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Petticoat Ranch
- Mary Connealy Author
- 2007 15 Nov
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Petticoat Ranch by Mary Connealy.
Mosqueros, Texas, 1867
Sophie heard God in every explosion of thunder as she listened to the awesome power of the approaching storm. But there was more. There was something coming—something more than rain.
Over the distant rumble, Sophie Edwards heard pounding hoofbeats. Her heart sped up, matching the pace. The horse came fast. Something about the way it ran echoed the desperation in the pulsing of Sophie's heart.
Sophie whirled to race inside the cabin. Exhausted after another day of grinding work, she prayed for strength and courage. God would have to provide it; she had none left. She scrambled into her disguise and waited until the last minute to wake the children, hoping the rider would pass on. She stood near the can that held the vile-smelling Hector scarf, hoping she wouldn't need it.
Was this the night someone would come for her and the girls? The night she couldn't talk fast enough or hide well enough to survive this rugged, lonely life?
The back of Sophie's neck prickled in horror as the horse veered from the main trail and came toward her cabin. For a second, she thought the rider meant to come to her place, but there was no letup of the running hooves. Sophie's fear changed. No one could safely ride the narrow, rocky trail down the slopes of the creek bank behind her cabin at that speed.
The horse charged on. Sophie could hear it blowing hard, its wind broken, the saddle leather creaking. She hated the rider for abusing his mount, but inside Sophie knew it wasn't the rider's fault. This pace—this reckless, dark ride—could only mean one thing.
And pursuit might mean a fleeing criminal with a posse on his trail. But not all pursued men were justly accused. No one knew that better than Sophie.
She almost ran out to wave the rider down. She let fear freeze her for a second. Then, ashamed, she grabbed at the door latch on her ramshackle cabin, praying, "Help me, Lord. Help me, help me, help me." Her prayers, like her life, had been stripped to bare bones.
The horse stormed past the heavy brush that concealed the house.
"No! Stop!" Sophie dashed out the door and down the stoop. "Stop! The cliff!"
She was too late. The rider was past. Within seconds she heard the dreadful screams of the falling animal, the coarse shouts of terror ripped from the throat of the rider.
Rocks dislodged along the top of the bank as Sophie ran in the direction of the accident. There was the rumble of falling rocks and the softer sound of the horse's big body striking stone as it plunged thirty feet to the creek below, neighing its fear and pain into the night. She heard the splash as the avalanche, and its unwilling cause, hit the moving water below.
She skidded to a halt and her long, white nightgown billowed around her. A gust whipped her blond hair across her eyes. Blinded for a moment, a cold, logical part of her mind told her that the best way to handle this was simply to ignore it and go back to bed.
But God asked more of her than cold logic. He even asked more of her than her own survival. It was a relief to admit it, because her strongest survival instincts couldn't stop her from going to someone in need, and she was glad to have God's support in the matter. She whirled away from the embankment and ran back to the house.
"Girls!" Her voice lashed like a whip in the darkness. The girls would be so frightened to be awakened this way, but there was no choice. If ever a family had learned to do what needed to be done, it was the Edwardses. "Girls, someone's fallen on the creek path."
Sophie tore at her disguise, putting everything in its place with lightning speed. She couldn't ever afford to be unprepared. "I need help. I'm going down. Mandy, bring the rope and the lantern and follow me. Beth, catch Hector and bring him. Don't take time to get dressed: just pull on your shoes. Sally, stay with Laura. Get blankets out and heat water. If he's alive he'll need doctoring."
Sophie heard the girls jump out of bed as she headed outside in her nightgown with untied boots on her feet.
She saw where he'd gone over and her stomach lurched. He couldn't have picked a worse drop. She stumbled and skidded toward the bottom of the creek, risking her own neck on the treacherous path.
Hearing Amanda call out from overhead, Sophie yelled, "Down here, Mandy. Quickly." Sophie picked her way over the jumble of dirt and stones edging the swollen waters of the creek. In the starless night, she couldn't make out anything. She glanced behind her and saw, with relief, ten-year-old Mandy coming with a brightly lit kerosene lantern.
Sophie continued to scramble over the debris. She stepped in mud and sank until water overflowed her boot. The thunder came more steadily now, until it was a constant collision of sound. The approaching lightning gained enough strength to light up even the depths of the creek.
Feeling her way, on her hands and knees now, she tried to pierce the utter darkness with her vision. Where is he, Lord?
A wailing wind cried at them that it was bringing disaster in its wake. Suddenly, the thunder and lightning held a worse threat than savage rain. The storm was coming from the north. It was probably already raining upstream. The creek might flood without a single drop of water falling here. And she now stood in the path of that flash flood. Worse still, she'd just ordered her children to come after her.
Sophie listened intently for the roar of oncoming water. She heard nothing. They still had time.
Mandy caught up with her. "Here's the lantern and rope."
Sophie took the lantern. "A rider and horse went over that drop-off. Help me find him, and hurry! It's raining up north!"
Her girls had lived in their little thicket hideaway long enough to know what it meant when rain came in from the north. Sophie saw Mandy glance fearfully over her shoulder into the darkness of the creek. Then, practical girl that Mandy was, she started searching for the rider.
"Oh, Ma. Can he have lived?" Mandy went ahead of Sophie to the very edge of the dimly illuminated area.
"I don't know, honey," Sophie said grimly as she surveyed the area, looking for a glimpse of fabric or a bit of horsehide. "I don't hear him. He might be buried under these rocks. He might have been swept away by the creek. We only have a few minutes to search."
"Here, Ma. I think I found him!" Mandy's voice was sharp with excitement. A bolt of lightning lit up Mandy's frightened face. Sophie saw Mandy's blue eyes, so like her own, glow in the jagged glare. Her blond hair, identical to Sophie's and the other girls', hung bedraggled and muddy to her waist.
Sophie rushed to her daughter's side and saw a single hand, coated with dirt, extending from a pile of mud and rocks. The two of them fell to the ground and began digging away the soil. They ignored the tear of jagged stones on their hands and the damage to their nightgowns, the only ones they owned. Sophie heard soft trudging steps as Hector came down the creek path. She dug faster, knowing that with the mule's help they could move the man as soon as they freed him.
Another rumble of thunder sounded closer. The lightning lanced the sky just as Sophie uncovered the stranger's face and pushed away the mud. The man was utterly still. As limp as in death. She didn't stop to check his condition. If there was life left in him after the fall, the suffocating dirt would snatch it away. She and Mandy uncovered his shoulders as eight-year-old Elizabeth came up.
"Get this rope around his shoulders, Mandy. Beth, hitch it around Hector's neck. We've got to get out of this creek before the water comes!" Even as she said it, Sophie heard the first distant crash of waves against the sides of the creek. Once the sound was audible, there were only minutes before the wall of water would sweep by their cabin.
She kept digging as she shouted commands. She reached deep into the muck to make sure there were no heavy rocks pinning him. Her girls worked silently beside her, following her orders. Sophie felt a surge of pride in them so great, she knew it to be almost sinful.
"Ready, Ma." Mandy turned her attention from fastening the rope under the man's arms and went back to digging.
"Hector's ready anytime, Ma," Beth shouted over the raging wind. A bolt of lightning flashed brightly enough for Sophie to see the man. His legs were still well buried, but there were no rocks on him.
He was so coated in mud that Sophie couldn't have told anyone what he looked like. She remembered the desperate speed at which he'd ridden and thought again the word: pursuit. Yet no one had come along behind him.
The thunder sounded again. The water roared ever nearer. Sophie shouted to be heard over the sound, "Once you start pulling, just take him all the way up! The floodwater is coming!"
Sophie knew Elizabeth, her second born, would handle the stubborn, rawboned old mule better than she could. Hector was a cantankerous beast on the best of days, but he had a soft spot for Beth, as did most animals.
Beth's gentle cajoling urged Hector forward to take up the slack in the rope. Mandy knelt at the man's head, and in the few remaining seconds, pushed more dirt off his arms and chest. Sophie braced herself to support his head and neck as he began to inch free. A bolt of lightning lit up their strange little group, this time with blinding brightness. The thunder sounded almost at the same instant. Sophie prayed for the man and asked God if the floodwater could just hold off another few minutes.
In answer, God sent the first icy drip of rain down the back of her neck. Sophie took it as a heavenly warning to hurry.
The man emerged slowly from the slide. As soon as he was free, with another lightning bolt to assist the lantern, Sophie yelled, "Keep going. All the way to the top of the bank. Mandy, you run ahead with the lantern." Anything to get her girls to safety, even if she didn't make it herself.
She looked at the man, now being battered even further by his ride up the hill. His body was coated in mud. The slime helped him slide along the rough ground. One particularly nasty jolt over the rutted path almost woke him. He took a deep breath and turned his head sideways. He vomited up filthy, muddy water and gasped deeply for breath as he was dragged along. It was the first sign he was alive. Sophie kept to his side to make sure his head didn't encounter a rock.
The rugged upward trail twisted and turned. Just as it faced the north along one of its steeper sections, a bolt of lightning split the sky. Sophie saw a wall of water raging toward her like the wrath of God. "Faster, Beth! The floodwater's coming! Get to the top!"
Elizabeth kicked Hector and yelled. Sophie knew her mule well, and whatever unfortunate qualities Hector had, stupidity wasn't one of them. She knew he headed for the top of that creek to save his own mangy mule hide, and if he saved the lot of them along with himself, well, that had nothing to do with him.
The path snaked back to the south. A few more feet. Twenty at the most. Sophie knew the water would come along right to the top of the bank. It had been cut to its current depth by these raging torrents over thousands of years. Sophie glanced over her shoulder and saw it coming. They weren't going to make it. Lightning lit up the sky just as Hector crested the top of the path. The roaring water changed to a scream. The thunder had become a constant jarring drumroll that only added to the fierce growl of the approaching flood. The rope dragged against the ground, and knowing she was out of time, Sophie reached down and twisted her arms through the rope that bound the man to the only anchor there was for them in the world.
The water hit like a crashing fist. Sophie heard her own cry of fear as she was swept sideways. Her arms wrenched nearly from their sockets as the rope tightened. Her body, literally tied to the man, lifted with the angry waters. The flood caught them as if it were a greedy child not wanting to let go of its toy. Sophie had a second to despair of Hector's strength and prayed Beth wouldn't be swept away with the mule. Flood water filled her mouth. The life her precious babies had to face without her was the image she'd die with.
Then they were up. They landed on the top of the creek bank like a couple of battle-weary trout. Sophie was too battered to move. She lay there, choking on muddy water as the world began to right itself. She tried to catch her breath and was having precious little luck, when Mandy got to her side, followed by Beth. Only when they rolled her off the man did she realize she'd been stretched out fully on top of him.
"Ma! Are you all right?" Mandy's anxious voice reached into her sluggish mind.
Her girls. She felt the scrambling fingers on the ropes that bound her to this stranger, and she heard their fear. She had to be strong for them. She forced the panic from her water-logged head. "Yes, I'm fine. Just got a good soaking. Let's see if our friend here survived it."
Sophie almost staggered when she got to her knees, but she didn't. The girls were watching. She turned her attention to the man and pressed her hand firmly against his chest. Beneath her palm was a strong heartbeat, even though, after his one spell of coughing, the man hadn't stirred again. She felt his chest rise and fall with a steady breath.
Sophie heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief. "He's still alive."
The spitting rain grew steadier, and Sophie wondered what a chest full of dirty water did to a man. A deep chill now might well be the last straw. With a renewed surge of strength, Sophie decided that, after all she'd been through, this man could just think twice before he up and died on her. Thinking aloud, she said, "There's no way we can carry him to the house, and we're not strong enough to get him up on Hector's back."
"If Hector goes slow, maybe we can just drag him," Mandy suggested. "Reckon it'll kill him, though."
Elizabeth said lightly from where she knelt beside her mother, "I don't know how he could get much worse. He appears to be mostly kilt already."
Sophie prayed in her heart, as she had been nonstop since she'd heard the first hoofbeats. But no better suggestions were forthcoming from the Almighty.
"Okay, we drag him. Take it real slow, Beth. Stay by his side, Mandy and . . . and . . . ." Sophie was out of ideas. A sudden gust of wind and a prolonged glare of lightning, with thunder rumbling constantly now, prodded her. "Let's get on with it then."
They hauled him the same way they hauled logs to split for their fire. Hector pulled the unconscious man right up to the front door. When Elizabeth stopped Hector, Mandy asked, with the practicality her life had forced onto her, "Reckon Hector can drag him into the house?"
The house was small—one room, with a loft, no back door, and two front steps that passed for a stoop. Sophie tried to envision the big mule climbing the stairs, ducking through the narrow door, and then turning around in the cramped space. Hector was large and not given to cooperation at the best of times, even with Beth's gentle urging.
"How about we put him in the barn," Mandy suggested.
Barn was a highfalutin word for the Edwards's one and only outbuilding. The building remained standing more out of pure ornery stubbornness than sturdy construction. It was a three-sided shed that stood upright, thanks to the bramble that had wound itself around every inch of the building and practically reclaimed it as part of the vast thicket that hid the Edwards's home. Hector seemed inclined to head for it, though he usually disdained to go under the rickety roof.
The wind began driving the steadily increasing sprinkles straight sideways. The lightning and thunder continued, and the icy drops of rain grew fatter, soaking into their thin, mud-soaked nightclothes. This was all the man needed to finish the work of his fall. Sophie finally said, "The barn it is. Let's go."
They hauled the injured man down a nearly invisible trail that wound away from the cabin. Another small clearing, one of hundreds that appeared inside the twisting maze of the thicket, opened up at the decrepit barn. Mercifully, the rain was coming from the north and the shed opened to the east. The inside was dry except for the multiple leaks in the roof. A stack of the first spring prairie grass Sophie and the girls had cut took up the driest corner. With some quick pitch-forking, they got the man situated on a soft bed of fresh-scented hay. It was a better bed than the one Sophie had.
Hector was released. As if in a huff at the uninvited company, he went to the far corner of the tiny shed. That put about ten feet between him and the intruders in his domain.
Sophie knelt in the hay beside the still-unconscious man. "Bring the lantern up close, Mandy. Be mindful of fire."
"I'll fetch blankets and check on the little 'uns, Ma." Beth darted out into the storm.
As the lantern light fell on the man, and with a sudden extended flash of lightning, Sophie saw bright red soaked through the coating of dirt on his face and across the front of his shirt. The stranger was drenched in his own blood.
With a dart of aggravation, Sophie thought the man was determined to die one way or another. She felt stubbornness well up inside of her that would have humbled Hector. After all she'd been through, he'd live if she had to grab his worthless life and hold him on this side of the pearly gates with her bare hands!
Taken from Petticoat Ranch. © 2006 by Mary Connealy. ISBN 978-1-59789-647-4. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683


