text:
From a stuctured experience to an open world
The LEGO videogame series has been around for some time, with its most popular incarnations definitely being the most recent licensed titles. Much like an artist that has been making music for more than five years, a series has to change, in sometimes unexpected ways, to avoid irrelevance while retaining the heart of what makes it great.
Coming off of LEGO Batman 2, the series' first foray into an open world, LEGO City: Undercover definitely runs with the idea to good effect. How good? Well that remains to be seen come launch, but so far, damn good.
LEGO City: Undercover (Wii U)
Developer: TT Fusion
Publisher: Nintendo
Release: March 18, 2013
A departure from the LEGO franchise in more ways than one, LEGO City: Undercover is a fully voiced, original story. As you can imagine this is quite the undertaking for a studio that has made its name on telling stories with only grunts and moans.
"Since this is an original story, it's really impossible to tell it with only grunts and people pointing at stuff," says executive producer Loz Doyle. "At least with something like Star Wars, most people already know the story, so it makes it easy for them to know what's going on." With this new direction, then, comes the challenge of getting a script in order. "When people pitched to get the job, it was important for us to make sure that it would be funny, which is quite difficult to tell in a simple pitch. So we didn't get anyone."
After going through an agency to try and find a writer, the team at TT Fusion instead tapped into some unknown resources. As it happens, one of their designers, Graham Goring, does stand-up comedy in his spare time. "It's actually quite unusual," says Doyle, "as you would normally have a whole team writing a game this size, but Graham jumped at the opportunity."
The important bit is that is seems to be paying off. LEGO City's writing carries a Saturday morning cartoon vibe to it, both light and accessible as well as entertaining. Anyone that knows me can tell you that my tastes in comedy tend to lean on the more fowl end, and even I found myself chuckling throughout my playthrough. There's really no denying that LEGO City's script carries real charm.
However, the biggest series change has to be the open world. As you can imagine, it is quite the undertaking for a team accustomed to building more structured experiences. Starting with the technical challenges -- "there's just so many," says Doyle -- "The geography, finding out how they all interact together, as well as building a road map on top of that to link all the different city and forest environments together."
Though the structure of the world has changed, the core of the LEGO franchise looks to have handled the adjustment. During my roughly two hours with the game, the bulk of my time was still spent solving puzzles, platforming, breaking and building tools, all while using different outfits and their abilities to assist.
The latter especially can lead to some Metroidvania-type moments. During Act 3, which takes place in part on a farm, I gained access to the farmer's outfit. allowing me to grow scalable vines wherever there was a plant pot. Once back in town, the farmer outfit becomes a great boon to exploring previously out-of-reach areas.
Of course, LEGO City would be remiss to not use its outfits in the side activities. For the fireman, there's about 25 barbeque fires to put out as well as kittens to save. For the robber, there's missions where you break into ATM machines and try to get away, as well as cars to steal that have you outrunning cops to get the car back in one piece.
These actives are further supplemented by your standard-issue collectibles such as red bricks, which act as cheat codes, and build sites where you can construct ramps and jumps. LEGO City is a pretty big place, and there's a lot to do.
Since this is a Wii U title, you can expect the GamePad to come into play, though not in any spectacular way. It's essentially the same GamePad-as-a-pause-menu interface we have seen from many games before. That said, it is quite handy to be able to set waypoints by simply taping on the mini-map display.
These gripes aside, there's good reasons to be excited for LEGO City: Undercover. Whether you're a fan or just looking for something else to play on you Wii U, you really should look to see how this one turns out.
You are logged out. Login | Sign up


text:
Try the latest MemTrax Memory Test -
- click here!! www.MemTrax.com
For an Alzheimer/MemTrax presentation - June 10, 2019, Stanford Geriatric Psychiatry Grand Rounds, Palo Alto, California, click here
For a MemTrax clinical example, click here
MemTrax is an assessment system for measuring memory function that can detect signs of Alzheimer's disease (this short, fun test takes 1 minute) - see here for earlier versions
Then try:
Brain training programs: www.Happy-Neuron.com
Cognitive therapy:
To participate in research, go to:
To participate in research on ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
at the Stanford / VA Alzheimer Center, click here!!
MEDAFILE is a website on ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE - for
families, clinicians, researchers - providing
information on Alzheimer's disease, forms for medical practitioners
to evaluate patients with dementia or other memory problems,
diagnostic recommendations, management suggestions, and etiological
International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease - July 17, 2006, Madrid, Spain
Poster: "DEMENTIA SCREEENING: IMPLICATIONS OF AGE, APOE GENOTYPE, PHARMACOECONOMIC FACTORS "
See Dr. Ashford talk about Alzheimer's disease in San Francisco (2002)
(about 1 meg, WMV format, Active X). This video clip
introduces the End Alzheimer
Task Force of the Internet
Broadcasting Association and plans for
on-line Alzheimer screening tests.
- A-Screen is a test that is recommended for primary care practitioners
to screen patients over the age of 60 years for possible cognitive
impairment. - The standard MMSE, as a group of items to
be arithmetically summed (removed pending resolution of copyright issues),
is not recommended
by this site. Note that there have been recent attempts to pull
this test from the public domain by the new owners of the copyright, who
have also obtained a trademark for this widely used term. As a clear
public domain alternative, the Stanford / VA Alzheimer Center has developed
the Brief Cognitive Exam (removed pending resolution of copyright issues).
A better approach to dementia severity measurement is to complete the
"Item Response Analysis" version of the MMSE, provided here, and
calculate an estimate of the relative number of years into Alzheimer's
MMSEi. The extended version,
MMSEe, provides a broader assessment.
TOP 10 TREATMENTS for preventing
Alzheimer's disease
-- see
version in Long Island Alzheimer Foundation News Letter
-- see - 2008 version
Also consider Paul Costa's Alzheimer's LIfe Plan:
ALZHEIMER HYPOTHESIS (Dr. Ashford's
Neuroplasticity Hypothesis)
Dr. Ashford's comment on the NIH State-of-the-Science Conference, April 26-28, 2010
(This conference downplayed important developments in research on risk factors, particularly genetics, and prevention of Alzheimer's disease, while recommending RCTs - randomized controlled trials - before we even know what to test.)
Site constructed and
maintained by: J. Wesson Ashford, M.D., Ph.D.
Electronic mail address:
Forms and papers provided on this site may be copyright protected by their authors or publishers.
HTML code copyright by J. Wesson Ashford, M.D., Ph.D., to retain rights for use.
Dr. Ashford is licensed to practice medicine in the states of California and Kentucky.
Last update: 02/26/2016

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Move Aside Crocs, These Are The World's Ugliest Shoes
Here's proof that two wrongs don't make a right.
Someone at backpacker and dad favourite Teva got drunk joined forces with Ugg to create something that looks like a terrible mistake.
There's no doubt they look like Teva sandals, but instead of the wearers' bare foot (or, while we're abandoning all sense of style, a socked one) being bound by Velcro straps, a strip of sheepskin has been added at the top of the foot and at the heel.
The boots are even more breathtaking.
The toes are, inexplicably, exposed in both styles.
The odd thing is, they look unbelievably comfortable and probably a hit for those who love nothing more than to rock some caveman-chic. But my word, they are violent on the eyes.
For those interested in the Frankenstein-ish footwear, the shoes are only available from the US sites of Teva and Ugg. A quick Aussie dollar conversion puts the sandal at $233, and the boot at $299.
TBH, taking some rusty scissors to your woolly slippers would look just as good.


text:
April 1, 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) appropriates significant new funding for programs under Parts B and C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Part B of the IDEA provides funds to state educational agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) to help them ensure that children with disabilities, including children aged three through five, have access to a free appropriate public education to meet each child's unique needs and prepare him or her for further education, employment, and independent living. Part C of the IDEA provides funds to each state lead agency designated by the Governor to implement statewide systems of coordinated, comprehensive, multidisciplinary interagency programs and make early intervention services available to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families.
The IDEA funds under the ARRA provide an unprecedented opportunity for states and early intervention service (EIS) programs to implement innovative strategies to improve outcomes for infants, toddlers, children, and youths with disabilities while stimulating the economy. Under the ARRA, the IDEA funds are provided under three authorities: $11.3 billion is available under Part B Grants to States; $400 million is available under Part B Preschool Grants; and $500 million is available under the Part C Grants for Infants and Families program. Preliminary information about each state's allocation is available at: http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/statetables/index.html. This Web site also provides information about the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) under the ARRA, which is separate from the IDEA ARRA funds described in this fact sheet. This document focuses on Part C; additional information on Part B is available in another fact sheet available at: http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/factsheet/idea.html.
IDEA Part C ARRA funds are a key element of the ARRA principles as described below:
Overview of ARRA
Principles: The overall goals of the ARRA are to stimulate the economy in the short term and invest in education and other essential public services to ensure the long-term economic health of our nation. The success of the part of the ARRA providing support for programs under the IDEA will depend on the shared commitment and responsibility of students, parents, EIS program staff and EIS providers, teachers, principals, superintendents, education boards, college presidents, state school chiefs, governors, local officials, and federal officials. Collectively, we must advance ARRA's short-term economic goals by investing quickly, and we must support ARRA's long-term economic goals by investing wisely, using these funds to strengthen early intervention and education systems, drive reforms, and improve results for children with disabilities from early learning through college. Four principles guide the distribution and use of ARRA funds:
Spend funds quickly to save and create jobs. ARRA funds will be distributed quickly to states and other entities in order to avert layoffs and create jobs. States in turn are urged to move rapidly to develop plans for using funds, consistent with ARRA's reporting and accountability requirements, and to promptly begin spending funds to help drive the nation's economic recovery.
