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Ideas for Using Current Event Articles in the Science Classroom
Summary: |
This will provide various ideas for using current event articles effectively in the science classroom. | Materials:
Source: |
Courtesy of Jennifer Bergman and David Mastie. | |
Grade level: |
6 - 12 | |
Time: |
Prep time and class time are small, ranging from 5-20 minutes depending on idea implemented. | |
Student Learning Outcomes:
Lesson format: |
Reading, writing and presentation activity | |
Standards Addressed: |
Idea 1: Use reading and then discussing a current event article as a warm-up activity for your class. Teacher prep time includes finding an applicable article that is related to what you are studying in class and making copies. Students should grab an article upon entering class and should start reading. Discussion will follow after 5-7 minutes of quiet reading time. There is no specific grading related to this idea. Students know they need to read the article and pay attention to details in case they are called on during discussion time (e.g., "David, what did you think about this aspect of the article?" "Susan, explain why scientists were excited about this particular result." etc). This is always a good warm-up activity because it gives the teacher 5-7 minutes to take attendance and deal with other administrative issues.
Idea 2: Find an article and have students write questions about the article. Teacher prep time includes finding an applicable article that is related to what you are studying in class and making copies. I would put the following text at the top of the article: "Directions: Read this article carefully. Underline, check, circle and/or highlight it as you would if you were taking notes. Then, follow directions below the article." I would put the following text at the bottom of the article: "Now, using the notes you've taken, compose 5 multiple choice questions and 2 short answer questions that you think target the important areas of the article. The multiple choice questions should have the correct answer circled. The 2 short answer questions do not need to be answered." Obviously, the teacher should change the number of questions to be written depending on the length and depth of the article.
The grading of this assignment is quite simple. I simply gave appropriate credit if the right number of questions were written. This part of the process I felt comfortable having a dependable teacher's aide do. I would then go through the questions and answers for each class and pick out the most clever, creative or in-depth questions. I would copy these to be placed on the overhead when the students came in the classroom. This became quite an incentive for students to do their best work on this activity. It took a bit of time for me as the teacher, but it was worth it to see a student recognize their question/answer on the overhead and beam with pride. I would regularly give this out as a homework assignment.
Idea 3: Have students find their own articles and present them to the class over a period of a month or so. I would use this technique at the beginning of every big unit we were studying (e.g., 4 big units in the year - Water, Geology, Atmosphere, Space). I would give the assignment at the very beginning of the unit. I then gave students (with plenty of reminders) 2 weeks to collect any article about the very general concept of the unit. At the end of the 2 weeks, the students knew they could be called on any day from that point forward. Being called on to present their article meant that the student needed to have the article present that day and needed to give a 1-2 minute summary of the problems, issues and/or scientific findings presented in the article. Grading was very simple - did the student have the article on the day they were called on and could they summarize it for the class?
I wouldn't give a class less than 2 weeks time to collect the articles; otherwise, you'll end up with many more repeated articles. You'll want to let students know where they can find appropriate articles (might include local newspaper, national newspapers, national magazines like Time, Newsweek or Scientific American, appropriate internet sites (I limited my class to the list found below)).
I like this idea because it meant that no class time was wasted. If a particular class moved quickly through activities that day, I would choose (as randomly as possible), 1-2 students to present their current event articles to the class. We would discuss their presented facts for the remainder of the hour.
Idea 4: Find an article that is timely and appropriate for what you are studying in your classroom and write prompts (multiple choice or essay questions) related to the article. The benefit of this idea is that it most closely mirrors Reading Comprehension sections on standardized tests students will be expected to take. The downside of this idea is that it involves the most teacher prep time (finding article, writing questions, making copies, grading answered questions for accuracy). Consider sharing this preparation task with at least another teacher (or 2-3!) that teaches the same subject. Then, you may only have to do the prep work every other time you use this approach.
Will vary from classroom to classroom depending on the idea implemented.
- CNN News - Science and Space
- Google News - Science and Technology
- MSNBC News - Technology and Science
- NOAA News
- Science @ NASA - Headline Stories (to subscribe, use box on the lower left)


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In response to:
Horace Walpole at Yale from the September 30, 1965 issue
To the Editors:
Mr. J. H. Plumb's simultaneous tribute to and attack upon Mr. Wilmarth Lewis and his edition of the Horace Walpole correspondence in your issue of September 30th is a very rum business. Again and again, Mr. Plumb rushes up to Mr. Lewis as if to kiss him upon both cheeks; a moment later, we see that it has been in order to slip a dagger between Mr. Lewis's ribs. Oh, Mr. Plumb is willing to forgive Mr. Lewis many things, including his courtesy, his charm, and his generosity; he is even prepared to forgive him for the lure of his dollars when it comes to collecting Walpole material, because, in Mr. Plumb's gratuitously magnanimous view, Mr. Lewis "has every right to spend his money as he pleases." Mr. Plumb goes so far as to say that "I, along with every other eighteenth-century scholar, owe a debt to Mr. Lewis." (Throughout the review, Mr. Plumb reveals a curious preoccupation with fiscal images; he fondles words like "treasures," "opulence," "rich," "expensive," and, many times over, "money…money…money" with an air of unclean relish.) Despite this debt, Mr. Plumb finds that Mr. Lewis has much to answer for; he is a villain as well as a hero, whose works Mr. Plumb doesn't hesitate to compare with those of mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. For Mr. Lewis "has started, one might say created, a new and dangerous form of historical activity." This activity is the so-called "factory" method of editorial scholarship. Now, there may be much or little to the indictment—I happen to consider it grotesque—but one would expect a self-described scholar like Mr. Plumb to draw it up accurately, if not at length; in point of fact, the name of but a single scholar is given in this connection. Mr. Plumb writes "And the factory method is spreading. Monsieur Besterman has been working away on Voltaire for years…" What an odd muddle we have here! To begin with a minor matter, Mr. Besterman is well known to be English, as well as a resident of England, so "Monsieur" is either faulty scholarship or Mr. Plumb's idea of a prank; moreover, Mr. Besterman need not have been left without a Christian name, as he happens to possess several (all meaning "gift of God" and all bestowed upon him by an atheistical father, whose sense of humor may have had much in common with Mr. Plumb's). But the major fact to be noted is that Mr. Besterman is celebrated for not presiding over a factory—for having performed feats of scholarship practically single-handed that more than one learned journal has described as being beyond the capacity of one man to accomplish in a lifetime. Almost alone, and by the very opposite of the "factory" method, Mr. Besterman has brought out over a hundred volumes of his Voltaire correspondence and has recently edited a fourth edition of his enormous and incomparable "World Bibliography of Bibliographies."
A last point, bearing on Mr. Plumb's perverse preoccupation. Mr. Plumb implies that Mr. Besterman is an imitator of Mr. Lewis, which he is not; he then makes the mistake of implying that while Mr. Lewis is at least spending his own money, Mr. Besterman is not. The truth is that Mr. Besterman has spent what Mr. Plumb would rejoice to call a fortune in the course of a lifetime of devoted scholarship—indeed, this is one respect in which it would have been especially appropriate to couple his name with that of the selfless Mr. Lewis. If Mr. Plumb has a case to make against Mr. Lewis's academic imitators, he has ludicrously missed the mark in citing Mr. Theodore Deodati Nathaniel Besterman.
Brendan Gill
Norfolk, Connecticut
This Issue
October 28, 1965


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Grizz's Story - A Greater Courage
Just a month before I sat down to read Grizz's story, I had been dealing with my own pooch's cancer scare. This was her second cancer in her 12 years, so I had had my share of tests, nerves and tears, but she was one of the lucky ones and is doing well today. Nevertheless, I was a bit leery to read a book that might bring back all those emotions, but as I sat with my tissues in hand, I was pleasantly surprised. Allow me to explain...
Grizz is a sweet, loving Siberian Husky who finds himself with a cancer diagnosis, but he doesn't let it weigh him down and takes it on with courage. We know this because it is Grizz who narrates his own story, with the help of his mom, Jo, of course. He displays a love for life and a disregard for illness that I have rarely seen in human patients during my years as a cancer nurse. Even the healthiest of humans can learn an important lesson from this loveable pooch – life is too short to not stop and smell the roses.
We see the dedication of Jo and Barry Helms, Grizz's human parents, through their tireless efforts to save their furry friend without sacrificing his quality of life. Jo describes how Grizz seems to know she is trying to get him well as he judiciously takes his medications without complaint. (Funny, my furry friend was not quite so understanding!) She takes us through their long trips to the oncologist and the heart-wrenching decisions made on Grizz's behalf. Their story serves as a support for families going through similar situations or a feel-good story for any animal lover.
All the proceeds of this book go to The Grizz and Friends Cancer Fund, a non-profit fund which raises money for research into the treatment of cancer in companion animals. What a nice tribute to Grizz! Jo also started a website where the book can be purchased, which also includes information on support groups and resources.


