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The Sugar Thieves have a sultry blues roots foundation, and powerhouse delta sound that will take you back in time. They also come equipped with a fresh new style, high-energy showmanship, and an original song list that brings music enthusiasts, of any age, to their feet.
From The Rooftop, 222 E Portland St, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
» More InfoThe Rhythm Room, 1019 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85014, USA
» More InfoFlatiron Park, 100 N Apache Trail, Apache Junction, AZ 85120, USA
» More InfoScottsdale Center For The Performing Arts, 7380 E 2nd St, Scottsdale, AZ 85251, USA
» More InfoClancy's Pub Pizza and Grill, 4432 N Miller Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85251, USA
» More Info1470 E Southern Ave, Tempe, AZ 85282, USA
» More InfoIn trying to describe The Sugar Thieves' sound, it only makes sense to call it good old American roots music. American music has always been a melting pot of styles including blues, jazz, country, folk, gospel, and rock and roll. All of these genres describe sounds that move us, and The Sugar Thieves blend all of these influences to create a sound that moves audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Their goal is to share their passion for great songs with the audience by exhibiting high energy showmanship and raw emotion with every performance. Firmly rooted in the blues, the Sugar Thieves have a love for all things Americana. On any given night the band will mix original songs with American covers spanning the last 120 years.
The Sugar Thieves started as a Duo in 2006, consisting of Meridith Moore's deep and colorful vocals, and Mikel Lander's gritty and gutsy guitar picking style, and vocal approach. Today they are backed by the most talented rhythm section west of the Mississippi.
Todd Chuba on drums boasts a thirty year career in music, and has shared a stage with the likes of Glen Campbell, and David Grisman. He is a wall of sound behind the kit, and embraces perfection in his approach to each and every tune. Shea Marshall, on plenty of instruments including keys, sax, harmonica, and even railroad spikes, has been with The Sugar Thieves since their very first concert. He is well known for his uniquely universal and ecumenical approach to instruments and styles. Jeff Naylor on upright and electric bass is a force to reckon with. His expressive showmanship, and hard playing captures any audience. He also compliments the band with backup vocals. Together, The Sugar Thieves are an uplifting, and unforgettable musical experience.


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Stan's No Tubes Crest 27.5 Front Wheels
The Crest sets the benchmark for XC tubeless performance. Years of refinement and victories in some of the most prestigious races in the world have created a rim that's lighter and stronger by design. Stan's patented lower-profile Bead Socket Technology offers an easy and reliable tubeless seal for decreased rolling resistance, less weight, and superior traction. One ride makes it clear why the best racers around the world choose the Crest (even when they're sponsored by someone else).
Faster, lighter, easier, and more reliable, the Crest rim with Neo hubs is the ultimate XC tubeless wheelset.
What's Included: Crest wheels include pre-installed tape for tubeless use and presta valve; 15x100mm front wheels include quick-release end caps and quick release.
- For cross country riding and racing
- Industry standard durable, lightweight rims
- Bead Socket Technology (BST) for superior tubeless performance
- Wider rim cavity increases tire volume for faster rolling, better traction, and improved cornering
- Stronger and lighter low-profile sidewalls for quicker acceleration
- Compatible with standard tires when used with or without tubes
Tubeless-ready rims are compatible with both standard and tubeless-ready tires. When a tubeless-ready tire is mounted on a tubeless-ready rim with special tubeless rim tape, valve, and sealant, the tire and rim form an airtight chamber that no longer requires a tube. This lets you run lower tire pressure with less fear of pinch flats and without the added weight of a tube. Lower tire pressure has many benefits, including greater traction and lower rolling resistance over rough surfaces. The rim can always be used with a tube, as well, by simply removing the tubeless valve stem and installing a standard tube like you would with any non-tubeless tire.
Size(s) | 27.5-inch |
Model | Crest |
Rim Material | 6061 Aluminum Alloy |
Rim Depth | 15.8mm |
Rim Width |
21.0mm Internal 24.4mm External |
Hub(s) | Neo |
Spokes (Front/Rear) | Sapim Force Black 2.0/1.7/1.8mm |
Holes (Front/Rear) | 32 |
Nipples | Sapim Secure Lock Alloy Silver |
Weight (Front/Rear) | 355g (Rim) |
Valve Type | 35mm Presta |
Extras | Pre-installed tape for tubeless use and presta valve; 15x100mm front wheels include quick-release end caps and quick release |
* Subject to change without notice.

subset: commoncrawl


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Sillage (pronounced as see-yazh) is a term used to describe a scented trail left by the fragrance wearer. It comes from the French word for "wake," as in the trail left in the sky by an airplane or on the water by a boat. Sillage defines how fragrance diffuses around the wearer, and a strong sillage means that a fragrance projects well. Sillage has nothing to do with the richness of the composition, however, but rather with the diffusive nature of the materials that go into it. For instance, hedione, fresh floral notes and some types of musk are extremely diffusive and radiant, while retaining an airy, light character.
Fragrances with a strong sillage include such rich compositions like Guerlain L'Heure Bleue, Lancôme Trésor, and Christian Dior Poison as well as light, ethereal blends like Bulgari Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert and Christian Dior Eau Sauvage. Conversely, minimal sillage fragances are ones that stay close to the skin and create a more intimate scented aura. Some examples include Comme de Garçons Avignon (Incense Series) and Prada Infusion d'Iris, Chanel 31, rue Cambon.
Generally, the most complimented fragrances are the ones with a strong sillage, but I find that depending on my mood, I alternate between diffusive and intimate fragrances. Plus, in some circumstances (office environment, theater outings, restaurants, etc.,) it is also a good idea to keep one's fragrant trail as understated as possible.