Improve student achievement through school improvement and reform. ARRA funds should be used to improve student achievement and help close the achievement gap. In addition, the SFSF requires progress on four reforms previously authorized under the bipartisan Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, and the America Competes Act of 2007:
Making progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high-quality assessments that are valid and reliable for all students, including English language learners and students with disabilities;
Establishing pre-K to college and career data systems that track progress and foster continuous improvement;
Making improvements in teacher effectiveness and in the equitable distribution of qualified teachers for all students, particularly students who are most in need;
Providing intensive support and effective interventions for the lowest-performing schools.
Ensure transparency, reporting and accountability. To prevent fraud and abuse, support the most effective uses of ARRA funds, and accurately measure and track results, recipients must publicly report on how funds are used. Due to the unprecedented scope and importance of this investment, ARRA funds are subject to additional and more rigorous reporting requirements than normally apply to grant recipients.
Invest one-time ARRA funds thoughtfully to minimize the "funding cliff." ARRA represents a historic infusion of funds that is expected to be temporary. Depending on the program, these funds are available for only two to three years. These funds should be invested in ways that do not result in unsustainable continuing commitments after the funding expires.
Awarding IDEA Part C Grants for the Infants and Families Program ARRA Funds
- The Department of Education (Department) awarded 50 percent of the IDEA, Part C Grants for Infants and Families program ARRA funds to lead agencies on April 1, 2009. The other 50 percent will be awarded by September 30, 2009. These awards will be in addition to the regular Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 Part C Grants for Infants and Families program awards that will be made on July 1, 2009. Together, these grant awards will constitute a state's total FY 2009 Part C Grants for Infants and Families program allocation.
- A state does not need to submit a new application to receive the first 50 percent of the Part C Grants for Infants and Families program ARRA funds because these funds are being made available to each state based on the state's eligibility established for FY 2008 IDEA, Part C funds and the provision of the certification required by section 1607 of the ARRA. The assurances in the state's FY 2008 application, as well as the requirements of the ARRA, apply to these ARRA funds. In order to receive the remaining 50 percent of IDEA, Part C ARRA funds, a state must submit, for review and approval by the Department, additional information that addresses how the state will meet the accountability and reporting requirements in section 1512 of the ARRA.
- The Department has reserved approximately $71 million of the IDEA, Part C recovery ARRA for State Incentive Grants under section 643(e) of the IDEA to provide funds to state lead agencies that elect to carry out the Flexibility to Serve Children Three Years of Age until Entrance into Elementary School provisions in sections 632(5)(B)(ii) and 635(c) of the IDEA. A state that wishes to receive a State Incentive Grant must submit with its FY 2009 application the policies and other information showing it has met the requirements in sections 632(5)(B)(ii) and 635(c) of the IDEA. All ARRA funds reserved by the Department, but not allocated to states eligible for Incentive Grants, will be reallocated proportionately to all states on July 1, 2009.
- In accordance with the goals of the ARRA, a state should obligate IDEA, Part C ARRA funds expeditiously. States may begin obligating IDEA, Part C ARRA funds immediately. All IDEA, Part C ARRA funds must be obligated by September 30, 2011.
Uses of IDEA, Part C ARRA Funds
All IDEA, Part C ARRA funds must be used consistently with the current IDEA, Part C statutory and regulatory requirements and applicable requirements in the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA) and the Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR), including the payor of last resort and restricted indirect cost requirements. IDEA, Part C ARRA funds may be used for any allowable purpose under Part C of the IDEA, including the direct provision of early intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, and implementing a statewide, comprehensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary, interagency system to provide early intervention services.
The IDEA ARRA funds constitute a large one-time increment in IDEA, Part C funding that offers states a unique opportunity to improve early intervention service delivery and results for infants and toddlers with disabilities. Generally, funds should be used for short-term investments that have the potential for long-term benefits, rather than for expenditures the state may not be able to sustain once the ARRA funds are expended. Some possible uses of these limited-term IDEA ARRA funds that are allowable under IDEA include:
- Provide in-service training on evidence-based practices to EIS program staff and EIS providers to ensure that infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families receive high quality early intervention services in a timely manner.
- Expand child-find activities to ensure that all states meet their performance targets related to serving infants under age one and infants and toddlers birth through age two.
- Develop intensive programs and initiatives to train and support families, including families whose primary language is not English, in working with their infants and toddlers with disabilities and effectively communicating their children's needs.
- Support development of high quality state and local data systems to collect valid and reliable data for use in improving the timely delivery of early intervention services, the transition of children receiving services under Part C to the Part B preschool program, the tracking of early childhood outcome data as children exit the program and enter preschool and school, and in meeting data reporting requirements on the state's and EIS programs' performance on early childhood priority areas.
- Obtain state-of-the art assistive technology devices and provide training to qualified personnel on the use of such devices to support the functional development of infants and toddlers with disabilities.
- Implement innovative program strategies for improving the statewide services program, such as web-based systems for developing Individualized Family Service Plans and transition plans for toddlers with disabilities as they exit the Part C program.
- Purchase equipment for use by qualified personnel such as occupational and speech therapists to increase their ability to provide effective services.
- Develop and implement a joint state policy to provide early intervention services with other early childhood and related programs in the state.
IDEA, Part C Fiscal Issues
- Neither Part C of the IDEA nor the ARRA provide the Secretary with the authority to waive the maintenance of effort/supplement not supplant requirements under Part C.
- The Department will set aside $71 million of the IDEA Part C ARRA funds for State Incentive Grants to states that elect to implement, and are determined eligible by July 1, 2009 under, the Flexibility to Serve Children Three Years of Age until Entrance into Elementary School provisions in sections 632(5)(B)(ii) and 635(c) of the IDEA.
- With prior approval from the Secretary of Education, a state may count SFSF (but not IDEA ARRA funds) under the ARRA that are used for early intervention services as non-federal funds for purposes of determining whether the state has met the IDEA, Part C maintenance of effort/supplement not supplant requirements. (See separate fact sheet on SFSF for more information.)
Accountability Principles
As with all federal funds, states are responsible for ensuring that the IDEA, Part C ARRA funds are used prudently and in accordance with the law.
- ARRA requires that recipients of funds made available under that act separately account for, and report on, how those funds are spent.
- The President and the Secretary are committed to ensuring that ARRA dollars are spent with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability. Reports on ARRA expenditures will be posted on the Recovery.gov Web site.
Additional Information
- The Department will provide updates as additional information becomes available regarding the details of the IDEA recovery funds.
- The Department will also provide further information on the government-wide data collection and reporting requirements as this information becomes available.
- If you have any questions or concerns, please email them to: firstname.lastname@example.com.


text: Jessica McClintock Home - The Romance Collection is inspired by the antiques which grace her home in San Francisco and have been collected from around the world. In concert with Jessica, American Drew designers crafted the collection from cherry veneers, select hardwood solids, marble, metal, simulated wood and metal components, and wood products. Jessica McClintock Home - Romance Collection offers rich finishes, all lightly distressed to enhance the character and authenticity of the collection. The Olde World finish is a soft, satin fruitwood color. Silver leaf with gold overtones and a dusty wax characterizes the Heirloom finish. Antique Gilded Iron is a classic cast iron and aluminum form, with gold overtones. The custom, jewel-like hardware that adorns this collection is crafted from solid brass with an antique gold finish.


text:
We are going to wait until next Lord's Day to return to our study of the Gospel of Luke. I had originally intended to get back into the sixteenth chapter of Luke. However, I had been involved in a particular assignment. I was, this week, in Orlando, Florida, speaking at the Ligonier Conference for R.C. Sproul and I had been assigned the subject of "Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church"—to give a study, a lecture, a sermon on "Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church." And I've been so absorbed in that particular study and I went down there and I delivered my heart on Thursday of this week, and the response was just very encouraging to me, and I thought I needed to come back and give this same message to you because if it was that kind of an encouragement to those folks, I trust it will be to you as well.
So this morning I want to talk about this subject: "Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church." This is not unfamiliar to a student of the Bible. In Ephesians 1 the Scripture says Christ is the Head of the Church. In chapter 5 Scripture says Christ is the Head of the Church. In Colossians 1, again, the Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says "Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church." And that may seem, on the surface, a sort of "so what" kind of statement. We all know that. We all affirm that. That's a rather benign issue. Why would you want to give an address or lecture on that subject? It's straightforward, it's clear, it's unambiguous. But so much of what comes to us by way of pure understanding of the Word of God has come to us not with small difficulty but with immense amount of difficulty, and this doctrine is one of those that has made it down through the ages to us at the cost of many, many lives. Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.
In fact, we're all Protestants. But I'm not sure we understand what we're protesting. If you go to some place to work, occasionally, or go to some school or want to get involved in the military there'll be a little box that says "Protestant, Catholic or Other." And I'm sure most Protestants have no idea that Protestant means "a protestor." That Protestantism was born out of a protest. And I'm sure that there are...most...probably true of most Protestants, they really don't know what they're protesting and there are many Protestants who really wouldn't want to protest anything very strongly. But we were born in a protest and there are things that we still protest loudly and strongly. One of those things is any attack or any assault on the headship of Jesus Christ in His Church. So let's go back in history a little bit.
The name John Huss (H-U-S-S)—well-known and well-loved by many who are church historians. Anybody who knows the history of the Protestant Reformation knows the name John Huss. He was a Bohemian from what would be modern day northeast Croatia, and he was a pre-Reformation reformer. He was born in Hussenitz, now in southern Croatia. He was born to peasant parents. People were basically named according to their village and Hussenitz was a little long for him, so at the age of twenty he shortened his name to Huss and that means "the goose." The nickname stuck so that when John Huss was martyred (burned at the stake), Luther said 100 years later in reflecting on that event, "the goose was cook ed" and that's where that expression came from. It's still around today. The day for the cooking of "the goose" was July 6 and the year was 1415. 102 years later Luther nailed his thesis to the Wittenberg door and started the Protestant Reformation. This is 100 years before Luther.
