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Dr. John Barnett, Discover the Book Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Original Source: Crosswalk.com
"Let everyone who names the Name" Paul said, avoid iniquity.
Is Halloween a celebration of iniquity? Read on and judge for yourself!
Here are some quotes from what many different people have said over the years concerning the celebration of Halloween.
Someone once said, "For a Christian to celebrate Halloween would be as proper as a Holocaust survivor trying to celebrate Hitler's birthday." Yet so many believers continue to do so without considering what they are doing.
Excited children masquerading as witches, ghosts, goblins, skeletons, demons, and other grotesque characters skipping through the neighborhood knocking one doors changing "trick or treat" while holding out a sack in which one is to drop a piece of candy or other goodies...the party at school, or church, or Sunday School where they bob for apples, tell fortunes, or go through "haunted houses"...decorations of jack-o-lanterns, witches on brooms and black cats with arched backs...IT'S "HALLOWEEN" - one of the strangest days of the year.
The word evokes a number of responses.
Every year as October rolls around, there are those that look forward to it with excitement and those that cringe and wish it weren't there. Some argue violently against it, some yawn because they've heard it all before, may just look the other way and go ahead with it. Some view it as an abomination, while many others view it as a harmless tradition.
What does it represent? And, what should the Christian think about it, if anything?
Where did this fast growing American tradition come from?
History provides the answers.
The pagans believed that on one night of the year the souls of the dead returned to their original homes. "There was a prevailing belief among all nations that at death the souls of good men were taken possession of by good spirits and carried to paradise, but the souls of wicked men were left to wander in the space between the earth and moon, or consigned to the unseen world. These wandering spirits were in the habit of haunting the living...but there were means by which these ghosts might be exorcised."
To exorcise these ghosts, that is, to free yourself from their supposed evil sway, you would have to set out food - give the demons a treat - and proved shelter for them during the night. If they were satisfied with your treat, it was believed they would leave you in peace. If food and shelter were not provided, or if they were not satisfied, these spirits, it was believed, would "trick" you by casting an evil spell on you and cause havoc.
So Where Did The Elements Of Halloween Come From?
Trick Or Treat. "The modern custom of 'Trick-or-Treat' began in Ireland hundreds of years ago. A group of farmers went from house to house begging food for the village Halloween festivities in the name of their ancient gods. Good luck was promised to generous donors, and threats were made against those who would not give." Thus these ancient pagan traditions continue today as youngsters, masquerading as ghosts, skeletons, and demons go "trick-or-treating" - begging in a sense for food while promising to refrain from evil deeds...
October 31ST. Though it was the Roman Catholic church who designated the October 31st date as All Hallow's Eve, or "eve of the holy one's day," in prelude to their November 1st All Saints' Day, it was earlier pagan peoples who gave the annual holiday the sinister meaning and traditions it still holds.
It is obvious that the elements, symbols, and traditions of the Halloween observance with its emphasis upon goblins and demons, witches and skeletons, ghosts and apparitions rising from cemeteries constitute a dabbling with the very things, which Scripture forbids to God's people and an open invitation to demonic activity. (Deuteronomy 18:10-13, Lev 19:31)
It is at this point that many will say, "But we don't worship demons on Halloween. It doesn't mean the same thing today as it did in the past. It's now just a harmless, innocent time of fun for the children and the young people."
Yet, history clearly shows that Halloween is unmistakably a "religious" (pagan and Roman) holiday. Religion is the adoration, obedience, and service rendered to the object of one's worship. It presupposes profession, practice, or observance of whatever belief and practice - in this case Halloween - as required by some superior authority.
It is indisputably clear that Halloween is NOT commanded or sanctioned by Jehovah God - the true Christian's Superior, Authority - in the Scriptures.
What Should We Do? Sadly enough, the biggest opposition to what has been said invariably comes from within professing Christendom. The witches, the occultists, and the secular sources all freely call it like it is.
Note the following quotation from a contemporary witch. "Most of Christianity's holy days have their basis in pagan ritual. I get myself into a lot of hot water when I remind American Christians of that fact. No matter, it's true. But the level of tolerance is rising."
Should the redeemed of God, His children, have anything to do with that which presents Satan?
Should children who "are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalm 127:3) be dressed up like witches and ghosts and goblins in light of God's displeasure? 1 Thessalonians 5:22 says, "Abstain from all appearance of evil."
The Amplified Bible puts it this way, "Abstain from evil - shrink from it and keep aloof from it - in whatever form or whatever kind it may be."
The true child of God should be identified with the pure and holy Jesus Christ. With "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance..." (Galatians 5:22-23), not with the powers of darkness and evil. The witch, earlier in this article, clearly states that it's their holiday, their celebration. History bears that out. Christians, have nothing to do with this. It can only be dishonoring to the name of our Lord.
Today Halloween is the highest of all celebrations for Satan worshippers, witches and the occult.
Christians need to be warned so they can take heed and obey the Word of God.
The apostle Paul wrote:
- "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Eph. 5:11).
- "Abstain from all appearances of evil" (1 Thes. 5:22).
- "Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31).
A note from 4CM Editor:
Really folks
1. Take no part in...
2. Abstain from all...
3. Whatever you do...


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The Canadiens started fast and then stymied the Bruins, winners of the Presidents' Trophy for the best regular-season record, to advance to the Eastern Conference final against the New York Rangers.
"It's definitely a special team and if we didn't know it before the playoffs, we definitely know it now," said Pacioretty.
Dale Weise and Daniel Briere, with a late power-play goal, also scored for Montreal.
Jarome Iginla's goal, which cut the Canadiens' lead to 2-1 with 2:08 remaining in the second, set the scene for a dramatic third period. The black and gold faithful hoped for yet another Bruins comeback.
Check out some photos from the game:
They almost got their wish early in the third when Iginla, pouncing on a rare Price rebound, hit the post. Boston came on but the Canadiens held fast and Price, improving his record in elimination games in 2014 to 5-0 including the Olympics, was rock-solid with a disciplined team defending in front of him.
The late Boston surge was not helped by a Johnny Boychuk penalty for interference with 4:31 remaining. Montreal scored on the ensuing power play when Briere's centring pass bounced in off Zdeno Chara's skate at 18:07 to pad the lead to 3-1.
Montreal killed off a late interference penalty to Andrei Markov — and a 6-on-4 Boston opportunity — to seal the win.
"Respect, you've got to earn it and I think tonight those guys earned it," said Canadiens coach Michel Therrien.
The Bruins outshot Montreal 30-18.
The game drew two sellouts: 17,565 at TD Garden and some 21,000 at the Bell Centre, where fans paid $10 to watch the game on the video scoreboard with proceeds going to charity.
They saw a contest in which both teams seemed at times weighed down by the occasion early on, knowing there could be an entire off-season to ponder a costly mistake.
The Canadiens finished the regular season 17 points and eight places below the Bruins. But speedy Montreal, which had five wins and five losses in the 10 previous regular-season and playoff games in 2013-14 between the two, proved to be a handful all year for Boston.
Yet the series was like rolling a boulder uphill for the Bruins, who rarely got their game going against Montreal. Boston coach Claude Julien had said Game 7s deserved your best. The Bruins failed to deliver for much of the night.
The series has been a roller-coaster ride with no shortage of subplots, most of which involved P.K. Subban whose star continues to grow. When he wasn't firing bullets from the blue-line or skating circles, the flamboyant Canadiens defenceman was dodging water aimed his way from the Boston bench and dealing with racism on social media.
Subban embraced the attention and found himself in the spotlight again ahead of Game 7 when he pointed to the crowd, noise and energy in Boston's TD Garden before saying: "I can't wait to take that all away from them."
Therrien refused to talk about any issues with the Bruins after the Game 7 victory.
"I'm not going to talk about the other team," said Therrien. "I never talk about the other team. One thing I could tell you we were a group that was really really motivated to win this series.
Subban focused on the task at hand Wednesday, forgoing the flash.
In a series where the team scoring the first goal had won all six previous outings, a fast start was mandatory. Especially when teams scoring first in Game 7s were 112-40 (.737).
Advantage Montreal as the visitors went ahead on their first shot, thanks to the fourth line, at 2:18 after Tuukka Rask kicked out what looked like an innocent long shoot-in. But Brandon Prust retrieved the puck and found Briere who sent a pass through Matt Bartkowski and Daniel Paille in front. Weise swept it in from Rask's doorstep.
Boychuk and Gregory Campbell both tried to hit Prust on the play, opening space for others.
The Bruins soon grew frustrated at the officiating, with first-period penalties to Brad Marchand (goalie interference) and Chara (holding). Boston killed them off but looked disjointed and a little desperate at times, trying to force passes.
The Bruins finally started throwing their weight around at the end of the period and had a gilt-edged charge after Patrice Bergeron stole the puck off a Canadiens defenceman. But Brad Marchand fired high from point-blank range. Price then had to stop a Carl Soderberg redirect.
Boston outshot Montreal 9-6 after 20 minutes but had nothing to show for it.
The second period started poorly for Boston with Marchand sent to the penalty box for unsportsmanlike conduct for a snow shower aimed at Price. That call prompted garbage thrown from the stands.
Boston dug itself out of that hole and looked to fight back. Price waited out Bergeron as he drove at the goal, trying to get the goalie to commit.
The Bruins outshot Montreal 7-1 at the start of the second period.
But it was the Canadiens who scored at 10:22 after Boston failed to clear its zone. A diving Brandon Gallagher somehow found five-foot-seven David Desharnais, who emerged with the puck after Loui Eriksson, Soderberg and Bergeron failed to deal with it. Desharnais headed towards goal but rather than shooting, sent a no-look pass to Pacioretty to his right. The Montreal sniper rifled a shot into the goal before Rask could slide to the other side of the crease.
Desharnais, under fire for his sub-par performance for much of the series, had a whale of game.
Boston finally beat Price on the power play on an Iginla tip of a Torey Krug shot at 17:58. The goal, which came with seven seconds left in a Pacioretty penalty, ended Price's shutout streak of 103 minutes 46 seconds.
The series was the 34th between the Bruins and Canadiens and marked the ninth time — a record in North American pro sports — that a Game 7 was required. Montreal held a 5-3 advantage in the eight prior Game 7s, but the teams had split the six such deciders in Boston.
The Bruins had the last laugh last time out, with Nathan Horton scoring at 5:43 of overtime to give Boston a 4-3 victory in the 2011 Eastern Conference quarter-finals. Boston went on to win the Stanley Cup.
Montreal held a 24-9 advantage in the playoff meetings between the two but Boston had won six of the last nine.
NOTES — It was the 11th Game 7 for Boston captain Zdeno Chara, passing Martin Brodeur, Andrew Ference and Scott Gomez (10) for the most among active players. And it was the 10th for Boston coach Claude Julien ... Wednesday's game came one year and one day after the Bruins' rallied from 3-1 down in the third period to dispatch the Maple Leafs 5-4 in OT in Game 7 in their first-round playoff series.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Flexible Real-Time Simulation of Truck and Trailer Configurations
Real-time simulation of truck and trailer combinations can be applied to hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) systems for developing and testing electronic control units (ECUs). The large number of configuration variations in vehicle and axle types requires the simulation model to be adjustable in a wide range. This paper presents a modular multibody approach for the vehicle dynamics simulation of single track configurations and truck-and-trailer combinations. The equations of motion are expressed by a new formula which is a combination of Jourdain's principle and the articulated body algorithm. With the proposed algorithm, a robust model is achieved that is numerically stable even at handling limits. Moreover, the presented approach is suitable for modular modeling and has been successfully implemented as a basis for various system definitions. As a result, only one simulation model is needed for a large variety of track and trailer types.