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MIAMI — Ozzie Guillen was fired Tuesday after one year as manager of the last-place Miami Marlins, whose promising season began to derail in April when his laudatory comments about Fidel Castro caused a backlash.
Miami's next manager will be the fifth for owner Jeffrey Loria since early 2010. Two managers he fired made the playoffs this year. The Marlins still owe Guillen $7.5 million for the three years remaining on his contract.
"After careful consideration following the disappointment of the 2012 season, we decided to dismiss Ozzie," president of baseball operations Larry Beinfest said in a statement. "Our managerial search begins immediately and our hope is that a new manager, along with roster improvements, will restore a winning culture."
The franchise was supposedly transformed by an offseason spending spree and the move into a new ballpark, and the Marlins expected to contend for a playoff berth.
In spring training, Guillen touted his team as well balanced and ready to win. But a dismal June took the Marlins out of contention for good, and management dismantled the roster in July.
The season went sour from the start. Guillen's comments praising Castro in a magazine interview angered Cuban Americans, who make up a large segment of the Marlins' fan base. The Venezuelan manager apologized repeatedly at a news conference for his remarks about the former Cuban leader. Guillen then began a five-game suspension only five games into his stay with the team.
"That was a very, very hard situation for me and the people around me," Guillen said in September. "It was maybe the worst thing I ever did."
In September 2011, Guillen left the Chicago White Sox after eight seasons. Some 24 hours later he sealed a four-year deal with the Marlins, where he was a third-base coach for the 2003 World Series championship team.
"I feel like I'm back home," he said at the time.
Loria traded two minor league players to obtain Guillen and gave him a team-record $10 million, four-year deal.
But by June, the Marlins had fallen below .500 for good. Despite the frustrations of losing, the talkative, opinionated, profane Guillen kept his cool for the most part, and he repeatedly accepted responsibility for the team's performance.
Mindful of speculation his job might be in jeopardy, he said two weeks before the end of the season he was glad he rented a house in Miami rather than buying when he took the job.
"With the job I did this year, do you think I deserve to be back here?" Guillen said on the final day of the season. "Of course not. But I'm not the only one. … Let's start from the top. The front office failed, Ozzie failed, the coaching staff failed, the players failed, everybody failed."
In December, the Marlins signed All-Stars Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell to contracts worth a combined $191 million. But Bell was a bust as the closer, and the Marlins were plagued by poor hitting, especially in the clutch. Bell was traded last week to Arizona.
In the Marlins' 20 seasons they have reached the postseason only twice, as wild-card teams in 1997 and 2003. Both times they won the World Series.