Huss was taken to the cathedral in Prague. He was dressed in all of his priestly garments; he was a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. They stripped him, however, after he was fully dressed...they stripped him piece by piece by piece until he was virtually naked. He had been condemned to die by the Council of Constance, presided over by a certain bishop and that bishop at the Council of Constance decreed his execution by burning. The bishop ordered him tied to the stake and the flames engulfed him, and as they did historians say he said, "Lord Jesus, it is for you that I patiently endure this cruel death. Have mercy on my enemies." And then he went on reciting the Psalms as the flames engulfed him and took his life. He was so revered that that the Roman Church was fearful of any remnants of him, and therefore they scooped up all his ashes from the dirt beneath the fire and threw them into a nearby lake so that nothing would remain of him at all. Some, however, who loved him collected bits of dirt on the spot where he was burned, took them back to Bohemia to constitute a memorial in his honor. It was nearly 100 years later that Martin Luther was rummaging through stacks in a library, and he came across a volume of sermons by John Huss, and he read them. And they had an amazing impact on Luther. He wrote this, "I was overwhelmed with astonishment. I could not understand for what cause they had hurt so great a man who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill." Huss became a hero to Martin Luther because Huss preached the Bible, because he preached biblical doctrine, very doctrines which became crucial later on to the Reformation, and because he was hostile to the Roman Catholic Church selling indulgences by which people could pay money to shorten their punishment in purgatory.
So why was The Goose cooked? Why, as a priest in the church, did the church burn him? Well, a little biography first. As I said, born to peasant parents in Bohemia he entered the priesthood only to escape poverty. It was a good way to make a stable living. But he was bright, so he went through the educational process and got a bachelor's degree and a master's degree and even a doctorate. In 1402 he was ordained as a priest. He was assigned, because of his abilities, to become the preacher and pro___ at the Bethlehem Chapel which seated about 3,000 people. He determined even then that he would preach in the language of the people, and not in the required Latin because he wanted people to understand what was being said. He had become influenced by the writings of John Wycliffe who lived about at that same time and Wycliffe was committed to the Bible and had a great influence on Huss. Huss said he desired to "hold, believe, assert whatever is contained in Scripture as long as I have breath in me."
It was that commitment that put him on a direct collision course to the Roman system. Eventually, they couldn't take his preaching. Not only was he preaching the Bible, but he was preaching it in a way that people could understand it. That posed a huge problem for the sacramental system which controlled the people by their ignorance. He was then forbidden to preach. He was excommunicated from the church, and he kept preaching anyway, and he kept preaching in the Bethlehem Chapel. They couldn't get him out, and he was too popular at the time for them to take severe action against him. And the more he preached, and the more he preached in opposition to the system, the more courageous he came, and the more heavily he leaned on the Bible which he proclaimed as the final authority. The church finally developed a strategy and this was it: the church announced that no citizen would ever receive holy communion and no citizen would ever be buried on church grounds in that region as long as John Huss continued to preach. So to spare the people, the loss of the Lord's Table, and the right to an appropriate funeral, he left the Bethlehem Chapel in 1412 and went out into the countryside where he preached and wrote feverishly.
Among the things that he wrote, the most important treatise is called "The Church." He knew he needed to define the church for a people who really didn't understand the biblical view. When he completed that treatise, it was read publicly in Prague so the whole population could know what the Bible said about the Church. His views were radical. I'll just give you the three important components that were so radical.
Number One: He said the Church was made up of all the predestined believers of all ages. It was made up of all the predestined believers of all ages. In other words, everybody who was a believer belonged to the Church. You say, "Why is that so radical?" It was radical because during the time of Wycliffe and Huss, the official Roman Catholic position was that the true church consisted of the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, and the priests, period. They were the church. The lay people were not the church. The common people were not real members of the church, but when they ate the bread they communed with the church. And they didn't give them the wine. Their communion was limited only to the bread.
The second radical view that he had was that the authority of the Bible was higher than the authority of the church. This was something that Wycliffe had also made very clear. It is interesting, by the way, that Huss' words on the Bible being the true and final authority over the church...his very words were later repeated verbatim by Martin Luther.
But The Goose was cooked because of a third thing he said in that treatise. He said this: "Jesus Christ Himself is the Head of the Church" and he defied the Pope. In fact, he said, "The Head of the Church is not a pope who through ignorance and love of money is corrupt." He denied that any man is the head of the Church, especially one who lived, he said, a reprehensible life. And he said all reprobate leaders are disqualified from leading the Church in any way but Jesus alone is the Head of the Church. To rebel against the Pope was to obey Christ as Head, said John Huss. And that was it. The Goose was cooked for affirming that Jesus Christ is Head of His Church. The Bohemians were furious at the execution. They repudiated the Council of Constance and the bishop who lead it. Over the next several years, a coalition of Hussites came together. Others that joined them refused to submit to the authority of the holy Roman emperor or the church. They eventually formed a little group called unitas fratrum—the union of the brethren, which became the foundation for the Moravian brethren, historically associated with missions, and it was from the Moravian missionaries that John Wesley and his brothers were saved. So the conversion of the Wesley's can go back to the testimony of John Huss.
The truth of the Headship of Jesus Christ, as I said, might seem a little benign to us, a little matter of fact, a little ho-hum. This glorious truth, however, has come down to us sailing on a sea of blood. Huss was not the only martyr. There have been many through the centuries, but it was a century later when the young Martin Luther found the sermons of Huss and was so influenced by them, and it was Martin Luther who engaged in the same fight for the Headship of Christ over His Church. Luther said this, and I quote from Table Talks: "I am persuaded that if St. Peter, in person, should preach all of the articles of Holy Scripture and only deny the Pope's authority, power, and primacy and say that the Pope is not the head of the Church, they would cause him to be hanged." If you got everything else right and you just said the Pope is not the head of the Church you'd lose your life, said Luther, even if you were Peter.
Luther went on to say this, "If Christ Himself were again on earth and should preach this that He is the Head of the Church, without all doubt" Luther said, "the Pope would crucify Him again." The Roman Catholic Church today holds to papal headship over the church. I quote from their documents, "The Pope possesses full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, not merely in matters of faith and morals but also in church discipline and in the government of the church." He's the king of the church. The Vatican Council declared (this is a quote): "If anyone shall say that the Roman Pope has the office merely of inspection and direction and not a full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals, but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the church spread through the world or assert that he possesses merely the principal part and not all the fullness of this supreme power or that this power which he enjoys is not ordinary and immediate both over each and all the churches and over each and all the pastors and all the faithful, let him be damned." Anathema. The Catholic Church damns anyone who says, according to Vatican Council, that the Pope does not have supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal church, each and every church, each and every pastor, and each and every person. That means they believe he is the head of this church, of me, and of you, even though we are the disenfranchised among the faithful.
What've we got? Catholic theologian, classic theologian writing in defense of these things said, "A true power, a universal power, a supreme power, and a full power is possessed by any pope who can thereby rule independently on any matter without the consent of anyone else, he himself is judged by nobody because there is no higher judge on earth than he. He answers to no one. No council, no cardinal, no bishop, no king, no one." And to this Luther said, "I owe the pope no more obedience than I owe to anti-Christ." Why? Because the Pope was anti-Christ because he was declaring himself the head of the church and taking a position in opposition to Christ. Against Christ. That's what antichristos means. D'Aubigne in his Classic History of the Reformation of the 16th Century, a great historical work, wrote this: "Luther's rejection of the Pope as head of the church inflicted the most terrible blow on Rome." This is really what was at the heart of the Reformation. Jesus Christ is the head of the Church, not the Pope. John Calvin agreed, "Some think us too severe when we call the Roman pontiff anti-Christ."
John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, influenced by Calvin in Geneva, the one who brought back the Geneva Bible text to Scotland, contributor to the very English Bible tradition which we enjoy today...Knox called the Pope an "anti-Christ tyrant over the Church." They all saw him as the one who opposed Christ as the Head of the Church. Westley identified the papacy as "the man of sin, the son of perdition, the one who exalted himself above the true Head of the Church, and even above God Himself." He wrote that in his writing "Anti-Christ and his Ten Kingdoms." 1647, the Westminster Confession was written to affirm sound doctrine, and in the Westminster Confession which is still the confession used by Presbyterians today around the world, this is what the Westminster Confession said, "There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof but is that anti-Christ, that man of sin and son of perdition that exalted himself in the Church against Christ and all that is called God." Pretty explicit.
In the 17th century when Knox came back to Scotland...of course the tremendous amount of influence there...but in the 17th century the same war was being waged over who is the head of the Church. By the 17th century, the battle was kind of shifting. If there was a Catholic ruler in England, there was call for everyone to subject themselves to the fact that the Pope was the head of the church and the king was under the Pope. If there was a Protestant ruler in England, the king or the queen was to be the head of the church. And so the battle raged about who was the head of the church. In England the Puritans fought that battle, the non-conformists fought that battle. But particularly in Scotland it really reached a feverish level. The Scottish had been influenced by John Knox. John Knox was a powerful, revivalist Reformation preacher, and he preached that Jesus Christ was the Head of the Church, and this put him in conflict with the royalty in England. The Catholic royalty still believed themselves to be head over the church and the Pope head over them. Even the Protestants, the Anglicans, the Anglo-Catholics in England believed themselves to be head of the church. And so the Scottish would not accede to that, they would not allow that, they would not submit to that.