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text:
- Focus on Funds
Mortgage REIT Funds in Focus; Jefferies Says Investors Underestimate mREIT Risks
- Order Reprints
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The mortgage real estate investment trust sector is recovering a bit of Friday's losses in early Monday trading. The group sunk 2% Friday after a surprise loss at American Capital Agency Corp. (AGNC) left analysts divided whether the selloff is a buying opportunity or a sign of things to come across the sector.
American Capital Agency shares are up by 0.1% in early Monday trading while the iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage PLUS Capped Index Fund (REM) is also ahead by 0.1%. Sector bellwether Annaly Capital Management (NLY) is rising 0.1% and Market Vectors Mortgage REIT Income ETF (MORT) is ahead by 0.3%.
In the buying-opportunity camp is Maxim Group's Michael Diana, who believes the company's earnings power and dividend are intact and that book value should rebound:
AGNC's 1Q13 book value decline was attributable to: (1) a decline in RMBS prices (especially those of RMBS with implicit prepayment "protection") caused by an expectation of an early end to QE3 (2) without a material move in interest rates, such that AGNC's hedges offset only a small part of the price decline. Subsequent to 1Q13 quarter-end, RMBS prices have rebounded partially, as has AGNC's book value. We expect a further rebound due to a consensus view about an extended QE3.
Diana, who has a "buy" rating on the stock and a $33 price target, keeps his 2013 dividend estimate at $5. "We expect any shortfall to be covered by AGNC's undistributed taxable income of $1.08 per share, which can be applied to future dividends," he writes.
There's a different view over at Jefferies, where analysts Daniel Furtado, Steven B. Maltz and Martin Kemnec, who rate the stock "hold," are more cautious in a Monday morning note:
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts Bose George, Jade J. Rahmani and Ryan O'Steen trimmed their 2013 operating estimate and reduce their price target to $33 but agree that the dividend is likely to remain intact:
We are maintaining our forward estimates following what we view as a relatively in-line quarter. The decline in book value was not related to the performance of the underlying assets as they continued to prepay slowly. Including the 1Q beat, our 2013 EPS estimate goes to $4.48 from $4.40, though our quarterly run rate in 2013 remains $1.10. Our 2014 operating EPS estimate is $4.50 which assumes that spreads increase slightly in 2014 relative to 2013. Our estimates assume no trading gains. While the dividend exceeds our EPS estimate, the company has enough undistributed taxable income
(UTI) to keep the dividend stable in the near term. At the end of 1Q13, the company had $1.08 a share of undistributed REIT taxable income. Our numbers suggest a dividend cut to around $1.10 but we would not expect that until 2014.


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Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff wants his agency to have a lot more authority over planning cross-state transmission lines, as well as getting states and utilities to share the costs of building them. But on Monday, the utility industry pushed back. The Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy — an industry group made up of 10 big utilities including Southern Co. (s SO), Consolidated Edison (s ED), Alliant (s LNT), DTE Energy (s DTE), PPL (s PPL), Progress Energy (s PGN) and PSEG (s PEG) — says it will lobby to change proposed Senate legislation that it says could unfairly spread the costs of building big new transmission lines across multiple states. Or, to put it another way, "states and regions that get the benefits of new transmission should be the ones to pay for them," Bruce Edelston, the coalition's executive director, said Monday.
The coalition has a specific target —Senate Bill 1462, otherwise known as the American Clean Leadership Act. It wants to take out language from the bill that would give FERC more authority over transmission lines, and replace it with language that "precludes the allocation of transmission expansion costs to electric consumers unless there are measurable economic or reliability benefits for those consumers."
Wellinghoff has said his agency needs more power to force states to agree on new ways to share the costs of massive new transmission lines to carry clean power from the places it's most cheaply produced to where it's most needed. Without it, he told a Senate panel in March, "it is unlikely that the Nation will be able to achieve energy security and economic stability."
But FERC having more power could involve, for example, a transmission line from a North Dakota wind farm to Illinois' Chicago suburbs, which might cross three states along its route. How should those "middle mile" states, which have to give up land and cover some costs of maintaining those lines, but may not receive power, be given a piece of the action? In Edelston's view, the costs and benefits of such undertakings should be shared equally among all regions that have to give something up to let them happen. If a project can't pay for itself while providing some financial benefit to utility customers in each of those states, it shouldn't get built, he said.
President Barack Obama has called for 3,000 miles of new transmission lines to be built to help the country double its renewable energy use by 2012. Estimates on the costs of this new interstate energy highway system range from $100 billion to $200 billion, Edelston said — and those costs may be underestimated. A consortium of Eastern power grid operators said last year that transmission to carry wind power from the Midwest to the East could cost $80 billion over the next 15 years or so.
Wellinghoff has said that with such scale of the transmission lines needed, it might be hard to move quickly through the complicated, state-by-state siting and permitting mechanisms now in place — and that's not to mention the universal opposition to having high-voltage power lines running through your backyard or environmentally sensitive region. For a sampling of the barriers to new transmission lines even within one state's boundaries, look to California, where one big transmission line in the Central Valley was canceled in the face of local landowner and environmental opposition, and another in San Diego and Imperial counties is being challenged in court.
But Edelston pointed out that transmission projects are still moving forward under business-as-usual conditions, and several projects are underway by "Green Power Express" developer ITC for example. Other private efforts are underway, such as the Tres Amigas project that would connect the nation's three mega-grid systems in the East, West and in Texas. Transmission projects take years to plan, permit and build, however, making long-range financing a challenge.
Not all utilities are against FERC's sought-after expanded authority. American Electric Power (s AEP), which serves 11 states, urged a Senate panel in March to expand federal authority over new transmission lines, including more broad cost-sharing, saying the economic benefits will outweigh the costs. FERC has already signed a MOU with EPA and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy and the Interior to work together on siting and permitting new transmission lines on federal lands, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem of states and their utilities arguing over costs and benefits.
For companies making next-generation transmission equipment such as HVDC and superconducting wire and cable — not to mention developers of utility-scale renewable power projects in hard-to-reach areas — it's an important controversy to keep an eye on.
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text: Stas is a young third generation Koryo-saram, a member of the Korean minority in Central Asia that was deported from the Russian Far East by Stalin. He and his three friends Kasoy, Shin and Said try to escape from the grim life in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and one day, they also try heroin. Then, however, Kasoy gets killed by a gang. 6 years later, Shin has emigrated to South Korea, Said has become a drug addict and Stas is now a police officer. Said commits suicide by overdosing and Stas, who has has since then also become a drug addict, decides to turn over a new leaf. He follows Shin to South Korea, but can this be Hanaan for him, the Promised Land?