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London-based photographer Gilbert McCarragher works around the world for architects, designers and brands including John Pawson, Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, Sevil Peach, Ian Schrager and Coca-Cola.
Gilbert's work is published widely and features in books and magazines such as
Gilbert has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art London and the Wapping Project.
The first question I'm asked when I tell people I'm a photographer is 'what do you photograph?', to which my usual response is 'light'. (I used to say 'magic', until someone once countered 'what, like wizards?')
My simple answer may sound flippant, but it's entirely true.
Light is what inspires me to pick up a camera. Light is what I search out when creating a work. The conversation between light and dark can transform a photograph, so it releases a memory rather than simply freezing a moment.
Selected works
Royal Academy of Arts
I am honoured to have had my work selected by the coordinator and curator of the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2022, Professor Alison Wilding OBE RA. The theme of this year's exhibition is climate in all manifestations, whether it presents as crisis or opportunity, nightmare or memories, or simply our everyday experience of weather.
'Watering cans 1' is part of a series of works I developed which incorporate garden implements from Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage. The desiccation of the near-desert environment in which the watering can was used is borne out by the worn, scorched and rusted markings present on the watering can's head. Photographed front on, the can's head hangs in space like the earth, giving a global perspective to issues of water scarcity and the deepening climate crisis.
- Prospect Cottage, Watering cans 1 - 80 cm x 80 cm x 3cm (Edition of 10)
- Prospect Cottage, Watering cans 2 - 93 cm x 63 cm x 3cm (Edition of 10)
- Prospect Cottage, Gloves - 93 cm x 63 cm x 3cm (Edition of 10)
All three pieces shown from this series are available to purchase. Price on application. Contact Gilbert McCarragher for further details.
'Watering cans 1' is on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London throughout Summer 2022. More details are available on the Royal Academy's website.
Alexander McQueen
As a part of the run up to the opening of McQueen's flagship store on Old Bond Street I was asked to document the creation of the plaster panels designed for the store's walls—panels that have since become a signature element of every McQueen store throughout the world. In a workshop in East London I patiently watched as the panels took form, evolving from a series of initial concept sketches, then bright pink latex moulds, until the moment of the great reveal when the moulds were peeled back to expose the artistry encased inside.
My work with Alexander McQueen spans several years and includes photography of the flagship store on Old Bond Street, the men's tailoring division on Savile Row, the McQ Store on Dover Street and the ongoing ArtBox projects curated by Sadie Coles HQ at McQueen Savile Row.
John Pawson
'Show me how you see it... Have fun with it... Surprise me... And make sure you get the shot!'
Having worked closely with the Pawson office for a number of years now, this is my usual brief from John before going on a job. Rarely do we talk about a specific shot list. Instead we talk about moods, inspirations and the relationship a building has with its surroundings.
The advantage of long-term relationships such as these is that I will have seen a building take shape across a number of years. However, having witnessed the blood, sweat and tears that go in to a particular project, I feel a personal responsibility to the architects to show their building in the best possible way. The photographs I produce are what the majority of people will see and experience: they will define what the project was all about.
Arriving on site I settle in and start a conversation with the building concerned: Who are you? How would you like to be photographed? The first few hours can be tricky, as I formulate and clarify the narrative in my head, though early starts and long exposures give me time to contemplate the space and how the building might answer my questions. Then 'click'—I get it—and away I go.
Moritzkirche, Augsburg
Although I hadn't visited Augsburg previously, on my first trip I felt I knew every inch of the church, having photographed an architectural model of it some years earlier. Technically little had changed from that 1:25 scale model—though standing in front of the finished building, I came to realise I was no longer the giant... Now the building reached upward and beyond me, while the Saints, from their now elevated positions, gazed down at me and the world below.
On arriving at the church I was greeted by Father Helmut who, smiling, held a buttered salted pretzel for me in one hand and a set of keys to the church in the other. I set to work immediately photographing the space. At night, streetlight fell across the church windows, transforming the ceiling into a constellation of stars. As morning approached the streetlights switched off and the stars disappeared. The sun's first beam of light pushed through the east window, cutting the darkness and illuminating the font. The water within took up the light and glistened.
Christopher Kane
Mount Street, London—home to Scottish fashion designer Christopher Kane's first store. Formerly a day spa and beauticians, this cavernous corner building in Mayfair was, when I visited a year before it opened, a maze of tiny rooms and twisting corridors from which the light gradually withdrew. Remnants exfoliated from the building's past life surrounded me.
A year later, the store had been completely transformed. Natural light, now nurtured, illuminated the store, allowing the space to breathe. A glowing totem light piece, hung full height between the two floors of the store, was made even more impressive by the staircase that spiralled around it.
St Paul's Perspectives
Perspectives was conceived as a site-specific installation for the Geometric Staircase of St Paul's Cathedral, as a part of the 2011 London Design Festival. A collaboration between the John Pawson office and Swarovski, I documented Perspectives from its creation to its installation in St Paul's in a series of photographs and films.
Sevil Peach
Built for the 21st century's growing army of freelancers and homeworkers, architect Sevil Peach's Red Elephant and Zuidas buildings are mixed use spaces from where you can run a business while still feeling completely at home.
Sevil designed and curated the spaces to work whether you're operating as an individual or a small or a large team. Versatile layouts accommodate modern, changeable work patterns and afford the occupants a freedom to find the space that works best for them—be that for the week, the day or even just an hour.
Not so much a workhouse as a playhouse, I looked up from my camera on the last day of my shoot to see Sevil dancing to Pharrell Williams' song 'Happy'. Fitting, I felt, as the spaces Sevil has created are exactly that.
Basilica di San Giorgio
Documenting the restoration of San Giorgio was an assignment I could hardly believe I had been asked to complete. The statue, which stands atop the dome of Palladio's magnificent Basilica di San Giorgio in Venice, had been struck by lightning a decade earlier and its badly damaged arm subsequently removed.
I ascended a complex scaffold erected in the centre of the church. As I neared the 100 foot mark, I clambered out through a small opening in the lantern of the cupola, before climbing more scaffolding on the exterior of the dome where I came face to face with San Giorgio. The first thing I noticed was what big eyes he had, his features having been heavily exaggerated to make them visible from the ground.
I watched over several weeks as the highly skilled restoration team, with funding from the Swarovski Foundation, worked like surgeons to reattach San Giorgio's arm and spear. Every nail from the statue—labelled and numbered—was driven back into its original hole, until finally San Giorgio was complete again, proudly looking out over Venice.
Ian Schrager
I first worked with Ian Schrager's design team when photographing the views from the apartments in their Miami Beach EDITION Hotel. Shortly thereafter the Schrager team approached me to photograph their London EDITION Hotel—a luxury boutique hotel on London's vibrant Berners Street and the first EDITION hotel to open in Europe.
Monastero di San Giorgio Maggiore
The Venetian island of San Giorgio is home to a community of Benedictine monks whose church—an impressive example of Palladian architecture—overlooks the lagoon toward St Mark's Square. It was a privilege and an honour to be permitted by the monks to document their way of life and their daily rituals of work and worship. Time and time again during the project, I was humbled by the brothers' gentle manner and the care they showed to one another and all others.
Wapping Project
I worked with the visionary Jules Wright of the Wapping Project on several exciting exhibitions. For her Fashion, Film and Fiction exhibition, Jules asked me to create a short film which followed the creative process of one of the fashion designers involved in the show. Fellow Irishman Jonathan Quearney, a Savile Row trained tailor, was my subject. Much of the film was shot on Super8, giving the work its own rich pattern and texture.
Contact Gilbert McCarragher by calling +44 (0)7958 791 014, or send a message using the form below.


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Microsoft fastest-yet homegrown supercomputer, running the U.S. company's new Windows HPC Server 2008, debuted in the top 25 of the world's top 500 fastest supercomputers, as tested and operated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
The supercomputer, built and maintained in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, ranked No. 23 in the world with a problem-solving performance of 68.5 teraflops. The announcement was made June 18 at the International Supercomputing conference in Dresden, Germany.
The NCSA used the beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008 to reach the 68.5-teraflop (68.5 trillion floating point operations per second) level. It runs on commodity hardware and reported 77.7 percent application efficiency on 9,472 cores, making this facility one of the most powerful supercomputing systems in the world and the fastest Windows cluster to date.
Most of the cores were made up of Intel Xeon quad-core chips. Storage for the system was about 6 terabytes.
"When we deployed Windows on our cluster, which has more than 1,000 nodes, we went from bare metal to running the Linpack benchmark programs in just four hours," said Robert Pennington, deputy director of the NCSA.
"The performance of Windows HPC Server 2008 has yielded efficiencies that are among the highest we've seen for this class of machine," Pennington said.
Microsoft announced that the final release candidate version of Windows HPC Server 2008 will be available for download during the last week of June.
Key features of Windows HPC Server 2008 include: high-speed networking; new, scalable cluster management tools; advanced failover capabilities; a service-oriented architecture job scheduler; and support for clustered file systems from some of Microsoft partners.
Microsoft, which got rich producing PC operating systems and applications, has been investing heavily in research and development in high-performance computing for about the last eight years.
In fact, the world's largest software company currently employs hundreds of engineers whose sole job it is to conceptualize and develop new products for the burgeoning HPC market, which research company IDC reports is the fast-growing sector in IT, at 19.5 percent per year.
According to IDC, during the next five years the HPC server market is projected to show healthy, steady growth. The researcher expects revenue for the total HPC server market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent to reach $18 billion by 2012.
Editor's note: This was updated to correct information about where the Windows supercomputer is located.
Home Applications


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I'm not really sure how to phrase this, so please bear with me. I need to write a program, that amongst other things, uses an "equation" (not just spitting out "1, 2, 3, 5....") to display 30 prime numbers. I don't want to "cheat" like I'm seeing some other students doing, but I'm not sure where to start. If anyone has any ideas on how to do this or where to look, I'd really appreciate it.
The only thing I can think of doing so far is testing a heck of alot of numbers by dividing by the numbers 2-11 with/without a remainder (as long as the divisor isn't the one I'm using to test), but if I do that I'm not sure how to set up the loop to display 30 numbers and just not test 30 numbers. I hope this makes sense, and ANY help/examples anyone could provide would be helpful!!!!!