In 1888 William Blaikie wrote a book called The Preachers of Scotland which I have read repeatedly with a lot of benefit, and one of the sections in the book says "the attempt by the state" (that's the English crown) "to force a new liturgy on the Church, the use of which should be binding under the highest penalty showed a determination to set aside Christ's authority and tyrannize over His people in the most sacred region of worship." This was the dually authorized worship book, authorized by the king. It was imposed by the English king upon the Scottish people, and it was brought into St. ____ Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinborough where I've visited a number of times, and into the cathedral came this man and announced (this is 1637) that everybody has to conform to this by royal decree. And one of the interesting little moments in Scottish history...there was a lady sitting in the church that day by the name of Jenny Geddes who was offended at this, that the Crown would dictate to them whatever it wanted to and push upon them some liturgy. She was infuriated by what was being said and history says her fury reached such a level that she reached down, found a stool in the church and threw it at the guy who was reading the book. This ignited a riot and a revolt that basically launched the movement called The Covenanters. Men got together, wrote a covenant that was a national covenant the Scottish people would affirm, and at the head of that covenant was that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, and not the Pope, and not the king, and not the queen.
And so what happened was, for fifty years really, this blood bath went on. Even prior to 1637 it had started (it went from 1625 to 1675). Fifty years of slaughtering these Scottish people for affirming that they will not submit themselves to the Crown or to the Pope. Blaikie writes this, "By force of reaction the Church was thrown into a more full assertion of Christ's claims as Head of the Church and the glorious privilege of the Church to follow her divine Head and the more this truth was thought of, the more glorious did it seem." What happened was when they had to really think through and defend that Christ was the Head of the Church, they began to clarify, crystallize, deepen, broaden that great doctrine until it became such a precious, rich doctrine. The more they fought for it, the more they worked with it, the more glorious it became. And Blaikie says "every vision of the true head of the church of Scotland was enriched so that no other than the glorious king exalted to such honor there, the Lamb in the midst of the throne having on His head many crowns and surrounded by elders and living creatures and thousands and thousands who cried with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain' burst upon their sight.'" They began to see the full glory of Christ as the true Head of His Church. And Blaikie writes, "The men of those times did not, like so many now, deem it enough to recognize Christ's headship over themselves personally. They joined to that with all the ardor of their nature, His headship over the whole church and to repudiate the one was as a great a crime and as great a folly as to repudiate the other.
I've spent a lot of time in my life writing and preaching on the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord over every true Christian. You do not come to salvation if you do not confess Jesus as Lord, but He is not just our personal Lord, He is Lord of the Church, and you cannot let go of that doctrine either. To deny Him, His place, and His Church is to imperil one's personal relationship to Him, "almost as much," writes Blaikie, "as if to deny His atonement." You cannot deny His headship in His Church without significant results and they're all negative. In fact, Samuel Rutherford said, "The more one delighted to think of His grace in relation to oneself, the more was one bound to see to it that He sustained no insult and no injury in His wider dominion. For the believer to join with those who gave over His authority as King to any earthly sovereign was about as wicked as to join with those who set aside His personal authority that they might serve the Devil and the world and the flesh." You can't deny His personal authority in your life and be a Christian. And you can't personally deny His personal authority in His Church and be true to the Word of God. And that was crystallized among those Covenanters as they had to fight to defend that even as it had been crystallized a couple of centuries before that in the Reformation, as they had to fight that battle as well.
And Knox, who was really brash and bold as were many of the Reformers, confronted Queen Mary, who was Catholic and slaughtered Christians, and addressed her as "a woman of stout stomach." This is not a good way to address a woman, but he was a pretty brash guy. He confronted her as "a woman of stout stomach who can't abide the presence of God's prophets." And the issue with Knox was who ruled the Church—Christ or the monarchy. It was in those years that they built a Presbyterian parliament building to rule the church of Scotland. The Presbyterian Church is where all the...or to lead it. It's on the Royal Mile between H____ Castle and Edinburg Castle up the rode past John Knox's house and I've been in that building. I was in there with Eric Alexander. And it's actually such an interesting building...it's's kind of a rectangle like the British Parliament is and it was used for the...for basically the discussion of the issues in the church. It wasn't the Scottish Parliament facility but rather the church parliament facility. By the way, the Scottish Parliament did use it when their own building was under construction some years back. But it has all kinds of facing seats at different levels so that all the leaders of the church, all the bishops, and all whoever are people of importance, all the way up the ranking seats and they're all in sort of a pecking order in that traditional kind of hierarchical structure of the church and that kind of government.
But I noticed the first thing you notice when I walked in there and I looked up at the top of the building...my eye was drawn up there...there was a throne up there about where the cross is. Just a throne way up there. And I said to Eric Alexander, "Who sits there?" And he said, "Well, that's the seat for the king of queen." Vestiges of that same old issue. No one sits there when the Parliament meets but, sad to say, the Presbyterian leadership of Scotland would be anything but Christian these days, so they probably wouldn't mind if royalty was there to give them some aid in the enterprises they're involved in. But it showed up even in the architecture—a seat for royalty above everyone else. The Church of Scotland rejected the rule of royalty. The ones that denied this were thrown out of their churches. Dragoons, from which we get "goons", you know people that show up to beat you up and kill you? Dragoons were sent by the English Inn to find these pastors who were not in compliance and kill them, and so they left their churches, and they ran out into the moors and the fields and the hillsides into what were called conventicles and people who wanted to worship had to go out of town in a hidden place to worship and that went on for years. They found them and they killed them. In one region alone they killed 400 pastors and only 37 survived. People were chopped up. They were hacked. They were beheaded. Along the Royal Mile, up that same route in Edinborough, there are spikes that stick up along the road and certain old buildings and they were places that they put the heads of the Covenanters—put them on parade in the middle of town. You can go to the hay market square in Edinborough. You can walk around the hay market square and you can see the very places where the Covenanters were killed for denying that Charles was the head of the Church. Even Cromwell, with whom they made an alliance, thinking he'd be their helper. And Cromwell even had as a chaplain when he went over to fight the Irish John Owen, the great Puritan. But even Cromwell betrayed them.
There were still some vestiges of this idea that the king was the head of the church even in the days of Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon said this, "Of all the dreams that ever deluded men, and probably of all blasphemies that ever were uttered, there has never been one which is more absurd and which is more fruitful in all matter of mischief than the idea that the Pope of Rome can be the head of the Church of Jesus Christ. No, these popes die," said Spurgeon, "and how could the Church live if its Head were dead? The true Head ever lives and the true Church ever lives in Him." He went on, "Christ did not redeem His Church with His blood that the Pope might come in and steal away the glory. He never came from heaven to earth and poured out His very heart that He might purchase His people, that a poor sinner, a mere man should be set upon high to be admired by all nations to call himself God's representative on earth. Christ has always been the Head of the Church." He was speaking pretty clearly in those days against the very same thing Luther had addressed and Huss had died for.
In a sermon called "Jesus, Our Lord" Spurgeon said, "The Church of God in a very special manner calls Jesus our Lord for there is not and there cannot be any head of the Church except the Lord Jesus Christ. It is awful blasphemy for any man on earth to call himself Christ Vicker and the Head of the Church. It is a usurpation of the crown rights of King Jesus for any king or queen to be called the head of the Church, for the true Church of Jesus Christ can have no Head but Jesus Christ Himself. I am thankful that there is no Head to the Church of which I'm a member, save Jesus Christ Himself, nor dare I be a member of any church which would content to any headship but His."
And Jonathan Edwards, the great American preacher and theologian said, "Christians are one society, one body and they are subject to the same King, Christ Jesus. He is the Head of the Church. He is the Head of the Body. Indeed all men are subject to the power and providence of this King, but those who are in His kingdom of grace all acknowledge the same King, own His rightful sovereignty over them, are willing to be subject to Him, to submit to His will, and yield obedience to His commands."
All the great reformers and preachers through the centuries understood how precious to the Church is the great truth of Christ's headship. And, by the way, the people who voted Jonathan Edwards out of that church obviously thought they were the head of the church, and sometimes congregations do that in rejecting the Word of the Lord and Head of the Church. It doesn't go away. Look at modern liberal theology at all the liberal seminaries, all the people you hear interviewed on television who are telling you things that aren't true about Jesus and about God and about the Bible. I was called recently by The History Channel. They said, "Would you be an expert consultant for us and we would like to interview you and have you speak on the things that we do on The History Channel that relate to religion." Yikes! I can't run fast enough from that. You think I want to be on there with all those wacky people who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, deny the Scriptures, deny the headship of Christ? Modern liberal theology denies the deity of Christ, so what does that do to His headship? Modern liberal theology denies the resurrection! That makes Him dead! How can He be the Head of the Church if He's dead?! Furthermore, liberal theologians deny the inspiration of Scripture, so even if He were alive, he didn't say anything to His Church. Maybe the great sin of liberalism summed up is its rejection of Jesus as Head of His Church.
Moving onto the seeker movement which replaces the Word of God with psychological, self-help, narcissistic, man-centered kind of stuff. How is that an attack on the headship of Christ? Don't they believe He's the Head of the Church? They will tell you they do, but what good is it to be the Head of the Church if those who lead the Church silence you? Take the Bible out of the pulpit. Stop teaching Scripture verse by verse and you have silenced the Head of the Church. De facto. You have interrupted His rule. Pretty serious stuff. Replace the Word of God in the Church with what John Piper calls "evangelical slapstick". Substitute anything and everything else and you have just silenced the Head of the Church in His Church.