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Yet most attempts at forcing convergence of disparate devices fails. A few geeks buy into the hype, but consumers tend to ignore mutants like PSX and other technological monstrosities.
What drives the big console manufacturers to create convergence devices if they have such poor historical track records? Technological hubris is of course always a player, but there are certainly deeper issues worth exploring.
Mind you, convergence is a messy marketing term that is going to need a bit of structure in order to discuss in a meaningful fashion. Let's look at the two key strategies that are often described as 'convergence' and pick them apart to see why they are attractive to those shiny boys in sharp suits.
- Convergence as a product design strategy
- Convergence as a platform strategy.
Why convergence as a product design strategy sucks
I'm not a fan of convergence devices that promise to do everything. They tend to under perform in the market due to a variety of factors. There a several great articles wandering about the net covering this topic in more detail, but here are the four basic reason the sink these brilliant technological marvels.
Issue #1: Confusing benefit statement
Instead of a single clear benefit statement, consumers are bombarded with a dozen half-baked benefit statements. You need to be able to sum up your entire value proposition in a short sentence.
Look at the PSP's promise to the customer "Experience entertainment without boundaries." That, my fine lady friends, is vague and meaningless marketing speak that fails to describe any sort of concrete benefit. Check out the value statements of some successful non-convergence products:
- iPod: 5000 songs in your pocket.
- Google: Find anything on the web easily and quickly.
- Nintendogs: Own a cute dog (even if you can't own a real one)
- Gmail: Friendly webmail that never forces you to delete your messages.
- Tivo: TV without the crap. (Admittedly, Tivo's biggest problem is that they aren't allowed to promote this as a value proposition without irritating the advertisers)
Issue #2: Compromised solution that competes poorly against single purpose solutions:
Look at the classic VCR TV. You end up with a crappy TV and a crappy VCR glued together by a weakened user interface. Many consumers would rather buy a quality TV that gives them those warm post-purchase fuzzies. The quality of the individual buying experience matters.
The complexity that attends convergence is typically the kiss of death. A poll the Consumer Electronics Association found 87% said ease of use is the most important feature for users when they are purchasing new technologies.
Issue #3: Higher cost of entry
A multi-function device forces you to buy a bundle. What if a VCR TV costs $300 and you only have $200? By increasing the entry point, you limit your audience. Often consumers will buy the cheaper single component and then save up to get the secondary or tertiary elements of the bundle.
Issue #4: Single point of failure
When one piece fails, the whole thing fails. The perceived risk of system failure is much higher for multi-function devices. This is quoted as a typical issue, but it sounds a bit academic relative to how consumers typically purchase.
The failed logic of convergence focused product design
The traditional product design logic of a company focused on convergence is deeply flawed.
- Both product A and Product B are valuable to consumers.
- If we combine product A and Product B into a combined Product C, we will end up with a product that is twice as valuable to consumers.
- Other companies aren't selling converged devices so our super product will have a unique competitive advantage that will help us dominate the market.
A company strategy based on convergence is often that of the lazy corporate strategist who attempts to avoid the radical cultural shifts required by real innovation by playing a childish game of mixing and matching existing product lines.
Product successes are not based on convergence
I can only assume the myth of convergence as a product strategy came about when someone saw the occasional success of a convergence device and mistakenly assumed that the chimeric nature of the device was indeed the source of the product's sales mojo. Let's look at a couple convergence devices and dissect the real reason why they were successful.
The classic one is the "clock radio" combo. Though this is certainly a 'convergence device', the ultimate driver of adoption was a simple, easily articulated use case: "Wake up to music." Customer benefit drives adoption.
I find camera phones to be another interesting example of customer benefit being the real driver of adoption, not convergence. At first glance the combination of cameras and phones seems to validate the logic of convergence. Cameras are successful and cell phones are successful. And what do you know; camera phones are successful as well!
Yet something curious occurs here. The marketing people at phone companies are running around frantically trying to come up with 'convergence' products and services that take advantage of this obvious 'camera-cell phone synergy'. This task ends up being really quite difficult. Why? Because the benefit of having a camera phone has very little to do with synergy.
The reality is that the benefit of a camera phone is really quite simple: "Always having a camera with you helps you take better pictures." Any professional photographer will tell you that the real trick to taking great photos is having a camera with you when the right moment occurs. By stashing a camera in an item that is on your body 99% of the time, you increase the value of the camera.
By this argument, if the technologists had managed to figure out how to pack a camera into a standard keychain (and people were constantly encouraged to upgrade their keychains), the "camera keychain" would have been nearly as successful. The customer value is what matters. The fact that the value takes place in a convergence device is mostly random happenstance.
What I'm harping on here is that most 'convergence devices' are in reality just a combination of technologies that happen to tap into a concisely defined customer need. Rarely does someone use a radio-alarm clock as a main clock. Nor do they use it as their main method of listening to music. Instead, they use it for a narrow, highly specialized purpose that has a very strong value proposition.
So focusing on "convergence" in consumer products is a silly, meaningless product innovation strategy. What you should be focusing on is serving a customer need. Sometimes that involves slapping two mature technologies together, but more often it involves traditional product design techniques that attempt to solve unrealized customer requirements.
As a game designer, the obvious lesson is that you shouldn't expect to create a RTS-FPS-RPG that is an overwhelming success in the market place. But we have bigger fish to fry today. If convergence is a poor product design strategy why do console manufacturers insist on designing consoles that promote convergence?
The other face of convergence: Platform creation
The other face of convergence is when a company attempts to create a technology platform that serves as the foundation of a wide array of successful products.
The logic here is straight forward.
- Create a technology base that allows product companies to make innovative products.
- Product companies will focus on filling the needs of real customers with great, easy to use products.
- Customers will buy the well design products and in the process the platform will come along for the ride.
- Ultimately, network effects will start to make their effects felt and it becomes silly for anyone to develop products without the help of the underlying platform.
Platforms are about potential, not about results
Platform creation is often mislabeled as convergence by the ignorant press and the marketing lackeys that goad them onward.
It is in the platform provider's interest to claim that they do everything under the sun. They have no idea what the killer application will be for the platform, but the last thing they wish to do is define the platform too rigorously and turn off potential developers.
We are entering into a turbulent time in media. The traditional console game industry is stumbling and future growth is coming from poorly defined markets like cell phones, online games and casual games. Pundits are describing an all digital future where media is downloaded on demand. Digital music and movies are driving the creation of radical peer to peer distribution system outside of the control of traditional channel owners.
In short, if you are a large company such as Sony or Microsoft, you can't afford a narrow focus. If you focus on a few carefully chosen product benefits and fail to pick correctly, you've put the entire platform at risk. What happens if you don't include great movie playback features and in the next few years someone comes out with an amazingly popular movie distribution system that doesn't run on your platform? Billions of dollars of potential revenue are lost.
When platform strategy meets product design reality
This thinking puts Sony and Microsoft in an interesting position. They release products that hedge their bets and promise to do everything. All the standard convergence flaws apply.
- The new consoles have confusing benefit statements. Is the PS3 a game playing device? Sony isn't saying.
- Convoluted UI's. The classic consumer devices of the world have two or three buttons that a grandmother could use. To really tap into a PSPs capabilities, you need to be an uber geek. Downloading a special program to download movies onto your PSP using you PC is not a strong value proposition. Where is my 'download music' button?
- The new consoles are overly expensive. Do you really need Blue-ray or HD capabilities? Most people don't, but you end up paying for those technologies now because they need to be part of the bundled ubiquitous platform capabilities.
Sony makes a bet that a GTA will come along and use the streaming capabilities of their DVD player to create a must have game experience. Microsoft makes the bet that a Halo will come along and use the Xbox Live capabilities to create a must have experiance. They don't know what the ultimate hit product will be, but they pack enough attractive goodies into their offering that someone, somewhere will build a success using their platform.
Do platform companies innovate?
There is a big difference between the culture of a product company and a platform company. At the most basic level, the DNA of how they think, react and value products and innovation diverge.
Innovation is almost always about creating a small set of easy to use functionality that serves an underserved customer need. The initial results are unpolished and compare badly to established products. However, because they have little competition in their niche, they thrive and grow at a rate far better than the main industry.
Platform companies are horrible at creating new products that target customer needs. They are always looking for someone else to make the hard customer-centric decisions for them. Trimming features is agonizingly difficult since there is always the little voice in the back of their head saying "But this could be useful in the future." The result is bloated product offerings that do everything for everybody.
The closest a platform company comes to innovating is when they spot a product category that is critical to the adoption of their platform. Superior resources will be spent in order to own that product category and ensure that its predominant home is the company's platform.
For Microsoft's original Xbox this product category was the FPS genre. They invested heavily in making Halo the predominant FPS title on any platform. Halo was certainly a good game, but the combined marketing and hype that Microsoft lavished up on it was critical to its ultimate success and recognition as a major brand. They spent this money because they realized that owning the product category would strongly drive the adoption of the overall Xbox platform.
Since they own the dominant brand in this product category, it is doubtful that they'll lose it to another platform. Nintendo made this mistake with Final Fantasy. Instead of creating their own RPG offering that dominated the RPG genre, they relied on Square. Ultimately the relationship faltered and Square took Final Fantasy over to the Playstation. The N64 platform suffered a major blow. A product category leader moved to a different platform and took their customer base with them. The lesson for a platform company is the importance of owning your product category leaders.
As we'll see, this mistake was not an isolated incident, but instead was a classic result of Nintendo's product focused philosophy.
Why do product companies remain small?
Product companies are great at innovating, but often poor at building up platform-style network effects.
Nintendo is quite happy to make hard choices and try to understand customer needs. Last generation, they made the choice that online services didn't bring enough value to their customers. This generation they are rolling out a service that has only a few features (what, no match making?!), but serves the true needs of their customer base far better than any current solution. The claim of twice the percentage of gamers playing Mario Kart compared to Xbox Live is a strong one.
Again, we see the philosophy of choosing simple products that serve clear needs and leap into the market with impressive success.
The downside is that product design is a heavily centralized activity. If you look at three very different product innovation companies, Nintendo, Apple and 3M, the vast bulk of their innovative products are designed internally. The culture and processes required to make great customer-focused product decision are highly refined and quite delicate. The fundamental activity of cutting the junk and keeping the good stuff can be easily sidelined by ever a few doubter or hedgers. You literally need to build your entire company around the product design process.
This product design process is not easily transferable to external firms. You can't easily imbue a 3rd party developer with the design processes that Miyamoto and crew have built up over the past decades. You can't easily replicate Steve Jobs' eye for design. In fact, there is limited strategy focus in most companies. The more you are a product company, the less energy is put into being a platform company and vice versa.
Instead of hundreds of developers innovating on your platform, you have one. That one company is generally a highly profitable powerhouse, but its output often will rarely compare to the shear bulk of people putting out content for a broader platform. The result is that massive platform momentum is hard to generate
A tricky balancing problem
All of this creates a complex set of difficult-to-balance requirements.
- A new console must be marketed to consumers with a clear value proposition at time when there is very little value and lots of potential.
- If you increase the potential of your device, you make it more expensive by bloating it with extra features.
- If you increase the out of the box value of the device, you limit the breadth of the platform's capabilities and tend to focus on first party innovation at the expense of 3rd party development.
Using some of these thoughts we can come up with a snapshot of each of the console manufacturers.
- Microsoft is a pure platform company that dabbles in product design only as a method of ensuring the dominance of their platform. Innovation is secondary to creating a rich and full featured platform. This ties heavily into the culture and history of the company.
- Sony historically has been a strong consumer product design company. In the past 10 years, they've caught the platform bug and are still figuring out how to deal with it. The success of Playstation literally saved a company that was hemorrhaging money from a stalled electronics business. The shock to Sony's DNA is that it succeeded as a platform offering, not a product offering. With the Playstation 3, they are embracing the platform strategy fully. The question is whether or not they have the skills and the internal culture to pull it off. They certainly have the brand.
- Nintendo is a strong product company that dabbles in platform development to the degree necessary to make their products succeed in the marketplace. It is quite likely that their individual products will be surprisingly successful in the next round, yet overall market penetration will still be dragged down by a basic lack of platform momentum.
And so end my meandering thoughts on the topic of convergence. The important takeaways:
- A product design strategy relies on a focused product targeted at a strong user need.
- A platform strategy relies on creating a broad and flexible foundation that accelerates the development of successful products. Where products are about fulfillment of needs, platforms are always about potential.
- The cultural DNA required to pursue each strategy is very different. Product design involves making hard choices for the customer. Platform design involves throwing in the kitchen sink for the developer.
- Product design requires a strong centralized system of decision making. This creates amazing successes, but limits the scalability of the platform.
- A platform focus creates a business model that scales impressively based off the contribution of numerous 3rd party developers. The real trick is getting it off the ground in the first place since the initial value proposition is mere fluff without products to back it up.
At that point, their tune will change. Suddenly the message will be all about the newly minted product successes. It is the same pattern that occurred with GTA, Halo and Final Fantasy. They will then use the success of the golden child to drive further adoption of their platform. In turn, their platform success will encourage more developers to take risks and build great new products. Over time, if enough killer products come out, the platform will snowball and gain momentum.
Nintendo, on the other hand, will come out of the gate with a concisely defined product offering that a target audience will love. The most successful teams will be internal Nintendo development teams and closely held 2nd parties who are well indoctrinated in the process of creating unique solutions around specialized hardware and software.
There are certainly many unknowns. Nintendo could realize their product design bias and beef up their 3rd party support structure to counter the weakness inherent in their cultural predisposition. Sony could rediscover its product design background and launch with strong games tailored to the strengths of their target platform, thus avoiding the early lull that hits most platform focused products.
We can't predict the future, but at least we'll have a reasonable vocabulary to discussing what happens.
Take care
- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/100/beauty-of-simplicity.html
- http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/45997.html