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Still vying to be the company synonymous with iPhone/iPad-related guitar products, IK Multimedia has just announced a mic stand adaptor for iPad, cleverly called the 'iKlip'.
"The new iKlip for iPad makes it easy for you to use your iPad in any live setting - on stage, in the studio, at school or in the boardroom. With its multi-angle adjustable design, you can now securely position your iPad for optimal viewing and accessibility, while all controls, buttons and connection ports remain free from obstruction."
The iKlip costs $39.99 / €29.99 and is available to pre-order now (ships in December).
With the sheer scale and quality of music making apps increasing at a rate of knots (including IK's own recently released AmpliTube 2 for iPhone which, by the way, has done nothing to dampen the company's aforementioned quest), we could definitely find a use for the iKlip, particularly for triggering live effects and instruments.
Not sure about using it as the world's most expensive lyric sheet/karaoke machine, mind…


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As previously reported earlier in 2011 Diamond Aircraft of London Ontario indicated it was in dire trouble and needed a federal government loan or it might not survive.
Company President Peter Maurer said in March 2011 "If we don't get the funding from the federal government, it puts us in a difficult situation. If the D-JET, for example, in a worse case scenario, were not to continue it would have a negative impact on the rest of the company's operations...[The debts are] at a level that would be very difficult to satisfy out of piston sales. I'll let you do the extrapolation."
Of course as we now know the government said "no" and the company went away looking for other options, Maurer oddly saying that he had considered a government bailout a "long shot".
On 13 November the company announced its solution to the crisis. It is now majority owned by Medrar Financial Group, an investment company based in Dubai. The buy-out was for an undisclosed amount.
*Diamond press release
*London Free Press
It is hard not to note the trend here, as I have written before many aviation manufacturers have recently been bought out by middle eastern or far eastern countries. A short list:
* Diamond Aircraft - majority owned by Medrar Financial Group, Dubai
* Cirrus Aircraft - Government of the Peoples Republic of China
* Continental Engines - Government of the Peoples Republic of China
* Liberty Aerospace - 75% owned by the Kuwait Finance House, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait Finance House of Bahrain
* Piper Aircraft - Government of Brunei.
* Epic Aircraft - partly owned by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China
Once again, though I will make the point that in almost all of these cases investment from North America, Europe and other western countries was not to be found. That means that while many people from North America will shake their heads and say "this is too bad", that is all they will do. They didn't pony up and put money on the table to keep these companies going. The case is the same with Diamond. It is pretty obvious that the choice was simply between selling it to interests from Dubai or shutting it down.
If westerners want to retain ownership of our aerospace industry, then we need to stop the "tut-tutting" and start buying companies out ourselves.
*Complete rundown on the Diamond story
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Walgreen Co.'s fiscal third quarter earnings jumped 16 percent, but its shares tumbled Tuesday as investors fretted over sluggish sales outside the drugstore chain's pharmacies and other troubling trends.
The Deerfield, Ill., company missed Wall Street forecasts, and its earnings grew largely because of the comparison with last year's quarter, when a business split had hurt its performance.
Several analysts said they were surprised by a weaker than expected expansion in this year's quarter of Walgreen's gross margin, which is a basic measure of profitability. That could indicate that the nation's largest drugstore operator is losing faster than expected a key boost it had been receiving from generic drugs, said Edward Jones analyst Judson Clark.
An influx of generic medications has helped drugstore bottom lines for several quarters now because they come with a wider margin between the cost for the pharmacy to purchase the drugs and the reimbursement it receives.
The generic wave was driven by the expiration of patents protecting top-sellers like the cholesterol fighter Lipitor. But that benefit is expected to wane because there are fewer significant patent expirations waiting to refuel it.
That decreasing generic benefit plus a promotional push to boost sales in store front ends, or the area outside the pharmacy, could hurt Walgreen's profitability in future quarters, said Credit Suisse analyst Edward J. Kelly, who called the results released Tuesday "fairly disappointing."
"This quarter is not a great signal for the near-term," he wrote in an email.
Walgreen shares fell 5.9 percent, or $2.83, to close at $45.22 Tuesday, while broader trading indexes climbed slightly. But the stock price had already advanced 30 percent so far this year before Tuesday, and Clark said that gain is part of the reason shares fell so much after the company released earnings.
"We think this is still a good business and an appropriate price," he said.
Overall, Walgreen earned $624 million, or 65 cents per share, in the quarter that ended in May. That's up from $537 million, or 62 cents per share, a year ago, when the company had fewer shares outstanding.
Revenue rose about 3 percent to $18.31 billion.
Adjusted earnings amounted to 85 cents per share, excluding expenses such as acquisition and legal costs.
Analysts forecast earnings of 91 cents per share on $18.4 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.
Last year, Walgreen and the nation's biggest pharmacy benefits manager, Express Scripts Holding Co., had a contract squabble that kept them from doing business for about nine months. That hurt the drugstore chain's results as many Walgreen customers migrated to competitors for their prescriptions, at least temporarily.
The companies resumed doing business last September, and Walgreen says customers have been returning to its stores.
Walgreen said Tuesday that results in this year's quarter also were helped by its acquisition of a stake in European health and beauty retailer Alliance Boots. That contributed about 10 cents per share to the U.S. company's adjusted earnings.
Walgreen said revenue from stores open at least a year climbed 1.4 percent in the quarter, but front-end sales barely rose.
Company leaders said that did not meet their expectations. They said a soft economy has hurt those results, especially in stores in lower-income neighborhoods.
"I can assure you that improving our front end is a high priority," CEO Greg Wasson said.
He said the company has started to customize its advertising circulars more toward individual communities. Walgreen also is using buying trends it gleans from its Balance Rewards customer loyalty program to tailor its promotions. The program lets shoppers pile up points for purchases that they can then translate into cash rewards to use at company stores, and it also gives Walgreen more insight into customer buying patterns.
Walgreen runs 8,097 drugstores nationwide, or 207 more than it did last year. That's more than the totals for CVS Caremark Corp. and Rite Aid Corp.