Bible translators do it with their feminist Bibles and their self-styled little Bibles that translate it any old way that they want, making it say what's convenient to their theological view. They tamper with the text. They are tampering with the Word of the Head of the Church to His Church. I mean, you've got to look where the blow is really being struck. The new emerging church—they're so smug and so self-content and self-impressed. They are happy to celebrate the lack of clarity in the Bible, that the Bible isn't clear. And they say they have hermeneutics of humility—they would never be so proud as to say they know what the Bible means by what it says. They're too humble for that. And humble people won't say they know what it means. So they would say "Christ is the Head of the Church, and we believe that, and He did speak but we haven't any clue what He said. We don't have any way to interpret this book. Besides, if you get too clear about it, too specific about it, it's very intolerant, very divisive." You see, you can attack the headship of Christ all kinds of ways. To say that the Bible is not clear? Or not true? Or not all of it's true? Or we can't be dogmatic? We don't know exactly what it means? Is to silence the Head of the Church in His Church!
John Armstrong who has headed up an organization called "Reformation and Revival"...he needs to change the name...said this, "certitude is often idolatrous. I have been forced to give up certitude. If there is a foundation in Christian theology," he writes, "it is not found in Scripture." Really? Scripture isn't the foundation and you can't be certain about anything. He then went on to say, "Theology must be a humble, human effort to hear God but never about rational approaches to texts." It's not in Scripture. You can't be certain. And you can't use your rational mind to understand a text. Boy, that is a convenient confusion. Now you're not responsible for anything. Why would people come up with that? Because "men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." This is not intellectual; this is moral. The Bible is clear. It's too clear. It's too clear what it's saying. They don't want to acknowledge what it's saying so they say it's not clear. This kind of entrepreneurialism, this church of human ingenuity, this church of creative whatever, whatever everybody's inventing things their own way is, in its reality, a mutiny. It is a mutiny. It is a rebellion against the Head of the Church. And along with it...along with all this liberal sort of seeker emergent church comes disdain for the faithful teachers of Scripture—disdain for the faithful theologians, disdain for the faithful expositors of the Word, the faithful mediators of the Lord's rule in His Church through the proclamation of His Word to his Church. He rules by His Word in the power of the Spirit. You remove the Word, you silence Him, you mutiny against Him. Everybody in history who understood the issues knew where the battle was. I know what we're protesting and I'll keep protesting it just as it's been protested all the way through history. The Lord is the Head of His Church. I have no word to His Church but the Word that comes from the Head of the Church. And when anyone serving or leading a church deviates one step out of the revealed will of the truth, deviating one step away from the Word of the Head of the Church, he has declared mutiny on the Head of the Church. He has declared revolution. This is an overthrow and he's become the rival of Christ. He is an adulterer trying to seduce the bride away from her true husband. Pretty serious stuff.
Non-biblical ministry, non-expository preaching and teaching, non-doctrinal instruction usurps Christ's headship, silences His voice to His Church, gives honor to proud independence and autonomy as if it is a virtue. It's another kind of minor league papacy. This approach strips the Church of the mind of Christ, builds indifference and ignorance toward the Bible, prevents the preacher from being the voice of the Lord to His Church, removes protection from error and sin, eliminates transcendence and clarity, therefore crippling worship and producing compromise, cheating people of the glory of their Head in His fullness and all that flows out of it. So this is not a doctrine to be treated lightly, but to be treated seriously.
That's my introduction. You think I'm kidding? I want to ask three quick questions, ok? This is my three point outline. Question number one: What does "Head" mean? For two decades, this idea of headship has been assaulted by evangelical feminists. You see, if you take Christ as the Head of the Church in Ephesians 5, it says "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the Church." So they don't want the husband to be the head of the wife in a sense of governing, ruling, authority so they want to get that out because feminism can't tolerate that and in the getting of that out they have just stripped Jesus of His headship as well because whatever "head" means regarding the husband over the wife it means regarding Christ over the Church. And so the attack on headship has come relentlessly for twenty years.
Thanks to our good friend, the encyclopedic, Wayne Grudem, who knows more about the issue of headship than any human who's ever walked on the planet because he studied it so intently...thanks to him, whenever there's a doctrine that's assaulted the Church goes to battle and he's been the leader in that battle. And in 1985, for one thing, among many things that he's done, he took the word for kephale, which is the word for "head" (kephale) and he examined 2,336 examples of it in ancient Greek literature from the 8th century B.C. (Homer) to the 4th century A.D. (the Church Fathers). 2,336 examples of kephale to find out if it's ever used as "source", simply to say that Christ is the Source of the Church, nothing more. That's crazy anyway because what does it mean that the husband is the source of the wife. What is that? What happened to the in-laws? Aren't they the source of your wife? That doesn't make any sense. So he studied all of those. This is his conclusion, and it's been in print and never been answered and he's written 1,000 pages on all of this: Never, when the word was used of a person, not a body part, but actually of a person called "the head", never does it have any other meaning than "governing, ruling authority." He's the Head of His Church, meaning He is the governing, ruling authority who rules through what He says to His church, as any ruler does—what He requires, what He commands, what He demands, what He asks. To say that Jesus is the Head is to say that He is Lord, and to say a husband is the head is to say that he is lord, just as it is said in 1 Peter 3 that Sara called Abraham what? Lord. That's why in Philippians 2, Paul says that when Jesus was given a name above every name, the name "Lord", in response to that Name every knee does what? It bows. Kurios equals kephale. Kephale equals kurios. Head—Lord. Lord—Head. That's what it means. He rules His Church.
Second question: Who made Him Head? Go back to Ephesians 1. Go back? You haven't been anywhere yet. Go to Ephesians 1. We got to get to the Bible, folks. That's what I keep saying, right? Ephesians 1. Now this is powerful stuff, so you're going to have to hang on. 17—Paul's praying here "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him." One thing God wants is that you would understand and have wisdom concerning the truth. Ok? Paul's saying I'm just praying that God is going to help you understand. Verse 18—"that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened." You just need to know the truth.
Alright, let's go on down to verse 20. And here he says...now we can't cover all of this...but he says this, "when He raised Christ from the dead" ... when God raised Christ from the dead...you need to understand this...this is the truth...this is part of what he wants you to understand... "When He raised Him from the dead He seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places." Ok? After the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, He ascended into heaven, He took His place at the right hand of the Father. Ok? Verse 21—"far above" Huperono—ono (higher up). Huper (higher, higher up, super high up, way up, far above). "He is exalted in the heavenlies far above, infinitely above all rule (arkay)...all firsts, all primacies, all authority (exusia—right, all who have rights), all power (dutimas), all dominion (kuriatays), all lordships, all sovereignties. He is far above all of them, and just in case something's left out "and every name that is named"...any other being, be it angelic or be it human...He is far above...way above all beings who have any rule, authority, power, and dominion, not only in this age but also in the one to come. Now and forever Jesus Christ is sovereign over all beings who exist. Now and forever. No change.
Then He says this...the language is magnificent...verse 22—"And He put all things in subjection under His feet." Not only is He over all beings, He is over all things. He is the King of the universe, He is the King of creation, He is the King over everything that has been created, material and immaterial. He is the King over all of it, now and forever. Now verse 22, at the end of the verse...and God who brought Him out of the grave, who raised Him from the dead, who seated Him at His right hand, who put all things under His feet, that same God and Father "gave Him as head over all things to the Church." Doesn't say He gave Him as Head of the Church. That's true, but that's not the emphasis. Do you see the language? He gave Him as Head over all things to the Church. He gave to us to be our Head the King of the universe. Wow. He gave the One who was already King of kings, who was already Lord of lords. He gave Him to the Church. The universal Sovereign over the entire created universe takes His rightful place as Head of His Church. Colossians 1:18: "That He Himself might come to have first place preeminence in everything." (ttp--I couldn't find the translation that matches this when I checked) This is the most glorious kind of language. I wish I could just explode on this for awhile, but I can't. I don't have time. He didn't give us Gabriel, He didn't give us Michael, I could go on and on like that. He didn't give us 10,000 super angels. He didn't just give us John Huss, and He didn't just give us Martin Luther's, and Calvin's, and people like that and Spurgeon's. He didn't give us just gifted pastors and teachers and theologians and evangelists to help us and support us and evangelize to bring us to salvation and sanctification and to teach us and defend us and guide us and lead us. He gave us the Ruler of the universe.
In verse 23 the Church is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. That's almost untranslatable. Pontaenpossinplayrumenoid. It says "all things in all things filling." What it means is He gave us a Head whose life flows down in us. He's not only over in us, He's in us. He gave us the King of the universe. He gave us the best. He picked the best shepherd to be our Shepherd. He picked the best husband to be our Husband. He picked the best king to be our King. He picked the best head to be our Head. Fall on your knees, you popes, and humble yourselves in the face of the true Head of the Church. Fall on your knees, you kings, you queens. Fall on your faces, you self-appointed lords of the church who deny the lordship of Jesus Christ and His headship in His Church by removing His Word. Humble yourselves, those who deny His Scripture is true or understandable or who deny its priority place. Fall on your face, you clever, creative, willful, self-styled, self-promoting people before the true Head of the Church.