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In his State of the Union speech Jan. 28, President Barack Obama announced an initiative to help people save for retirement. While this program represents an important first step, there is a small change to the concept that would make it significantly more effective at no additional cost to the government. As currently conceived, the program helps people start saving now. What is missing is help to encourage them to save even more later.
To understand why action is needed, it's necessary to grasp the scale of the retirement crisis. The numbers are undeniable: 75 million Americans do not have a retirement savings plan — that's more than half of all workers.
James Poterba — Mitsui professor of economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology — and colleagues found that 46% of retirees died with less than $10,000 and relied almost entirely on Social Security benefits for support.
To deal with this crisis, Mr. Obama outlined the creation of a new kind of retirement account called MyRA. While MyRAs offer tax incentives and security — the principal investment is backed by the U.S. government — their main appeal has to do with the ways in which they make saving easier. In particular, MyRAs allow workers to enroll in automatic savings plans, which deduct a fixed amount from a paycheck. Such a setup means workers don't have to deliberately choose when and how to save — all the details are arranged for them.
A few days after the president's speech, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, offered his own plan, the USA Retirement Funds Act of 2014, introduced Jan. 30. One of the main pillars of Mr. Harkin's plan is that all employees are automatically enrolled in a savings plan at a rate of 6% of pay. This is not a mandate, of course: Workers can always choose to raise, lower or stop their contributions.
As a behavioral economist who has spent decades studying the psychology of retirement savings, I applaud these attempts to make saving as easy as possible. Extensive research has confirmed the benefits of both automatic deductions and automatic enrollment. Perhaps the most relevant evidence comes from the United Kingdom, which launched the National Employment Savings Trust. The goal of NEST is to ensure that all British workers have easy access to a retirement savings plan. The initial evidence suggests NEST has been an important success, with 92% choosing to maintain suggested savings levels, i.e., they did not opt out of the savings plan. By any measure, NEST is a reminder that the best way to get workers to start saving is to make saving as easy as possible.
But I think it's not enough to simply enroll workers in retirement savings accounts. My concern is that the establishment of these auto-enrolled, low-yield accounts might have unintended consequences and generate a false sense of security among savers.
Let me explain. The underlying logic of automatic enrollment is that humans are prone to decision-making inertia: Once a default setting is established, the evidence suggests they rarely tinker with the details. This inertia can be a good thing, if it encourages people to open new savings accounts. However, the same mental tendency might also lead to serious shortfalls over time, as those automatically enrolled workers will stick with their initial savings rate, even when it's not nearly high enough. This inertia is only compounded by the fact that the default settings are often seen as implicit endorsements. For instance, employees might assume that 6% is the ideal savings rate, though it often takes double that rate to retire comfortably, especially for those who started saving late in their career.
But won't people realize they're not saving enough before it's too late? Not necessarily. For the last several years, Dan Goldstein, principal researcher, Microsoft Research, a wholly owned unit of Microsoft Corp., and honorary research fellow at the London Business School; Hal E. Hershfield, assistant professor of marketing, Stern School of Business, New York University; and I have been studying a behavioral tendency known as the illusion of wealth. In essence, the illusion of wealth has to do with the fact that a significant lump-sum amount of money — say, $100,000 in a savings account — seems like far more money than it actually is, at least when we're forced to live off it in retirement. The end result is that workers might conclude they are saving enough for retirement, when the reality is they are falling far short. If that's the case, then IRAs might come to stand for illusionary retirement accounts. They give us the illusion of security, but not the real thing.
What's the solution? We need to combine auto enrollment with auto escalation so that savings rates are gradually raised over time. (Workers, of course, can always opt out of the program.) In a 2004 study I co-authored with Richard H. Thaler — Charles R. Walgreen distinguished service professor of behavioral science and economics, University of Chicago Booth School of Business — we demonstrated that auto escalation was able to take the savings rate at a midsize manufacturing company to 13.6% from 3.5% in less than four years. In the years since, auto escalation has become a popular and effective savings tool, offered by more than half of all large corporations in the U.S., and it has helped doubling the saving rates of more than 4 million employees. It's time to make the same benefits available for the small employers and part-time workers most likely to rely on MyRAs. Under such a system, IRAs would become synonymous with automatically increasing retirement accounts.
Millions of people have benefited from the insights of behavioral economics as applied to retirement savings. We've learned that, when it comes to saving, it's really important to make things as easy as possible, which is why auto enrollment is so effective. But making it easy to save is just the start. If we are serious about fixing the retirement crisis, then we also need to make it easy to save enough.
Shlomo Benartzi is professor and co-chair of the behavioral decision-making group at the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, and chief behavioral economist of the Allianz Global Investors Center for Behavioral Finance, which seeks to turn academic ideas into practical tools plan executives can use to help participants make better financial decisions.