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To all my loyal Renewables Offshore subscribers:
To all my loyal Renewables Offshore subscribers:
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I came across this interesting article about how the White House is exploring cloud computing options as a way to modernize the federal government infrastructure. For those unfamiliar with the term, cloud computing is a catch all for delivery of different types of services - from infrastructure to software - over the Internet.
Now, I know what you're thinking: that this is a marine renewables energy blog, not a high-tech blog. So what relevance does a White House initiative on cloud computing have for the marine renewables industry. Plenty, in my view.
What's most exciting about cloud applications is that they facilitate collaboration. Instead of having information housed on local machines, cloud applications operate in a cyber-hub, where lots of different participants can log-in and use them. Thus, centrally located online data and work hubs could facilitate coordination on permitting - which in turn, would help overcome one of the marine renewables' biggest hurdles: getting projects in the water.
Now you may think that I have my head in the clouds by believing that information technology can help move the marine renewables industry forward. But for me, collaboration is the silver lining of cloud apps - and it's through collaboration that this industry can succeed.
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They say that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Somewhat analogously (though not a perfect fit), the best way to figuring out an agency's intentions is through its budget. So it was with great interest that I reviewed FERC's FY10 Budget to see if I could glean any insights about the future of the marine renewables industry.
Going by FERC's budget predictions, there won't be much significant growth in the marine renewables industry, at least over the next two years. From the budget document:
So - three Full Time Employees to handle marine renewable for FY2010 and no growth over FY2008. Moreover, the Commission doesn't appear to be anticipating any larger scale projects - which is probably reasonable given that so few small projects have gotten through licensing. Though I wish the news were better, I tend to believe that the Commission's assessments of its needs are probably accurate. This is the first time I've wished for more government (since more FTEs for marine renewables would mean more projects) rather than less.
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Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) has introduced the Marine Renewable Energy Promotion Act of 2009 in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced companion legislation in the United States Senate, reports Energy Current and the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition. The Act will authorize US$250 million for marine renewable research, development, demonstration and deployment (RDD&D), a device verification program, and an adaptive management program to fund environmental studies associated with installed ocean renewable energy projects. It is expected that the bill will become part of a more comprehensive energy bill.
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As I await the completion of the new home for this blog, I'm still playing catch-up with postings. So here's a quick round up of some recent developments and interesting news items from the past two weeks:
The Scottish Saltire Prize - the largest single innovation prize for marine renewables - which I posted about a year ago continues to attract international attention. According to this story, 100 entities from 23 different countries worldwide have submitted entries to compete for the $20 million (USD) prize.
A new study will evaluate the potential for wave, tidal-stream and tidal technologies around the English and Welsh coastlines, says this Press Release. In the meantime, there's some disagreement over when marine renewables technologies will achieve full blown commericialization. According to the Irish Times, a recently published report forecast that "wave energy would not develop in Ireland for at least a decade," though these findings were disputed by John McCarthy, Chief Executive of Ocean Energy, LTD. Martin McAdam, CEO of Aquamarine Power is equally optimistic, telling Reuters that "What we feel is we can offer a device in future that will be competitive with offshore wind energy. By 2014 we will have a commercially available device."
There's progress in the U.S. as well. Mike Raferty of Stevens Institute in New Jersey reports progress on the Wave Energy Harnessing Device (WEHD), a system of submerged platforms and buoys will utilize a wave's motion to create electricity. And over in Maine, a collaboration between the University of Maine, Maine Maritime Academy and Portland-based Ocean Renewable Power Co. has landed nearly $1 million in grant money from the federal government to research and develop tidal power according to this Release.
Finally, an April 30, 2009 article by industry thought leaders Roger Bedard, Mirko Previsic and Brian Polagye, up at Renewable Energy Access gives a good overview on how much marine energy is available for development in the United States.
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The potential for the marine renewables technologies to eventually spawn ancillary industries and economic growth in related sectors continues to captivate my imagination. Imagine, floating data centers or wave-powered desalinization facilities or other hybrid uses.
This past week, I came across two potential cross-over marine renewables applications. The first, via CDiver.net suggests that marine renewables will be a boon for the shipping industry, since vessels are needed to spread power cables for wind farms and also haul components out to sea. Said Subocean's operations director, Mike Daniel:
An example of a second and far less intuitive use for marine renewables comes via Clean Technica. The post reports on Swell Fuel's wave powered electric technology and notes that
An unlikely savior may be coming to the rescue of the planet's beleaguered coral reefs: "they may prove ideal providers of the the low-voltage charge that seems to help coral reefs regenerate." According to Planet Save.com, ongoing research suggests that coral reef growth may be stimulated by low power electricity, a concept that is under further study.
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Well, folks, the jurisdictional smackdown between FERC and MMS that I first posted about over two years ago has finally ended. Following threat of Congressional intervention, on April 9, 2009, both agencies finally signed off on a Memorandum of Understanding divvying up each agency's respective jurisdictional responsibilities on the OCS. FERC agreed to give up authority to issue preliminary permits on the OCS and dismissed the Gray's Harbor preliminary permit applications, which brought the MMS-FERC issue to a head (by way of background, Gray's Harbor filed several permit applications for hybrid wave-wind technologies, several on sites that had already been identified by state energy offices as potential locations for offshore wind projects). MMS will issue leases for marine renewables project on the OCS - something which was always required, as I've previously pointed out. But MMS will give FERC responsibility for licensing and oversight of marine renewables on the OCS. As for treatment of hybrid wind-wave projects or projects that straddle the OCS, the MOU leaves those issues open for future resolution.
From my own perspective, the MOU doesn't clarify much that wasn't fairly clear before. Before the MOU, MMS always needed to issue leases for FERC projects and that hasn't changed. And though pre-MOU, FERC had the power to issue a preliminary permit, there was nothing to stop MMS from issuing a lease for the lands within that permit to a competing developer. After all, a permit doesn't convey property rights. So even though FERC could issue a permit, a developer relying on that permit for priority rights wouldn't have been on very strong grounds, thereby vitiating the practical value of the permit anyway. Unfortunately, the MOU still leaves open the tough questions such as whether a developer who begins a project on one side of the OCS will be able to access lands on the other side of the OCS for a possible build out. And if a wind farm goes through an extensive, Cape-Windesque permitting process before MMS and a few years later, decides to add a wave energy component, will it need to go through a full blown FERC process as well?
The best part of the MOU, however, is that it finally cleared the way for MMS' long awaited rules governing alternative energy on the Outer Continental Shelf, which finally issued on April 22. At 579 pages, there's plenty to digest (stay tuned for a summary), but at least development can begin to proceed on the OCS.
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As my loyal readers have noticed, my postings over the past several months have been erratic - and I'd like to explain my absence. First, with the election of Obama and various stimulus packages, budget bills and energy legislation under development on the Hill, I've been spending more of my ocean-related time staying current at the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition website. Second, I'm in the process of completing a major overhaul to my law firm website and I plan to move this blog from the Typepad platform and incorporate it at the law firm site.
Once I've made the transition, I'll be bringing this site back full force and may even add a small for-fee subscription service which will provide the kind of detailed coverage that's not possible at this blog and which this particular industry lacks.
Finally, if any of you happen to be attending the Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference in DC on April 15 and 16, be sure to introduce yourselves.
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Under threat of Congressional intervention, FERC and MMS last week agreed to lay down their swords in the jurisdictional smackdown that has held up MMS' issuance of leasing rules for the Outer Continental Shelf and stymied development not just of marine renewables, but also offshore wind. Don't get your hopes up yet, though because the agencies still need to hash out a resolution that will give FERC the control it seeks without undermining MMS' ability to ensure orderly development of renewables on the OCS. Many have blamed MMS for the mess, accusing it of trying to preserve its ability to extract royalties from marine renewables developers. But what they may not realize is that FERC requires developers to pay annual charges to cover costs associated with FERC's administration of its hydropower program. Presumably, any agreement between the agencies will protect marine renewables developers from paying twice.
We'll keep you posted on this saga.
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Sorry for the long break - there's just so much going on in the marine renewables space and I promise to get you all up to speed. To find out what's going on at OREC, visit OREC Website. And more importantly, be sure to sign up for the Global Marine Renewables Conference at Global Marine Renewable.com.
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OK, so maybe the top 5 myths of FERC Jurisdiction aren't as humorous as a David Letterman Top 10, both features do have something in common. Just as Letterman's top 10 lists are an indispensable part of his show, so too, dispelling the myths of FERC jurisdiction is indispensable to understanding how marine renewables regulation works in the United States. So without adieu, here are some of the most egregious, outrageous and cringe-worthy myths of FERC jurisdiction:
I need a FERC license for my offshore wind farm because it's going to interconnect to the grid. Wrong! FERC has authority to issue a license for projects that use water to generate electricity under Part I of the Federal Power Act. Technologies like wave, tidal and hydrokinetic use water to generate electricity, offshore wind does not. Part II of the Federal Power Act governs issues like electricity sales or interconnection that are part of interstate commerce. So as a general rule, FERC will have jurisdiction over an marine renewable energy project's interconnection agreement with the utility, access to transmission and wholesale power sales. However, FERC's power under Part II of the FPA relates to regulatory oversight and rate approval, rather than licensing, which it carries out under Part I. So while FERC would have authority over, for example, an offshore wind facility's interconnection agreement with a utility under Part II of the FPA, it does not have licensing authority under Part I.
My wave/hydrokinetic project is entirely in state waters. I don't need a FERC license, right? Wrong! FERC has power to license wave and hydrokinetic projects that are located on (1) navigable waters; (2) federal lands or reservations or (3) commerce clause waters and connected to the grid. Generally speaking, waters up to three miles from shore are definitively classified as navigable waters, and thus, FERC has licensing power over them. In fact, referring to waters up to three miles out as "state waters" is deceptive. More accurately, these waters are better described as "waters over state submerged lands," because the federal government retains authority to regulate navigation and water power production in these waters.
My project won't connect to the grid so I don't need a FERC license. Well, this one isn't as much a myth as it is a legal fiction. Technically speaking, under the Federal Power Act, any project located in a navigable water whether connected to the grid or not must be licensed. End of story, until the Verdant Power decision. There, in an effort to reach what all (myself included) agree was the right result of allowing Verdant to test its project for a short period without a license, FERC concocted a bit of a legal fiction, suggesting that when a project did not send power to the grid, or earn money from power sales (which would be a transaction in interstate commerce), it could be exempt from licensing. But this whole grid nexus is really irrelevant in the Verdant case since the project is on a navigable water and is jurisdictional whether or not connected to the grid. Truth be told, it would have been far cleaner for FERC to have exercised its authority under Section 10 of the FPA to exempt Verdant type projects under 2 MW from licensing requirements rather to inject confusion into the statute. But it's tough to complain when the result is absolutely the right one.
My project is in Hawaii or Alaska. Does FERC have jurisdiction? Here's where the Verdant decision creates confusion. Technically, projects in Hawaii and Alaska aren't connected to the interstate grid. But those projects may be located on navigable waters - e.g. oceans - and are therefore subject to FERC jurisdiction. With regard to Alaska, the state has the ability to opt out of FERC jurisdiction for projects of 5 MW or less provided that it implements a licensing regime that receives approval from FERC. But to date, that hasn't happened, so marine renewable projects in Alaska remain within FERC's scope.
Since FERC is licensing my project, I can ignore state laws, right? Nope. FERC's ability to preempt state law is extremely limited and only applies to those laws that directly conflict with FERC's authority. And for some state laws, such as those relating to fish protection, FERC is required to attempt to negotiate a solution before overriding state law. Further,when the state implements federal law, such as in issuing CZMA consistency findings or Section 401 Water Quality Certification, those decisions, albeit issued by the state, have the power of a federal statute behind them and as such, can't be preempted.
I can't think of any other myths right now, but if you have questions about the scope of FERC jurisdiction, please feel free to send me a question below. And keep in mind that none of this constitutes legal advice, it's just my analysis based on my understanding of the law of how FERC jurisdiction works.
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text: I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the Ada market weren't run by the DoD and Defense Contractors who insist on paying non-competitive rates, they would find more than enough Ada programmers. Last time I did paying Ada contract work, in 1994 / 1995, I made $75 / hr. Since then, I've made over $100 / hr doing C, Java, perl, csh and whatever else has been required. Heck - if they probably even paid what they undoubtedly end up paying for C programmers eventually up front for Ada programmers, they'd probably be able to find plenty as well. -- Karl --