How does He rule? That's the third question. Ephesians 5. How does He rule in His Church? This is quick. Verse 23. First, the husband is the head of the wife, Christ the Head of the Church. First, He Himself being the Savior of the Church. The first thing He does in his Church...He sovereignly saves His Church. He sovereignly saves His Church. That's how He builds His Church and the gates of Hades don't prevail against it. Verse 25 says it in another way: "He gave Himself up for her." He saves His Church by sacrificing Himself for His Church. Secondly, He supervises His Church. Verse 24. The Church is subject to Christ. Thirdly, he sanctifies His Church, verse 26. He sanctifies her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word. He saves His Church sovereignly. He supervises His Church sovereignly through instructing and subjecting the Church to His Word and His Spirit. He sanctifies His Church through the purification of the Word and cleansing from sin. He even secures His Church, verse 27. He will present to Himself the Church. Nobody else is going to do it. He will do it Himself someday in the future glory—present to Himself the Church in all her glory without spot, without wrinkle, or anything like that, completely holy and blameless. In the meantime, He supplies everything His Church needs. Verse 29. He nourishes and cherishes. He moves His Church along with all they need to grow and flourish. How does He rule? Sovereignly saving His Church, sovereignly supervising His Church through the work of the Word, sovereignly sanctifying His Church by cleansing them from sin, sovereignly securing them to future glory, and sovereignly supplying everything they need to be nourished and cherished. And why does He do all this? Why does He do this? Because, verse 25, He loves the Church. Nobody loves the Church like the Lord of the Church, the Head of the Church. Nobody. I want to submit myself to the Lord of the Church because I know that He loves the Church. Nobody loves the Church like the Lord of the Church. I want His loving leadership in your life. I want His loving leadership in this church. I want His loving headship in this church, and therefore I submit myself completely to the Head of the Church who loves the Church infinitely and eternally.
Closing thought. When Huss was dying, he said this to the bishop who pronounced his sentence: "Sir, you may silence this goose but there will come another that you will not be able to silence." 100 years later came Martin Luther and you see pictures of Luther, old pictures of Luther with the Goose faintly in the background. He was the fulfillment, the Reformers thought, of John Huss' statement. Luther went to be ordained at Urfort. They brought him in front of the chancel in front of the altar. They told him, as they did in those days, to lay prostrate upon the ground with his arms spread wide, making with his body the sign of a cross. And Luther, flat on the ground, before those who were ordaining him, took his place. It happened that he was lying on a crypt which are pretty common in old cathedrals. He was lying on a crypt. Beneath him was what was left of the body of someone who was dead. Just so happens that crypt was the crypt of the bishop who pronounced sentence on John Huss. Now, just maybe when Huss said to that bishop 100 years earlier, "You may silence this goose but there will come another you will not be able to silence"... just maybe the bishop said, "Over my dead body." That's enough.
Let's pray: What a heritage is ours, oh Lord, what a heritage is ours. Help us to know what it is we have to protest. We would do anything to save the sacred reality of Christ as Head over His Church. We acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that you are the Head of the Church. We submit gladly to your saving, supervising, sanctifying, securing power and will. We thank you for the glory of the work of the Word in us through the Spirit. Help us to exalt our dear Lord Jesus in every way we can. We thank You, Lord, that You have made us Your body, your bride, members of Your glorious kingdom for now and forever, and we give You all the honor and all the glory. Amen.


text:
3m x 2m Gala Shade Pro 50 Gazebo (Taupe) Complete with SidewallsQty:
New Gala Shade Frame Specifications
* Leg size: hexagonal 50 x 50mm - (60mm x 60mm corner to corner)
* Profile aluminium joints and fixing (not cast aluminium which breaks)
* Tube upto 2mm profile aluminium
* We use robust screws fixing for easy repair
* We use profile aluminium profile joints
* We use grey hammer tested Nylon inserts.
* Sprung loaded rhythmatic wind resistant framework
* We use 6061/T6 aluminium, used in our big modular marquees, far stronger than used by our competitors
Now With 5 Adjustable Height Settings
Position 1:
From ground to valance: 1400mm
From ground to the centre: 1440mm
From ground to the top: 2680mm
Position 2:
From ground to valance: 1550mm
From ground to the centre: 1590mm
From ground to the top: 2830cm
Position 3:
From ground to valance: 1700mm
From ground to the centre: 1740mm
From ground to the top: 2980mm
Position 4:
From ground to valance: 1850mm
From ground to the centre: 1890mm
From ground to the top: 3130mm
Position 5:
From ground to valance: 2000mm
From ground to the centre: 2040mm
From ground to the top: 3280mm
* Material made from 600d Polyester PVC lined cover
Gala's uniquely designed sidewalls include a clear windows at the rear for maximum light exposure into your event, blank sidewall from right to left for printed advertising space.
The clear window panel also features a shutter cover, which can be conveniently rolled up or down depending on the privacy of your event. All side panels attach together at the corner with heavy-duty zips, heavy duty Velcro is
used all way around the valance to attach to the canopy. The front entry roll up door panel also comes complete with very heavy-duty zips.
Exclusive PVC skirt set on every sidewall ensures water drainage away from your event as well as being very easy to clean
* 600d Polyester PVC lined panels
* Side panel storage bag
* Heavy duty eyelets inside & out
* Clear window with blind cover
* Heavy duty Velcro which attached to canopy
* Heavy duty zips up corners
* Zip door entry & tie back clips
* 6' side skirt for water drainage
Packing Dimensions:
Frame - 163cm x 50cm 35cm Weight - 42kg
Canopy – 44cm x 37cm x 13cm Weight - 6kg
Sidewalls -63cm x33cm x16cm - 12kg
Total Weight: 60kg
Optional Equipment
* Leg Weighted feet
* Ratchet Tie Down Kit + Pegs
* Ground Bar Rail kit
* Sun Shade Canopy
* Printing ServiceRead More
Each window panel has a roll up window blind for privacy, this set of sidewalls also come with quality storage bag with handle. Every sidewall comes complete with 6' side skirt for water drainage keeping your pop up gazebo dry inside.
You're Investing In Quality The Gala Tent™ brand is renowned in the industry as the pinnacle of quality, by using the highest quality materials available Gala Tent™ have managed to manufacture products of unbeatable quality.
Replacement Parts Gala Tent™ receive hundreds of emails and telephone calls each year from distressed individuals who require a spare joint, pole or canopy for their pop up gazebo, which they have purchased elsewhere, unfortunately we can't assist. This would have been a simple process if they had purchased a Gala Shade™ as all spare parts can be purchased online.Read More
I made a commercial decision many years ago not to compete on price but compete on quality and value for money. I was well aware of low-price items claiming to be the high specification of Gala Tent. However after many case studies it was clear they are evidently not. What I did was invest in research and development, design and technology and produced the finest range of marquees and gazebos on the market. And I'm sure again you will agree that you can in fact make anything cheaper and we have all bought a product on Price and been very disappointed which comes at a COST. And guess what, Gala Tent is still the market leader and recently posted double digit growth in our first quarter of this year alone.
Gala Tent gazebos are designed and built in Britain. A large number of our competitors despatch from either Germany, Denmark, France or even China and pose as UK companies by using a .co.uk address. Return postage can cost £100's leaving you with more COSTS, and replacement parts will not be available.
Don't get caught out, buy right, first time !!!
Jason Mace, Managing Director
P.S "It's not an event without Gala Tent"
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Finance is a fantastic way to spread the cost of your purchase. To make it easy we've added the ability to let you apply for and then complete the loan application quickly and entirely online.
Before you apply please note you will only be considered for finance if you:
- Are having the delivery to a UK address
- Are having the delivery to the same address as cardholder
- Are at least 18 years old
- Are in regular full or part-time employment (minimum 16 hours per week or £5,000 per annum, unless you are retired and receiving a private / company pension or in receipt of disability allowance)
- Are a permanent UK resident and have lived in the UK for at least 3 years.
- Have a good credit history with no late payments, debt relief orders, CCJs, IVAs or bankruptcies.
Please note discounts can not be carried over if you are purchasing using finance.
First add the items you wish to purchase to your basket. When you reach checkout select the best finance option for you and choose 'Buy Now Pay Later'. The quick application form takes no more than a couple of minutes to complete and then you'll receive an instant decision.
In the unlikely event that you believe you have seen a like for like product at a lower price, then please use this form to request a Price Match.
You Won't Find A More Durable Safety Shade
The New Designed & Built in Britain Gala Shade Pro-50™ pop up gazebo is a favourite among commercial users and has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of the professional market by utilising the highest quality materials available to date. Featuring an easy-up fast build mechanism, the structure is easily and quickly erected by two people in just a few minutes. The Pro-50™ frame comes fully assembled with no expense spared boasting profile aluminium joints on all leg and centre poles, giving an unbeatable performance when it comes to heavy duty use. The new Gala Shade™ Pro-50™ is never beaten on quality and value for money as the structure is specifically designed to meet the requirements of the commercial market. Our market research shows that our customer is looking for a gazebo that is built to last and easy to repair with a full warranty and back up service of spare parts available on a next day delivery.
This is the TRUE Pro-50™ Trademark product
Which unfortunately has been copied by imitators however they can not call theirs a Pro-50™ so rename them Extreme 50 or Express 50 or similar, and measure the framework corner to corner to get 50mm, if you measure a Gala Shade Pro-50 corner to corner you will get a measurement of over 60mm a huge difference in quality. And you will also find they are only manufacturing the leg pole in 50mm and its unlikely the aluminium will be strong enough to be commercial quality and the rest of the all important frame is usually no better than a domestic gazebo. Remember you can only buy a Pro-50™ from Gala Tent™ as we own the trademark and Patents.
Its Super Quick to Erect!
Featuring an easy-up fast build mechanism making the structure easily and quickly erected by two people in just a few minutes.
NEW Recently Upgraded Key Features
* Smart heavy duty 'quick release-clip' allows rapid and straightforward leg height adjustment with 5 different height settings
* Seam-sealed 600d UV protected canopy delivers superb weather resistance, no water will leak in!
* Up to 2mm 6061/T6 aluminium weight-bearing frame, in pristine unspoiled polished silver to protect it against the elements.
* Pro-50™ Comes complete with Heavy-duty wheelie storage bag with storage compartments for equipment
* Advanced patent Spirotite bolts and profile aluminium joint technology
* Sprung Loaded framework which sways rhythmically side to side in tune with the changing wind direction stabilising the whole structure.