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The other day, my mother called and I picked up the phone. This is noteworthy because I don't usually pick up the phone when anyone calls me, not even my mother, because I'm a very busy person whose life is full of many busy things. But I picked up the phone, and she asked me what I was up to, and I said that I was very busy with work and work-related fancy cocktail New York activities. The fact of the matter is that I was sitting pantsless on the edge of my tub trying to shave my legs with mushed up banana instead of shaving cream. But I told her I was busy, and I assumed that she'd understand that "busy" implied "with important things," because telling people that you're busy and overworked and pretending that your life is a mental endurance test is part of our understood patriotic duty as Americans.
There's been a lot of talk about being too busy lately. In a piece for the Times this weekend, Tim Kreider argued that the "I'm busy" pissing contest is actually a trap that makes Americans miserable. But their misery doesn't come from actual fatigue of doing actual work; it's a humblebrag designed to convince others that you are busy because you are constantly necessary to a large number of people. Your kids need you. Your friends need you. Your boss needs you. Your coworkers need you. In reality, he asserts, the stress that comes from being "too busy" is self-imposed and completely unnecessary, albeit socially inescapable. Idleness is a virtue that too many Americans are foregoing. Which is why Tim Kreider now writes from an undisclosed location in the middle of a giant meadow, where birds do his hair every morning. Bless him.
For women, the pressure to appear busy folds nicely into the beaten dead horse discussion around whether or not we can have all of the things on account of the fact that we're babymakers. After Anne-Marie Slaughter postulated that things are very difficult for working women because the world still expects successful people to have a wife to take care of their non-work responsibilities at home, the entire internet weighed in. The verdict? Women can't have it all because no one can have it all, because we're all already too busy to have any more than what we already have. If a woman somehow found the time to do much more than what she's already doing, then is she busted inflating her busyness for the sake of conformity?
Kreider's right about the socially imposed expectation that we all appear to be busy at all times; according to The Atlantic, 80% of Americans keep working outside of the hours they're technically at work. They're checking email before 8 am. They're responding to messages at the dinner table. An astonishing 69% of American workers surveyed in this particular small but depressing study said they can't go to sleep without checking their work email first. And all of this is going down in the only industrialized country in the world without government-mandated employer-provided paid vacation time. We're getting hosed! We're allowing this encroachment to happen! Why aren't people more upset?
As I chatted with my mother on the phone, hands covered in banana slime, I didn't tell her what I'd really done with the previous evening. I got done with work, stared at my nose pores in the mirror, and then fed my cat while singing "Call Me Maybe" to her (I changed the words to "Call me Kitty." Obviously.). Then I changed clothes from what I had been wearing (man shorts and a WISCONSIN POLK COUNTY tee shirt that I bought in 1995) and took a train to meet my coworkers for a viewing of Magic Mike, which was pretty much the best movie about the promise of wang I'd ever seen, where my job was to count how many times women in the audience couldn't stop themselves from saying "Woo!" loudly. Then I got home and ordered Indian food and read the news on the internet until I fell asleep. Why the hell did I tell my mother I was busy? I should have said that I work really hard at my job and then spend the rest of my time putting off doing the other non-work things that I should be doing with my non-work time because — UGH. Later. Which, from what I can glean, is what most people do, when they're not busy telling people how busy they are.
So on this, the most inconveniently-placed Independence Day ever (Seriously? A random day off on a Wednesday? That's not even enough time to fully recover from a Tuesday hangover), celebrate your American-ness by exploding some illegal fireworks, grilling some meat, and then participating in our annual collective "Am I too busy?" discussion followed by a loose consensus that yes, we are too busy, and something ought to be done about that. And then, on Thursday, everyone can go back to complaining about their overworked, overstimulated, undersexed lives and not doing anything about it.
Image via Nixx Photography/Shutterstock


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NEW YORK — Mattress rivals Tempur-Pedic and Sealy are becoming bedfellows.
Tempur-Pedic, the 20-year-old leader in foam mattresses, is buying more-than-a century-old rival Sealy for about $228.6 million in cash.
The acquisition comes as competition has increased in the mattress industry, with makers stepping up their marketing and promotions to help lure cost-conscious consumers into making big purchases.
Tempur-Pedic International Inc. said Thursday that it will pay $2.20 per Sealy share, which is a 3 percent premium to the company's Wednesday closing price of $2.14.
Sealy, based in Trinity, N.C., currently has about 103.9 million outstanding shares, according to FactSet. Its stock rose 5 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $2.19 per share in heavy afternoon trading. Volume of more than 27.9 million shares was more than 38 times normal trading in the stock.
Tempur-Pedic says it will also assume or pay back all of Sealy Corp.'s outstanding debt. The Lexington, Ky., company plans to finance the acquisition with debt. Its shares soared $3.46, or nearly 13 percent, to $30.24 in afternoon trading, with volume more than seven times normal trade. Earlier in the session, shares peaked at $32.97.
The companies put the total value of the deal at $1.3 billion, including debt. They say that the transaction will create a $2.7 billion global bedding company.
"Tempur-Pedic and Sealy together will have products for almost every consumer preference and price point, distribution through all key channels, in-house expertise on most key bedding technologies, and a world-class research and development team," Tempur-Pedic CEO Mark Sarvary said in a statement.
Tempur-Pedic and Sealy will run independently of each other, with Sealy's CEO Larry Rogers remaining in that position. Rogers will report to Sarvary.
Tempur-Pedic, founded in 1992, makes and distributes mattresses and pillows in more than 80 countries under its Tempur and Tempur-Pedic brands. The company borrowed the memory foam technology developed by NASA. Memory foam mattresses conform to users' shape and position by reacting to their body temperature and weight.
Sealy, which was founded in 1881, makes a broad array of spring coil beds under brands including Stearns & Foster, Sealy and Sealy Posturepedic.
While Tempur-Pedic has a particularly strong presence in North America, Europe and Asia, Sealy has a strong presence in North America, Asia and Argentina. Sealy also has strong brand recognition through its international licensees and joint ventures.
"In one action, Tempur-Pedic gains access to new slots at major retailers and independents with a complimentary product suite," wrote Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions in a note to clients. "Essentially, the company has fought to build a wall around itself from competitors that have demonstrated innovation." Sozzi estimated that annual revenue combined for the two companies is around $2.8 billion to $3.1 billion for 2012, making the combination the world's largest bedding company.
Stockholders with about 51 percent of Sealy's outstanding shares have put forth a written consent approving the deal. No additional shareholder approvals are needed to complete the acquisition.
Both companies' boards have approved the buyout, which is expected to close during 2013's first half.
Annual cost savings for the combined company are expected to be more than $40 million by the third year.
The announcement came as Sealy reported a loss of $106,000, and broke even on a per share basis for the third quarter ended Aug. 26. That compares with a profit of $6.6 million, or 7 cents per share in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose 9 percent to $365.4 million in the quarter.
Analysts had expected profit of 3 cents per share, on revenue of $344.2 million, according to FactSet.
In July, Tempur-Pedic International reported that its second-quarter profit fell 45 percent, but it managed to beat market expectations.
It blamed the profit decline on increasing promotions and discounts to keep up with the market. Tempur-Pedic made up for the soft North American market, where revenue fell 8 percent, with strong sales in international markets, where revenue grew 8 percent. Its total revenue fell nearly 4 percent to $329.5 million.
Tempur-Pedic warned investors in June that weak sales in North America would hurt its performance for the period.