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Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts
Alternate appearance
- Compatible across virtually all gaming platforms and devices
- An unmatched, immersive gameplay experience (THX 7.1 surround sound capable, detachable mic, and more)
- Gel padding is incredibly comfortable across a wide range of head sizes
Collect over 75 Jiggies, then go to Spiral Mountain, and defeat Grunty in the final Showdown challenge to complete the game. Reload your cleared saved game file after the ending sequence. Banjo will be wearing a Tuxedo and Kazooie will wear a neck tie.
Banjo Head vehicle
Successfully complete the game to unlock the Banjo Head vehicle as a L.O.G. option.
Bonus Gamerpics
Successfully complete all five "Klungo Saves The World" levels to unlock a Gamerpic featuring Klungo. Collect all 131 Jiggies to unlock a Jiggy Gamerpic.
Klungo Sssavesss The Universsse! mini-game (L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges DLC)
Successfully complete all six challenges from both L.O.G.'s choice and player choice vehicles with a "Jiggy" or better rank, and complete the puzzle picture in the level with colored Jiggys to unlock the Klungo Sssavesss The Universsse! mini-game.
Golden Trophy Thomas house and statue (L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges DLC)
Successfully complete all six challenges from both L.O.G.'s choice and player choice vehicles with a "T.T." rank. The Trophy Thomas statue and his house in Showdown Town will now turn golden.
Bonus Stop 'N' Swop blueprints (L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges DLC)
Use the Stop 'N' Swop items in Banjo-Tooie to unlock seven new blueprints.
Flying trolley
Place any object on your trolley. Move the trolley to a barrier that you want to levitate over. Stand on the object, then highlight your trolley. You can now move the entire trolley, and yourself, in the air with your wrench. The trolley will rise in the air. With practice, you can fly anywhere with it. Note: If you slide off the object, the trolley will fall.
- Compatible across virtually all gaming platforms and devices
- An unmatched, immersive gameplay experience (THX 7.1 surround sound capable, detachable mic, and more)
- Gel padding is incredibly comfortable across a wide range of head sizes
Surviving falls
If you are falling and expecting death, press Start before hitting the ground. You will survive with about a quarter health. Alternately, press X before landing.
Upgrading your Showdown Town trolley
To add better parts to your trolley, you must play levels (acts) with one challenge. If there is only one, you will be pitted against Grunty. If you win, you will get upgrades, such as high grip tires, floaters, etc.
Secret vehicle parts
Have a saved game file from Banjo-Kazooie (Xbox Live) with the six colored eggs and the Ice Key. There will now be a Mumbo crate at the following seven secret locations in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts . Each crate corresponds to one of the colored eggs and the Ice Key.
- Beacon: Requires the green egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is in the cave under LOG's game factory.
- Disco Ball: Requires the red egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is beneath the Terrarium Of Terror. Walk down the tunnel next to the wrench-it switch.
- Flag: Requires the Ice Key in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is on top of Boggy's gym.
- Fluffy Dice: Requires the pink egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is in the boathouse under the Banjoland doors.
- Goldfish: Requires the blue egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is on the castle turret that overlooks the docks.
- Googly Eyes: Requires the yellow egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is on the beach below the lighthouse. Note: The horn is required to obtain it.
- Mole On A Pole: Requires the cyan egg in Banjo-Kazooie . This crate is on the rooftop south of the Jiggy Bank; access via the drain pipe near the canal.
Free Jiggy machine locations
A free Jiggy machine can be found at the following locations:
- 1. Underneath Klungo's arcade.
- 2. Underneath LOG's Factory.
- 3. On top of LOG's Factory.
- 4. Underneath the lighthouse.
Crate locations
The following is a list of crate location and what is needed to obtain them:
No special access
- 1. Gift from LOG at start.
- 2. Behind Mumbo's Motors.
- 3. Under glass awning left of Nutty Acres Act 1 Door.
- 4. Under glass awning to the right of Nutty Acres Act 1 Door.
- 5. Left of Humba Wumba.
- 6. On the roof of Mumbo's Motors.
- 7. On top of statue in front of LOG Box 720 Plinth.
- 8. On wooden Bridge north of LOG Box 720 Plinth.
- 9. On top of LOG's video game factory.
Requires high grip wheels
- 10. On top of broken wall near northern safe house tower.
- 11. By main gate on east side of Showdown Town.
- 12. Across broken bridge above LOG Box 720 Doors.
- 13. Hidden between rooftops in canal zone above theater section.
- 14. Roof of Pikelette's police station.
- 15. Empty containers on dock.
- 16. Empty containers on dock.
- 17. Behind Klungo's Arcade.
- 18. Roof of King Jingalings Bingo Palace.
- 19. Open safe house tower west of LOG's Factory.
Requires floaters
- 20. Inside cave under lighthouse.
- 21. Sandbar against northern wall of city.
- 22. On the slope to the right of the Banjoland Jiggy Vend.
- 23. Top of pavilion.
- 24. Island to the right of the boathouse.
- 25. Base of the giant crane that activates the Jiggoseum.
- 26. Top of the giant crane that activates the Jiggoseum.
- 27. Top of slippery Slope next to Canal.
- 28. Top of Jiggy Bank.
Requires spring
- 29. On high rooftop directly south of police station.
- 30. Northern end of roof above Humba's store.
- 31. Safe house tower closest to lake.
- 32. Safe house tower Below LOG's factory.
- 33. Spring up to wooden platform to right of LOG Box 720 Plinth.
- 34. On top of lighthouse.
- 35. Lowest rooftop of the Jiggosseum building.
- 36. Middle building of Jiggosseum building.
- 37. Next to red Jinjo house overlooking the docks.
- 38. Inside laser gate blocking main road to uptown.
Requires scuba seat
- 39. Left of bottles behind Grille.
- 40. Inside alcove on outer wall.
- 41. Drive through water to come up inside castle.
- 42. On top of castle turret.
- 43. Drive through tunnel west of uptown.
Requires laser
- 44. Gate behind Mumbo's Motors.
- 45. Gate above Banjoland Boathouse.
- 46. Gate inside castle.
- 47. Gate in water below Terrarium of Terror Plinth.
Requires horn
- 48. On top of building north of Mumbo's Motors.
- 49. Left of LOG Box 720 Plinth.
- 50. Lower roof of house overlooking water.
- 51. Next to Terrarium of Terror Plinth.
Stop 'N' Swop crates
- 1. On top of Boggy's Gym.
- 2. On rooftop south of Jiggy bank.
- 3. In boat house below Banjoland.
- 4. On castle turret.
- 5. Under LOG's Factory.
- 6. Beneath Terrarium of Terror Doors.
- 7. On beach below lighthouse; must use horn to remove ghost from crate.
Easy "Farmhand Of The Year" challenge
Smash into the nut vacuuming device, and put it on your cart. Take it over to the nuts to collect them easily.
Easy "Fuzz Off!" achievement
Blow up a police car in Showdown Town to get the "Fuzz Off!" achievement.
Accomplish the indicated achievement to get the corresponding number of Gamerscore points:
- Pointless Collector (10 points): Take part in the L.O.G. badge collecting challenge at the start of the game in Spiral Mountain.
- Open Nuts (10 points): Place the Nutty Acres Game Globe on its plinth in Showdown Town.
- Next-Next-Gen (10 points): Place the LOGBOX 720 Game Globe on its plinth in Showdown Town.
- History Lesson (15 points): Place the Banjoland Game Globe on its plinth in Showdown Town.
- Let the Games Begin (15 points): Place the Jiggosseum Game Globe on its plinth in Showdown Town.
- Super Banjo Universe (20 points): Place the Terrarium of Terror Game Globe on its plinth in Showdown Town.
- My First Bank (10 points): Bank your first Jiggy in Showdown Town.
- Little Banker (20 points): Bank 10 Jiggies in Showdown Town.
- Big Banker (30 points): Bank 30 Jiggies in Showdown Town.
- Shower of Gold (40 points): Bank 60 Jiggies in Showdown Town.
- Jiggillionaire! (50 points): Bank 131 Jiggies in Showdown Town.
- Pimped Up (20 points): Complete the Showdown Town Trolley with Parts won from Grunty battles.
- Witch Hunt (50 points): Defeat Grunty at the end of the game.
- My First Trophy (10 points): Earn a T.T. Trophy from any challenge.
- Few Trophy Pts (20 points): Earn 10 T.T. Trophies from any challenges.
- More Trophy Pts (30 points): Earn 30 T.T. Trophies from any challenges.
- A Lot of Trophy Pts (40 points): Earn 60 T.T. Trophies from any challenges.
- Be Crateful (15 points): Find and return two crates to Mumbo's Motors.
- Blueprint Buyout (15 points): Buy a blueprint from Humba in Showdown Town.
- Roid Rage (15 points): Train Banjo once in the Showdown Town gym.
- Start to Free the Showdown Six (15 points): Free and re-house a Jinjo in Showdown Town.
- Vigilante (15 points): Lock up a Minjo in Showdown Town.
- Bingo! (20 points): Complete a line on the Bingo card at King Jingaling's Palace.
- Stop 'n' Swop (0 points): Return a Stop 'n' Swop crate to Mumbo's Motors.
- BBQ Beef (20 points): In Nutty Acres, they like their steak well done.
- Massive Damage (20 points): Aim at the 10 legs for massive damage.
- Test Your Strength (20 points): Roll up, show the whole of Banjoland how strong you are.
- Great Balls of Fire (20 points): Take a heavy ball around the Jiggosseum and get a burning sensation.
- Ultimate Combo (20 points): More like a three-hit combo in the Terrarium of Terror.
- Floater in the Pipe (20 points): Eeurgh! That's not going to help the Test-O-Track plumbing.
- Burn the Witch! (20 points): Showdown Town witch hunt.
- Head for Heights (20 points): Find the best view in Showdown Town.
- Fuzz Off! (20 points): POP goes the Weasel!
- Paint Your Wagon (10 points): Paint any part of your vehicle in Mumbo's Motors.
- Speedy of the Colossus (25 points): Build a vehicle with 200 blocks or more and go over a set speed.
- Minimalist (25 points): Build a vehicle with five blocks or less and go over a set speed.
- Whoa Nelly! (25 points): Travel in a vehicle over a set speed.
- Loose Change (20 points): Collect ALL the Showdown Town Loose Change.
- Arcade Pwner (20 points): Finish all levels of Klungo's Arcade game.
- Sunday League (20 points): Play in and complete a multiplayer game League.
- Premier League! (40 points): Play in and complete a marathon multiplayer game League (Every Race, Every Sport or Every Race and Sport).
- What's That Smell? (10 points): Play an Xbox LIVE multiplayer game against a Banjo team member, or somebody who has already done so.
- Bit of Blue (10 points): Share a blueprint with another player or Friend over Xbox LIVE, or save 20 blueprints.
- Paparazzi (10 points): Take a photo and upload it to Xbox LIVE, or take five photos.
- Caught on Camera (10 points): Send a video replay to a Friend over Xbox LIVE, or save five replays.
- High Fives All Round (10 points): Be on the winning team in a ranked team game.
- All My Own Work (20 points): Win a ranked solo game with a custom vehicle.
- Too Easy! (10 points): Win a ranked solo race by reversing over the finish line.
- Too Easy Too! (20 points): Win a ranked solo race by running or swimming over the finish line.
- Are You Trophy Thomas? (40 points): Win 20 Xbox LIVE ranked multiplayer games in any mode.
The following achievements require the "L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges" bonus downloadable content:
- Compatible across virtually all gaming platforms and devices
- An unmatched, immersive gameplay experience (THX 7.1 surround sound capable, detachable mic, and more)
- Gel padding is incredibly comfortable across a wide range of head sizes
- Crowd Pleaser (20 points): Knock down all of the supporting cast in Ben Hurdle.
- Halfway Home (15 points): Complete all of L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges once.
- L.O.G. Master (30 points): Win all of the new DLC multiplayer games.
- L.O.G. Ranked Apprentice (20 points): Win one of the new DLC multiplayer games in a ranked match.
- Old Ssskool Ssseekrit Area (20 points): Klungo not ssstupid, ussse old fake wall trick to hide Klungo goodnesss.
- Paint the Town Gold (40 points): Complete all of L.O.G.'s lost challenges to TT standard.
- Pointless Achievement (5 points): Find the door to L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges.
- Sssave The Universsse! (30 points): Complete all Lost Challenges in L.O.G.'s Choice and Player's Choice vehicles.
- Ultimate – Played The Game (50 points): Show Sssuper Klungo the real meaning of sssuper.
- Wheels on Fire (20 points): Burn an opponent's vehicle until it falls apart at the seams.


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Upper-atmos ion drive dart sat launch delayed
Plesetsk countdown stopped at T minus 7 seconds
Updated A new European satellite which will fly aerodynamically through the extreme upper reaches of the atmosphere, using ion rocket propulsion to maintain orbital speed, has been held up on the launch pad with just seconds left on the countdown.
The ion ship, buffeted by upper-atmosphere winds.
The dart-shaped GOCE spacecraft (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) is being sent up by the European Space Agency (ESA) to measure very small variations in the Earth's gravity. This should permit the planet's geoid to be mapped very precisely, allowing trends in sea level, ice and ocean circulation to be measured more accurately than they now can be.
The satellite was due to be launched today at 14:21 UK time from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, but the countdown was stopped with seven seconds to run.
In order for GOCE to measure the Earth's gravity with the best possible precision, it needs to fly low - just 250km up. There's enough atmosphere at that height to exert significant drag, enough to de-orbit a normal satellite in fairly short order.
But GOCE isn't normal. Unlike other sats it is streamlined, which will reduce the drag it suffers from the ultra-thin fringes of the atmosphere. This wouldn't be enough on its own to keep the spacecraft orbiting, however: it also has a pair of rockets which will burn throughout its 20-month mission, keeping the cruising survey sat up to speed.
An ordinary rocket would require an absurd amount of fuel over such a long period, but GOCE's rockets are electrically-powered T5 ion jobs from Brit defence-lab selloff firm Qinetiq. 'Leccy from the craft's solar cells is used to spit out xenon reaction mass hugely faster than normal exhaust is emitted from regular rockets. This means that GOCE gets a lot more push out of a given amount of fuel, and so it only needs 40kg of xenon for the whole mission.
The downside of ion rockets is that they have poor thrust-to-weight performance, but GOCE only needs a little bit of thrust to counteract the wispy winds found on the edge of space. As for launch, it travels into orbit aboard a Russian Rockot launcher - a converted SS-19 ballistic missile.
There's more on GOCE from the ESA here. ®
It appears that the delay was caused by a technical failure in the Plesetsk launch tower. Dr Matthias Oehm, CEO of Eurockot - the consortium providing the Rockot launcher - told reporters at 1505 that "the door of the tower didn't open, perhaps due to a bolt," and said that more details would be forthcoming once the Russian space forces, in charge at Plesetsk, gave them to him.
There appeared to be no fault with the satellite or the rocket, but the launch window has now passed. ESA officials said the next window will open in approximately 24 hours.