subset: commoncrawl


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Events Calendar
Primary tabs
For lectures to programs for children, come visit us at one of the library events and programs listed below. For more information, call 615-862-5750 or 1-800-342-3262.
You are cordially invited to the 47th annual National Storytelling Festival in historic Jonesborough, TN. They are committed to making one of the performance spaces accessible throughout the entire Festival by bringing in two NIC interpreters. Their combined 50 years of experience in interpreting promise to make the Family Showcase Tent an open and inviting place for all Deaf and hard of hearing audience members.
Borderless Arts Tennessee is pleased to announce the upcoming Teapot Diplomat workshops that will take place from now through January 2020. These workshops are free of charge, but registration is required and space is limited. Please, let them know if you need accomodations. This program is supported by funding form Mark and Niki Antonini.
On October 5, Dee Kimbrell: Wire People
Docent-Guided Exhibition Tour with ASL Interpretation
1:30 p.m.
Meet at the Frist Art Museum's Information Desk
Gallery admission required. Click here for admission prices.
Architecture Tour with ASL Interpretation
4:30 p.m.
Meet in the Frist Art Museum's Grand Lobby
Coming downtown to the First Saturday Art Crawl? Then start your evening at the Frist.
"When was the Frist Art Museum built? Who was the architect? Can you tell me about the floors in the galleries?" These are just some of the questions answered in the Frist's popular architecture tours. Stroll around the Frist Art Museum as you learn more about our landmark building from one of our always-engaging docents.


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Student Activities Board is a student-run planning board that brings FREE comedy, music, special events and films to campus! We're looking for people on-campus in Spring 2013 to fill the following positions:
Advertising Chair
Music Co-Chair
Special Events Co-Chair
Multimedia Chair
Comedy Shadow
Applications are available at bit.ly/SNZvnI and are due November 23!
If you have any questions, please e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Alyssa Frey at firstname.lastname@example.com. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.
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World Wildlife Fund via Crowdrise
May 14, 2012
BENEFITING: World Wildlife Fund
EVENT: Groupon Earth Day Challenge
EVENT DATE: May 15, 2012
For 50 years, WWF has been protecting the future of nature. The world's leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by 1.2 million members in the United States and close to 5 million globally. WWF's unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature.
WWF's vision is to build a future in which people live in harmony with nature.
WWF's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on Earth.
Goal and Strategies
By 2020, WWF will conserve 15 of the world's most ecologically important regions by working in partnership with others to:
- Protect and restore species and their habitats
- Strengthen local communities' ability to conserve the natural resources they depend upon
- Transform markets and policies to reduce the impact of the production and consumption of commodities
- Ensure that the value of nature is reflected in decisions made by individuals, communities, governments and businesses
- Mobilize hundreds of millions of people to support conservation
Please show your support by helping us win the Groupon Earth Day Challenge


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Abstract and Keywords
Although the 1992 Los Angeles riots have been described as a "race riot" sparked by the acquittals of a group of mostly white police officers charged with excessively beating black motorist Rodney King, the widespread targeting and destruction of Asian-owned (mainly Korean) property in and around South Central Los Angeles stands out as one of the most striking aspects of the uprising. For all the commentary generated about the state of black-white relations, African American youths, and the decline of America's inner cities, the riots also gave many Americans their first awareness of the presence of a Korean immigrant population in Southern California, a large number of Korean shop owners, and the existence of what was commonly framed as the "black-Korean conflict." For Korean Americans, and Asian Americans more generally, the Los Angeles riots represented a shattered "American dream" and brought focus to their tenuous hold on economic mobility and social inclusion in a society fraught by racial and ethnic tension. The riots furthermore marked a turning point that placed Asian immigrants and Asian Americans at the center of new conversations about social relations in a multiracial America, the place of new immigrants, and the responsibilities of relatively privileged minorities toward the less privileged.
Keywords: Los Angeles, riots, Asian American, uprising, race relations, race, Korean, conflict, African Americans, black Americans, multiracial, multicultural, American dream
Access to the complete content on Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
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Richard Weylman took the stage at IMCA's annual conference Monday afternoon to talk about creating an exceptional client experience.
Weylman (left), of The Weylman Center for Excellence in Practice Management, told the audience that a superior client experience is central to effective wealth management. He focused the interactive presentation on highly effective client communications, understanding the client's needs and tailoring the wealth management team's approach to fulfill those needs. His central theme was "What do affluent and wealthy clients really want from their financial 'team?'"
Through his research, he has identified six "must-haves" for an advisor in order to have a successful client relationship:
1) Warmth
There must be chemistry between advisor and client. The client is determining the "presence" you bring to the relationship from the very first meeting.
2) Friendliness
"Well, you might say, 'of course, anyone would want their advisor to be friendly,'" Weylman said. "It goes far beyond that. They want you to personalize and humanize the experience. If you bring economic security, that's good. If you bring emotional security, even better. But what they really want you to do is to effectively address their fear, uncertainty and doubt about their future."
3) Personal interest
Advisors might know their clients hobbies, like playing golf and tennis. But do they know where their clients play golf and tennis? What are their special interests? Does the advisor know about the charitable, cultural or religious organizations to which the client belongs?
4) Undivided attention
Clients do not want an advisor to be all things to all people, Weylman said. They want the advisor's undivided attention. However, they want the advisor to be able to grow his practice and not be bogged down in day-to-day administrative tasks. Weylman's research shows advisors spend just three hours each week on marketing and new client relationships. Successful advisors typically spend 19 hours a week on such tasks.
5) Responsiveness
Wealthy and affluent clients want 12 contacts per year. The want them to be scheduled contacts, not "ad hoc" contacts.
6) Direction and Guidance
"The cliché in the industry is 'he who builds the plan owns the plan,'" Weylman said. "I just read it in Registered Rep magazine, probably from a failed advisor that wants you to fail as well. The cliché is plain wrong. He who executes on the plan owns the plan. The client wants you to provide next steps. By providing next steps you elevate the conversation."
"My research shows 71% of households with $1 million in investible assets are actively looking for sources of new information to help them invest," he said. "It's not a great leap to go from looking for sources of new information to looking for a new advisor."
Weylman then asked the audience to circle the correct answer in his "self-analytic instrument" about the service platform the advisor provides. The choices were:
- Exceptional or acceptable
- Structured or spontaneous
- Personalized or institutionalized
- Proactive or reactive
- Definable or debatable
- Distinct or "just different"
"People will compare you to what they already have," he added. "By identifying what makes you distinct, rather than different, you immediately remove the comparison from the client's mind. If you build a distinct practice, you will close the door on client attrition."
For complete coverage of the 2012 IMCA Conference check out AdvisorOne's special home page.