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Intelligent Multiculturalism – Survival and the Beauty of Openness
If you've got someone pushing for special concessions regardless of fairness, and who have stated their intentions to usurp the legitimate government, you would think it a no-brainer to stop them.
The two things that prevent most Westerners from even knowing about this issue are political correctness and blind multiculturalism. These two cultural blots prevent politicians from speaking openly and directly about orthodox Islam. They prevent newspapers and television reporters from reporting openly and honestly about it, and they even prevent individual people talking about it among themselves out of fear of making a social blunder and being considered racist or bigoted.
Of the two, I would say blind multiculturalism is the more important one. If that's true, it means the single biggest barrier to being heard by a significant portion of the population of non-Muslims — the one thing stopping a widespread public education about Islam — is blind multiculturalism, so let's deal with it right now.
I thought William Bennett made a good point in Why We Fight: Multiculturalism simply says we might have something to learn from other cultures. For several centuries, Westerners have taken up multiculturalism with a passion, often driven by a reaction to the self-righteous snobbery of Europeans and Americans when they came into contact with "primitive" people.
The openness and willingness to look for value in other cultures is good, and the willingness to consider people from other cultures just as human as people in your own culture — that's good too.
But over time, this idea has streamlined. It simplified into merely: "My own culture stinks. Other cultures are worth respecting and appreciating. Except mine."
Maybe multiculturalism combined with the natural teenage rebellion against the "establishment," I don't know.
But however it morphed from something completely legitimate to something self-destructive, there is no doubt it has morphed, and this simplified, dumbed-down multicultural ethos has permeated two very influential positions: School teachers and journalists. The vast majority of teachers, from kindergarten to graduate school, are dyed-in-the-wool blind multiculturalists. And so are the majority of journalists in the mainstream media.
It's not really multiculturalism that is bad. The original idea is very good. But blind, oversimplified multiculturalism could be our downfall.
Trying to oppose one extreme position (ours is the only culture worth appreciating) with the opposite extreme position (ours is the only culture not worth appreciating) still misses the reality of the situation, which is that not all cultures are equal, not all cultures are the same, not all cultures allow equal amounts of freedom or human rights, not all cultures allow equal amounts of free speech and rights for women, and not all cultures allow for equal opportunity for economic abundance and creative pursuits.
Some cultures are better, in some respects, than others. We should appreciate and be open to other cultures, and here in the West, we are — and we are more open than probably any society has ever been in history, and that's one of the reasons this culture, our own culture, is superior to any other culture in at least this one respect (and there are others).
To take an example, do you think Saudi Arabian culture is more open to other cultural influences than we are?
No, they aren't. Not even close. Which means we are more open than they are. Which means when it comes to this particular value — openness to influence by other cultures — we measure higher. Our own culture is better. (Gasp!)
Our Western culture is not perfect, and we should never become so arrogant as to think so, but it has many fine qualities. So whenever multiculturalism devolves into hating Western culture, it is as limited and ignorant as loving Western culture and willfully finding nothing good in any other culture.
But even here, we have at least two variations within our own culture: One that hates its own culture but is open to other cultures, and one that loves its own culture but is not open to other cultures.
These two variations can also be judged. On the criteria for openness, the first one is better. But what about survival in the face of an aggressive competing culture? Islam is aggressively trying to encroach and ultimately replace our culture. Which of our two variations is better at surviving that kind of encroachment?
In other words, if you have two equal cultures and one hated itself but was open to other cultures, but the other culture loved itself but was closed to other cultures, wouldn't the self-loving culture be more likely to survive if they clashed? I think so.
That means that those who have adopted blind multiculturalism (and spread it in schools and the media) are accidentally (or not) making our culture — and all the freedom that goes along with it — vulnerable to invasion and subversion by orthodox Muslims.
Blind multiculturalists must be converted to multiculturalists who appreciate their own culture.
A culture (like ours) that is open to other cultures but also appreciates its own strengths and fine qualities would be the best one to live in and it would survive an invasion by orthodox Islam.


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It shows satellite rush hour on the Sagitta-Vulpecula border: as much as four objects in this single image measuring less than 10 degrees!
11-037B is related to the SPEKTR R (Radioastron) launch. Kosmos 530 (72-087C) is clearly slowly flashing.
click image to enlarge
Later that evening, I captured the FIA Radar 1 (10-046A) passing through Cygnus amidst whisps of clouds, making for this eerie picture (made using the Canon EF 2.5/50mm Macro):
click image to enlarge


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Australia fires burn 50,000 acres of farmland and forest
| Hobart, Australia
Officials searched Monday for bodies among the charred ruins of more than 100 homes and other buildings destroyed by wildfires in the Australian island state of Tasmania. Around 100 residents remained unaccounted for, three days after the fires broke out.
As scores of fires raged across Australia's parched southeast, a volunteer firefighter suffered severe burns to his hands and face while fighting a grass fire near Gundaroo village, about 220 kilometers (138 miles) southwest of Sydney, the New South Wales state Rural Fire Service said in a statement. The firefighter was flown to a hospital in Sydney.
Tasmania's acting police commissioner, Scott Tilyard, said no casualties had been reported in the state from the fires. But he said it would take time before officials were certain that no one had died in the blazes, which have razed 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of forests and farmland across southern Tasmania since Friday.
Tilyard said 11 teams of officials were searching for the roughly 100 missing residents in places including the small town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart, where around 90 homes were destroyed.
"Until we've had the opportunity to do all the screening that we need to do at each of those premises, we can't say for certain that there hasn't been a human life or more than one human life lost as a result of these fires," Tilyard told reporters.
Three fires continued to burn out of control in southern Tasmania and in the northwest Monday.
Police charged a 31-year-old man with starting one of the southern fires, near Lake Repulse, by leaving a camp fire unattended last week.
Police did not release his name, and it was not clear what penalty he could face if convicted.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who flew to Tasmania on Monday, warned that New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, was about to move into a period of extreme heat Tuesday and that the wildfire risk would be high.
"We live in a country that is hot and dry and where we sustain very destructive fires periodically," Gillard told reporters. "Whilst you would not put any one event down to climate change ... we do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions."
New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said more than 90 wildfires were blazing across the state Monday, including the Gundaroo fire. He warned that conditions would worsen on Tuesday. No homes were currently under threat.
"It is going to be very hot and very dry. Couple that with the dryness of the vegetation, the grassland fuels, the forest fuels and those strong winds that are expected tomorrow," he said.
Temperatures across much the state was expected to reach 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, while winds were expected to be as strong as 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour).
Wildfires are common during the Australian summer. In February 2009, hundreds of fires across Victoria state killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.


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1. Is it legal to watch movies on Putlocker ?
Absolutely, Watching is totally legal. We also do not host the movies, we link to them.
I can't find my favorite movies, what can I do
2. How to know the version of the movie I am watching ?
In movie list, move your mouse on a film's thumbnail, you will see its version (HD 720p/ HD 1080p)
3. How to turn on/off subtitles ?
Most of movies have English subtitles, you can turn it on/off by click to [CC] icon in control bar of our player.
Some of movies have no subtitles and the icon will not appears.
4. Most of movies have some quality options (1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p). You can choose which you want.
Some of them just have 720p and 360p and it will display HD/SD icon
5. How to know quality of a movie ?
You can move your mouse on its thumbnail, you will see its quality in top right corner of its tooltip
6. It says url is broken, what i need to do ?
Just click on Fix movie in left corner of the player and it will be fixed automatically.
7. How to contact us ?
Please check contact page


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Boss VB-2W Vibrato Waza Craft
Ahead of its time when it debuted in 1982, the VB-2 Vibrato has been rediscovered by modern players looking to create unique guitar textures with stompbox effects. Thanks to its expressive, one-of-a-kind sound, this rare pedal has gone on to become one of the most valuable BOSS effects in the vintage market. Now, the progressive spirit of the VB-2 has been reborn as the Waza Craft VB-2W. Using all-analog circuitry, the VB-2W authentically reproduces the true pitch-shifted vibrato of the original pedal, and also adds an innovative new vibrato mode and real-time control function for enhanced expression.
-Waza Craft: The Art of Superior Tone-
Since the beginning, the engineers at BOSS have been committed to achieving the finest guitar tones using any technology necessary, from old-school analog circuits to high-tech DSP. Continuing this enthusiastic spirit, we are pleased to introduce the Waza Craft series. In Japan, "Waza" is the term for art and technique, and these special edition pedals proudly carry the Waza symbol to represent the pinnacle of BOSS design and craftsmanship. With final sound approval carried out by BOSS in Japan, the Waza Craft series brings you exceptional tone and touch response through carefully selected analog components, refined circuitry, and meticulous attention to detail.
- Premium edition Waza Craft pedal delivers the ultimate BOSS tone experience
- Custom mode features a totally new vibrato sound with unique filter wave
- Standard mode provides a true reproduction of the vintage VB-2 Vibrato sound
- All-analog circuit with BBD (bucket brigade) vibrato line
- Control the effect depth in real time with an optional expression pedal
- Rise Time knob to control the initial onset of the vibrato effect
- Unlatch mode activates the effect only while pressing the pedal, ideal for adding vibrato to specific notes and chords
- Bypass mode takes the BBD out of the signal path to eliminate latency when the effect is off
- BOSS five-year warranty
Returns accepted within 3 days of receiving merchandise.
The Empire music promise
- Full factory setup and inspection on every guitar with purchase
- Personal service from Joe, Todd or Anthony before and after your purchase
- Free shipping on all new items
- Free technical assistance for life on all products