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What does the government's tentative agreement with doctors mean for Ontario's health care system?
Last week, the Ontario Medical Association and the Ontario government announced they had reached a tentative agreement that they hope will end their current dispute.
The tentative agreement, which will run until March of 2014, will affect doctors in a number of ways and also has implications for the wider health care system. In this article, we revisit some of the major themes Healthy Debate has reported on over the last year and a half, and examine how this tentative agreement will, or will not, address them.
Primary care
Ontario has made substantial investments in primary care over the last decade in an attempt to improve quality and access, and also improved the recruitment and retention of family doctors. The return on these investments has been mixed.
These investments have significantly increased the number of Ontarians with a family doctor. Many more doctors are now working in team-based practices, and some of these teams now include a range of other health care providers, like dieticians and counselors. Morale has improved significantly among primary care providers, which experts say has improved both recruitment and retention of family doctors.
However, not all the new care models are performing as well as hoped. Some clinics do not provide the evening and weekend appointments required by their contracts, and many Ontarians cannot get a same or next day appointment with their family doctor. As a result, emergency room and walk-in clinic use is one of the highest among developed countries. There are also concerns that new capitation payment systems for family doctors (where doctors are paid per patient, rather than per service) do not encourage them to take on patients with complex medical needs, or encourage them to "de-roster" these patients and bill the government fee for service. In response to these concerns, the government delayed and then capped the entry of new family doctors into all enrolment models, which led to concerns that the spread of interdisciplinary care would be halted.
The tentative agreement will affect primary care in a number of ways.
Primary care groups will be required to provide more after hours care than in the previous agreement. The number of additional after hours requirements will vary according to the group's size. While increasing the after hours requirement will likely improve evening and weekend access, the Auditor General identified a number of other barriers to patients accessing after hours services. Currently, it is not specified when physician groups must offer after hours services, so many clinics do not appear to offer services on Fridays or weekends. Also, some physician groups operate out of multiple locations, but the after hours service requirements need only be offered at one location, which may not be convenient for many of the enrolled patients. Additionally, compliance with the previous requirements was not monitored by the ministry. The new tentative agreement includes no language about monitoring and does not specify locations or days upon which after-hours services must be provided, which together may dull the impact of these new requirements.
Another key change is the introduction of an "acuity modifier", which is meant to compensate family doctors who care for complex patients more fairly than under the current system. The precise size per patient of this modifier has not yet been determined, but according to the agreement there will be an interim modifier put in place while an acuity-adjusted capitation model is developed over the next two years. $40 million has been set aside to develop and implement this initiative – approximately 1% of the total budget for family doctors and general practitioners – so it is unclear at this point how big an impact this will have . As with other parts of the tentative agreement, the development of the acuity modifier is being delegated to a working group. It is yet to be seen whether an effective acuity-adjusted capitation model can be developed, and whether the $40 million that has been earmarked will be enough to implement it effectively. If an effective acuity modifier is not developed, some family doctors may continue to de-roster complex patients and bill fee for service, a practice that will continue to be allowed under the new tentative agreement.
An important element of the tentative agreement for patients is the expansion of resources for interdisciplinary health team provider resources to a wider array of primary care practices (such as dietitians and pharmacists). Currently, only community health centres and family health teams are able to offer their patients publicly funded, comprehensive interdisciplinary care, but under the new agreement other family physicians will also be eligible for these services. This signals an important commitment on behalf of both the government and doctors to continue to move towards an interdisciplinary, team-based approach to primary care. However, the agreement does not specify how much money is to be committed to this initiative, so it is unclear at this time whether it will be sufficient to provide access to interdisciplinary care to all Ontarians.
House Calls
Through much of the 20th century, doctors have moved away from doing house calls, in part because of the shift towards more technologically sophisticated care and the ability to see more patients in the office than in homes. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in house calls, because increasing numbers of chronically ill patients find it difficult to visit doctors' offices. However, a number of barriers remain to increasing home visits. Under the current system, family doctors providing comprehensive, home-based primary care earn much less than what they could earn if they saw patients in their office. In the last election, the Liberal government pledged to commit $60 million to expanding house calls.
The tentative agreement stipulates that enhancements will be made to the existing bonuses for primary care doctors who provide home calls, and establishes a formula that takes into account the number of patients a doctor provides home services to (and the number of visits). However, the agreement does not establish criteria for ensuring that the resources for home visits are used for homebound, frail and medically complex patients, and not for less frail patients. The development of these criteria is to be delegated to a primary care working group.
Appropriateness of diagnostic tests
There is growing consensus among doctors and policy makers that steps must be taken to improve the appropriateness of diagnostic tests. Some tests can cause harm directly, while others can lead to unnecessary medical procedures, so it is important for the well-being of patients to reduce the amount of unnecessary diagnostic testing (while at the same time ensuring timely access to necessary tests). Policy makers are also eager to reduce testing that offers no clinical benefit in order to help control the growth of health care spending.
The tentative agreement includes a number of provisions to reduce unnecessary testing. The agreement will remove or restrict some specific tests, including folate, asparate amniotransferase, chloride, creatine kinase blood tests and thyroid scans. It will also adjust the frequency with which certain screening tests will be reimbursed, including screening for colon cancer and cervical cancer. Doctors will be encouraged not to order several tests for low risk patients, such as annual stress tests, pre-operative cardiac testing in people without heart disease, and routine pre-admission chest x-rays. The agreement also establishes that the Expert Panel on Appropriate Utilization of Diagnostic and Imaging Studies will continue its work, and a new working group with a distinct mandate will be established to address the appropriateness of a number of other tests and procedures, such as the use of blood glucose testing strips.
It is unclear how much of an impact the tentative agreement will have on the frequency of unnecessary testing. The specific tests slated for removal make up only a tiny fraction of tests performed in Ontario, while many 'big ticket' items, like the use of blood glucose testing strips, have been left to a future working group to address. Nor is it clear that the volume of activities identified in the agreement under "phase 2", which range from prescription tracking mechanisms to practice patterns in cardiac services, are within the abilities of a working group to tackle effectively.
A recent pilot study in the Ottawa area has suggested that e-consultations (where specialists connect with family doctors or patients over the internet) hold promise for better communication among doctors, and shorter wait times and less travel for patients. E-consultations between patients and specialists could also be used to provide specialist consultation to remote communities, which would save patients both the trouble and expense of traveling to large centres to see specialists.
The tentative agreement includes a number of provisions for ramping up e-consultations across the province. A working group is to be established to evaluate existing pilot programs and develop recommendations for a provincial business and technology model. Fee codes are also to be established for e-consultations, beginning with dermatology and ophthalmology, with the intention of expanding these to other specialties over time.
The expansion of e-consultation is promising. However, successful provincial roll-out of these systems will require significant resources, and given the state of the e-health file in Ontario, it may be some time until Ontario's family doctors are regularly consulting their specialist colleagues over the internet.
No caps on utilization of services
Although the agreement reduces most physician fees by 0.5% or more, there is no overall or individual cap on physician services. If the parts of the agreement that focus on decreasing unnecessary tests are effective, overall spending may decrease. However, physicians who are paid fee for service may respond to the cut in payment by providing a greater number of services, in which case expenditure will increase more than the government hopes.
The devil is in the details
The tentative agreement between the government and the OMA attempts to address many of the major problems facing Ontario's health care system. However, much of the most important work has been delegated to working groups. The history of working groups delivering on promises and being able to tackle tough issues in Ontario is mixed. Time will tell whether the agreement will deliver on its promises.


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In a simple documentclass for homework assignments, how should I go about specifying a few attributes in addition to
title and
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\acadclass{Linear Algebra}
\title{Some Title}
\author{Joe Shmoe}
I would like this to render stuff like "Linear Algebra - Pset 2" in the header by evaluating
\@acadclass - Pset \@psetnum. How can I declare these variables in the documentclass such that I could access them from


text:
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Higgs boson suspicious behavior
What's more, direct searches for particles not accounted for in the standard model of particle physics, our leading theory of the fundamental particles and forces, are also coming up empty. "I would, as a hunter of new physics, have liked to see it different than what we have now," says Albert De Roeck of CMS, one of the two major detectors at the LHC, which is based at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. "But the data is the data."
Since the Higgs is credited with giving mass to other elementary particles, a well-behaved one might seem like a good thing. The trouble is that the particle is predicted by the standard model, which must be incomplete as it doesn't contain any mention of dark matter and gravity.
Back in July it seemed like the newly-discovered boson might reveal clues as to how to extend the standard model – there were still gaps in the data that might have allowed for some unexpected properties.
The Higgs isn't detected directly, but rather by a slew of other particles it is predicted to decay into. One tantalising anomaly was a lack of elementary particles called tau leptons in this debris. The Higgs is supposed to decay into a tau and its antiparticle, but if it doesn't, this could suggest the existence of non-standard model particles.
Today, experimentalists from CMS and the other main LHC detector ATLAS, armed with twice as much data as they had in July, told the Hadron Collider Physics symposium in Kyoto, Japan, that the number of tau particles detected has crept up. The new data can't yet rule out a deviation from the standard model but they do remove the main reason for thinking there was one in the first place.
Christoph Paus of CMS says the decay into tau particles is still "a high priority because they have some potential for not agreeing with our expectations".But it does seem as though this source of new physics may have run dry. "In short, all that hullabaloo about a deficit in the rate for Higgs decays to tau/anti-tau was much ado about nothing," wrote Matt Strassler of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey on his blog.
Mirror image identical
How the new particle decays isn't the only thing that could pry open the standard model. The theory also says the Higgs boson behaves the same when viewed in a mirror, giving it what's called "positive parity". Back in July, the particle's parity wasn't known, leaving open the possibility that its mirror images aren't identical. Such misbehaviour could have been a sign of an elegant extension to the standard model, called supersymmetry.
Yet again though, the Higgs seems to be toeing the standard model line. At the symposium, CMS also reported a signal suggesting that its parity is positive, with a statistical significance of 2.5 sigma, meaning that there is only a 1 in 100 probability that a signal like this is produced by chance.
"The particle discovered at the LHC looks more and more like the particle that was predicted," Steven Weinberg, who won a Nobel prize in 1979 for theoretical work on elementary particles, told New Scientist.
As if the good behaviour of the Higgs boson wasn't frustrating enough, direct searches for new physics at the LHC have turned up empty too. Physicists presented searches for dozens of particles that would exist in a world governed by some of these new theories, including the squarks and charginos, neutralinos and gauginos predicted by SUSY.
Persistent oddity
"The results really tell us that we're either not looking in the right place, or we're not looking in the right way, or maybe both," says Paul Jackson, a physicist from the University of Adelaide in Australia who works on ATLAS.
There is one oddity left over from July though, that may yet yield clues to physics beyond the standard model: the Higgs seemed to decay twice as often as predicted into pairs of photons.
Some thought there could be a non-standard model particle decaying to produce the extra photons. Others cited the photon excess as possible evidence that the Higgs itself could be a composite of other particles – rather than the elementary particle predicted by the standard model.
Intriguingly, despite collecting significantly more data on this decay rate, neither experiment has provided an update. De Roeck says they need more time to do crosschecks and wouldn't be drawn further. "We had the result, we had a discussion, it was interesting, but the collaboration felt we needed to push a little harder," he told New Scientist.
Nightmare scenario
Haijun Yang of ATLAS says the analysis of the diphoton decay rate is ongoing and will be updated later. Weinberg has previously said it would be a "nightmare scenario" if the LHC discovered a Higgs boson that did just what the standard model predicted and nothing more. But he says it's still too early to tell if that is where we're heading.
"It is disappointing that no new physics has shown up yet," says Tony Gherghetta, a theorist from the University of Melbourne in Australia. However, he adds that other SUSY particles – such as stops or gluinos – could still show up before the end of the year, when the LHC is set to shut for a year.
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- Anonymous15 November 2012 at 10:09
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text:
78-year-old Sarasota woman dies after being hit by SUV on Midnight Pass Road
UPDATE...A 78-year-old Sarasota woman was killed Wednesday when a vehicle lurched out of a parking lot and struck her as she walked in Siesta Key, authorities said.
Carol Goodwin was pronounced dead at the scene following the incident, which occurred in the 8700 block of Midnight Pass Road, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
Maria Fernandez, 35, of Sarasota, the driver of the 2003 Toyota RAV 4 that struck Goodwin, was charged with driving without a license causing death of serious bodily injury, an FHP press release noted.
The incident unfolded around 9:15 a.m., as Goodwin walked northbound on the sidewalk on the west side of Midnight Pass, adjacent to Tortuga Club at 8750 Midnight Pass Road, troopers reported. Fernandez was stopped in a parking lot at 8730 Midnight Pass Road.
For unknown reasons, Fernandez accidentally pressed the accelerator pedal in the RAV 4, launching the vehicle through bushes and onto the sidewalk, where the SUV hit Goodwin, according to reports.
The vehicle then continued on across the road, eventually stopping when it reached the road's east shoulder.
ORIGINAL...A woman was killed this morning in a crash on Siesta Key, according to authorities.
The pedestrian fatality was reported about 9:28 a.m. at Midnight Pass and Hidden Lagoon roads, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. The scene is just north of Turtle Bay Condominiums.
A 70-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, died after being struck by a vehicle, Capt. Susan Pearson, spokeswoman for Sarasota County Fire Department, said. No one in the vehicle was injured.
The crash remains under investigation. Information regarding possible charges in the case was not immediately available.