* The canopy and sidewalls are Pro quality with 600d fabric and heavy duty Velcro attaching the sidewalls to the canopy this improves the speed of erection and also provides a proud taut looking structure.
Advanced Technology Explained
The Gala Tent™ range of gazebo also benefit from Patent designed joints and rhythmatic framework you can only buy from Gala Tent™. These features enhance the speed and performance when erecting and dismantling your commercial gazebo. Our profile aluminium joints will not oxidise like our competitors who use cast aluminium. Our design has evolved to provide a smooth action incorporating advanced technology and sculpted nylon inserts in every profile aluminium joint, which prevents aluminium on aluminium friction with added strength.
Why Gala Tent is the Best!
When aluminium and aluminium rub together there is friction, abrasion and oxidisation and in due course joints will fuse together. You see some of our competitors customer using WD40 on their joints to erect there popup gazebo framework at events, even from new; this tells a story itself of an unsuccessful unfortunate design and cost cutting quality.
You Can Use Gala Shade™ Pro-50™ Almost Anywhere
Gala Shade™ Pro-50™ gazebos are ideal for promotional events, catering, trade stands at exhibitions, market stalls, and extremely popular with Motorsport and Karting. Bring your imagination into play; we're sure you can find many other uses for your Gala Shade™ Pro-50™.
Gala's uniquely designed sidewalls include a clear windows at the rear for maximum light exposure into your event, blank sidewall from right to left for printed advertising space.
The clear window panel also features a shutter cover, which can be conveniently rolled up or down depending on the privacy of your event. All side panels attach together at the corner with heavy-duty zips, heavy duty Velcro is used all way around the valance to attach to the canopy. The front entry roll up door panel also comes complete with very heavy-duty zips.
Exclusive PVC skirt set on every sidewall ensures water drainage away from your event as well as being very easy to clean
Its Completely Generic
All Gala Shade™ Pro canopies and sidewalls are totally generic, which means they will fit all our new Pro framework throughout the range. So lets say you would like a Pro-MX™ or Pro-40™ for a less commercial event all you need to buy is a new framework, no other company offers this flexibility.
Enhance Your Company Brand Image.
The Gala Shade™ Pro-50™ range is used by many of Britain's leading companies for promotional events to raise brands awareness. The quality finish of the Gala Shade™ range mirrors the qualities companies seek to incorporate into their brand identities. You can raise awareness of your product, company and campaign through the use of wide format colour printing speak to our specialist contact centre team to discuss this service on 0800 988 4252 on introduce yourself on our online chat.
You're investment is in Quality
The material specification of the Gala Shade Pro-50™ indicates it is designed and built to last. The aluminium leg poles and frame are 50mm in diameter and 2mm in depth: the hexagonal framework provides exceptional strength. The whole structural frame is completely driven by aluminium profile joints which have hammer tested nylon inserts powering a smooth action to simply POP-UP or POP-DOWN. The class of Nylon used in engineering for replacing steel as a more effective hard-wearing solution, which has greater flex tolerance for uneven ground, the Pro-50™ basically ticks all the box's.
Award Winning Pop Up Gazebos
Gala Tent™ is an award winning company and is the preferred supplier for sporting events, Motorsports, market traders, emergency services, military and government bodies throughout Britain.
Read More
The Gala Shade™ range of commercial quality gazebos was upgraded in 2012 to a 1.2mm tube frame and we are sure none of our competitors have invested in this type of quality. This is what puts Gala Tent™ ahead of the competition, by developing and improving existing products to make sure they are the highest quality possible and never beaten on value for money.
We hear so many stories of people who have purchased pop up gazebos with only 0.6mm and 0.8mm thickness tubing, and it's often that their gazebos were not fit for their purpose and were too flimsy, with no spare parts available, leaving the customer thinking "what a waste of my hard earn cash"
The framework and joints are steel grey to give a nice contemporary look, while the joints are nylon and hammer tested for strength. You will not buy a better steel framed pop up gazebo than this model, which stands proud at any event hovering over the cheap imitations supplied by others. Whatever the weather, whatever the event. Gala Tent™ have got you covered with our wide range of structures to suit all budgets.
So make a commercial decision right now to buy right first time and invest in a durable, commercial quality gazebo from Gala Tent™. You may spend a little more initially, but this purchase will save you heaps of money in the long term...................... Makes sense right?Read More
Frequently asked questions
The best deal differs from customer to customer. Some customers want the cheapest gazebo possible because they have just a few events a year, whereas some customers want a commercial quality gazebo to hire or to have erected for long periods of time. So, whatever your budget or what your definition of 'the best deal' is we have the perfect gazebo for you.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Yes, we can print and brand on all our range of pop up gazebos, Gala Tent can also help with your other promotional print requirements, such as brochures, handouts, PVC banners and pop up display stands.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Now in its 20th year in business, Gala Tent is an award winning, market leading company, and is the preferred contract supplier for a number of different organisations, these include marquee hirers, councils, branches of the emergency services and the military. Gala Tent is a trusted brand used by Virgin, Lego, RAC, RAF, high profile film productions, even Google and No 10 Downing Street purchase gazebos from Gala Tent.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
It`s always stressful planning a party - where to go, what to do? The hassle of transport; local pubs and clubs jam-packed with strangers struggling to buy drinks from the bar. So, we understand why you want to host your own party at home?! You may be celebrating a wedding, moving into a new house or enjoying a summer barbecue. Perhaps your special event is a birthday, anniversary, New Year`s Eve, team building or an office party.
Gala Tent provide an inexpensive way to add glamour and space bringing the outside inside. Be the host with the most - everyone will be talking about your event for years to come. There`s nothing better than inviting friends, family or work colleagues' round for food, drinks and catching up on all the latest news. Our pop up gazebos will provide the extra room you require, and you won`t have to worry about the unpredictable English weather! The gazebo is your insurance 'cover'. After the event is over you will have a commercial quality gazebo available for future special occasions. You could even hire it out to friends or business associates, and there will always be family members who would love to borrow it.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Gala Tent is the market leader in the manufacture and stockist of many sizes of pop up commercial gazebos, I'm sure we will have the size you require in stock as we stock sizes from 3m x 2m to 4m x 8m. Gala Tent also stock specially designed gutter kits and infill panels, so our commercial gazebos can easily be joined together to cover a larger area. However, if you do require a very innovative bespoke gazebo, send in your drawings and we will have look to see if we can help.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Literally, just a few minutes. Our team are experienced experts and once you provide them with the information for your event our system will generate you a quote and send this to you via email instantly. However, if it is bespoke work you require then this may take a few days due to calculations and bespoke designs that maybe required.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Yes of course, Gala Tent are the preferred supplier to the national market operators association, we sponsor NABMA, LOVE YOUR LOCAL MARKET, FARMA, GROUPE GERAUD and many more. Our market research across Britain indicate that your priority as a market trader is affordability, durability and erect-ability. Gala Tent has responded to your feedback. We've designed our pop up gazebos so they are quick to erect; the framework is lightweight yet extremely strong and robust, along with quality material covers. We've hit the affordable price point due to mass-production, and not sacrificing quality; this has enabled us to be extremely competitive.
More traders now recognise the benefit of having a market stall that stands out from the crowd. Gala Tent offer a full colour printing service to add extra impact to the visibility of your business, this will in turn drive more traffic to your stall and create more revenue for your business. "a safe and super investment"
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Yes, we offer finance on our full range of gazebos, this is a fantastic way to spread the cost of your purchase. To make it easy we've added the ability to let you apply for and then complete the loan application quickly and entirely online. We offer a range of interest-free and interest-bearing finance options to help you spread the cost of your purchase over 12, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months, depending on the type of finance you choose. The value of the loan needs to be over £350 and you can choose a deposit of up to 50% of the value of the goods click here for more info.
Call Now: 01709 913990 or click here to email us.
Delivery Pricing
Gala Tent offer an unrivalled next-day delivery (if ordered before 4pm), delivery is free if you spend £100 or more.
Trusted Contact Centre
Gala Tent agents will never ask you to read out and compromise your credit card banking details over the phone, we use SOTpay which is a fully PCI DSS Compliant digital payment technology speak to us in confidence CALL NOW 01709 913990.
Response from


text:
Alyssa Sutherland
Vikings - S04Eps19
IMDb: 8.6
44 min
The adventures of Ragnar Lothbrok: the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the saga of Ragnar's band of Viking brothers and his family ...
Actors: Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, Gustaf Skarsgård, Clive Standen, Alyssa Sutherland, Maude Hirst, Alexander Ludwig, George Blagden, Linus Roache, Jessalyn Gilsig, John Kavanagh, Moe Dunford, Edvin Endre, Georgia Hirst, Jefferson Hall
Real Vikings - S01Eps4
IMDb: 7.2
60 min
This series dives deep into the history and archaeology that inspires the popular drama Vikings that transports us to the brutal world of Ragnar Lothbrok, ...
Country: USA
Genres: Documentary
The Mist - S01Eps10
IMDb: 5.5
After an eerie mist rolls into a small town, the residents must battle the mysterious mist and its threats, fighting to maintain their morality and ...
Country: USA
Actors: Alyssa Sutherland, Holly Deveaux, Gus Birney, Luke Cosgrove, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Romaine Waite, Bill Carr, Nabeel El Khafif, Greg Hovanessian, David Wm. Marsh, Alexandra Ordolis, Laurie Hanley, Darcy Lindzon, Lola Flanery
Vikings - S05Eps20
IMDb: 8.6
44 min
The adventures of a Ragnar Lothbrok: the greatest hero of his age. The series tells the saga of Ragnar's band of Viking brothers and his ...