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Starbucks Announces Media Marketing Initiatives; Australian Researchers Announce Persuasiveness of Caffeine
Posted by TheShot on 01 May 2006 | Tagged as: Café Society, Coffee Health, Consumer Trends, Starbucks
Some days you come across two stories that, when combined together, are far more interesting than they are separately. Case and point, two curiously complimentary (conspiratorial!?) stories that came across the wire today:
- Starbucks Announces Relationship With William Morris Agency; As the Coffee Retailer Transforms Traditional Music Distribution and Motion Picture Marketing, Talent Agency Enlisted to Identify Projects | Nachrichten |
- Health & Medical News – Coffee makes us say 'yes' – 01/05/2006
Now of course I am being facetious. The belief that you should "never assume a conspiracy where incompetence will suffice" is written gospel to me. (I would never make it in Italy.) But here's the lowdown on these two stories, and together they make for some interesting conspiracy fodder…
Would you like a latte with that home entertainment system?
First, Starbucks Coffee continuously seems to fashion itself as an entertainment company rather than a worldwide chain of coffee houses. Today they announced a relationship with the William Morris Agency (WMA). Yes, the agency that once represented Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley — and today represents many of their modern day equivalents — is jumping in the coffee sack with the company-formerly-known-as-Starbucks, who just brought us the movie Akeelah and the Bee this past weekend.
Quoted in the press release is Ken Lombard, president, Starbucks Entertainment (notice that curious division name?): "We are extremely excited about the value that William Morris is providing to our strategy and more importantly bringing quality entertainment choices to our customers."
First step, William Morris. Second step, Philip Morris.
Which brings us to the second article. As regular readers of TheShot know, I normally refuse to post on the medical blather du jour about caffeine and coffee — largely because unfiltered health information is the legacy of a scientifically ignorant mainstream media (and is one of the industry's most painfully obvious embarassments).
But researchers in Australia have apparently found that caffeine makes us more open to persuasion… and, perhaps, advertising. To quote the article:
Their experiments showed that "caffeine increases persuasion through instigating systematic processing of the message." But caffeine also puts people in a better mood, which makes them more likely to agree with a message, the researchers say.
You know you want that Pauly Shore anthology box set, don't you? Oh, and have another latte — it's on the house.
I forget… was George Orwell a former WMA client?
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2 Responses to "Starbucks Announces Media Marketing Initiatives; Australian Researchers Announce Persuasiveness of Caffeine"
[…] Starbucks has gotten bored with coffee and now is a media company wannabe, making book, CD, and movie deals, […]
[…] such as Israel and New Zealand, but perhaps prostitution rings are their next opportunity for growth in the entertainment industry. (There's no word yet if the William Morris Agency intends to begin casting for Pretty Woman: […]


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ZiiLABS has announced that it will demonstrate media acceleration capabilities enabling HD video playback for Google's Android open platform with its ZiiLABS ZMS-05 media processor and platforms. ZiiLABS will unveil the demonstration at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware, and key applications. ZiiLABS ZMS Processors work with Android to provide media acceleration for media-rich devices, purportedly offering HD video playback up to 1080p on handheld devices will be available on the Android platform. ZiiLABS is committed to enabling its OEM and ODM customers the choice to deliver media-rich mobile platforms based on Android. The Company expects to release its Android platform to OEM partners during the summer of 2009.
Tim Lewis, director of marketing for ZiiLABS, said, "Last month at the Consumer Electronics Show, we launched the ZMS-05 based upon our StemCell Computing architecture. We are now expanding our support beyond our existing SDK to anyone who wishes to leverage the Android platform. At CES, we demonstrated how HD video playback at 1080p can work on a handheld platform now, a feat which has been reported to only be achievable five years from now. By building upon our existing Linux SDK and optimized libraries, we can take full advantage of the highly efficient, scalable ZMS architecture to deliver media-rich Android platforms with unprecedented acceleration, including HD video playback and advanced graphics."
A public demonstration and images of the ZiiLABS ZMS-05 media processor powering Android will be available on February 16 on the company's website.


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June 21: Music for the shortest night
The Living Road
The sun had long gone down before anyone told me what the day was. "Somewhere there are pagans dancing, singing, and celebrating," she said, prefacing her momentary revelation. "Did you know that today was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice?"
"The pagans are probably having lots of sex too," I replied. It was the first thing I could think of. In all honesty, I hadn't noticed the day being that long at all. My friend and I both figured that we would pay close attention to the next day. It would be the second longest day, and that was close enough for us.
Thinking about the summer solstice got me in somewhat of an exotic mood. Maybe it was all the connotations associated with the day, or maybe the extra long day actually did affect me in a subconscious way. Whatever it was, I felt the need to break out of the normal mode.
I turned to my friend, "Hey, remember that sexy Spanish music we heard at the Twisted Branch? Didn't you buy that CD? I'm in the mood to listen to something sexy."
She gave it to me with instructions not to get too sexy with her new disk. I told her I'd try my best.
The artist is a female vocalist who goes by Lhasa. The name of the disk: The Living Road. From the first track I was absolutely captured by the spell of her voice.
I quickly discovered that this was not Spanish, as I had suspected, but French. I was fooled by the fact that a few songs are sung in Spanish. Lhasa sings in English, too. Although the songs are translated in the booklet that comes with the CD, it's not necessary to know what she's saying to understand what the track is about.
Her low, sometimes raspy vocals speak a kind of universal language. I hesitated to read the translation of many of the songs until listening to them multiple times. I didn't want the translation to ruin the mental images I conjured.
Once I finally gathered the courage to read them, I found gems like this on "La Confession": "I am not afraid to say that I betrayed you out of pure laziness and melancholy. Between you and the devil I chose the most comfortable... I'm not afraid to say I cheated. I put my most pure thoughts up for sale. I want to forget this whole idea of truth."
Ah, sooo sweet.
She sings these unexpected words over Algerian tangos and a Riviera waltz, accompanied by piano, strings, a plethora of percussive devices, guitar, bass, clarinets and organs.
Composed by Francois LaLonde and Jean Massicotte, the songs offer precise and rhythmically complex that show deep understanding of Mediterranean music. The soundscapes sit well beneath Lhasa's slow, drawn out phrases and bring energy to her sad song. I can't remember hearing a more pleasant combination of artist and producers this year.
I listened to Lhasa until the sun came up over Monticello. I saw it peaking over the ridge on my fourth full circle around Charlottesville on the 250 bypass. I had missed the longest day, so I challenged myself to see if I could make it all the way through the shortest night. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. But I had Lhasa's stories of The Living Road to keep me company.
The Living Road<br>PUBLICITY PHOTO


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Buskes, Gerard is the author of 'Topological Spaces From Distance to Neighborhood', published 1997 under ISBN 9780387949949 and ISBN 0387949941.[read more]
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Rainbow Kids Teacher Training
The 3-day Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training is a comprehensive, intensive and practical certification course. Be prepared to practice and learn to teach yoga while laughing, dancing, playing and singing!
The Rainbow Kids Yoga Teacher Training is well rounded and intensive, with practical theory, discussions and TONS OF FUN! Most importantly, you will come out with immediate tangible knowledge and tons of fabulous ideas to create original, captivating and fun yoga experiences for kids of all ages, anywhere in the world.
The course is for anyone who loves working with kids, and loves yoga. It is for yoga teachers wanting to specialize, and educators wanting to bring the benefits of yoga to their classrooms. It's also great for parents to find new ways to connect with their children and family, and share a healthy, fun, and non-competitive movement-based activity. It is also for anyone who wants to expand a current related profession, or learn a new one! You do not need to be a yoga teacher to take the course.
Our graduates teach everywhere using our diploma: schools, kindergartens, day care centers, community centers, Yoga studios, gyms, Yoga birthday parties and privately.
Training Details
Time: 9 AM to 6 PM daily
Dates: Friday – Sunday, June 6 – 8, 2014
Location: Sacred Brooklyn
Address: 197 Clifton Place Brooklyn, NY 11216
Tel: 347.715.4112
*The instructor of this training is Nayeli
**Rainbow Kids Yoga is a 500 Hour Registered Yoga School with Yoga Australia ,a 200 Hour Registered Yoga School with the US Yoga Alliance and with the Yoga Alliance UK, as well as a Registered Yoga School for Children Yoga and Pregnancy Yoga with the Yoga Alliance UK**
The Rainbow Kids Yoga certificate is recognized by the UK Yoga Alliance and is eligible for continuous education credits by the US Yoga Alliance.