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Hi all,
I'm having a discussion with our registrar about providing the .re1 file to meet directors. This is a file that a registrar can generate that contains all swimmers currently registered in the LMSC - name, club, USMS ID, and birthdate. This is tremendously helpful for meet directors not using ClubAssistant for online registration, as it pre-populates their Meet Manager file with valid swimmer information and greatly reduces the errors introduced when typing the information in from paper forms.
My registrar expressed a concern about releasing this Personally Identifiable Information to Meet Directors. It's not a question I've ever thought about before - this was standard practice in my previous LMSC for a number of years, but has not been done in Illinois since I became TTR and our current registrar took office. You can make, I think, a reasonable argument that joining USMS and ILMSA and providing that info doesn't give USMS or ILMSA a license to distribute that to any meet director upon request; on the other hand, the tools provide registrars the ability to obtain that information for ANY purpose.
Has anyone worked with their registrar to develop a policy or procedure related to this?
Mike Abegg
Illinois Masters Top Ten Recorder
Pacific Masters Officials Chair


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Whatever dark times lie ahead, the dance floors of Manchester, England, are prepared. Between the sublime subs and eerie specters of Holy Other's stirring debut this year and these eight tracks from fellow Manchurian Andy Stott, the spirit of the town is alive and hiding in its darkest corners. Opener "Numb" finds the disembodied voice of Alison Skidmore cutting through the void like a flashlight. Skidmore is Stott's former piano teacher, and her voice inhabits five songs as stray breaths, glowing whispers, and melodic brush strokes. "Hatch the Plan" takes its time emerging from a fog of field recordings, with Skidmore's voice circling over its thudding pulse. Where she doesn't appear — the heaving, mobius drum circle of "Sleepless," the churning dirge of "Expecting" — Stott's darkness shines. It's an album full of these types of tensions, somewhere between dance music and death knell. And Stott doesn't just produce these tracks, he haunts their halls. (Out Tuesday)
ESSENTIAL "Numb"


text:
"Nothing Left to Fear" is a new horror film being produced by Slash that follows a family who move into a small town and find they're living near one of the gates to hell. It's just been slapped with an October 5th limited theater run before coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on October 8th. Little known fact, Slash has a belly button ring. That top hat isn't so cool anymore is it?
Sony Pictures has picked up the rights to "Grace", a new horror flick that is shown entirely through the eyes of an 18 year old girl being terrorized by evil forces. Alexia Fast will play the lead role and Alan Dale, Lin Shaye and Joel David Moore will co-star. I'm just going to come out and say what we're all thinking. People with three names are unnatural.
A couple days ago I mentioned how it looked like "Paranormal Activity 5" was going to be pushed to a 2014 release date rather than its planned October 25th, 2013 launch. Well now it looks like the film actually won't see the light of day until October 2014 and instead we'll see the Spanish spin off film in January. Well you'll see it. I won't. I don't speak Spanish and I have no desire to see it. Unless those strippers from the Telemundo evening news are in it. Then I'm onboard.
Of course there's a "Sharknado" sequel coming. You ironic pricks on twitter made this happen. God have mercy on your soul.
Sony Pictures has snatched up the rights to "Lockdown At Franklin High", a new monster flick set in a High School. Joe Ballarini and Gregg Bishop, the super duo behind "Dance Of The Dead" penned the script and none other than Mr. Michael Bay himself is apparently in talks to produce the film. You know what that means fellas. Supermodels who can hardly speak English!
The "Robocop" remake is on the fact track all of the sudden. It seemed like just a couple weeks ago we had no director, leading man or release date. Now the holy trinity is complete with the announcement that it'll hit theaters on August 9, 2013. Yes that's over almost a year and a half away but I'm confident with some hard work and a little bit of elbow grease we can all make this happen on time.
A while back we told you about the short film "Myctophobia" and how our friends over at Drunken Zombie were on the prowl for funding to get the project off the ground. Well it looks like all that shaking babies and kissing hands worked because today they've got a trailer for the project that will premier at Days Of The Dead in Indianapolis July 7th. So.. you're welcome and stuff.
I have no problem with Tobey Maguire but for some reason his name makes me want to punch him in the face. This in no way has anything to do with his production company Material Pictures going full steam ahead with a new alien flick titled "Fifth Wave" but I thought you might want to know. GK Films also has there tootsies in this hot tub about a girl searching for her brother after an alien invasion. What a gross word. Tootsies.


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What is it that the modern lady wants as an adornment? Why a necklace with carefully preserved anatomical sections from a bull's penis and testicles of course!
If bull gonads aren't your thing, you can also get pieces of horses and ducks, too.
Of course, some woman prefer bracelets or earrings when displaying dead animals in plastic. Fortunately, you can look here for other tasteful options. Just click on the subcategories.


text:
In the English Standard Version, Hebrews 10:29 reads, "How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?" My question is, in this verse, who is it that is "sanctified" by the "blood of the covenant?" Is it the apostate or is it Christ?
Grammatically, "by which he was sanctified" can refer either to the apostate or to Christ.
If the reference is to Christ, it is Christ who is sanctified, set apart as our great high priest by the sacrificial shedding of his own blood. The apostate has spurned Christ and, specifically, his entire priestly office.
If the reference is to the apostate, then the apostate has acted hypocritically. He professed that it is by Christ's blood that forgiveness is effected, and membership in the covenant community secured. The benefits the apostate claimed as a member of God's visible covenant people are forfeited for he partook of them impenitently and in unbelief.
I am inclined toward the second interpretation. The apostate gathered with the sanctified, but in unbelief. He renounced the very blood of the covenant by which he once obtained access to this privileged position. Only fearful judgment awaits him.
"Questions and Answers" is a weekly feature of the OPC website. The answers come from individual ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church expressing their own convictions and do not necessarily represent an "official" position of the Church, especially in areas where the Standards of the Church (the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms) are silent.
The questions come from individuals like yourself. If you have questions about biblical and theological matters, you are invited to send them by e-mail by using the "Pose a Question" link on the OPC home page or by clicking here.
At least one new question is posted each week, so there should always be something new here for you to read. (For those people who would like to look at previous questions and answers, they will continue to be available as well.)
The purpose of the OPC website's "Questions and Answers" is to respond to biblical and theological questions. Matters of church discipline, disputes, or debates go beyond the scope of our work. We recommend that you present your concerns in these areas to the appropriate judicatory. In most cases this will be to a local pastor, elder, or session. We do not want the website to replace personal involvement in, or commitment to, the local, visible church.
While we will respond to every serious questioner, we are not bound to give a substantive answer to every question, should we deem the question to be beyond the scope of our purpose or our own ability to answer.
You will receive an answer by e-mail. Please be patient as many of our respondents are busy pastors. The response to your question may take up to two (2) weeks. Some of the questions submitted will be chosen to be posted here, along with the corresponding answers.
Note that the "Questions and Answers" posted on the site have been editedall personal references are removed, Scripture references or from some source may be added, and sometimes portions are expandedto make the questions and answers more useful to a larger audience.
|© 2020 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Chaplains and Military Personnel