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Constructivist Learning
Constructivism and Structured Academic Controversy
Constructivism is a philosophical view that describes how students and their teacher interact; how classroom time and space are used, and how control within the classroom is in an equilibrium state between teacher and students. Social constructivism emphasizes the importance of dialogic space, where communication is not the transfer of knowledge, but the interpretation of knowledge within a community of learners (Confrey, 1994). "For social constructionists, however, ways of talking are central; we see them as working to constitute what we take our experience to be..." (Shotter, 1994, p. 54). Constructivism assumes that learning is made possible through the dual factors of social interaction and simultaneous exposure to cognitive experiences. Sources of cognitive experiences can be stimulated through the teacher, textbook, three-dimensional objects, computer software, phenomena, or reflection on previous classroom or life experiences. SACs are an ideal format for providing cognitive experiences.
"To guide students' thinking, teachers must also understand how children's ideas about a subject develop, and the connections between their ideas and important ideas in the discipline" (Borko, 2004, p. 6). Constructivism promotes a climate of shared responsibility among teacher and students, and therefore power and control are shared among all members of the classroom community. In a constructivist classroom, students are given necessary structure, voice, time, and space to question, explore, and argue to make sense of phenomena and concepts.
Constructivism is not defined by a set of activities or strategies. Rather, constructivism is a set of beliefs: that students are capable of accepting the responsibility to take charge of their own learning; that students are willing to be responsible and responsive; and that students who are entrusted to learn will develop the essentials of intrinsic motivation and self-confidence to continue as independent learners.
Inquiry is operationally defined as "structured opportunities to experience, firsthand, science... content and process" (Loucks-Horsley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles, 1998, p. 49). Inquiry is characterized as allowing participants to focus on in-depth content knowledge and to fully engage in the habits of mind of the discipline. Inquiry strategies give learners opportunities to explore concepts, manipulate materials, and engage in data collection and analyses through developmentally appropriate activities and materials. Classroom use of SACs promote acquisition of deep content knowledge as students prepare to advocate for a position, require critical thinking patterns of analysis and synthesis of ideas, and encourage students to explore their own beliefs as they begin to understand others' beliefs.
Characteristics of a Constructivist Classroom
1. Interactions between teacher-student and student-student are equally important in the learning process.
2. The roles and responsibilities of student and teacher fluidly pass back and forth between the two parties. While the teacher is ultimately responsible for creating an environment conducive to learning, students also share in the responsibilities associated with creating and responding to a learning environment.
3. Knowledge worth teaching/learning is broadly encompassing of factual, conceptual, and procedural types of knowledge. Prior knowledge of students is acknowledged and actively incorporated into the enacted curriculum. Questions whose answers may or may not be known by the teacher are welcomed and explored, and also become integrated into the instructional dialogue of the classroom.
4. The classroom environment of a constructivist classroom is safe: intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Students look forward to spending time in the classroom because they are known, their idiosyncrasies are accepted, and their interests are important in the dynamics of the classroom.
5. Diverse instructional and assessment strategies are used which focus on conceptual understanding and reinforce the balance between teacher and student dynamics.
Online Resources on Constructivism
Social Constructivism
Constructivism: From Philosophy to Practice


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Once upon a time a certain tradesman was leading a caravan1(大篷车,旅行队) to another country to sell his goods. Along the way they came to the edge of a severe hot-sand desert. They asked about, and found that during the daytime the sun heats up the fine sand until it's as hot as charcoal2(木炭) , so no one can walk on it -- not even bullocks(小公牛,阉牛) or camels! So the caravan leader hired a desert guide, one who could follow the stars, so they could travel only at night when the sand cools down. They began the dangerous night-time journey across the desert. A couple nights later, after eating their evening meal, and waiting for the sand to cool, they started out again. Later that night the desert guide, who was driving the first cart saw from the stars that they were getting close to the other side of the desert. He had also overeaten, so that when he relaxed, he dozed3 off(打瞌睡,困倦) to sleep. Then the bullocks who, of course, couldn't tell directions by reading the stars, gradually turned to the side and went in a big wide circle until they ended up at the same place they had started from! By then it was morning, and the people realized they were back at the same spot they'd camped at the day before. They lost heart and began to cry about their condition. Since the desert crossing was supposed to be over by now, they had no more water and were afraid they would die of thirst. They even began to blame the caravan leader and the desert guide -- "We can do nothing without water!", they complained. Then the tradesman thought to himself, "If I lose courage now, in the middle of this disastrous4(灾难性的,悲伤的) situation, my leadership has no meaning. If I fall to weeping and regretting this misfortune5, and do nothing, all these goods and bullocks and even the lives of the people, including myself, may be lost. I must be energetic and face the situation!" So he began walking back and forth6, trying to think out a plan to save them all. Remaining alert7, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a small clump8 of grass. He thought, "Without water, no plant could live in this desert." So he called over the most energetic of his fellow travelers and asked them to dig up the ground on that very spot. They dug and dug,and after a while they got down to a large stone. Seeing it they stopped, and began to blame the leader again,saying "This effort is useless. We're just wasting our time!" But the tradesman replied, "No no, my friends, if we give up the effort we will all be ruined and our poor animals will die -- let us be encouraged!" As he said this, he got down into the hole, put his ear to the stone, and heard the sound of flowing water. Immediately, he called over a boy who had been digging and said, "If you give up, we will all perish9(死亡,毁灭) -- so take this heavy hammer and strike the rock." The boy lifted the hammer over his head and hit the rock as hard as he could -- and he himself was the most surprised when the rock spilt in two and a mighty10 flow of water gushed11(涌出,迸发) out from under it! Suddenly, all the people were overjoyed. They drank and bathed and washed the animals and cooked their food and ate. Before they left, they raised a high banner12 so that other travelers could see it from afar(遥远地) and come to the new spring in the middle of the hot-sand desert. Then they continued on safely to the end of their journey. The moral13 is. Don't give up too easily keep on trying until you reach the goal. 点击收听单词发音
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Acidity in Wine
The Role of Acidity in Wine
Acidity give wines a tart and crisp taste; while minerals, sugar and alcohols balance out the acidity. Thus, controlling acidity is crucial to great wine. There are several ways in which winemakers regulate the acidity in a wine, both in grape growing and in winemaking.
Winemakers Influence on Acidity
The human aspect of acid in wine lies in the hands of the winemakers. They use knowledge of chemistry and their palate to decide what course of action would be best for that particular wine. Through the winemakers influence on acidity, they can change total acidity, or just a particular acid to adjust the taste and balance of a particular wine.
Most of the acid you taste in wine is from the acid in grapes. The acids in grapes, even at maturity, are not in the same concentrations as they are in must and wine. The main process that affects this is alcoholic fermentation.
Role of Acidity in Wine Taste & Color
Acidity and Taste: Taken as a group, the acids in wine are just as important as the alcohol. Acids have a profound impact on sense perception, particularly taste. They not only have a "refreshing taste," but also play an integral role in reducing the perception of "sweetness."
Acidity and Color: The acidity of a wine is critical in maintaining the color in red wines. As acidity decreases, the anthocyanins lose their color and may even turn blue. In addition, oxidation is inversely related to acidity. The less acidic, the higher the degree of oxidation a wine will undergo.
Acidity and Microbial Stability: In addition to these important roles, high acidity has anti-microbial benefits. Since most bacteria cannot grow in acidic conditions, maintaining acidity is an important defense strategy that winemakers employ to retard spoilage.
Acids Found in Wine
Tartaric acid and malic acid are the primary acid components in wine. The relative amounts of these two acids are different for each varietal and can be changed by environmental variables, viticultural practices and winemaking philosophies.
Both acids are classified as non-volatile acids, meaning they do not boil off when the wine is heated. This is important because if they were volatile acids, their concentration would be far less in the wine.
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The Oakland Raiders will wrap up their 10th consecutive season without a winning record Sunday when they visit the San Diego Chargers.
With Carson Palmer out with cracked ribs and a bruised lung, the starting quarterback position will fall to either career backup Matt Leinart or sophomore Terrelle Pryor. Coach Dennis Allen said the determination will be made later this week.
During his Monday news conference Allen undersold Pryor, whom many Raiders fans would like to see given an opportunity.
"He's still a work in progress as far as that's concerned," Allen said, noting Pryor doesn't have full command of the offense, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. "I wouldn't expect a lot different out of any other young quarterback."
The Raiders selected Pryor in the third round of the 2011 NFL Supplemental Draft, but according to Allen, Pryor is still fighting the same question marks that surrounded him when he left college.
Allen said Pryor needs to work on his fundamentals, including "his footwork in the passing game, going through his reads, going through his progressions."
Given his comments Allen must feel the pressure to start Pryor in Sunday's game, a move he sounds hesitant to make. However, he didn't name Leinart right off the bat, so he's at least considering Pryor.
Of the 17 NFL teams eliminated from the playoffs only the Raiders are stashing a young quarterback, who is still an unknown quantity, on the bench. Every other rookie or young prospect has been given a chance on bad teams with quarterback question marks. Even Greg McElroy started an NFL game this season.
We know what Leinart brings to the table, and while Allen dismissed the quaterback's struggles last week as him dealing with rust, he isn't the long-term answer for the Raiders.
Is Pryor that answer? We'll never find out if he doesn't get a shot. With the season lost and Palmer hurt, we have to wonder if he'll ever get a chance in Oakland if he doesn't get one on Sunday.
Follow Kevin Patra on Twitter @kpatra.