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Free Games Download Site My Real Games Ends 2012 on a High with App Store Approval
LONDON, Dec. 11, 2012 /CNW/ - Free PC games download site, My Real Games will end 2012 on a high after confirming that one of its latest additions has been approved by the App Store.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121210/582431 )
Dirty Devils, published in partnership with Nuclear Games, is a breathtaking mobile game available for iPad tablets, iPhone and Android handsets. Online gamers have been gripped by the need to get the trouble making Dirty Devils under control by swiping them into hot vats of oil.
Nikolai Veselov from MyRealGames.com said, "The popularity of Dirty Devils shows just how addictive action games are. Many of our most downloaded free PC games fall under the action genre, making it consistently one of the busiest parts of the website. The fact that Dirty Devils has just been approved for the Apple App Store means that we expect an even bigger surge of popularity."
The AppStore thumbs up caps an incredibly successful year for the My Real Games team. In the summer it announced that it had captured a huge share of the online games market with a 47% increase in gamers for the period January - June 2012 compared with 2011. The site has also seen a substantial increase in the number of returning visitors. Studies show 66% will return each month.
In addition to Dirty Devils, the site has seen an increased demand for Hidden Object games and has been tailoring its library of new additions to suit. The PC download, Three Musketeers Secrets: Constance's Mission is one of a slew of new titles satisfying this demand. It is a hidden object quest based on the famous book by Alexandre Dumas. Players must seek out clues, locate items and bring those plotting against the crown to justice.
Also new is Celtic Lore: Sidhe Hills, a hidden object game based on Celtic mythology. Players solve clues and follow trails to rescue a kidnapped brother. In The World's Legends: Kashchey the Immortal, gamers must defeat the evil sorcerer to return kidnapped Tsaritsa to her homeland.
Racing and action fans can sate their need for speed with Dead Paradise, a sports and action hybrid or play the tropic simulator Katy and Bob: Way Back Home.
To view all of the games available to download and for more information, visit http://www.myrealgames.com/press/free-games-download-site-myrealgames-ends-2012-on-a-high-with-app-store-approval/.
SOURCE: MyRealGames.com
For further information:
Contact: Rebecca Appleton, Email: [email protected], Tel: +44-(0)1623-428-996


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The Vibrant World Of Hohokum
Santa Monica Studio is no stranger to working with talented indie developers, having helped bring games like Sound Shapes, The Unfinished Swan, and Journey to Sony's platforms. Its latest collaboration is Hohokum, a colorful and creative 2D sandbox game from developer Honeyslug and artist/designer Richard Hogg.
In Hohokum, players control a floating snakelike creature called The Long Mover, exploring a variety of unique, hand-made environments as they help the world's inhabitants, solve puzzles, and just have fun. Santa Monica Studio's Nathan Gary saw an early demo of Hohokum at IndieCade back in 2011, and was so impressed that he raved about the game to the rest of his team. After a few conversations with Honeyslug, the two companies began their collaboration and have been working together ever since.
To learn more about Hohokum, we spoke with co-creators Ricky Haggett and Richard Hogg about what the gameplay entails, how the collaboration with Santa Monica Studio is going, and what they think about the current state of the industry.
Hohokum is a collaboration between Honeyslug and artist/designer Richard Hogg. Can you describe what the creation process is like and what each party brings to the table?
Haggett: The process of making video games with people from other disciplines is highly recommended – there are so many subconscious assumptions about how things should work in a video game that you find yourself in the uncomfortable position of trying to justify without really knowing why. Collaborations with "outsiders" are a good way to force yourself to approach things from first principles and really think about the thing you want to make and why. Dick and I were working on Hohokum part time for several years before the IGF build in 2011 and it went through at least four distinct phases before we settled on what we have now (one version had a golf mini-game!). The ethos and atmosphere have remained consistent throughout though; we were always trying to make quite a playful, relaxed game, but it took a while to work out what our core values (or manifesto) for the game should be.
Hogg: Collaborations are really cool. Making things and being creative with other people is probably my favorite thing to do in life and I guess working on a project where two people have very different but complementary skills is a nice solid foundation for a collaboration. The bits which cross over, where we can work together – like the game design – are the most important and fruitful. But the things that we rely on each other for are the glue that keeps us working together.
Haggett: And recently we've become more relaxed about allowing other people creative input – animators, gameplay programmers, designers, and musicians...Getting amazing people to work with you, then giving them a free hand and seeing the amazing stuff they come up with is one of the best things about what we do!
How did Sony get involved in the game? Who approached who?
Haggett: It was during Indiecade 2011; Our fairy godmother Robin Hunicke (and producer of Journey) introduced us to Nathan Gary, creative director of Sony Santa Monica, and he came along to check out the game in a big neighborhood fire station in Culver City, LA. Though unfortunately he wasn't able to actually play the game because a four-year-old boy named Alex was hogging it. Alex was a bit of an early Hohokum megafan and kept dragging his poor dad back to play more. Anyway, that's where we started talking to Nathan, explaining our vision for the game, and it went from there.
What's it been like working with Sony? How has adding SCE Santa Monica Studio affected development?
Hogg: The thing that drew us to Sony Santa Monica was that we had a hunch that they would respect and protect our game. You look at the games that they have published and you can see where they have worked with artists who have a strong, uncompromising vision and they have supported and championed that. We are unapologetic about the fact that we are auteurs; we are passionate about our game and were unwilling to see our vision get diluted by a publisher. So we were always limited to either self-publishing or working with a publisher who we trust and who has artistic integrity. But actually working with Santa Monica has been way better than us just trusting them – they are very good at this stuff! What they have brought to the game in terms of creativity, enthusiasm, design expertise, and moral support has been fantastic. It is a really good collaboration.
Haggett: Yeah, there's that indie rhetoric about "the publisher ruining your game," but our experience has been the opposite. We've been working with incredibly experienced, thoughtful people who provide a sounding board from the perspective of being a little bit removed from the day-to-day development process. They are often able to see the high-level issues more clearly and prod us in the right direction, while being respectful of what we're trying to achieve. We've never felt that Sony Santa Monica want to stamp their own vision onto Hohokum. Ultimately, we could never have self-published the game we're making, and I don't think there were many other publishers who would have supported the game so well.
Hohokum was nominated for an IGF award for Excellence In Visual Art back in 2011. How has the game evolved since then?
Haggett: We spent a long time in the early stages of development thinking about places we want to be in the game, walking around places like the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum or the National Maritime Museum looking at all the exhibitions and talking generally about stuff. Then we would try to make sense of the things we were interested in, and look for ways to fit them into the game. It is isn't overt, but there is definitely an attempt to make the game feel "well-rounded" in anthropological or historical terms; to capture a range of experiences and places from our own world, rather than just having, say, a lava world or an ice world.
There is much more variety, in terms of the atmosphere and art style, but also in the gameplay, which varies between being very playful and unfocused in some places, and a bit more "puzzley" in others.
Coming Up Next: Haggett and Hogg discuss the characters and world of Hohokum, and share their thoughts on the current state of the game industry...
Can you describe the basic premise/backstory for the game? What is the character that the player controls, what is the main goal, etc.?
Haggett: The player controls a long, thin creature with a single eye, who we're currently calling the Long Mover. It is a very expressive thing to control, and feels a little like doodling in the air with a kite. Each place you visit has its own goals – the world is not bound together by a shared "plot" (this is not a hero's quest game). In some places you definitely are helping out (someone at Sony once made the analogy to the old TV series The Littlest Hobo, which we really like), but in other places your role isn't so clearly defined – you may be causing mischief or just messing around for fun.
Hogg: Causing mischief! I have never thought of it like that before. We really want Hohokum to be a game where the player feels comfortable just moving around spaces in a playful, expressive, creative way. What is the "main goal" of someone who is snowboarding or flying a kite?
So far we've only seen one level of Hohokum, which involved floating city structures. How will the other levels be different? Will you be introducing new gameplay mechanics? Can you describe some of the other experiences players will have in Hohokum?
Haggett: Hohokum doesn't use the common approach to making a game where everything is made up of a kit of parts which get reused in different ways. Instead, pretty much everything is bespoke and handmade for the place it lives in; there is very little repetition. This makes it special, but also hard to make – not just technically, but also in terms of communicating things to the player, and retaining enough of a common feel to everything. We need to ensure that we get all these crazy, different things in without the "surface" of the game feeling bumpy or uneven.
Recently we've been adding things like swimming through pipes full of guano, making a Ferris wheel spin really fast, and having Gibbos throwing fruit at the bottom of a giant Baribosa.
What is your goal for Hohokum from a design/gameplay standpoint?
Haggett: We're trying to make a game where people can relax and just enjoy being in a space, and make their own decisions about whether to engage with the "things there are to do" or just fly around making fun shapes and listening to amazing music. There are enough games out there which spend too much time telling the players what to do constantly. Turns out this is a really tricky problem; without any guidance, some players can find the experience unsatisfactory – they are so used to games telling them exactly how they are supposed to be having fun that when a game doesn't do that, it feels stressful. So a big goal for us is figuring out a way to give players enough information about what the "goals" of the game are without this impacting negatively on the people who are content to take things at their own pace and figure it all out organically.
Hohokum looks like a really unique and uplifting game. What are your thoughts on the current state of the industry? Do too many developers use violence as a core gameplay mechanic?
Hogg: Cheers! It's got kind of sad bits in it too, though. Anyway, the state of the industry, as far as I am concerned (which mainly means indie games) is fantastic! There are so many great games around at the moment and loads more in development that I am excited about and none of them use violence as their core mechanic. It is an amazing time to be playing video games. The indie stuff that is happening these days, it feels like a direct continuation from the kind of gaming that I was doing as a kid in the '80s. The stuff that happened in between mostly feels like some kind of bad dream.
Haggett: I think it depends on what you mean by "too many" developers. As Dick says, if you look at the wealth of amazing smaller games around now, there is every reason to be optimistic. For my tastes, there is definitely too much money and talent being spent on violent games, but that is a direct reflection of what games people are buying. The good news is that every year the big money is being pooled into fewer games, and every year there are loads of opportunities for smaller, interesting games to be supported financially.
For more on Sony's involvement with indie game developers, check out our previews of Counterspy and Doki-Doki Universe.