text:
White dough with pumpkin pie filling. White frosting and fall colored sprinkles.
Pumpkin Pie
Found via the Spooky Little Girl blog.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Pop Tarts
16 comments:
- Vintage Seance said...
Target! I was just there the other day and saw them. I was like "MOM! Look Pumpkin Pop-Tarts! Buy them for me!" She ignored my request and told me I was crazy getting that excited, lol.
- September 13, 2010 at 3:55 PM
- Custom Zombie said...
Target has them! I got a box today and just ate the first one a few minutes ago - very tasty!
- September 13, 2010 at 4:41 PM
- Danielle said...
I saw these at Target the other day, my husband wanted the Pumpkin Pie ones, don't know why he didn't get them :)
- September 13, 2010 at 6:15 PM
- Anonymous said...
They're at Targets everywhere, in the seasonal section.
- September 13, 2010 at 6:56 PM
- Christina said...
OMG I must find these too! The choc o lantern ones looks so cool!
- September 13, 2010 at 7:53 PM
- ShellHawk said...
Looks worth blowing my diet for.
I am, however, holding out for the Halloween cereals.
But, I AM weak-willed. I may cave in to the Evil Pop Tarts any minute, and be damned the consequences!
- September 13, 2010 at 8:00 PM
- Necropolis said...
How is a man supposed to live healthy if his favorite season promotes such delicious treats? If not to eat, I have to get these in the house just to add the festive colors.
- September 13, 2010 at 8:04 PM
- Rot said...
COOL! I would never have even thought of checking Target.
I found the choc-o-lantern ones tonight at a supermarket. REALLY good. similar to the choc fudge ones, but better due to the coloring ; )
I swear they are.
- September 13, 2010 at 8:25 PM
- A Spooky Soiree said...
- September 13, 2010 at 10:17 PM
- Tisha Leigh said...
No f*!!!g way! I've never seen these! I'm on the hunt now. Thanks for posting! hehe
- September 13, 2010 at 11:54 PM
- NoahFentz said...
Its funny you mentioned Pop Tarts. I just discovered there was a Pop Tart store on 42nd Street and 6th Ave. They got everything. I can check it out to see if they got those flavors.
Those would be cool to hand out for trick or treats too.
- September 14, 2010 at 12:08 AM
- Anonymous said...
Oh Dear... I must be getting old... these don't look appetizing at all!
Pity me.
- September 14, 2010 at 10:21 AM
- MorbidMariah said...
Dude! Pumpkin pie PopTarts!? Dangit...these are the times when being Gluten Free is a bummer. Altho, I gotta say, I make some rockin gluten free Halloween goodies from sratch. :)
- September 14, 2010 at 11:54 AM
- Anonymous said...
Oh, sure. They come out with this stuff after I'm gluten free from celiac disease. Where were these when I was a kid?! Mmmmm.....eat one for me.
- September 14, 2010 at 5:54 PM
- Mikki said...
OMG...must....go....to Target!!
- September 14, 2010 at 6:23 PM
- Rot said...
I made a trip to Target just for these things and they only had the chocolate ones. All the stores around here only have the chocolate ones. This had better not be a regional issue and the Pumpkin Pie ones end up elsewhere.
I'll spit.
- September 15, 2010 at 6:11 AM


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ICU4J is a set of Java libraries that provides more comprehensive support for Unicode, software globalization, and internationalization. In order to provide this functionality to the Eclipse community, ICU4J was added to the Eclipse platform build in 3.2. You will see it in the build as a plugin named com.ibm.icu.
- 1 Updating the Execution Environment for ICU4J
- 2 Migration from java.text/java.util to com.ibm.icu.text/com.ibm.icu.util
- 3 Replacement Plug-in
- 4 Effect on JFace - ViewerSorter and StructuredViewer
- 5 Bugs in ICU4J
- 6 ICU4J Usage in Eclipse
- 7 More Info
Updating the Execution Environment for ICU4J
In Indigo (Eclipse SDK 3.7) Eclipse will remove the Foundation-1.0/J2SE-1.4 restriction on our consumption of ICU4J and move com.ibm.icu up to J2SE-1.5.
Rational: ICU4J has been using J2SE-1.5 for a while now. In Eclipse SDK 3.6, the ICU project provided us a specially compiled version of ICU4J 4.2.1 (conditional compilation code back to Foundation-1.0). But with ICU4J 4.4 the ICU project moved up to using java 1.5 libraries in the implementation and java 1.5 syntax in the API, and can no longer provide a back-compiled version of ICU4J.
By moving the BREE of com.ibm.icu up to J2SE-1.5 we will be able to consume the ICU4J releases without a special compile step. This will allow us to move up version more easily:
- ICU4J 4.4 includes Unicode 5.2 support.
- ICU4J 4.8 is planned to include Unicode 6.0 support.
Comments welcome on Bug 324782 - Workbench: Move up to ICU4J 4.6 with J2SE-1.5
Effects on Consumers
The Eclipse SDK 3.7 and RCP apps built against it as a target platform will only run on a Java 1.5 and higher.
This will not require *consumers* of com.ibm.icu to change their BREEs unless they need to use new 1.5 APIs (ex: org.eclipse.ui.workbench still has a BREE of J2SE-1.4).
The requirement that no one specifies a maximum version range for com.ibm.icu still applies, and plug-ins should specify the minimum version that satisfies their use of ICU4J API. That will be com.ibm.icu 3.8, for the most common cases (use of com.ibm.icu.text and com.ibm.icu.util).
RCP applications that require themselves to run on Java 1.4 can use com.ibm.icu 4.2.1, the last version to run on Java 1.4. This is available from Orbit.
Migration from java.text/java.util to com.ibm.icu.text/com.ibm.icu.util
This section describes how to adopt ICU4J into your application.
Migration of application code can be done incrementally, meaning full adoption of all ICU4J function is not necessary to reap the benefits of using ICU4J. Migration can be done in the following five sequential steps:
1. Remove use of affected classes
Take a careful look at your use of the java.text, java.util, and java.lang classes mentioned below. In some cases, dependency on these classes can be removed entirely. For example, if you are just using MessageFormat for binding parameters to a translated string, consider using org.eclipse.osgi.util.NLS#bind instead. Or, if you were using these classes to format dates and messages for printing in a context that does not require translation (such as the log file), consider using a simpler format that does not require these APIs. Avoiding the classes listed below will prevent the need to add any unnecessary dependency on the ICU4J packages. In the case of RCP applications where size is critical, you may want to avoid the large ICU4J bundle if it's not really needed.
2. Import changes
Some classes need only be replaced with the ICU equivalent class by changing the import statement (i.e. change java.* with com.ibm.icu.*).
Example: change references of java.text.Collator to com.ibm.icu.text.Collator
This should be done for the following classes:
- java.text.BreakIterator
- java.text.CollationKey
- java.text.Collator
- java.text.DateFormat
- java.text.DateFormatSymbols
- java.text.DecimalFormat
- java.text.DecimalFormatSymbols
- java.text.MessageFormat
- java.text.NumberFormat
- java.text.SimpleDateFormat
- java.util.Calendar
- java.util.TimeZone
Note: java.util.StringTokenizer should be included in this list but the equivalent class in ICU4J (versions up to and including 3.4.4) can potentially cause a performance degradation versus the default Java implementation. Therefore, the Eclipse SDK did not adopt ICU's version of StringTokenizer for Eclipse 3.2.
3. Parallel APIs
In this case, you will want to use the corresponding classes and API's in place of the ones that are included in the JDK (in the java.* packages).
Example: replace references of java.lang.Character with class com.ibm.icu.lang.UCharacter
The conversion of java.* classes to com.ibm.icu.* classes should be done as follows:
- java.util.Currency -> com.ibm.icu.util.Currency
- java.util.GregorianCalendar -> com.ibm.icu.util.GregorianCalendar
- java.util.SimpleTimeZone -> com.ibm.icu.util.SimpleTimeZone
- java.lang.Character -> com.ibm.icu.lang.UCharacter
- java.lang.Character$UnicodeBlock -> com.ibm.icu.lang.UCharacter$UnicodeBlock"
- java.text.Format -> com.ibm.icu.text.UFormat
- java.util.Locale -> com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale
- java.util.ResourceBundle -> com.ibm.icu.util.UResourceBundle
Note: classes UCharacter, UResourceBundle, and UFormat are not implemented in the replacement plug-in (see below) so if your application's code needs to work with both the replacement plug-in and the real ICU4J plug-in then you will not be able to adopt these classes at this time.
4. Re-structure
Some code needs to be re-written to take utilize ICU function. Discovering code that needs to be re-structured in this manner will not be as systematic as in the previous two steps.
Example: use com.ibm.icu.text.BreakIterator to locate boundaries in text instead of iterating over a string and using java.lang.Character.isLetterOrDigit(string.charAt(idx)).
5. Utilize New Features
ICU adds additional function in some areas that is not provided by the JDK. In this case, new code would need to be written to take advantage of these new features.
Example: the class com.ibm.icu.text.Transliterator
A note on using pre-req ranges with ICU4J
The typical advice for specifying pre-req ranges for OSGi bundles, is to specify a minimum and maximum version that would be acceptable. However, the ICU4J project does not use "semantic versioning" in the same way as most Eclipse projects, and therefore it is recommended to not specify a maximum. The ICU4J project regularly increases their major version, which typically means "API breaking changes", but for them they are simply trying to match various versions of Unicode specifications. Many bundles in the Platform specify a minimum of "3.4.4" and no maximum, even though ICU4J has "moved up" to major version "52" as of this writing. This is thought acceptable in this case because it is known the ICU4J team is quite focused on maintaining API compatibility even though the major version changes.
Replacement Plug-in
The Eclipse SDK will be adopting the ICU4J APIs for Eclipse 3.2. The addition of the ICU4J plug-in adds on the order of 3MB worth of code. Some applications may not want to absorb ICU4J if the priority is size over adopting the ICU4J function. If this is the case for your application, you can download the replacement plug-in (com.ibm.icu.base) from an Orbit p2 repository, (See Note, below) remove the com.ibm.icu plug-in and its source counterpart, and drop in the replacement plug-in. This is required because the Platform adopted the ICU APIs for 3.2 and so just removing the ICU plug-in will result in compilation errors. The replacement plug-in is about 100KB in size and simply calls through to the java.* packages (default JDK implementation) of the most commonly used classes and APIs in ICU4J. The classes that are implemented in the replacement plug-in are as follows:
- BreakIterator
- CollationKey
- Collator
- DateFormat
- DateFormatSymbols
- DecimalFormat
- DecimalFormatSymbols
- NumberFormat
- SimpleDateFormat
- Calendar
- TimeZone
- ULocale
- MessageFormat
If your application needs to be compatible between both the ICU4J plug-in and the replacement plug-in (most often for size reasons), we recommend you only use the API in the classes from this list. If ICU4J is guaranteed to always be present in the application then you can safely use any of the ICU4J APIs. The replacement plug-in will be built separately and available as a download on the build pages, but this is still work in progress. You can however, start using the ICU4J APIs since the ICU4J plug-in is currently in the SDK build as of M4 (and beyond).
If you choose to adopt ICU4J, it is recommended that, in your plug-in manifest file, instead of using the Require-Bundle header to specify the dependency on ICU4J (e.g.)
Require-Bundle: com.ibm.icu
you use the Import-Package header to specify your plug-in's dependency on ICU4J (e.g.).
Import-Package: com.ibm.icu.text, com.ibm.icu.util
This is to ensure you will not encounter compile or runtime errors if you decide to use the replacement plug-in instead of the full ICU4J plug-in, or vice-versa.
Note on getting replacement plug-in from Orbit
There several ways to get and use the "replacement bundle" from Orbit, depending on your builds, packaging, etc.
One way is to refer to the specific Orbit repository you'd like to use, along with the bundle name and exact version. For example, a section of a PDE .target file might be similar to:
<location includeAllPlatforms="true" includeMode="slicer" type="InstallableUnit"> <unit id="com.ibm.icu.base" version="52.1.0.v201404241930" /> <unit id="com.ibm.icu.base.source" version="52.1.0.v201404241930" /> <repository location="http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/R20140525021250/repository/" /> </location>
Or, you can download the actual bundles individually and put or use them however that would fit in with your builds or use-cases, Orbit makes each bundle available via http, as can be see on each download page, such as, at the time of this writing, the latest available is at
or for the replacement bundle and it's source, the URLs would be
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/R20140525021250/repository/plugins/com.ibm.icu_52.1.0.v201404241930.jar http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/R20140525021250/repository/plugins/com.ibm.icu.base.source_52.1.0.v201404171520.jar
For anyone who still uses map files, Orbit also makes it's builds available from a generated map file, such as see the link on it's download page titled "map file in p2 format".
One final method will be mention, for anyone using BND or similar technology, an OSGi repository index is made available on each download page.
Effect on JFace - ViewerSorter and StructuredViewer
In order to support ICU4J in JFace, some creative API additions were made without actually referencing classes in the ICU4J plug-in in the API. This resulted in the addition of:
1. a new class called org.eclipse.jface.viewers.ViewerComparator, of which org.eclipse.jface.viewers.Viewer Sorter is now a subclass
2. two new methods to StructuredViewer, to support the addition of the ViewerComparator class
The ViewerSorter class has a public method getCollator() that returns a java.text.Collator. Since this method is API it could not simply be changed to use an ICU Collator. Also, ICU classes cannot be part of the API (signatures) as a direct plug-in dependency on ICU would prevent JFace from being used standalone (with SWT). To accomodate these constraints, the ViewerComparator class that uses a java.util.Comparator, rather than an ICU Collator, was added. This was done because ICU's Collator class implements java.util.Comparator, so StructuredViewers now have the option to use ICU's Collator rather than the java.text.Collator, but JFace doesn't have to add a dependency on the ICU4J plug-in.
The two new methods added to StructuredViewer support using ICU's Collator to sort the contents of the Viewer via a ViewerComparator, rather than a ViewerSorter. It is recommended that StructuredViewers now use these methods to get/set the viewer's sorter, instead of the getSorter() and setSorter(ViewerSorter) methods.
/** * Return this viewer's comparator used to sort elements. * This method should be used instead of getSorter(). * * @return a viewer comparator, or null if none * * @since 3.2 */ public ViewerComparator getComparator() /** * Sets this viewer's comparator to be used for sorting elements, and triggers refiltering and * resorting of this viewer's element. null turns sorting off. * To get the viewer's comparator, call getComparator(). *
 * IMPORTANT: This method was introduced in 3.2. If a reference to this viewer object * is passed to clients who call getSorter(), null may be returned from * from that method even though the viewer is sorting its elements using the * viewer's comparator. *
 * * @param comparator a viewer comparator, or null if none * * @since 3.2 */ public void setComparator(ViewerComparator comparator)
Bugs in ICU4J
Bugs that are found in ICU4J should not be logged against Eclipse products or components, they should be logged against the ICU project at:
Be sure to include the version of ICU4J you are using and mention that you are using ICU4J in Eclipse.
ICU4J Usage in Eclipse
Link to a table that lists all the plugins in the Eclipse SDK that have a dependency on ICU4J.
More Info
For more information about ICU4J visit the official home page:


text:
Legal Services
- Business Entity and Principal Search
- Search for information on business entities registered with Utah's Division of Corporations. After you've identified your entity of interest, access principal information and print Certificates of Existence.
- Executive Name Search
- Search for business entities associated with specific individuals
- Driver's License Search (Requires Utah.gov Network Registration)
- Real-time, accurate driver record information.
- Motor Vehicle Search (Requires Utah.gov Network Registration)
- Obtain car title, lien and registration information.
- Professional Licensee Lookup
- Search for information on individual licensed professionals or licensed businesses in the state of Utah.
- Uniform Commercial Code Searches (Requires Utah.gov Network Registration)
- Access information on UCC filings and print official and certified copies.
- Notary Exam and Application
- The fastest, easiest way to become a notary in the State of Utah.
- Business Registration
- The OneStop Business Registration system allows you to register businesses with the Utah State Tax Commission, the Utah Labor Commission, the Utah Department of Commerce, the Utah Department of Workforce Services and the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. After completing the online registration process, you will receive all of the necessary licenses and account numbers for your business.
- Utah Business Renewals and Updates
- Quick and easy service for renewing business registrations.
- Uniform Commercial Code Filings, Continuations & Terminations
- Official UCC filing system streamlines initial filings as well as continuations and terminations.
- Employer Verification Registry
- Register with the Department of Commerce certifying that your company is in compliance with immigration status verification laws.
- The State Construction Registry
- Your online resource for Utah construction projects.


text:
Come on. We've heard these candidates in just over one million debates so far this year. Another one? Another two actually, this weekend leading up to the New Hampshire debates. And these two debates could definitely wreak havoc on the standings going into New Hampshire.
Mitt Romney is the undisputed front runner. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum fans at this point are dreaming if they think their candidates are on a solid trajectory to win. Not winning Iowa should be a clear sign to heavily religious social conservatives like Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and Newt that getting past Romney is going to be nearly impossible with a crowded field. Bachmann got the hint, and Perry almost did. As for Ron Paul, maybe if he runs two more times he can win enough support to break out of his traditional 5-10% polling finish. Look, he's already doing better this year than last time, and last time he did better than the time before. That was Ross Perot's and Ralph Nader's problems. They quit trying too soon.
Back to Mitt Romney. You know he is back on the punching bag hook tonight, a place he hasn't been since the very first debates. Santorum wants a piece of him, Newt wants a piece of him, Jon Huntsman finally qualified for another debate and you know he wants to take Romney down a peg. I think Perry will try to just get through the night and might take a few shots at Santorum. As far as the #1 conservative attack dog of other conservatives, Michele Bachmann will not be there tonight to claim that Perry is in bed with pharmaceutical companies, Newt Gingrich is pro-partial birth abortion and the number one Freddie Mac adviser responsible for the economic collapse, and whatever she might cook up about Rick Santorum while mostly leaving Paul and Romney alone. So I think Romney will be taking the hits and the other candidates can relax their guard a little bit.
Now, on to the x factor in debates. Newt Gingrich was finished this summer after his campaign collapsed and he proved he was in the top 1% by buying his wife jewelry. I mean how out of touch can you get. But, he has climbed back into contention through powerful and commanding debate performances. Just two weeks ago, Gingrich was the front runner. The difference between Gingrich's fall and other candidates falls is that their demises can be tied directly to debate performance. Bachmann with her claims about HPV and other wild attacks on the candidates, Perry with his glaring gaffe, Cain who offered 999 and 999, oh yeah and 999. It wasn't enough substance to save him when scandal gave nervous supporters a reason to doubt. Huntsman affirmed his global warming stance.
Gingrich hurt himself with his illegal immigration stance, but his downfall can be attributed to the harsh attacks he faced over the last two weeks from Romney's friends, paid allies, and former foes. Ron Paul also attacked Newt, not Romney, with harsh ads in Iowa. Paul has probably done the same math I have, but mistakenly thinks he has a shot with Newt's base over Romney's.
The debates are ad free. They are also friend free. The only way Romney can attack another candidate tonight without attacking that candidate directly is to pay off the moderator or a fellow candidate. On that stage, it is going to be Santorum's "what smells" debate face versus Perry's memory versus Huntsman's out of touch moderate stances versus Paul's old shaky finger wagging versus Romney's slick hair and nice demeanor versus Newt's heavy hitting and quick wit and ideas.
If these debates garner an audience, this is all upside for Newt, and downside for front runner Mitt Romney and social conservative front runner Rick Santorum. In an instance of incredible luck for the candidates in this New Hampshire debate, the New England Patriots get this weekend of playoff action off.
Filed under: Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich, Polls, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Strategy | Tagged: 999, abrassive, ann coulter, bachmann, cain, climate change, conservative, coulter, coulter attacks catholicism, debate, freddie mac, gaffe, Gingrich, global warming, huntsman, leftwing, mitt, Mitt Romney, moderate, Mormon, New England, New Hampshire, newt, Newt Gingrich, obama, patriots, paul, perry, playoffs, radical, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, santorum, supporters, Texas | 1 Comment »


