinding ourselves to the suffering of others - most notably, the Palestinians.
There will be some around the Seder table who will resent me wanting to recount the woes of another people ("the Palestinians for heaven's sake!") rather than those of my own kith and kin.
"Please can we celebrate the Exodus and our founding mythology of Jewish nationhood without dragging all that stuff into a nice family gathering! Let us enjoy the remembrance of our liberation by a God who intervenes in history with 'a strong hand and an outstretched arm'. Or are you going to insist on playing the part of the 'wicked son', the one in the Haggadah that cannot see the point of the celebration? Now have some more Motza and shut up!"
So, I will have to take a deep breath and try to explain how we have reached this immensely regrettable state of affairs. I may need a fifth cup of wine to get me through.
There are two powerful themes at work within the Seder night service. Two themes that have dominated Jewish self-understanding since at least the Middle Ages when the Seder night service, as we know it today, was first woven together.
The first theme can be characterised by this beautiful sentence that comes early on in our Passover meal:
"Let all who are hungry, come and eat; let all who are needy come and celebrate Passover."
This is the Jewish voice of welcome, of empathy. It marks the Exodus as the ancient anchor of Jewish ethics and reminds us of our timeless belief in a God that bends His universe towards justice and compassion.
The second theme arrives, with a chill air around it, towards the end of our evening of story telling, after the last terrible plague, the death of the Egypt firstborn, has persuaded Pharaoh to (temporarily) end his tyranny.
"In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. And the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hands."
This is the collective cry of a people that has been oppressed and discriminated against throughout its history. A people left physically and psychologically scarred. A people that feels justice for them has been long delayed. This is our story told as one long pogrom.
It is a passage that reinforces the sense of the Jews under perennial siege all the way from biblical mythology to modern history. From the tribe of Amalek trying to thwart the slaves' escape from Egypt, to Haman's planned genocide of the Jews of Persia in the story of Esther, to Adolf Hitler's near success in making the European continent 'Judenrein'
In every generation there is always another Pharaoh who is out to get the Jews.
It's not difficult to understand how this idea repeated each year, at what is still the most widely observed Jewish festival, has profound emotional consequences for the Jewish imagination. And the resonance of the message does not end with the singing of the final verse of 'Hud Gadyah'.
We leave the Seder table convinced, once again, that we are the eternal victims, outsiders, never accepted, forever threatened. It is the worldview that helped to propel 19th century political Zionism into the 20th century Jewish mainstream. Zionism, brilliantly and dangerously, wrapped together a religious longing for spiritual and physical redemption with a nationalist colonial project dressed up as a rightful 'Return'. It was a compelling and heady mix. The world will never accept us, so the theory goes, so we must have our own state in our own land where we can live in safety and normalcy. And never mind who might be living there now, for our needs our greater than theirs, our story more important, and our ancient Promise more profound than any set of civil rights.
In our post-Holocaust, Israel-centred Jewish consciousness, the 'Every generation...' passage has continued to grow in significance, eating away at our moral sensibility. So much so, that we have difficulty understanding modern Jewish history and politics without constant reference to this paradigm of oppression and threat, or, as it is now more often described, 'Security'.
Benjamin Netanyahu happily taps into all of this with his new demand that the Palestinians accept Israel as a 'Jewish State' with all the implications that has for Israeli Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens, the rights of Palestinian refugees and the chances of the State of the Jews ever being truly 'Jewish and Democratic'. John Kerry and the Obama administration have failed to challenge the same "In every generation..." mindset and so find themselves acting as Israel's legal team rather than as honest brokers of peace.
And meanwhile...whatever happened to: 'Let all who are hungry, come and eat...'?
In Hebrew, the word for ancient Egypt is 'Mitzrayim'. The same word can also be translated as 'the narrow place'. Today, we Jews are living our lives in a narrow nationalist echo chamber where the chanting of our past suffering bounces off the walls blocking out every other sound to our ears.
It is true, we celebrated many Seder nights in the ghettos and shtetls of European oppression. But we are now in a radically different place and we are yet to adjust to our new circumstances. We have failed to notice that in this generation it is we who have the power, we who have status in every country where we live, we who have a nation state with a great army and Super Power backing. And it is we who have constructed our own apparatus of prejudice and injustice in the very land we call 'Holy'. Today, we have become the Pharaoh we once despised.