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Content-type: text/html
cc [ flag ... ] file ... -lcurses [ library ... ] #include <curses.h>
int deleteln(void);
int wdeleteln(WINDOW *win);
int insdelln(int n);
int winsdelln(WINDOW *win, int n);
int insertln(void);
With the deleteln() and wdeleteln() routines, the line under the cursor in the window is deleted; all lines below the current line are moved up one line. The bottom line of the window is cleared. The cursor position does not change. This does not imply use of a hardware delete line feature.
With the insdelln() and winsdelln() routines, for positive n, insert n lines into the specified window above the current line. The n bottom lines are lost. For negative n, delete n lines (starting with the one under the cursor), and move the remaining lines up. The bottom n lines are cleared. The current cursor position remains the same.
With the insertln() and insertln() routines, a blank line is inserted above the current line and the bottom line is lost. This does not imply use of a hardware insert line feature.
All routines return the integer ERR upon failure and an integer value other than ERR upon successful completion.
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
MT-Level | Unsafe |
curses(3CURSES), attributes(5)
The header <curses.h> automatically includes the headers <stdio.h> and <unctrl.h>.
Note that all but winsdelln() may be macros.


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St Katarina's Hospital
St Katarina's hospital was as far as we know the first health care institution in Bergen. It was built at Sandbro during the first part of the 13th century. The hospital burnt during the city fire in 1248. It was rebuilt behind the Cathedral in 1266 and stayed a hospital for leprosy patients, a poor house and a hospital for other gravely sick people until 1771.
The remains of the original St Katarina's hospital, which was built in stone, is located in Dreggen near Bryggens Museum, where we can see the results of the archaeological excavations during 1971-73.
The hospital was built in connection with the royal chapel St Katarina's Church. King Håkon Håkonsson built the hospital, and it was early on intended to care for people with leprosy. It was commonplace in European Middle Ages that hospitals took care of people with leprosy. These hospitals were always closely connected with churches.
Both the church and the hospital were ruined by the big fire in 1248. They were rebuilt behind the Cathedral under King Magnus Håkonsson in 1266.
St Katarina's Hospital was initially intended as a hospital for sick men, although later it was referred to as a leprosy hospital, 'ospitale leprosorum'. In 1276 it became a hospital for poor women. In this 'ospitale pauperum', the hospital for the poor, the women were provided with housing, food and clothes.
From 1500 onward, St Katarina's hospital was run by The German Office – the Hanseatic merchants. It was now referred to as a poor house for "old and young, wed and unwed, still helpless and frail". The church and the hospital benefitted from 75 wills from travelling merchants during the period 1339–1527.
St Katarina's hospital burnt again during the devastating fire in 1702, but was rebuilt three years later. The government was put in charge of the hospital in 1759, but in 1771 it was shut down. Six paupers still lived in the hospital at the time, and they were moved to another poor house; Sailors Poor House. St Katarina's Hospital was torn down in 1884, after having accomodated both a school and Bergen Temperance Society.
Til alle som har en fot i fortidens Bergen - hva med Elisabeth Welhavens fornøyelige historier fra Bergen rundt 1800? Boken kan bestilles på Histos forlag!


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Investors chasing the biggest rally in high-yield municipal debt since 2008 are drawing the line at the bonds of Allen Park, whose ill-fated plan to build a movie studio has left it facing possible bankruptcy.
The city of 28,000 sold $31 million of bonds about three years ago for the venture, the brainchild of California film executive Jimmy Lifton. Instead of his Unity Studios, the city is stuck with partially leased buildings that aren't meeting costs, and $2.6 million in annual bond payments from a $16 million general budget.
Next month, a new law gives Allen Park's emergency manager, Joyce Parker, more power to stave off insolvency. Still, in the $3.7 trillion muni market, investors are standing clear even as yields close to 47-year lows lure buyers to riskier, higher-yielding debt. Allen Park bonds have trailed gains in benchmark local debt, pushing the extra yield for some securities to about seven percentage points from 6.5 percentage points in June.
"There has to be a legitimate turnaround plan for some of these communities before it warrants a high-yield investor like me getting involved," said Tim Pynchon, who helps manage $3 billion of high-yield munis at Pioneer Investment Management Inc. in Boston.
Burned roster
Allen Park joins a roster of municipalities burned by assuming debt to finance commercial or sports-related projects with promises of economic salvation. Last year, Vadnais Heights, Minn., had its credit rating dropped 12 levels after it borrowed for a $25 million sports complex that wound up costing one-third of its annual budget.
In Allen Park, the deficit when including costs such as pensions and health care has ballooned to nearly $4 million and the city's future as "a going concern" is in doubt, according to a Dec. 29 audit report. Its credit was cut five levels below investment grade by Standard & Poor's in March.
Lifton didn't immediately return a call to his studio in Burbank, Calif. He signed an agreement with Allen Park in 2010 that left him with no liability. Under the accord, he's not allowed to talk about the deal.
Repair plan
Parker, appointed emergency manager in October, unveiled plans last week to fix the city's finances. They include selling assets such as vacant property; cutting pay and requiring employees to assume a bigger share of health-insurance costs; hiring a private contractor for trash pickup; and refinancing bonds sold for the failed studio, Parker said in a statement.
Bankruptcy "is always an option if the other plans are not feasible," Parker, 60, president of Ann Arbor-based The Municipal Group LLC, said in an interview. She would need state approval for that.
Rather than run out of cash this month, the city has delayed payments to some vendors, she said.
No Michigan city has declared bankruptcy, and state laws aimed at averting defaults are helping turn around municipalities such as Flint and Pontiac.
Parker's toolkit will expand at the end of March. That's when a law signed in December by Gov. Rick Snyder takes effect and gives emergency managers more authority, including renewed power to cancel union contracts. Voters in November repealed a similar law that critics labeled as undemocratic, anti-union and too protective of bondholders at the expense of government services.
State involvement
The emergency manager law makes the state more attractive to investors, said Hector Negroni, New York-based chief investment officer of Fundamental Credit Opportunities, which invests in the municipal market.
"I'm interested in investing in places where I understand that there's a framework by which responsible actions can be taken to address credit stress," Negroni said in an interview.
Falling property values and $3 million in annual employee retirement costs added to the fiscal strain, said Parker. Yet finances went over a cliff when officials sold the bonds to buy property for a $146 million movie studio and 3,000 new jobs promised by Lifton, a Detroit native and president of Oracle Post, a Burbank, Calif., video post-production company. The 104-acre site once housed an automotive supplier.
The studio didn't materialize, though the movie company, Unity Studios, operated a film school at the property for a few months until it shut in 2010. Portions of the site are leased, though not enough to cover the city's cost of maintenance.
Markdown move
As the stress mounted, investors marked down prices on debt financing the venture. They have been left out of a rally in tax-free munis rated BBB, or two levels above junk, for which the extra yield on 10-year maturities is close to the smallest since 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Taxable general-obligation bonds sold for the project in 2009 with a 7.33 percent yield and due in 2039 have traded this month with yields averaging about 10.8 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
For Michael Brooks, who helps oversee $31 billion at AllianceBernstein LP in New York, including a Michigan state fund, Allen Park's debt has no appeal, no matter what the yield.
"We're staying away from weak local issuers," Brooks said.
In trading last week, benchmark 10-year muni yields rose to 1.88 percent, the highest since August, Bloomberg Valuation data show.
-- Chris Christoff and Brian Chappatta, Bloomberg News


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All the sciences, well maybe not math, but all the others, have unique fears about certain aspects of the other sciences. I've seen biologists freak when I opened a bottle of toluene ("Don't you know that's a carcinogen!" It's not, but I can't convince them otherwise, and the fact that a number of independent biologists have stated it makes me fear for how wide spread the thought is) and I've talked with nuclear physicists paranoid about acrylamide monomer (as if the it's a worse risk than the radioactive materials that they work with).
Chemists certainly have fears in these other sciences, but they also have a few chemical fears. The most widespread one is of hydrofluoric acid. These pictures give you some idea why. HF is a deceptively nasty acid. The deception is in the actual acid strength of it. The halide acids (HF, HCl, HBr, HI) are stronger as you proceed down the periodic table. This is because the anions increase in size in that manner and are better able to disperse the charge. Look at the pKa's: HF 3.45, HCl -4, HBr -9, HI -10. Not quite as wimpy as acetic acid at 4.75, but pretty close.
Despite this, the acid is properly feared because it is merciless in attacking two important everyday materials: glass and human flesh. Glass is remarkably resistant to most acids, but is readily etched by the tiny HF acid, and in the human body, HF is a systemic poison going right for the calcium in your bones. I've never experienced such a burn, but I understand it gives a new meaning to pain.