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Mustang MonthlyHow To Engine
Steeda Ultimate Induction Pak Installation - How To Install 2011 Cold Air
Steeda's New Ultimate Induction Pak Improves Horsepower And Torque From The Mustang's New 5.0-Liter
It's impossible to think about the Steeda name and not think of late-model Mustang performance. Steeda got its start with the 5.0 Fox-body Mustang movement more than 20 years ago. Looks like the Mustang-and Steeda-have come full circle back to 5.0-liter in a new 412hp, double overhead cam V-8 for 2011. There's also a whopping 390 ft-lb of driving torque to get you going.
Steeda believes enthusiasts can achieve even more power with increased airflow and custom flash tuning. Steeda's Ultimate Induction Pak (PN 555-3935 for manual transmission or 555-3936 for automatic) consists of the High Velocity Cold Air Intake and SCT X3 flash tuning kit. It can deliver 44 additional horsepower and 52 ft-lb more torque over those already impressive 412/390 factory numbers. Imagine being able to harness this much power in about one hour from your Mustang's hot Coyote V-8. To achieve these numbers, you've got to follow instructions and make use of both the High Velocity Cold Air Intake and the SCT X3 flash tune kit.
We looked to both Summit Racing Equipment and Marlon Mitchell at Fly-Ford Racing for direction on our factory-fresh '11 Mustang GT. Summit sent us the Steeda kit; Marlon delivered the installation expertise.


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Purchased a 8x6 shed on a flash sale weekend got it for half the normal price I was a little apprehensive regarding quality but it is made to a high standard. The company were very helpful regarding delivery. Well satisfied
Service is brilliant! I ordered on a Sunday and received a phone call first thing in the Monday to arrange delivery, very impressed! The delivery was prompt, and the quality of the shed is brillliant. Fantastic, and would t hesitate to buy from again! Thanks


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In order to advance its Mission, all Benton County Office of Public Defense staff and contractors share the following Values.
We are constantly seeking out and developing inter-office and intra-office synergistic relationships through which to accomplish shared goals and create win-win outcomes.
Effectiveness & Efficiency
We are always choice-driven and introspective so as to maximize effectiveness (do that which has the most effect on advancing the Mission) and efficiency (while consuming the least amount of resources)
We take pride in quality work product in all aspects of what we do.
We recognize the fiduciary duty we owe to the taxpayers who provide the resources by which we can advance our Mission and always strive to maximize cost-effectiveness without jeopardizing quality.
Compassion & Fairness
We recognize that all members of the public with whom we interact and for whom we provide services are fellow community members and citizens and we will treat them with respect, compassion, and fairness.
Effective Risk Management
We will always be mindful of the liability related interests of Benton County and constantly seek to minimize the exposure of the County to liability risk.
Continuous Improvement
We recognize and embrace the dynamic nature of many factors that affect our ability to advance our Mission and as such, constantly seek out, and take action on, ways to improve every aspect of our operations. We will never settle for "good enough" or accept that the "way it has always been done" is necessarily the best way to continue to do it.


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In 1984, two young writers made their Spanish prose debut with a strange dual novel titled Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce (Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fanatic). The book was not a commercial smash and in truth is not a great novel, but it is noteworthy for launching the career of the Chilean co-author, Roberto Bolaño.
Whereas Bolaño continued to write and publish after Consejos, eventually delivering his second novel in 1993, his collaborator, Barcelona-born A. G. Porta, went dark and reportedly abandoned literature, not returning until 1999. (Bolaño claimed that Porta spent the decade and a half wrapped up within a deep study of Ulysses.) He quickly made up for lost time, publishing a total of five novels within a decade. The first of Porta's books to appear in English, 2006's The No World Concerto, has now arrived via Dalkey Archive Press in a co-translation by Darren Koolman and Rhett McNeil.
The No World Concerto is a strange, ambitious title, a work that attempts to combine the forms imagined by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg: It might best be described as a book that wants to exist as a performance of a score residing somewhere in the confines of Porta's skull. Or, as Porta himself writes, "it has an unsettling rhythm, like something that's always approaching but never quite arrives." In its constant insinuation that it is governed by obscure formal rules, the book feels reminiscent of writing from the famous French collective the Oulipo, yet it also has the feel of a Christopher Nolan film in its frequent upending of what we understand to be the book's reality, and the slick, sketchy landscape of surfaces in which it takes place. Sentence by sentence, The No World Concerto is stylistically unremarkable; the book's innovations, such as they are, occur at the level of large structural features that sit behind the action of this novel.
If I'm reading Porta correctly, the idea behind The No World Concerto is to construct a literary text as one might compose a twelve-tone musical composition. Before the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, composers chose a certain key in which to compose their works (that's why you may see, for instance, "in A Major" in the title of a composition). This method of composition necessarily privileges certain notes and harmonic combinations above others, an artifact that twelve-tone meant to change: instead of granting primacy to notes contained within a certain key, it would force a composer to use all twelve notes of the chromatic scale equally in any given piece — essentially, a composer must cycle through the notes with a systematic regularity.
In addition to leveling, twelve-tone also hastened the demise of music's tendency to have a beginning, middle, and end (listen to a composition of Schoenberg's at random, and you will be hard-pressed to say if it is just starting up or about to close down); thus, it necessarily brought to the fore previously neglected aspects of music. Modeling The No World Concerto on twelve-tone principles has much the same effect on Porta's book, which resolutely declines plot or character in the traditional sense. It seems to be arranged less according to standard plot dynamics than to certain recurrent images, phrases, and even minor episodes. As do the notes in serialist music, these images and phrases appear with equal measure (perhaps even according to some preordained set of permutations). And, like musical themes, the plot points in this book continually recur, each time in elaborated and embellished form, only finally exhausting themselves in their ultimate expression.
This is all well and good, but as the great Oulipo author Harry Mathews once said, no matter how ingenious or intriguing the idea behind a literary experiment, its execution must produce "valid literary results." So how does The No World Concerto stack up?
The book is narrated by an aging, down-on-his-luck screenwriter who has holed up in a drab Parisian hotel in order to complete a film script. He may or may not be having an affair with a young, beautiful pianist — he is for certain writing his screenplay about one, and occasionally he receives missives that he believes are from a girl much like her, the missives containing fragments of a novel-in-progress that the girl is writing. The screenplay that he is writing is almost identical to this real-life situation: it involves a pianist who has quit her career in music in order to write a novel obsessed with Wittgenstein and space aliens, which is almost exactly like the one the girl may be sending the screenwriter. Porta occasionally attempts to fill out the characters of the never-named screenwriter and the girl (there are very few proper names in this book), but for the most part they remain the playthings of the book's desire to mirror and entwine these stories.
This conceit plays out for nearly 400 pages of dense, single-paragraph prose. The plot feels almost salutary, as though Porta has included it simply because he needed to draw from the traditional novelistic toolkit in order to have something to hang his musical scheme upon. What little story there is builds around the fact that the screenwriter, estranged from his wife, is slowly running out of money and is accepting the fact that his life is a failure, while also hitting on every young, desirable woman in sight. The plot's other half involves the girl having second thoughts about quitting her career as a pianist to become a writer.
The book the girl is attempting to write is to be titled The No World Concerto, and it grows out of a bastardization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It begins with the statement "The No World is all that is the case," emending Wittgenstein's famous sentence with that single negative, and its skeleton consists of invented quotes that are attributed to the aphoristic text. The book-within-a-book The No World Concerto is at one point described as, "simply a name for the all-encompassing thought, the thought of which all things ultimately consist," which is not a bad description of the main point of Porta's book. It seems that he means to imply that the screenwriter and the girl are simply emanations of one another's subjectivities, like the famous drawing of Escher's that shows two hands drawing each other. As such, the book constantly pivots around thoughts that one writes and the other has, as, for instance, here:
The story is his own invention, but he knows he borrows heavily from the girl, from the stories she tells him, from the extracts of her novel she reads to him or that get delivered to his hotel, with commentaries scribbled in the margins, which he incorporates into his own narrative. It's dawn. The girl's looking out from the balcony, standing almost exactly where she was the previous night while observing the front of the Grand Central Station, as if deliberating whether or not to go there….
There is no doubt that Porta's book is a carefully conceived and painstakingly rendered literary experiment, and noteworthy insofar as it brings Schoenberg's and Wittgenstein's ideas into conversation. Its main strengths are its inquiry into what exactly fiction is, and its twinned examination into how we conceive of the world around us and how it conceives of us. These aspects make the book, from time to time, a genuinely worthwhile experience.
But much of The No World Concerto drags: it is a far better book in the aggregate than in its particulars. Porta's examinations of the idea that the world is, ultimately, our impressions of it, as well as its portrayals of youth and old age, too frequently feel clichéd. Moreover, it is a lengthy and dense work, and too often one must wade through swamps of prose in order to finally reach a reasonably luminous moment. It is probably true that to have trimmed the fat would have been contrary to Porta's method — because here the fat is an integral part of the work — but that makes the book no less responsible for its failures.
In the end, The No World Concerto is perhaps just what an experiment should be: a thing that succeeds in some ways and fails in others, with both its successes and failures illuminating the deeper nature of that thing it is experimenting upon. One hopes there are writers paying attention to the results.