At this point I'm hoping that my Seder night companions will turn to me and ask, with at least a hint of humility: "So what is to be done, Rav Micah?"
I have a remedy. But it will not be easy.
A new Exodus is needed to set the Jewish mind free and open our imagination to those that suffer at our hands. The theme embodied by "In every generation..." must be understood anew. It must be claimed for the same Jewish spirit that invites the hungry and oppressed to share at our table. We must see that in every generation, even among ourselves, the narrow vision of 'Pharaoh' can rise up. Our task is is to bring it down in the name of the same God that rescued our ancestors with 'a strong hand and an outstretched arm' and delivered us to uphold a moral universe.
This year - we remain trapped in the narrow place. Next year - may we find our new Exodus to liberation.
Hag Sameach!


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DK Society & Beliefs: Religions
Religion involves belief in divine beings along with a set of practices and a moral code that help to reinforce that belief. A religion's teachings, usually written down in a holy book, and its stories are intended to help people to understand the meaning of life. Each religion has its own idea of the ultimate goal of life, its own place for worshiping GOD or gods, its own rituals, and its own rules for living.
The Ganges River, also worshiped as the goddess Ganga, is considered the holiest of all rivers by Hindus. Pilgrims drink, bathe, and scatter their loved ones' ashes in the sacred waters in an act of spiritual purification.
Religions are not easy to count. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share some common origins, but are all separate. Each of these may contain more recent differences, such as Sunni and Shia Muslims, or Catholic and Protestant Christians.
Atheists reject all belief in supernatural beings. Agnostics accept the possibility of God, but cannot commit themselves. Humanists replace faith with human reason. Many people are nonreligious, but may describe themselves as having spiritual beliefs.
Young people usually learn a religion by following the same beliefs and rituals as their parents. Most religions use teachings and stories to inform children about, for example, CREATION. Some religions also try to convince other people to join their faith.
As people grow up, they start to ask all kinds of questions: "What is the meaning of life?"; "Why do people suffer?"; "Does God exist?" The world's religions have all sought in different ways to provide answers to these questions. Where Western religions tend to focus on obedience to God and salvation from sin, Eastern religions tend to focus on self-knowledge and release from the cycle of rebirth.
The mysteries of the natural world and the Universe have inspired religious feelings throughout time. Today, science can explain much but not everything, and people still use religion to help them explain events and their place in the world.
Most religions believe in one god or many gods. A god is an all-knowing, all-powerful being, who can help or hinder humans. In some religions, believers pray to their god or gods for help. In others, they use meditation to help them focus on their duties.
Although Buddhists share common roots with Hindus, they worship no gods but instead use Buddha's teachings to encourage spiritual progress. Confucians strive for cosmic harmony by creating a society based on order and virtue. Many local religions worship spirits that inhabit the natural world around them.
Each religion has its own explanation for suffering. Often it is seen as punishment for sin, or bad behavior. People may be tricked into being bad by a devil figure, or they may be misled by their own desires. Western religions generally see suffering as the result of human failings. Eastern religions see it as the result of human ignorance.
Many religions have their own story about the origins of the Universe and of humankind. Called creation stories, these often pass on ancient insights about humanity and its relation to the natural world. Some view the scientific Big Bang theory as another creation story.
Some religions have complex stories about the gods who gave birth to the world. Australian Aboriginal beliefs recount a Dreamtime when mythic ancestors roamed Earth, creating the landscape by their actions. Judaism and Christianity describe a world that was created in seven days by God's command.
Most religions follow their own calendar. The Mayan calendar of Central America predicts that the current epoch will end in 2012. Hindus and Buddhists believe that time is cyclical, so everything is reborn over and over again, including the world. Christians and Muslims believe that time is linear and that the world will end with a Day of Judgment.


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I am having some problems setting up the MUnit testing framework for a J/Link project and would be grateful for advice. I do have J/Link working when running or debugging the .nb notebook in workbench, just can't get it going when trying to run or debug the .mt unit test file.
I did the following steps, following the documentation as closely as i can.