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SLAM: Landslide warnings from satellites may save lives | |
2004-02-16 | |
As winter rains come, thousands of square kilometres of territory across Europe's heart face a looming threat: steep slopes and waterlogged soils combine to trigger landslides. | |
A build-up of groundwater within a slope increases its weight and decreases its cohesiveness, weakening the slope's ability to resist the remorseless pull of gravity. The heavy earth flows downward. For all in the path of a landslide the results are devastating, and frequently lethal. "In Italy, landslides have claimed an average of 54 victims per year during the last half century," says Nicola Casagli of Italy's National Group for Hydro-geological Disaster Prevention (GNDCI),a research network working with Italy's Civil Protection Department. "The extreme rainfall of our climate, our mountainous geography and recent uncontrolled urbanisation of unstable land makes us one of the countries most affected by landslide hazards. The total cost of direct damage done by Italian landslides is estimated at between one and two thousand million Euro per year." Very gradual ground shifts are known to precede more major landslides. Often these are on a scale of millimetres – too slight to even be noticed by local observers, but enough to be detected via satellite using a powerful technique called radar interferometry. It involves mathematically combining multiple radar images of the same site - acquired using instruments such as the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) aboard ESA's ERS spacecraft - in such a way that tiny changes in the landscape occurring between images are highlighted. This technique is the basis of a new project called Service for Landslide Monitoring (SLAM), enabling landslide susceptibility mapping across parts of Italy and Switzerland, two of the European countries most under threat. GNDCI is one of three national-level users working with SLAM, along with Italy's Ministry of the Environment and Switzerland's Federal Office for Water and Geology (FOWG). "Surface movements assessed over wide areas are one of the best indicators of landslide activity, and can be employed for risk forecasting," added Casagli. "Extremely slow movements usually occur for several weeks or months before a sudden collapse." Trial services are being provided across Italy's Arno river basin as well as a section of the Campania region. In Switzerland the service covers the eastern Valais and Berne cantons. "Our interest is to have a tool evaluate landslides and mass displacements all across the Swiss Alps," explains Hugo Raetzo of FOWG. "About 8% of Swiss territory is vulnerable to landslides, making up thousands of square kilometres. The annual landslide frequency varies with the weather – heavy rainfall can potentially re-accelerate existing landslides." Three different service products are available: a large-scale Landslide Motion Survey identifying areas affected by landslides across an entire river basin, a reduced-scale Landslide Displacement Monitoring measuring ground deformation over particular sites of interest, and Landslide Susceptibility Mapping which merges the previous data products with thematic maps of land use, slope, geomorphology and other relevant parameters to provide geological hazard maps. More than a decade's worth of ERS data archives are being exploited to derive SLAM products. These products disclose new and essential information to the institutions charged with landslide risk and hazard management. Benefits from the service include the identification and characterisation of displacements both known and previously unknown and the verification of remedial interventions performed in the past to stabilise particular landslides. The SLAM service is being formally implemented in February and will run until the end of this year. It is entirely funded as part of ESA's Data User Programme and is carried out by an international consortium led by Planetek Italia with five other partners: Tele-Rilevamento Europa, Gamma Remote Sensing, Spacebel, Geotest and Florence University. |
Related links
Italian Ministry of the Environment
Swiss Federal Office for Water and Geology
Italian Group for Hydro-geological Disaster Prevention
Annex images


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The high northern latitudes on Enceladus show little detail from Cassini's distant vantage point, nearly 50 degrees above the moon's equator.
The plume of icy material that jets from the south pole of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is not visible in this viewing geometry.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 26, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 95 degrees. Scale in the original image was 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. The image was contrast enhanced and magnified by a factor of two.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.


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Ozone Depletion Sets Record
News story originally written on October 14, 1998
The ozone hole over the South Pole is larger than it has ever been since
scientists discovered it in the 1980's. They use the Total Ozone Mapping
Spectrometer (TOMS) and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument
(SBUV) to measure the ozone levels.
Ozone absorbs ultraviolet light, which is a harmful part of sunlight. UV
rays cause sunburns.
Scientists aren't worried about the hole continuing to grow. They think
that the record size this year was due to temperatures in the
atmosphere that were colder
than normal. But it is still a problem for
people in the southern hemisphere. They could face higher UV levels as
the hole breaks up and the low-ozone air spreads out and dilutes the
ozone in other places.
Ozone is measured in Dobson units. The average ozone level is 300 Dobson
units. This is a layer of ozone about 3 millimeters thick--how thick the
layer would be if you took everything besides ozone out of the air.
Last modified April 24, 2001 by Jennifer Bergman.


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16 Best Neutrogena Products for 2017 — and the 4 WorstFrom cakey foundations to oil-zapping facial scrubs, these beauty product reviews tell all |
Image via @neutrogena
SEE NEXT PAGE: The Worst: No. 4: Neutrogena SkinClearing Liquid Makeup, $11.99
Older comments
Love, love, love Neutrogena. I had great results with the "Visibly Firming Cream." My skin was taut and resilient yet hydrated.
by GigiSD Saturday, April 27, 2013 at 01:45PM Report as inappropriate
i love neutrogena - it's quite cheap and most products deliver on their promises
by AstridB Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 06:01AM Report as inappropriate
I've used a few of these products. Nice to see that list of ratings on them.
by EricaC123 Saturday, January 5, 2013 at 01:18PM Report as inappropriate
I want to try their body oil. Been looking for a well priced oil for after the shower.
by Lamexicana1 Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 01:47PM Report as inappropriate
I like Neutrogena but I've found that they've changed some of their products in recent years. I have extremely sensitive skin and I used to use them without a problem, but the last time I used the sensitive skin moisturizer I had red burning patches all over my face and my skin felt really greasy.....it didn't seem to absorb, it just sat on my skin.
by KitKat4Every1 Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 06:02PM Report as inappropriate
definitely going to try that body cream. usually i'm very meh about neutrogina because the scent tends to be so distinctive, but definitely wiling to try again!
by schien Monday, November 5, 2012 at 08:38AM Report as inappropriate
Neutrogena is a great affordable brand. sometimes tho the products make my skin break out.
by kimihavens Monday, November 5, 2012 at 08:19AM Report as inappropriate
I love the Rainbath & Shower gel. It smells wonderful also
by mainepride Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 08:16AM Report as inappropriate
For some reason, i tend not to look at neutrogena products, but now i thiink i wanna try there body products. The body oil looks great.
by nicky22 Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 07:24PM Report as inappropriate
I've used lots of different Neutrogena products on and off over the years and now I feel inspired to try out some of the others! I'm especially interested in the Rainbath shower gel and the body oil, since my skin can get very dry in the winter.
by tallredamanda Thursday, July 5, 2012 at 08:22AM Report as inappropriate


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People with celiac disease in Joplin, MO need our help!
The following message was posted by Barbara Hicks, leader of the Tri Lakes Celiac Support Group in Kimberling, MO. Contact Barbara to find out how you can get involved.
Hi Everyone,
I am sure that by now you have heard about the tornado that hit Joplin. It took out a major portion of the town including the two major grocery stores where celiacs Read More »