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Buenos Dias won for the first time in the United States, saving ground throughout en route to a clear victory in the $49,000 turf feature on Thursday at Hollywood Park.
Providing Hall of Fame trainer Ron McAnally with his first win of the spring-summer meet, the 5-year-old Peintre Celebre horse out of the Rainbow Quest mare Buenos Aires ended a nine race losing streak.
The victory was the 721st of McAnally's career at Hollywood Park. He ranks fourth on the all-time list in Inglewood, trailing Bobby Frankel (952), Charlie Whittingham (859) and Mike Mitchell (810).
Eight of Buenos Dias' defeats had come in this country. His last win before his 7-1 upset Thursday was in a listed stakes at Clairefontaine in France on Aug. 30, 2008.
An Irish bred owned by Charles Cella, Buenos Dias ran the 1 ½ miles under Brice Blanc in 2:26.76. He paid $16.40, $7.20 and $3.60 as the second longest shot in the field of five.
The win was his third in 19 lifetime starts. He has earned $223,412.
After pacesetter and 17-10 second choice Lease Of Life began to tire around the far turn, Buenos Dias moved decisively to the lead on the rail and was not menaced in the final quarter of a mile.
Romp, the 6-1 third choice, paid $5.20 and $3 after finishing three-quarters of a length in front of 9-10 favorite Falcon Rock. The show price on Falcon Rock, a distant second behind Acclamation in the Jim Murray Memorial Handicap on May 15, was $2.10. Muhannak and Lease Of Life completed the order of finish.
The defeat was the 10th in a row for Muhannak since his victory in the inaugural Breeders' Cup Marathon in 2008 at Santa Anita.
Buenos Dias was the first of three winners that returned double digits in the Pick Six, which began with a carryover of $93,572. An additional $510,981 was wagered Thursday. There were 10 perfect tickets. Each was worth $37,724.
The day's final race was taken by 6-1 shot Milty Way. The 3-year-old Stephen Got Even colt gave apprentice jockey Alex Gonzalez his first victory in Southern California.
A recent arrival to Hollywood Park, Gonzalez, 18, had been riding at Golden Gate Fields where he is fifth in the standings with 64 victories.
Racing continues Friday night. Post time is 7:05 p.m.
At the conclusion of the eighth and final race – approximately 10:30 p.m. – a concert starring Naked Eyes will begin at the North Park Lawn.


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A definite prediction of string theory is the existence of a scalar field, the dilaton. The presence of the dilaton generally leads to strong violations of the equivalence principle and thus describe a kind of gravitational force radically different from what we experience. String loop corrections, however, may render phenomenologically acceptable the region of the theory characterized by large values of the dilaton field i.e. the region with a strong tree level-coupling. Interestingly, in this framework, violations of the (weak) equivalence principle should be observed in the next satellite-based generation of experiments. A dilaton running towards infinity can also play the role of coupled dark energy and ease the so-called "cosmic coincidence" problem.


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Robin A. Ward and Jennifer Albritton
This article includes an original artwork using geometry. Art such as this can foster understanding and appreciation of fundamental concepts across fields.
Keith Nabb, Jaclyn Murawska, Jessie Doty, Annie Fredlund, Stewart Hofer, Casie McAllister, Sami Miller, Zoe Nassif, Savannah Pearson, Abby Pike-Nobile, and Emma Welch
Teachers will inevitably encounter mathematical problem contexts that suggest mainstream views, incorporate deficit language, or make inequities visible. This project reports on a small intervention in which prospective elementary teachers were asked to rewrite a mathematics problem exercising the cultural competence needed in both daily teaching and the critical examination of curricular documents.
Allison W. McCulloch, Nina G. Bailey, Kristen Fye, and Gayle Scott
In this article, we examine the ways in which the creation of a third space can bridge the divide between coursework and practice for preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PSTs) taking a technology, pedagogy, and content course. A university-based instructor partnered with two high school teachers to create a space in which PSTs draw upon and use both academic and practitioner knowledge while creating technology-based tasks for high school students to use. Our results revealed increased focus on pedagogical decisions in areas such as technology-task design and questioning techniques. The data also indicate that the success of this collaboration was connected to fair distribution of work, feeling valued, and personal benefit and challenges centered on maintaining rejection of hierarchy.
Cara Djonko-Moore
Early childhood practitioners consider practical strategies to innovate mathematics through cultural responsiveness and funds of knowledge.
Christopher R. Rakes, Rebecca J. Kirvan, and Ashley Witkowski
Students explore equivalent radical expressions using the relationship between area and side lengths of a square.
Ryan Gillespie, Julie M. Amador, and Abraham Wallin
Rigorous assessments might be stripping students of their ability to know before a classroom assessment whether their learning is proficient.
Ceire Monahan, Mika Munakata, and Ashwin Vaidya
Students explore probability in an open‐ended environment by participating in two activities that employ Monte Carlo simulations.
Mervenur Belin and Gülseren Karagöz Akar
The understandings prospective mathematics teachers develop by focusing on quantities and quantitative relationships within real numbers have the potential for enhancing their future students' understanding of real numbers. In this article, we propose an instructional sequence that addresses quantitative relationships for the construction of real numbers as rational number sequences. We found that the instructional sequence enhanced prospective teachers' understanding of real numbers by considering them as quantities and explaining them by using rational number sequences. In particular, results showed that prospective teachers reasoned about fractions and decimal representations of rational numbers using long division, the division algorithm, and diagrams. This further prompted their reasoning with decimal representations of rational and irrational numbers as rational number sequences, which leads to authentic construction of real numbers. Enacting the instructional sequence provides lenses for mathematics teacher educators to notice and eliminate difficulties of their students while developing relationships among multiple representations of real numbers.
Zandra de Araujo, Samuel Otten, Wenmin Zhao, Jessica Kamuru, and Jaepil Han
Encourage student collaboration in problem solving by altering the who, when, and what of the homework videos you use in flipped lessons.


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De Blob 2 is a fairly simple platformer with clear objectives. This further aided by the compass, which can be brought up by pressing Y on the Xbox 360, or Triangle on the PS3. As such, a step-by-step walkthrough is unnecessary. Instead, we will show you how to get every collectible that doesn't appear on the compass. That is, we'll show you the location for every Inspiration, Gallery Card, and Style Swirl pickup in each level.
Keep in mind that the collectibles don't "ghost": once you grab something, it disappears from the world with no indication that it was ever there. This isn't a problem for the collectibles that reset once you leave a level. However, if you're not keeping careful track of what collectibles you have found and which ones you have yet to find, you might wind up running around in circles trying to get that last object.
Some collectibles are rewards for completing story or secondary objectives. We'll list these first. Your priority when you play a new area should be to clear its story objectives first anyway, followed by its secondary objectives, due to the time limit. After you're free of time constraints, you'll be able to snag all the other collectibles you missed otherwise. Feel free to grab a collectible you see anyway during your missions, but keep track of them so you don't waste your time looking for something you already own.
We've got screenshots for each location, separated in pairs. Between the screenshots and our text descriptions, you should be able to find everything pretty easily. Note that half of the stages change their names once you clear them. Don't let that confuse you! We list both names for headers so you can keep them straight.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii Cheats
LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Cheats
LEGO The Lord of the Rings Cheats
Donkey Kong Country Returns Cheats
LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues Cheats
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 Cheats
WWE '12 Cheats
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X360 Forza Motorsport 4
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de Blob 2 at IGN
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There are a total of (2) military contracts listed for Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Incorporated in the MiC database. Only those contracts with a value of $6.5 million USD or greater are reported by the U.S. DoD. * Indicates a "small business" classification per the US DoD. ** indicates a "small disadvantaged business" per the U.S. DoD. NOTE: the U.S. DoD only publicly reports contracts valued at $6.5 million USD or greater.
Contracts are listed by awarded date descending.
Total: $1,013,279,142
12/19/2008 - Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Incorporated - $9,950,000
12/21/2007 - Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Incorporated - $1,003,329,142


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CraftKitsandSupplies has a large selection of St. Patrick's Day Crafts and Supplies. St. Patrick's Day Crafts like, Leprechaun wall hanging crafts, Pot of Gold crafts, and much more.
We also carry a complete line of Beads, Birdhouse Kits, Christmas Crafts, Craft Supplies, Kids Crafts, Misc Crafts, Wood Craft Kits, and much more.