I created a fresh J/Link project, right-click the inner project folder and choose New / TestFile, and I get a tree like the following in the package explorer of workbench:
+-- javaSource
+-- JRE System Library [1.1]
+-- fooProject
| +-- Java
| +-- Kernel
| | +-- init.m
| +-- fooProject.m
| +-- fooProject.mt <---- this is my unit test file; can't get it going
+-- fooProject.nb <---- this one works well
I put a couple of functions in my .m package file:
(* Mathematica Package *)
(* Created by the Wolfram Workbench Feb 3, 2012 *)
BeginPackage["fooProject`", {"JLink`"}]
(* Exported symbols added here with SymbolName::usage *)
KvpQ::usage = "Tests whether its argument is a KVPair or KVP, that is, a list of two values, the first of which is a string or symbol Key.";
(* Implementation of the package *)
SymbolQ[x_Symbol] := True;
SymbolQ[___] := False (* all other cases produce False *);
KvpQ[kvp_List] := (Length@kvp === 2 &&
(StringQ[kvp[[1]]] || SymbolQ[kvp[[1]]]));
KvpQ[___] := False;
Then I open the MUnit Test file, fooProject.mt, do Ctrl+K and choose the test template, and then fill it out:
(* Mathematica Test File *)
Now, following the directions at the wolfram site on J/Link launching, I create the new configuration as directed accepting all defaults. Then when I try to run the unit tests, I get a dialog with the unsettling message:
The selected file is not a Mathematica notebook or scrapbook file.
Please make sure that a file with extension .nb or .mscrapbook
is selected, then try the run again.
This leads me to suspect that MUnit testing just isn't supported for J/Link projects, which would make me sad :( But it's more likely I've just done something silly wrong.
Again, I'd be grateful for any advice or guidance. Thanks.


text:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Factories are producing more cars, computers and household appliances, and applications for unemployment benefits over the past four weeks are at the lowest point since summer 2008.
Economic data released Thursday suggest that March will be the second straight month of strong job growth. And the reports helped Wall Street rebound a day after the market suffered its biggest drop in seven months.
Still, rising prices for household necessities and trouble overseas could slow the U.S. economy in the coming months.
"We have a lot of momentum in the U.S. economy right now," said Kurt Karl, chief economist at Swiss Re. "That's good, particularly since we're going to be challenged by higher oil prices" and the impact of Japan's earthquake and nuclear crisis.
A key reason for the brighter outlook is that factory production increased in February for the sixth straight month. The Federal Reserve said production of cars and auto parts jumped 4.2 percent, nearly matching January's gain. Production of furniture, electronics and appliances all rose.
Manufacturing output has grown in all but four months since the recession ended in June 2009. And manufacturers have created 190,000 jobs over the past year, the highest 12-month total for that group since 1998. Last month alone factories added 33,000 net new jobs.
Ford Motor Co. said last month that it would boost factory production 13 percent in the January-March quarter in response to greater demand for its cars and trucks. The company has announced plans to hire 7,000 workers over the next two years just to build new models, such as the Ford Escape, a small SUV.
Rising factory output supports "more high-paying jobs, and more high-paying overtime," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.
Fewer people are seeking unemployment benefits. Applications fell last week for the third time in four weeks, the Labor Department said. The four-week average has dropped to a 386,250 — the lowest level since July 2008. That's near the 375,000 level that, if sustained, tends to signal declines in the unemployment rate.
The decline is "strong evidence that the labor market recovery is for real," said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for MFR Inc.
The Conference Board also cited an improving employment picture Thursday while noting that its index of leading economic indicators rose for the eighth straight month in February. But the group warned that a spike in food and energy costs could slow economic growth.
Inflation in those two areas drove consumer prices up in February by the biggest amount since June 2009, the Labor Department said in a separate report. While many economists say gas prices are peaking, some expect food will get even more expensive this fall. That's when consumers will feel the full impact of higher wholesale food prices, which surged last month by the largest amount in 36 years.
As Americans spend more on groceries and to fill their gas tanks, they have less money to spend on discretionary goods. That means consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, could fall.
Still, inflation for most other goods is relatively tame and most economists were encouraged by Thursday's data.
The reports mostly reinforced the view among some economists that employers will add a net 200,000 jobs this month. That would be the second straight month of private payroll gains above 200,000, the first time that's happened since the recession began in December 2007.
Private companies added 222,000 jobs in February, the most in almost a year, and unemployment fell to 8.9 percent. The unemployment rate has fallen by nearly a full percentage point since December — the steepest three-month decline since 1983.
Investors seemed to be pleased by the data. The Dow Jones industrial average rose by more than 160 points to close at 11,774. That followed a drop of 242 points Wednesday, the largest one-day decline since August.