Actors: Gustaf Skarsgård, Katheryn Winnick, Alexander Ludwig, Travis Fimmel, Clive Standen, Alex Høgh Andersen, Maude Hirst, Jordan Patrick Smith, Alyssa Sutherland, Moe Dunford, Linus Roache, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, George Blagden, Jennie Jacques, Georgia Hirst, John Kavanagh, Jessalyn Gilsig, Peter Franzén


text:
I have a feeling this book was priced but it was given to me as a Fathers Day gift by my older son and I think he clipped the price off. Whatever the price was, it would be worth it if you were involved in World War II, or even if you were not, to read about the island to island battles in the Pacific.
VOICES OF THE PACIFIC, by Adam Makos, Penguin Group,397 pp, Not priced.
I have a feeling this book was priced but it was given to me as a Fathers Day gift by my older son and I think he clipped the price off. Whatever the price was, it would be worth it if you were involved in World War II, or even if you were not, to read about the island to island battles in the Pacific.
This is not one long treatise on the war going from one heavily fortified island to the other. Rather it is a series of statements derived from interviews by Marines who were actually there, made the landings, often under heavy enemy fire, and succeeded in capturing the island in each and every case.
It was not an easy operation, or as the author points out, it was not a series of easy operations. When one island was captured and the Japanese soldiers had been killed or neutralized it was time to go back on the big boat and get ready for the next operation.
Each island presented its own unique problems. One island may have been a steeply graded beach. Another may have been a very shallow shoreline, stranding the landing craft and making them vulnerable. Other islands held swamps that made the passage of heavy weapons all but impossible. Or there may have been a series of caves that brought into play a new weapon, the flame thrower, to clear away snipers.
One facet that was common to all the islands were the fanatic Japanese troops who didn�t know the word surrender and would often sneak up in the middle of a dark night to penetrate Marine positions.
Each Marine interviewed brought something a little bit different to the story. One may have been a mortar man with his crew, wading through swamps to set up their deadly weapon and hold off a suicide attack. Another told about helping the wounded and trying to stop the bleeding until a corpsman could be located. A third Marine spoke about trying to get safe in a shallow fox hole dug in coral.
The rare break in fighting for some combat units gained by rotating to Australia is also part of their stories. The people they met, the Australian girls they romanced, the wounds they were able to heal, are all part of the story.
The author has provided photographs of those he interviewed and even more importantly there are maps showing the location of each island in the Pacific Ocean. Guadalcanal is probably the most famous but Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Tarawa are located and described.
This reviewer was there but in the now disbanded Marine Air Group 32, Headquarters Squadron, Zamboanga. I was an aerial photographer. Worst episode, forced landing in a pineapple field in a B-25. Best episode, stepping off the Long Island Railroad and into the arms of the lovely lady who became Mrs. Reviewer.
This is one good book and I would recommend it, not just for Marines and their families but for everyone who was not there and needs a reminder how cruel and brutal war can be.
Ken Gruebel lives in New Bern.


text:
The number of properties pending foreclosure or REO, but not yet on the market to sell, is down year-over-year in April. The shadow inventory supply now stands at 1.5 million units, representing a four-month supply, according to CoreLogic (CLGX).
The shadow inventory fell nearly 15% annually and is now similar to October 2008 levels.
"The decline in the shadow inventory is a positive development because it removes some of the downward pressure on house prices," said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. "This is one of the reasons why some markets that were formerly identified as deeply distressed, like Arizona, California and Nevada, are now experiencing price increases."
CoreLogic said the dollar volume of shadow inventory is now $246 billion as of April 2012, down from $270 billion a year ago and a three-year low.
Serious delinquencies, which are the main driver of the shadow inventory, declined the most in Arizona (-37%), California (-28%), Nevada (-27.4%), Michigan (-23.7%) and Minnesota (-18.1%).
Paul Diggle, property economist for Capital Economics, said in a note on house prices that the outlook is greatly improved. "The extent of undervaluation in the U.S. housing market convinces us that if house prices were now to move significantly in one direction or the other, they are much more likely to rise than to fall," he said.
Luis E. Vergara, a director at Mission Capital Advisors said the CoreLogic report suggests an increase in the velocity with which servicers are liquidating non-performing loans. "However, the CoreLogic methodology omits 90+ day delinquent loans that were recently cured or modified and the likely occurrence of re-default for a subset of this group," said Vergara. "The drop in shadow inventory may not be as rosy as the report implies."


text:
How To Use One Superfan To Spread The Word To Millions
from the media,-who-needs-it? dept
Techdirt has been a great believer in connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy for many years, but it's always interesting to see people come up with new variations on this theme. Here's the idea in an extreme form, from a couple months ago: sharing a new album stream with just one "superfan" who then spread the word with dramatic results:
To recreate the word-of-mouth phenomenon that made them famous, the xx shared their album stream Coexist with a single fan just outside London last week -- days before its official US release.
The "superfan" was chosen on the basis of frequent postings about the band "the xx" in the past. This meant he or she was certain to be fired up by the prospect of exclusive access to the new album ahead of everyone else. That in its turn increased the likelihood the initial post revealing the location of the stream to the rest of world would be positive. It would also come with the implicit authority of someone who was presumably well-known in the music community for writing about the band, adding to its impact.
It was a risky marketing move that set out to test whether the band could replicate their initial viral success with a map that tracked shares with a visualization on the Coexist stream's host site.
Twenty-four hours after the stream was shared with a fan on Facebook, the site crashed from the millions of streams, with the average user spending 2.1 hours on the site.
Alongside the massive interest this approach generated, the other big benefit for the band is that it avoids the uncertainties of releasing the album first to music journalists, who are much more unpredictable in their reactions. Indeed, it was only the next day that the music press got hold of the story, by which time the huge viral success of this campaign meant that there was no question of ignoring the new album or its enthusiastic uptake. In other words, the traditional news outlets found themselves forced to acquiesce in the narrative generated by the fans, rather than being in control and telling those fans what to think.
Clearly, this isn't a strategy that can be used too often, and there's also the issue of how good this kind of connection is at generating sales. But it does underlie the importance of fully understanding the social structure of the community of fans -- in this case, in order to find a superfan who could be used to seed the rest of the fan base via an enthusiastic recommendation. There are many other possible ways of involving people who are key "nodes" in the social graph -- the ones whose influence really counts -- and we'll doubtless be hearing about them in due course.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+


text:
Whether your looking for fast excitement or casual pleasure, Tomahawk Sports Center can fit your recreation needs. Snow, Dirt, Pavement or Water, Northern Wisconsin's one stop shop for UTV's, ATV's, Snowmobiles, Boats & Motors, Watercraft, Docks, and Waterfront Equipment is Tomahawk Sports Center in beautiful Tomahawk, Wisconsin.
With a large selection of products to choose from like Honda, Ski-doo, Alumacraft, Johnson, Yamaha, Manitou, Sanpan, Aqua Patio, and Sweetwater, Tomahawk Sports Center is your next stop for fun!
Unlike the other guys, we are a family run business with a long history and give you personal service before and after the sale. Tomahawk Sports Center services all of our products and others with our full service department.
Think Tomahawk Sports Center when you think "Fun In The Northwoods!"
Sports Center Hours
8 am - 5 pm Monday - Friday
8 am - 2 pm Saturdays


text:
Photo care of Carmen Chan
Get the latest Vegetarian news and restaurants directly in your inbox.
Become a member of the the TVA and get discounts on meatless meals and groceries with the Toronto Veg Card.
You'll also get access to Toronto vegetarian news and events in our Lifelines newsletter. Support Toronto's go-to resource for all things veg.


text:
Security Industry Visionary Joins Cisco
We are in the middle of several major market trends and transitions, including mobility, cloud and virtualization. Security is at the center of these massive transitions, and our customers tell us that they want simplicity and seamlessly integrated solutions for their network architectures. These industry disruptions require new thinking to create innovative technological solutions that will solve our customers' biggest problems.
Enter Bret Hartman.
Bret has joined Cisco as the new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Security Technology Group, which encompasses all of Cisco's core security products. For Cisco, Bret will define our overall security technology strategy, particularly as it relates to how security technology integrates across the network infrastructure. Ensuring that our strategy transitions into value-added customer solutions will be critical as we move to an integrated security architecture that leverages the network.
Bret is a well-known security industry visionary and leader, with over 30 years of experience building information security solutions for major enterprises. He comes to us from RSA, the Security Division of EMC, where he was CTO and responsible for defining the corporate security strategy. His expertise includes Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services security, cloud and virtualization security, policy development and management, and security modeling and analysis. Prior to EMC, Bret held leadership positions at IBM, DataPower Technology Inc., and Quadrasis Security.
During the past decade, Cisco's security posture has evolved from focusing on unprotected desktops and unmanaged desktops, to proliferating device types and a future of cloud-connected ecosystems. The CTO role is not only critical as we enter this new world of market transitions, but also as the threat landscape increases. Bret will work with our threat and government teams to ensure that all of these are taken into consideration when defining our future technology requirements and architecture.
The network is critical in the Security landscape because it ties together customers' IT resources and touches all the key control points – from the data center to the end points. A security visionary such as Bret Hartman will lead the way in understanding our customers' security requirements so that we can help solve their challenges as they cope with market transitions and an evolving threat landscape.
In an effort to keep conversations fresh, Cisco Blogs closes comments after 60 days. Please visit the Cisco Blogs hub page for the latest content.
2 Comments
Dr. Jose A. Wong - Perez
…Congratulations, and welcome aboard…I'm sure he will enhance the SEcurity Technology Group…thanks for this informative post…my respects and regards from PR.
Very welcome