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Robot parade: Rat to cat to elephant size
The Jetsons were lucky enough to be able to palm off their housekeeping tasks on Rosie the Robot. We're not yet that technically advanced, but Paul Perrone wants to close the gap.
As every good nerd knows, the first step in creating a cybernetic domestic slave race is achieving autonomous mobility, and it's to that end that Perrone has been pursuing his latest project. Sort of.
Perrone heads up Team Jefferson, a Charlottesville-based technical swat team that has set its sights on a program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The first DARPA Challenge, held in March, offered a prize of $1 million to the team that could design and build an unmanned vehicle with the mettle to tackle a 175-mile course set up in the Mohave desert. Unfortunately, the performances turned in at the inaugural race proved to be decidedly unimpressive.
"I think there was one that tipped over at the starting line, and some of them crashed into the walls at the beginning," laughs Perrone. Even the best showing, turned in by the vehicle sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University, managed to go only seven and a half miles.
Thus, the money rolled over into the next event, so Team Jefferson will face plenty of competition at the rematch in October 2005 thanks to the doubled prize. Still, Perrone, 36, doesn't seem worried.
"We're definitely going to have far more than they were expecting in March," he says confidently.
The source of this pride is Tommy, a four-wheeled fusion of torpedo and taxi that Team Jefferson has been feverishly crafting– or, more specifically, its brain.
"We're focusing on a platform, an operating system, if you will, for robotics," he says of the MAX software developed by Perrone Robotics. "We're building a platform for extensibility, so that our software can run on anything from rat sized to cat sized to elephant sized."
The DARPA Challenge grew out of the military's interest in the promising technology. Unmanned robots mean fewer human casualties.
"We're talking about things from robots to run around doing surveillance in military facilities to robots mounted on little R[adio] C[ontrolled] cars that can run around in caves in Afghanistan looking for terrorists," explains Perrone excitedly.
Developing software for such devices– even perhaps a robot vacuums like the Roomba– is a sensitive task.
"Your laptop computer isn't going to run amok. It doesn't have legs and arms, and it's not going to attack you," says Perrone ominously, "but once you start putting these things in Roombas and fear for the life of your cat or dog, you have to leverage in certain safety measures."
Or, depending on the situation, perhaps not. If Perrone has his way, we might soon be searching for terrorists by dispatching a horde of homicidal vacuum cleaners.
Paul Perrone


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Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]
(Bulk: 1936-1944)
Scull, Howard Myers, 1913-1944
Extent: 1.2 linear feet (3 boxes)
Howard Myers Scull was a flight surgeon with the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He died in a plane crash on July 4, 1944. This collection documents his early life and education, his World War II service, and the way in which his family mourned his death. Researchers will find photographs, correspondence, diaries, and official documents relating to Scull's education at Lafayette College and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, his military career (including training and service in England), and his death.


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RADNOR, Pa. (RNS) "How many of you have ever studied a parish budget?" the Rev. David Couturier asked the 11 Catholic priests-in-training seated before him. After a few beats, just one hand went up, tentatively.
"That's not unusual," Couturier told them. "Just unfortunate."
It's also why these seminarians were at a Villanova University conference center in the leafy Philadelphia suburbs, part of a first-of-its-kind program that aims to provide some real-world grounding to the theological studies that dominate their course work.
It's a bit of "operative theology" to complement the "abstract theology," as Couturier put it.
Couturier, a Capuchin Franciscan and a popular consultant on church management issues, was one of several guest lecturers this summer. He spoke about parish planning — "The budget is your best theological statement," he said. "It will tell you where the priorities of the parish are" — while the Rev. Michael White, who has written widely about building up congregations, probed the principles of effective leadership.
By the end of the course in mid-July, the students will hear talks on finances, human resources, facilities maintenance and security as well as a crash course in civil law.
The reason, and urgency, behind the program is simple: Today more than ever, Catholic parishes are complex entities that require a patient manager and a watchful overseer who can lead a team of collaborators, not just a staff of employees.
Once upon a time, the parish staff usually consisted of a janitor and a parish secretary, maybe a volunteer, while a phalanx of nuns and brothers would teach the students, clean the rectory and fix the meals. No more.
Today, there are pastoral and finance councils, and lay people fill most paid positions, which mean a payroll to juggle and benefits to parse. In addition, parishes have to comply with a range of church and civil statutes on everything from child safety to environmental waste to landmark status for historic buildings.
Moreover, all of this is happening at a time of declining attendance and decreasing contributions that are forcing pastors to do more with less.
Parsimonious pastors also know that a parish is still a cash business, a reality that is regularly driven home by the numerous stories of parish fraud and embezzlement that hurt the bottom line as well as the credibility of a church that is still trying to recover from the sex abuse crisis.
"The younger people, especially, if they see incompetence, they're going to walk," said Charles Zech, director of the Center for Church Management and Business Ethics at the Villanova School of Business and the prime mover behind this program.
Zech also noted another crucial factor: the ongoing priest shortage in the Catholic Church means newly minted clergy are likely to be running their own parish just two or three years after ordination, and may wind up leading several parishes not long after that.
That's a big change from just a decade or two ago, when new priests could expect to serve 10-15 years as an associate pastor. They used that time to learn the ropes from experienced pastors about everything from who to call to fix the boiler to who to trust when it came to financial reporting — and how to make sure there were checks and balances on everything.
"These guys are also likely to be living alone," said Zech. "Unless they find a mentor or someone to help them get adjusted, they're going to make a lot of mistakes."
That's why Zech pushed for a decade to start a program to give new priests a head start. Last summer he was finally able to launch the first Seminarian Leadership Institute, a five-week course that works in conjunction with the real-life experience that the seminarians are getting as they intern in local parishes.
Of the 11 men in this year's class, five are from the Philadelphia archdiocese's St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, three are from the nearby Diocese of Allentown, two are from the Wilmington Diocese in Delaware, and one is from across the river in Camden, N.J. Nine are still in seminary, and two are "transitional deacons," meaning they will be ordained priests next spring, with a parish the next stop.
To be sure, seminarians these days are often older, sometimes in their 50s, and almost all of them have some previous work experience.
This crop of students, for example, includes a former newspaper sports reporter, a retired Navy pilot, and a onetime insurance executive, and some had studied business in college.
That's still not enough, said Auxiliary Bishop Timothy Senior, the rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. Senior, who raised the money to fund the institute, has more administrative experience than most priests: he has an MBA and a master's degree in social work, and he worked in Catholic Charities for years and oversaw clergy personnel for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Senior quickly discovered that the top reason that stressed-out priests requested a new assignment was to get out from under the heavy administrative burdens, and he wants to help new priests avoid that pitfall.
"It's not that you have to be able to do everything," Senior said. "But you certainly have to be able to recognize what needs to be done, and how to get the right people to do it."
Senior stressed that he doesn't want to turn priests into businessmen; instead, he wants them to use good management practices to help them operate a parish more efficiently, giving them more time to be the spiritual leaders they were called to be.
"To try to impose a straight business model on a parish is bound to fail," said Albert Camburn, 42, a seminarian from Allentown who worked in construction for years before entering the seminary. Camburn was one of the student's in this summer's program.
As a foreman, Camburn said he learned some financial lessons that will serve him well as a priest, but the "hierarchy" of a work site didn't help him develop strong people skills.
"I got very accustomed to barking orders. I didn't want feedback," he said. "But that doesn't work in a parish. It may have at one time, but not anymore."