The Federal Reserve acknowledged the threat of more expensive food and energy earlier this week. But the central bank said the pressures are likely to be temporary.
Most economists don't expect the central bank to take any steps to combat inflation, such as raising short-term interest rates, until next year. Prices would have to rise much faster to prompt an earlier move by the Fed.
Overall, the Fed this week offered its most optimistic assessment of the economy since the recession ended, largely because of stronger job growth.


text:
Weight-Lifting Exercises
Have no fear, here are some moves you can do either at the gym or at home with weights. It's a start. The main thing is to get comfortable lifting weights. Once you're comfortable, break out of your comfort zone and try new exercises.
More: 10 Weightlifting Exercises for Beginners
Terminology you should know:
- Reps: The number of times you repeat movement in an exercise.
- Sets: The number of completed rounds.
Get your body warmed up before you start lifting weights. Hop on a bike, step on a treadmill, or try an elliptical for five minutes. You want to get your muscles warmed up so you don't injure yourself.
Here are a few exercises to help you get started:
Use weights ranging from 8 pounds to 15, depending on your comfort level. As you build more strength, you can lift heavier weights.
Bicep Curl
Stand tall with shoulders back and feet hip-width apart. Keep your arms near your sides, palms facing forward with weights in your hands. Bend from the elbow so you're creating a 90-degree angle; your forearms should be parallel to the floor. This is your start/end position. From here, lift the weights toward your shoulders; keep your elbows glued to your sides. Your elbows never move. Raise up and then lower to that 90-degree angle (start position). Try to do three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Give yourself one minute of rest in between each set.
More: 10 Ways to Build Biceps
Bench Press
You can either do this with a bar or dumbbells. Lie down, facing upward, on a flat bench. Hold the bar, hands should be a little wider than shoulder width, parallel to your chest. Your elbows are bent at a 90-degree angle. With your back flat on the bench, press up. If you feel your back start to arch, place your feet on the bench, knees bent—this will help support your back. Lower the bar down, but not all the way to your chest. Lower it so your elbows are even with the bench. Try to do three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Again, break in between each set.
More: 12 Tips for a Better Bench Press
Upright Row
Stand tall, feet hip-width apart, arms are down with your forearms facing your thighs (dumbbells in hands). This is your start/end position. Bend your elbows to pull the weights up toward your shoulders. Raise your arms until they are parallel to the floor. Your elbows should be in an even line with your shoulders as you lift. Lower to start position. Try three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Break in between each set.Squat
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and hold dumbbells in your hands. This is your start/end position. Push your hips backwards as if you're going to sit in a chair. Keep pushing back, bend your knees and lower until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Activate your muscles and push back up to standing position. Do three sets of 12 to 15 reps. Break in between each set.
More: Strength Train With Squats
Take a few minutes to allow your body to cooldown. Stretch the muscles you just worked and slowly let your heart rate steady out. This will help you prevent aches and pains.Note: It's always important to speak with your doctor before starting a workout program.
More: Importance of Cooldown
Stay in shape in a fitness class.
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text:
KABUL (Reuters) - Three United States soldiers were killed in Afghanistan's eastern borderlands on Sunday, US and Nato officials said, the first Nato combat deaths this month.
The soldiers, from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force, were killed by insurgents in Paktia province, a US official told Reuters.
The last Nato soldier to be killed in action was killed late last month.
Paktia is one of several provinces that border Pakistan and have endured some of the highest levels of fighting during the US-led 12-year war in Afghanistan.
US soldiers based in Paktia are rarely involved in combat operations since handing over security responsibility to Afghan security forces earlier this year. They now primarily train their Afghan colleagues.
The Nato-led mission has about 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, of which about 68,000 are American. Those numbers are expected to reduce sharply before the official end of the Nato-led combat mission - Dec 31, 2014.
More than 2,100 US soldiers have died during the war in Afghanistan.


text:
17 Best Lipsticks for Every Single OccasionWant a look that packs a punch? Pucker up to these top-rated lipsticks |
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Total Beauty's fearless readers have tried and tested the lot. Prepare yourself for these, dare we say, life-changing lipsticks. We've got 'em all, from drugstore steals to the recherché.
Image via Imaxtree
SEE NEXT PAGE: Best Lipstick No. 17: Clinique Almost Lipstick, $18.50
Older comments
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Revlon Renewist Lip color is supperb!!!! LOVE IT... Goe's on smooth, feel's great...
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