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Assuming a design lifetime of 20 years as standard practice when designing new wind turbines, machines installed in the early 1990s will soon be reaching the end of their design lives. This means their owners need to determine whether and for how long these wind turbines can continue to operate beyond their originally assumed lifespan.
Under the right conditions, extended service life can be justified from both technical and economic viewpoints. Especially in the case of newer, larger turbines and machines used in offshore wind farms, a long lifespan is desirable because of the high initial investment cost. However, regardless of whether there is technical and economic justification for continued use, wind farm deconstruction can also run contrary to sustainability goals. Conservation of natural resources is becoming increasingly important when using alternative energies.
As the rated capacity of wind turbines has increased over the years, it tends to be small turbines with a power rating of up to 250kW that first need assessment of their suitability for continued operation. But this subject is now gaining in importance for larger wind turbines.
Many questions need to be answered when assessing a turbine's lifespan. These include whether the service life of a particular wind turbine can be assessed based on site wind data alone and if maintenance work was carried out regularly to the manufacturer's recommendations - and whether this has an impact on the original life assumptions. If re-siting a turbine, there are technical considerations that affect the installation of used wind turbines in new locations and there may be cost assumptions for new stakeholders in existing projects to be validated.
Looking for guidance
In order to find suitable solutions from a technical point of view, certification body Germanischer Lloyd (GL) began drafting a guideline on the continued operation of wind turbines.
Supported by an expert committee, GL's Guideline for Continued Operation was published in 2009. It is aimed mainly at older wind turbines that have already reached the end of their service life, although it can be equally useful when considering continued operation of turbines yet to reach this stage.
The assessment of a wind turbine for continued operation is a complex engineering task that must be executed with due regard for the special features of each individual installation.
The guideline offers two pathways for gathering the information necessary to make an informed decision on the extension of a turbine's operational life: assessment through renewed calculation (analytical method) and through inspection (practical method).
Assessment through renewed calculation
The analytical method makes new or additional calculations for the wind turbine, taking into account site-specific parameters, such as wind loads at the particular location.
In general the procedure for the analysis is the same as for the certification of a new wind turbine: the manufacturer or operator verifies the structural integrity of the turbine for extreme and fatigue loads. An accredited certification body then reviews and assesses the documentation.
Both the technical feasibility and economic viability of continued operation must be questioned. The cost of the re-evaluation itself has to be taken into account. Other considerations include whether historic data on turbine site-specific loads is available and, if this is the case, whether the available loading information is sufficient to calculate the remaining service life.
There is no universal answer to these questions as all of them have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Assessment through inspection
The practical method can be used as an alternative to the assessment through renewed calculation. This method can be compared to the general inspection of roadworthiness carried out on motor vehicles.
The objective of the inspection is to assess the wind turbine's suitability for continued operation and covers examination of the machinery, including the drive train and gearbox; the rotor blades; the safety system, the tower and the foundation. In other words, the inspection looks at the condition of the entire turbine.
When completed, the expert conducting the inspection should produce a record of the results. In contrast to the analytical method, it is not possible to make a statement on the entire service life of the turbine. But the technical expert can define an interval until another inspection is required. This interval depends on the overall condition of the turbine - one year is a reasonable period of time between inspections for continued operation.
The third way
It is also possible to combine the two methods. Both must be carried out by qualified, independent experts for wind energy. The main focus of any assessment is on the structural integrity and the safety-relevant assemblies. The availability of the wind turbine and the associated economic aspects are not considered directly.
If deficiencies endanger the structural integrity of the wind turbine, or if they can be expected to result in greater damage, the technical expert would recommend taking the turbine offline for repairs. If repair is not possible or not economically justifiable, it is then recommended that the installation is dismantled completely.
In recent years the number of installed wind turbines has dramatically increased worldwide. Considering various market and environmental factors - in particular targets to reduce greenhouse gases - it can be expected that wind energy will play a major role in generation portfolios of the future. Longer service lives for wind turbines are clearly desirable.
Be practical
Because the analytical method entails much more time and effort than the practical method, the assessment through renewed calculation is more costly than the assessment through inspection. Additionally, the renewed calculations also require reliable data for the actual wind load history as a basis for the fatigue verification. Such information is often not available. So, it is for these reasons it is expected that the focus will be on the practical method of assessment for service life extension. The analytical method is more likely to be employed for the verification of large wind farms and for offshore wind energy.
As described above costs for the assessment for continued operation strongly depend on every individual case and have to be analysed separately.
Klaus Hansen is a senior engineer in the civil engineering concrete group and contact person for continued operation at Germanischer Lloyd Industrial Services.


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Liberals vs. the IRS
Even the left doesn't want the tax man regulating speech.
The media have remained quiet about the IRS targeting of conservative nonprofit groups and even quieter about the proposed IRS rule to restrict their political speech. Maybe our colleagues will snap out of their slumber now that the objections are coming from liberals.
The comment period for the new IRS political-speech rule is open until Feb. 27, but already there have been more than 69,000 comments, the majority negative. That's far more than the normal reaction to a new regulation—only 7,353 comments on the Keystone XL...
To Read the Full Story


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Trial over tribal night deer hunting begins
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal trial to determine whether Chippewa tribes can hunt deer at night across northern Wisconsin is underway.
The trial began in U.S. District Court in Madison on Monday with testimony from Kekek Jason Stark, a policy analyst on tribal treaty rights. Neither side offered opening statements.
The state Department of Natural Resources has long banned hunting deer at night out of safety concerns. But the Chippewa contend circumstances have changed, noting the DNR allowed hunters to go after wolves at night this past fall. The tribes consider the wolf a spiritual brother.
Stark said Monday the wolf hunt triggered the tribe's push for night deer hunting. He said the tribes plan to impose strict safety standards.
The trial was expected to last about a week.


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AUBURN, Ala. – Hunter Kelley hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the third and Garrett Cooper hit a three-run shot in a four-run fifth as the Auburn baseball team claimed a 6-3 win over Alabama on Friday night to even the three-game series at a game each. The win improves Auburn's record to 16-11, 1-7 SEC while Alabama fell to 17-11, 6-2 SEC.
"It was important for us to get that lead," Auburn Head Coach John Pawlowski said. "We finally got some things to go our way. Hunter Kelley came up with a big two-run home run and Garrett Cooper, who has been swinging the bat really well, came up big for us today."
Michael O'Neal (5-2) gave the Auburn pitching staff just what it needed as he went 7 2/3 innings to earn his first SEC win. The southpaw surrendered an unearned run in the first and two more in the eighth as he was able to scatter eight Alabama hits in his outing without walking any hitters. At one point he retired 10 straight Alabama hitters, starting with the final hitter of the first through the final hitter of the fourth.
"It's Alabama and you want to win, especially having lost seven straight in the SEC," O'Neal said. "We have not been playing well lately and everything bad that could happen bad happen to us. It was finally nice to have that night where when Hunter takes it deep you just know we are going to win. It's just nice to get that win and get that monkey off our back."
"We had some momentum going our way and when you have a guy on the mound like Michael O'Neal, who is just a strike thrower, he misses barrels and did a great job," Pawlowski said.
Kelley, hitting ninth, gave Auburn its first lead in SEC play in the bottom of the third when he stroked a 1-1 pitch over the wall in left for his first home run of the season, a two-run shot following a Blake Austin walk.
Two innings later Auburn got to Alabama starter Jon Keller (3-3) again as it had three hits and two walks to take a 6-1 lead. Kelley drew a one-out walk to get the inning started, went to third on a Ryan Tella single and scored on a Jordan Ebert single. Cooper then stepped to the plate and smashed a ball to dead center for his second home run of the season and his first since opening weekend.
"I was looking for a ball up and he threw me a fastball right over the plate," Cooper said. "As soon as I hit it I knew it was getting out of here. Last night I came up with the bases loaded and hit into a double play. Tonight was a different story."
Alabama would not go away quietly, scoring two more unearned runs in the eighth on a Booth sac fly and an Austen Smith RBI single to cut the deficit to three.
With two down in the eighth following the Smith single, Pawlowski called on Tuscaloosa native Terrance Dedrick to get the final four outs. The right-hander needed three pitches to get Kyle Overstreet to ground into a fielder's choice to end the inning.
"I just had to get up there and throw strikes and keep the ball low," Dedrick said of coming in in the eighth. "It was a very exciting moment for me but the only thing on my mind was to not let them get a good swing on the ball and not let that runner in."
In the ninth, Mikey White led off with a single but Dedrick got pinch hitter Cameron Carlisle to ground into the 3-6-1 double play and then struck out pinch hitter Andrew Miller to nail down his second save of the season.
Alabama went up 1-0 in the first when Brett Booth hit a two-out RBI double.
The two teams will play the rubber match at 3pm on Saturday. Left-hander Will Kendall (0-1) will start on the mound for Auburn while Alabama will start right-hander Spencer Turnbull (2-1). The game will air live on CSS.
Courtesy: AU Media Relations