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- Home
- Government
- Auditor
- Manufactured Homes
Manufactured Homes
Computing Taxes
Manufactured homes are those which have titles, are to be registered in the office of the County Auditor within 30 days of being placed on a property. There are 2 different ways a manufactured home can be taxed. Under the old law, manufactured home tax is computed on the purchased price or the market value, whichever is more. The other way they are computed is on the lower effective rate as opposed to the higher voted tax rate.
Those who purchased homes prior to January 1st, 2000 have the option to remain on the old law or convert to the new law. To complete this transaction an owner must complete an application, send a photo copy of the title and pay all taxes currently owed on the property.
Transferring a Title
Transferring a Title
When a manufactured home is transferred (sold to a new owner) the title must be notarized by the previous owner and given to the new owner. Ohio law says failure to give a new owner the notarized title is punishable by 90 days in jail and a $200 fine. To begin the transfer process, the new owner must bring a notarized title to the Auditor's office and complete a conveyance fee statement. A penalty of $100 will be imposed if the title is not transferred into the new owners name within 30 days.
The current taxes must be paid and a stamp from the County Treasurer must be placed on the title indicating the same before the transfer can be accomplished. The new owner is also required to pay a conveyance fee which is equal to four dollars per each one thousand dollars of the sale price plus $.50 cents per title.
The notarized title must be delivered to the Clerk of Courts, Title Department, in any county as cross-county titling is in effect. A new title will be issued in the name of the new owner. Within 30 days of the date the conveyance fee was paid, the new owner must register with the County Auditor's Office where the manufactured home resides. Failure to register a copy of the new title in the Auditor's office will result in an additional $100 fine.
Moving a Home
If a manufactured / mobile home is moved from 1 location to another, regardless of how far, a moving permit must be acquired from the County Auditor where the home presently sits. The fee for the permit is $5. Failure to purchase a moving permit will result in a $100 fine for the owner and also a $100 fine for the person who moved it.
Converting a Mobile Home
A mobile home may be converted so as to be taxed as real property. To convert, it must be on a permanent foundation which goes below the frost line, the wheels and tongue must be removed, all taxes must be paid and the original (lien free) title must be surrendered to the Auditor. The deadline to complete this transaction is December 15th each year.
Taxing an Inhabited Home
A manufactured home is taxable if it is inhabited or has a use. A good rule is if the structure has not been destroyed (completely knocked off its frame), then it is taxable. If an owner wishes to junk his/her manufactured home, the proper form may be completed at the Auditor's office. Again, taxes must be current and a stamp placed on the front stating said taxes are in fact current. After completion of this task, the title may be taken to the Auditor's office and officially junked.
If you have any questions concerning manufactured homes, please call 937-599-7211.


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Ticket UUID: | 83af1f5401a4cb9ba9943d0ec122ce721693bd9e | ||
Title: | fossil rollback | ||
Status: | Closed | Type: | Feature_Request |
Severity: | Important | Priority: | Immediate |
Subsystem: | one | Resolution: | Overcome_By_Events |
Last Modified: | 2015-02-17 00:55:53 | ||
Version Found In: | |||
Description & Comments: | |||
`fossil rollback` - undo the commit but leave files modication
drh added on 2008-10-18 13:34:09: The first and less serious reason is that removing information from a fossil repository goes against the fossil philosophy of preserving all changes. There are other mechanisms in place to remove content from a fossil repository (ex: the "shun" mechanism) but these things are intended to combat spam. We have concerns about users routinely backing out their changes. The second problem is that the rollback can only occur on the local repository. If a sync has occurred since the commit, then the commit has already been replicated onto other repositories. The next time the local repository syncs, the commit will reappear from the remote repository and the rollback will be undone. Note also that the default behavior is for the local repository to sync automatically after each commit, so there is a strong change that a sync will have occurred in between the commit and the rollback. What exactly is the OP hoping to accomplish with a "rollback" command in fossil? There are two opportunities during the commit process to abandon the commit - while editing the check-in command and while entering the GPG password - so it seems unlikely that a commit might occur by accident. What problem would the "rollback" command solve? anonymous claiming to be lRem added on 2009-04-08 15:45:30: # EDITED some_filedoes not prevent you from revealing your CC number you put there as a test string ;) Now if I want to rollback a bad commit the only way to do it is to remove the local repository, pull and apply my changes once again. This is a lot of work that could be avoided. As you wrote nothing can be done about changes that were pushed somewhere. But that is acceptable - one has to look out for his own autosync... drh added on 2009-04-08 16:22:34: The Shun mechanism was created for this and related purposes: to remove wiki-spam or inappropriate or obscene comments or remarks or to remove copyrighted material or material that contains trade secrets. Shunning can be done from the web UI. For some screens that show a single artifact, there is a "Shun" submenu option. (You have to have Admin privilege to see it, I think.) Or you can type in the SHA1 id of an artifact in the Shun screen which is found off of the main Admin page. Shunning takes effect the next time the repository is rebuilt. bharder added on 2009-04-08 17:19:16:
"fossil rewind debac1e5 -m 'password accidentally checked-in with code'" would leave the repository in a state where ticket [debac1e5] is the last entry. The manifest would be rebuilt to reflect repo state. I'd hope that syncing the checked-out files would not be done automatically. From there, a user could "fossil commit" to commit current diffs again, or re-checkout whatever baseline they want reflected on disk... As I think of it, perhaps a "rewind" entry could be installed as an artifact, too. So, after the above operation the "fossil timeline" might read:
I'm guessing, too, that the "rewind" entries would *absolutely* need to be immutable (ie: non-rewindable themselves). ...as I think about this more, it could also be nice to rewind artifacts to a temp storage, fix the point-in-time error (ie: take out the CC#, or password), then replay the temp storage back to the main repo... correctly only the mistake of entering a CC# or password, etc., but allowing the repo to otherwise easily be brought back to initial (pre-rewind) state. That's really breaking the "must not be mutable" philosophy of drh's though. fossil rewind debac1e5 ;# rewinds main repo to "debac1e5", storing unwound items on temporary stack [do local edits] ;# i.e.: remove the CC# fossil commit ;# now there is no embedded CC#, or secret password fossil replay deadbeef ;# replays stack taken with "fossil rewind", starting with deadbeef, to end (beddable) fossil timeline ;# new state after rewind/edit/replay
I'm sure there are corner cases, and details to be worked-out, but it sounds interesting... bharder added on 2009-04-08 17:24:24: anonymous claiming to be lRem added on 2009-04-08 19:37:56: |


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Yes, the City will provide reusable bags to recipients of SNAP and WIC beneficiaries.
Show All Answers
Sunday, January 1st, 2023
The City of Charlottesville (Link) and Albemarle County (Link)
5-cents per disposable plastic bag
Any grocery store, convenience store, or drugstore located within Charlottesville City Limits and Albemarle County. Larger retailers that contain a grocery store, convenience store, or drugstore are also subject to the tax. The store must maintain regular business hours at a fixed place of business in the City. This includes in-store purchases, to-go purchases, delivery purchases, and curbside pick-up purchases from its establishments within City limits.
No, you will not need to pay the tax if you bring your own reusable bags or other containers.
No, the state's grocery bag fees may not be paid for with SNAP or WIC benefits. In addition, the Food and Nutrition Service does not have authority to exempt SNAP or WIC clients from this fee. Therefore, grocery bag fees must be paid for using cash, credit card, or non-SNAP or WIC debit.
Pollution from single-use plastics is extremely harmful to our land and waterways and poses a threat to the health of humans and animals alike. Plastic bags have a useful life that is often no more than minutes, yet this plastic can last in the environment for hundreds of years or more. Plastics contain harmful chemicals and never truly decompose—instead they break down into smaller pieces called microplastics which are consumed by humans and animals through our food and water sources. This tax will help address these problems by drastically reducing the plastic pollution in our streets, streams, and stormwater system.
Environmental cleanup programs, providing education programs designed to reduce environmental waste, mitigating pollution and litter, providing reusable bags to recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) benefits
There is no conclusive evidence that plastic bags are more hygienic than reusable bags. While some studies have shown bacterial growth on unwashed reusable bags, this bacteria is not usually harmful to humans, like most of the bacteria on surfaces around your home. While the risk of food-borne illnesses from reusable bags is extremely small, regularly washing your bags is recommended.
Only about 1% of plastic bags are properly recycled today. Many communities don't accept plastic bags in curbside recycling because they jam and damage the sorting machinery. As a result, most plastic bags end up in landfills, incinerated, or polluting the environment.
To contact the Department of Taxation, please visit the Department's website at tax.virginia.gov (LINK) or contact the Department at (804) 367-8037.


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I am sure he would have liked a Minecraft one, but I have already made a surprise inside one for big man as well as a Minecraft birthday cake one. I was originally cursing myself for throwing out an old Happy Meal Mario figure, but then I found a Mario Pez dispenser and had an idea. As I just had the head, I decided I would stick it into the middle of the cake and it would look like he was coming out of one of those green drain pipes.
Time is scarce these days so I made the cake as easily as possible. I made a basic sponge using 8oz self raising flour, 8oz caster sugar, 8oz butter and 4 eggs. I split this between 3 round cake tins and added greaseproof paper to the top as well as bottom so they would rise evenly.
Once cooled, Betty Crocker came to the rescue with her chocolate fudge frosting. I sandwiches the layers together and spread frosting around the sides and top. This then went into the fridge to cool so that I could smooth it and add blue icing over the cake.
To make all the details of the cake, I used coloured icing pre prepared with CMC. To make the drainpipe stand up I used an ice cream cone to attach the icing to.
Finally I added some chocolate gold coins to the back of the cake using toothpicks.
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