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The program consists first in organizing a study preparatory workshop in order to elaborate the strategy that should lead to a sustainable use of the water resources of the Ichkeul National Park, then in monitoring the workshop and its recommendations and finally in coordinating the implementation of the management strategy of site: to provide a finalized management plan
The objective of the project is to develop a follow-up plan of the Ichkeul National Park. This plan will have to be implemented in close consultation with the experts of IUCN and the World Heritage Centre. It will identify suitable parameters and indicators for a follow-up of the state of conservation of the site and will allow the experts to establish references, calendars and conditions for annual evaluations by the World Heritage Committee.
In 1996, the Ichkeul National Park is inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. In June 1998, lUCN provided technical data revealing that the salinity of the lake waters could have reached an excessive level and that the chances of restoration of the World Heritage values of the site could decrease very quickly.
IUCN was worried about the slowness and the lack of efficiency of the rehabilitation program that was implemented by the State Party.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Web GUI hides number-crunching open source elephant
Cloudera's Hadoop desktop
Hadoop World Cloudera - the startup that commercialized the Google-like number crunching of the open source Hadoop project - has unveiled the first web-based GUI for running applications on the much-hyped distributed computing platform.
Announced this morning at the Cloudera-sponsored Hadoop World in midtown Manhattan, the free Cloudera Desktop provides a graphical user interface for creating and submitting jobs on a Hadoop cluster, monitoring the cluster's health, and browsing stored data. Typically, Hadoop clusters are managed via the command line.
"We always knew we had to create some kind of Hadoop management console," Cloudera vp of product Jeff Hammerbacher tells The Reg. "The idea is to make Hadoop more accessible and usable by non-developers and non-web-organizations."
Inspired by research papers describing Google's proprietary software infrastructure, including its GFS file system and MapReduce platform, Hadoop is a means of crunching extremely large amounts of data across a network of distributed machines. The Apache-hosted project was founded by Nutch crawler creator Doug Cutting, who spent several years driving Yahoo!'s Hadoop work before leaving for Cloudera. Famously, Cutting named the project after his son's yellow stuffed elephant.
The Cloudera Desktop runs insides a browser, but it's meant to have the look and feel of a desktop OS. Make that Apple's Mac OS X:
(Early incarnation of) the Cloudera Desktop
The initial version of the pseudo-desktop environment includes four applications: a file browser for copying and browsing data files; a job submission tool for creating jobs, running them, and saving them for later use; a job browser for tracking live jobs; and a health dashboard for monitoring the cluster and alerting users to problems.
Unlike the Hadoop platform itself, the Cloudera Desktop is not open source - at least not now. And for the moment, it only works with Cloudera's Hadoop distro - though Hammerbacher says it will eventually front other distros as well.
The ex-Facebooker also says that the company has pieced together a developer toolkit that should soon deliver additional applications for its Desktop. These include an app for writing Hive queries, Hadoop's SQL-like coding language, and a GUI version of SQOOP, the Cloudera-created tool that imports data from existing databases. For its own internal Hadoop implementation, Facebook offers its semi-technical employees a Hive GUI known as HiPal
The Cloudera Desktop requires the installation of a server, which can be downloaded here. At some point, Hammerbacher indicated, third-party developers will also have access to the tool-kit. ®


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BOSTON — At school, Rose Hayes, 8, works with a team of teachers and therapists trained to help with her genetic condition. They set goals for her reading, give her physical therapy to improve her balance and make sure she stays on track. But for the last two weeks, her only connection to school has been through a computer screen.
Rose, home amid the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered schools across the country, now watches lessons her teacher posts to YouTube. Her therapists check in via video chat. In between, she works through daily assignments.
Her parents say it's the best they can expect, but they still struggle. Rose has difficulty working on her own, so they need to stay nearby. And without the therapy equipment Rose uses at school, they have to improvise.
"We're trying to be teachers. We're trying to be therapists. We're a little bit of everything right now, and it's very stressful," said Rob Hayes, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He and his wife work for pharmaceutical companies and have continued working during the pandemic, trading turns staying home with Rose and their 2-year-old daughter.
Across the U.S., schools and families face new challenges in maintaining instruction for students with disabilities. Teachers are exploring new ways to deliver customized lessons from afar. And while parents of all children have taken on schooling duties, those whose children have disabilities are adding therapy, hands-on lessons and behavioral management to the list.
Last year, nearly 7 million U.S. students ages 3 to 18 received special education services, according to federal data. Schools are required to craft individual education plans for each one: For some, it's mostly a matter of providing extra time on assignments; others need an array of complex services, and some have lost access to expensive technology they use at school to help them communicate.
As they adapt to shutdowns, some schools are turning to video conferencing to provide lessons and therapy sessions, while others are bringing small groups of students back for services or training parents to help.
Some, though, have hesitated to move special education online. As virtual instruction began unrolling, the U.S. Education Department issued a reminder that students with disabilities must be granted the same opportunities as other students. It led some districts, including Philadelphia's public schools, to forgo online instruction entirely, citing concerns about their ability to serve all children.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos blasted that approach, saying schools have a duty to serve their students. She urged schools to use online platforms or, if that isn't possible, low-tech alternatives like work packets or written assignments.
"It was extremely disappointing to hear that some school districts were using information from the Department of Education as an excuse not to educate kids," DeVos said in a March 23 statement. "This is a time for creativity and an opportunity to pursue as much flexibility as possible so that learning continues."
Many districts say it's inevitable that families would have to help. Some are asking parents to guide students through daily lessons or administer tests measuring their children's progress, a key component of special education laws.
Officials in South Carolina's largest district said they know it's a tough ask, and they're asking families to set realistic expectations.
"We can't replicate the general education curriculum in the home, so we're not trying to replicate the special education program either," said Traci Hogan, Greenville's assistant superintendent for special education services. "It's not perfect on our end, and we don't expect it to be perfect on their end."
Advocates say it's crucial that students with disabilities continue to receive instruction during closures. Research has found that breaks in schooling — even for a day or two — can erode ground on skills students were starting to master. But keeping them engaged from afar will be a challenge, schools say, especially for those with severe disabilities.
A rescue package approved by Congress aims to help by providing $13.5 billion that schools could use to buy computers and technology for students with disabilities. But it also asks DeVos to consider whether the government should temporarily waive requirements around the instruction of students with disabilities, a move disability advocates strongly oppose.
Amid rapid change, some parents say they already feel left out.
Darlene Gildersleeve, of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, has a 14-year-old daughter whose education plan includes counseling, occupational therapy, speech therapy and specialized instruction. Her school is offering to arrange some of that by phone and Google Classroom, but Gildersleeve hasn't heard anything about speech therapy or support for math, English and reading.
"I have no idea how to get on Google Classroom," Gildersleeve said. "That's a big concern of mine — will I be able to step in and help her?"
Some districts say it will be hard to avoid learning setbacks, especially in skills that are tougher to teach from afar. Honing social skills amid social distancing mandates, for example, has already proved challenging.
Rose Hayes' teacher tried to gather the class for a video conference, but some families didn't have the required technology, her father said. Elsewhere, teachers are using interactive video games to keep students connected, said Kelly Grillo, a special education coordinator for Cooperative School Services, an organization that works with nine school districts in Indiana.
But Grillo said some problems remain unsolved. She's currently grappling with how to help students who use costly Braille machines at school but don't have access to them at home.
"There are lots of barriers, but we can find lots of ways to work around them," said Grillo, of Lafayette, Indiana. "Our field has never felt the urgency that it feels right now."
Roslyn Holcomb, a social worker in Dunwoody, Georgia, worries that her son Kell, 8, isn't learning at the same pace he was in the classroom. His school posts daily video lessons, and his teacher calls every day to go over assignments he found difficult. But Kell, who has autism, ADHD and a language processing disorder, needs his mother's help to stay focused.
Holcomb shifted her schedule to work nights so she can spend her days helping him. She appreciates what the school has done, but wonders how much longer the arrangement can last.
"It's labor intensive. It really is," she said. "This is not something that we'll be able to do for months."


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In a scene that would have been familiar to the farmers' sons and daughters who populated this campus in the early 20th century, college-aged adults can be seen planting, thinning, weeding, watering, harvesting and dispersing produce from five gardens at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) May to September.
This summer, for the second year in a row, EMU's vegetable gardeners are growing beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, potatoes, onions, lettuce, herbs, peas, spinach, grapes, and more for a group of 15 committed purchasers in a system called "community-supported agriculture," or CSA.
Each CSA shareholder invests $100 at the beginning of the summer, plus $100 in July (or the equivalent in labor), to receive 1/15th of the freshly harvested food each week over the summer. Three of the 2013 shareholders are returnees from last year; the others responded to an EMU-wide email sent by two university professors, Kent A. Sensenig and Peter Dula, inviting people to buy the remaining shares. All were snapped up within 24 hours.
"We started talking about having a CSA in the fall of 2011," says Taylor Weidman, one of the original visionaries for the program. "We wanted to keep it small, though, so we could test it out and not be overwhelmed."
EMU has supported the initiative by allowing four summertime employees of the university's physical plant – recent graduates Weidman and Aly Zimmerman and rising juniors Jeni Heishman and Chris Lehman – to spend part of their workdays on the gardens.
"Owning a share means there will be a basket of food waiting for you every Friday evening in conjunction with a simple, informal meal for anyone interested," said the email inviting shareholders in early April.
Will Hairston, EMU grounds supervisor, says that from the get-go the CSA has been led by students, emerging from their Sustainable Food Initiative, with the support of faculty and staff. "Without the leadership of students like Louise Babikow and Taylor Weidman, the CSA wouldn't be able to exist," he says.
In its inaugural summer of 2012, only six shares were offered. This summer, that number has more than doubled to 15. "We might expand [next summer] to 20-25 shares," says Weidman, "but we don't really have the resources to go beyond that."
Office manager Jessica Hostetler '08 is one of the shareholders: "I love that I can see where everything is grown when I walk around campus, and that it's a walk or bike ride away from my house." On one recent Friday, Hostetler received asparagus, arugula, chard, herbs, kale, lettuce and spinach. She looks forward to receiving tomatoes, beans, peppers, peas, onions, squash, garlic, potatoes, cabbage and beets in coming weeks.
In their email announcing the 2013 CSA, the Sustainable Initiative students explained that their vision goes far beyond growing vegetables. They view community-rooted food production and consumption as a means "to connect together to build a community dedicated to doing justice with how we grow and eat."


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What will you Carry?
Your hardware and accessories belong together. That's why the plain old sleeve just won't cut it anymore. The GRID-IT!® Uber sleeve keeps your tablet protected in it's own padded compartment, while your accessories are tucked away nicely in our patent pending GRID-IT!®, the world's most versatile organization system. The unique weave of elastic straps cradle your wires, drives and chargers to ensure you are never without them.


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In 1971, Ossett had a population of just over 17,000 and thirty years later there were 21,000 people living in the town. Located just off junction 40 of the M1 motorway, Ossett's convenient position has attracted industry and resident commuters working in the major cities of the West Riding. Following three decades of gradual decline, Ossett has seen unprecedented growth in recent years. House prices increased from an average of £50,000 in 1998 to £130,000 in 2003, one of the largest in the U.K. and only rivalled by some parts of London and Cheshire.
In the 1970s, a forty acre site, adjoining the A638 Dewsbury-Wakefield road at Flushdyke, a feeder road off the M1 was zoned for industrial use. Longlands Industrial Estate has attracted many new businesses to the town, providing jobs and increased affluence, although it has to be said, ruining the residential nature of the area. Software company Team 17 were once based in Ossett and their most famous game "Worms" contains a Hell level with a sign saying "Welcome to Ossett".
One of the reasons for the influx of people to Ossett is the excellent performance of Ossett Academy and Sixth Form College, a specialist Technology and Sports College, which has some of the best academic results in the area. Ossett Academy (formerly Ossett School) was created in 1969 when Ossett Grammar School, which was originally founded in 1735, became a comprehensive. The Academy now has 1660 pupils and 196 staff. Ossett School became Ossett Academy in 2011. An academy school in England is a state-funded school which is directly funded by the Department for Education and is independent of local authority control.
After recent boundary changes, Ossett is now part of the Wakefield constituency. Simon Robert Lightwood (born 15 December 1980 in South Shields) was elected as the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Wakefield in the 2022 by-election, following the resignation of Conservative MP, Imran Ahmad Khan, who was forced to resign following his conviction for sexual assault of a minor. Lightwood was elected on the 23rd June 2022 with a 4,925 majority. He is also notable for being the last Member of Parliament to swear his Oath of Allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, since his by-election was the last before her passing three months later. At the 2022 Labour Party Conference, Lightwood was appointed Shadow Minister for Buses and Taxis, taking over from Sam Tarry. Lightwood lives in the Calder Valley constituency with his husband, however has pledged to move into Wakefield following his election.
In the 2016 Referendum, 66.3 per cent of the Wakefield constituency opted to leave the European Union, compared to 33.6 per cent who wanted to stay in.
Within the town, local elections are usually closely contested between the Conservative and Labour Parties. The current local councillors for the Ossett ward after the 2023 Local Elections are Olivia Rowley (Labour); Nick Farmer (Conservative) and Tony Homewood (formerly Conservative, but now Independent after his resignation from the Conservative Party in November 2022). For the South Ossett and Horbury ward, the councillors are Darren Byford (Labour); Deb Nicholls (Labour) and Gwen Page (Labour).
Ossett has strong sporting traditions with a semi-professional football club Ossett United, Ossett Cricket and Athletics Club, Ossett Rugby Union Club, Ossett Trinity Rugby League Club, Ossett Sports Badminton Club, Low Laithes Golf Club, a Martial Arts Academy and a Pool & Snooker Club. There was an Ossett Football Club in the 1890s, they played in the original West Yorkshire League.
A thriving market town, Ossett holds a market on Tuesdays and Fridays. There is a Community Centre that hosts local hobby groups, a new Public Library coming soon in the Town Hall and one very crowded central Post Office following the mindless closure of Ossett's sub-Post Offices in the outlying districts. The Gawthorpe Maypole Feast and Procession has been held each May since 1874.
Under the Local Government Act of 1972, Ossett lost its Borough status in 1974 and became an unparished area in the Metropolitan Borough of Wakefield.
Above: The new 2022 Ossett History and Heritage Book and the newly repainted Gawthorpe Maypole.
From Mayall's Annals of Yorkshire 1734 - 1736
"The inhabitants of Ossett, a village three miles from Wakefield, have been employed in making broad woollen cloth from time out of mind.
In this year the weavers, etc., employed in that trade, had to work 15 hours every day for eight pence. A horn was blown at five o'clock
in the morning, the time for beginning, and at eight at night, the time for leaving their work. The clothiers had to take their goods to Leeds
to sell, and had to stand in Briggate in all sorts of weather.
About the year 1736, Richard Wilson, a resident of Ossett, made two pieces of broadcloth; he carried one of them on his head to Leeds and sold it. The merchant being in want of the fellow piece, he went from Leeds to Ossett, then carried the other piece to Leeds, and then walked to Ossett again; he walked about forty miles that day."
That sturdy and forcible spirit is what has made Ossett the flourishing place it is today. The incident we have quoted is characteristic of the old-time industry of the place. At one time Ossett could boast of well over a hundred manufacturers - chiefly handloom weavers who worked at home. Most of the houses had looms in them, and Ossett was musical with the sound of their working, whilst a manufacturer who had a small mill and employed from ten to twenty people was considered to be in a big way of business. When a person could buy a bag of wool and a bit of mungo - the local name for rag-wool and had a family to assist him, he became a manufacturer. These small manufacturers carried their pieces to Leeds; either - like the aforesaid Richard Wilson - on their heads or backs, or on the backs of donkeys. In the Cloth Hall at Leeds the pieces were displayed on stalls for the inspection of the merchants. These forerunners of the woollen industry of today traded in a very small way, and to receive an order for half a dozen or a dozen pieces was doing business on the grand scale.
Above: Typical handloom used by Ossett cloth makers of the 19th and 18th centuries.
Frequently these humble people had
to sell their pieces fresh from the loom in order to get supplies of money for the purchase of wool for the next piece. Wool at this time was brought
from Leeds to Bradford by road. There was no standard rate of wages as there is now, and when a certain manufacturer had an order in a time of
depression, he called his men together and told them he could not accept the order unless they agreed to take 3d. per string less. The men would
hold a meeting in the fields and agree to the reduction rather than face a further period of idleness. Wages were very low as compared with recent
earnings. A fettler or woolyer would earn from 9s to 11s. a week, while, in the words of an old manufacturer,them that piecened billy - the youngsters
would earn 4s. 9d. a week working full time. There were few workpeople who averaged a pound a week sixty years ago. The old hand loom system died hard;
indeed, it lingered on until the early years of this century, when the last of the Ossett handloom weavers passed away at the patriarchal age of ninety.
The old order had given place to the power loom - an innovation that was long and sorely resented by the old weavers. How many and radical have been the
changes wrought in and by the power loom! - from "The Town and Trade of Ossett" published 1927
This Richard Wilson referred to above was one of the founders of the Green Chapel (later Ossett Congregational Church) in Ossett with his brother Robert Wilson
who was my direct ancestor. At this time, in the early part of the 18th century, Ossett had a population of about 2,000 and many were self-employed cloth weavers
like Richard and Robert Wilson. With this web site, I hope to share some of the history of Ossett that I have been able to collect over the last few years as I
researched my Wilson family roots in the town. I have gathered a good selection of pictures and information about Ossett from a number of sources and I have tried
to acknowledge those sources wherever possible. I hope none of the pictures on this site are copyrighted, but if they are, do please let me know and I will remove
Although Ossett doesn't have an official coat of arms, the design above has been universally accepted as the unoffocial coat of arms. It has been widely seen over the years on various Ossett keepsakes such as Silver Jubilee mugs, postcards and some official Town Hall documentation. The design features the three principal industries of the town: wool and shoddy mills, coal mining and agriculture. The sheep signifies the importance of wool and the white rose is the symbol of Yorkshire. The Latin transcription, attributable to Ossett Grammar School headmaster Mr. M. Frankland who joined the school in 1881, means roughly "useless things made useful by skill". It is a reference to turning rags into mungo or shoddy - one of Ossett's major industries in the 19th and 20th century.
This website and its content is copyright of Stephen Wilson © ossett.net 2011 - 2022 under the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:
- You may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only;
- You may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material.
You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.
Site updated: 1.11.2023
ossett.net is hosted by
Mayall's Annals of Yorkshire was published in three volumes in about 1862. It contains, to quote "A most fascinating everyday history of the people of Yorkshire with accounts of the events relating to the "ordinary" people of the county."
The following extract is from "The Town and Trade of Ossett" published in 1927:
"The Municipality of Ossett is of comparatively recent creation. The great increase in population which accompanied the industrial progress made by the town during the 19th century justified application for incorporation as a borough, and a Royal Charter giving effect to this natural ambition was granted on July 16th, 1890. It provides for the administration of the Borough by a mayor, four aldermen, and twelve councillors. The original borough comprised the parish of Ossett-cum-Gawthorpe, but in 1900 part of Alverthorpe was added by an Act of Parliament confirming a Provisional Order of the Local Government Board. Gawthorpe, with Chickenly Heath, became a separate parish for ecclesiastical purposes in 1901, but the area is still included within the administrative borough."
Above: Ossett War Memorial in 2021.
Above: Ossett's miniature cathedral Trinity Church.
Above: Ossett Town Hall clock. Photo by R.L. Dixon.
Above: The World Coal Carrying Championships are held in Gawthorpe on Easter Monday each year.
The event consists of Men's, Women's and Children's races that take place on Easter Monday. Men carry 50kg of coal and women 20kg in weight.
On the 1st April 1974 Ossett ceased to be a Borough and became part of the Wakefield Metropolitan District ending 84 years autonomy.
The South African astronomer Cyril V. Jackson, who was born in Ossett,in 1903, honoured the town when he named asteroid 1244 Deira.
The citation he submitted to the IAU was meant to represent the ancient name of Ossett. However, that is something of an exaggeration: the ancient Kingdom of Deira actually encompassed (at its height) most of modern Yorkshire.
Jackson emigrated to South Africa in 1911 with his family.
If you are doing family or local history research, Anguline Research Archives are based in Ossett and have a catalogue of almost 500 CDs of old and rare family and local history books.