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The Department of Pediatrics of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Pediatric subspecialty programs: Our Subspecialties include: Adolescent Medicine Allergy Bone Marrow Transplantation Cardiology Child Advocacy Child Development Hospitalists Emergency Medicine Endocrinology Gastroenterology General Academic Pediatrics Hematology/Oncology Infectious Diseases Newborn Medicine Neurology Pulmonology Rheumatology Assistant, Associate, or Professor positions in the tenure or non-tenure tracks at the University of Pittsburgh with rank and salary commensurate with experience and academic credentials. Positions are open to all applicants who hold doctoral level education (MD, DO, PhD), are board certified or board eligible, are qualified for medical licensure in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and meet the minimum position credentials. The University of Pittsburgh is an Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity Employer and values equality of opportunity, human dignity and diversity. EEO/AMM/F/Vets/Disabled
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Reveal Chagas: Clinical Evidence of the Implantable Cardiac Monitor in Patients With Chagas Disease
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01539161
Recruitment Status : Terminated (Extremely low enrollment rate)
First Posted : February 27, 2012
Last Update Posted : October 12, 2016
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
The study "Reveal Chagas: Clinical Evidence of the Implantable Cardiac Monitor in Patients with Chagas Disease" is a prospective, multicenter, randomized study that is being conducted at several centers in Latin America with commercially available products.
The primary study hypothesis is that patients with implantable cardiac monitors will have a shorter time to the decision to treat for electrical or arrhythmic disorders during the follow-up period.
The geography includes Argentina and Colombia.
|Condition or disease
|Chagas Disease Heart Diseases
|Device: Implantable Cardiac Monitor Procedure: Standard of Care
|Phase 4
The purpose is to study the possible benefit of a superior treatment decision rate for cardiac arrhythmias (brady- and or/ tachyarrhythmias) using an implantable cardiac monitor (ICM) in patients with Chagas Disease diagnosed by serology, who are asymptomatic and/or minimally symptomatic. Patients that meet inclusion criteria of the study will be randomized to standard care or standard care plus ICM.
Approximately half of the patients will receive an ICM. All patients will be followed for 36 months. It is expected that the enrollment phase will last 1 year, and that the total study duration will be 4 years. The study is expected to end in 2017. One hundred and two patients are needed for 95% confidence level and 80% statistical power to be randomized into the study, at approximately 5 centers in Latin America. Patients will be considered enrolled once they have signed the Informed Consent. The following additional parameters will also be collected:
- Recorded arrhythmic events stored within the ICM (bradyarrhythmia and tachyarrhythmia)
- Time duration spent in arrhythmia and incidence of symptomatic arrhythmias in patients with an ICM.
- Clinical data on subject outcomes and changes in heart failure as assessed by heart failure hospitalizations, New York Heart Association class and mortality.
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|12 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Parallel Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|Reveal Chagas: Clinical Evidence of the Implantable Cardiac Monitor in Patients With Chagas Disease
|Study Start Date :
|July 2013
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|April 2015
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|April 2015
Experimental: Reveal XT plus SOC
Standard of care treatment plus the Reveal XT Implantable Cardiac Monitor. Treatment will follow the same schedule of the standard of care arm regarding exam, ECG and Holter every 6 months, and an Echo, Chest X-Ray and Stress test every 12 months. The addition will be device interrogation at every 6 month exam. Participation will last 36 months.
Device: Implantable Cardiac Monitor
9529 Reveal XT Implantable Cardiac Monitor as well as the use of 9539 Reveal XT Patient Assistant.
Other Names:
Active Comparator: Standard of Care
Standard of care arm as described by exam, ECG and Holter every 6 months, and an Echo, Chest X-Ray and Stress test every 12 months. Participation will last 36 months.
Procedure: Standard of Care
Standard of care arm including exam, ECG and Holter every 6 months, and an Echo, Chest X-Ray and Stress test every 12 months.
Other Name: SOC
- To compare the time to the physician's decision to treat for electrical disorders (brady/tachyarrhythmias) between the two randomized groups. [ Time Frame: 36 months ]The primary endpoint is time to the first decision to implant a device (IPG, CRT-P, ICD or CRT-D) or prescribe anti-arrhythmic drugs.
- Summarize the recorded arrhythmic events stored within the ICM (bradyarrhythmia and tachyarrhythmia. [ Time Frame: 36 months ]Compute summary statistics for arrhythmic events recorded during follow-up, whether or not related to symptoms, for all patients in the ICM arm, including the total number, distribution (e.g., minimum, maximum, median, quartiles, and standard deviation), number per patient year, number of patients having events and percentage of patients having events. Summary statistics for bradyarrhythmia and tachyarrhythmia events will also be computed separately.
- Compute the time duration spent in arrhythmias for ICM patients. [ Time Frame: 36 months ]Compute the total duration each ICM patient spends in, 1) atrial arrhythmias and 2) ventricular arrhythmias during the entire follow-up period, and their corresponding distribution (e.g., minimum, maximum, median, quartiles, standard deviation). Compute the average duration each patient spends in an, 1) atrial arrhythmia event, and 2) a ventricular arrhythmia event, and the corresponding distributions.
- Compute the incidence of symptomatic arrhythmias in patients with an ICM [ Time Frame: 36 months ]Compute the incidence rate of symptomatic arrhythmias in patients with an ICM, overall, and for bradyarrhythmias and tachyarrhythmias separately.
- Compare the time to the physician's decision to treat with components of the composite primary endpoint between randomization arms. [ Time Frame: 36 months ]
Individually compare the time to the physicians' decision to treat with the following between the two randomization arms:
- A device of any type (IPG, CRT-P, ICD or CRT-D)
- A pacemaker (IPG)
- Anti-arrhythmic drug therapy
- A defibrillator (ICD or CRT-D) or prescribe anti-arrhythmic drug therapy
- Compare the mortality rate between randomization arms. [ Time Frame: 36 months ]Compare the mortality rate between randomization arms.
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|21 Years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Have Chagas disease, confirmed by two serological tests.
- Provide evidence through any of the following diagnosis methods: Rest ECG, 24 hour Holter monitoring, electrophysiological study, stress test or loop monitoring, at least one electrical disorder consistent with sinus bradycardia greater than 45 and lower than 60 bpm, sinus arrest not greater than 2.0 seconds, second degree atrial sinus block, intraventricular conduction disorders such as right branch, left branch or a bifascicular blockage type, first degree A-V blockage, or of type I second degree AV Block without associated bradycardia, atrial and/or ventricular arrhythmias that do NOT constitute an indication for pacemaker implant, ICD or mapping and radio frequency ablation.
- Be asymptomatic or having minimal isolated unspecific symptoms not consistent with cardiac arrest, aborted sudden death, syncope, frequent and recurrent palpitations, cardiac failure, and lower extremity edema.
- Have ejection fraction of left ventricle >35%
- Be able to give his/her written informed consent.
- Subject should be > 21 years old.
- Be able to return for follow-up visits as required.
Exclusion Criteria:
- Class I or II (according to AHA/HRS/ESC guidelines) indication for final implantation of pacemaker, ICD, or cardiac resynchronizer.
- Exhibit extrinsic causes of sinus dysfunction or A-V blockage.
- Exhibit infiltrative myocardial diseases such as tumors or associated valvular defects.
- Suffer any concurrent disease that may limit the follow up or evaluation.
- Suffer aftereffects of cerebral embolism.
- Suffer ablation or isolation of pulmonary veins previous to their inclusion in the study.
- Not being able or willing to comply with the follow-up schedule.
- Have previous lesions of the spinal cord or aftereffects of skull trauma.
- Have a record of epilepsy.
- Receive pharmacological treatment for other diseases that may modify the autonomic function.
- Have a record of myocardial infarction.
- History of alcohol abuse or drug addiction.
- History of emotional instability, unstable psychiatric disorders or are under treatment for such disorders.
- Have previously implanted pacemakers, cardiodefibrillators or CRT systems.
- Are included or intend to participate in another study of devices during the course of this study.
- Have a clinical condition that may limit life expectancy to < 36 months.
- Use of Antiarrhythmic drugs, except Beta Blockers
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01539161
|Hospital General de Agudos "Juan Fernandez"
|Buenos Aires, Caba, Argentina
|Hospital Interzonal General de Agudos "General José de San Martin"
|La Plata, Argentina
|Fundacion Cardioinfantil
|Bogota, Colombia
|Hospital Militar Central
|Bogota, Colombia
|Study Chair:
|Claudio Muratore, MD
|Principal Investigator:
|Diego Venagas, MD
|Study Chair:
|Jose Carlos Pachon Mateos, MD
|Principal Investigator:
|Luis Medesani, MD
|Argentina - Hospital Interzonal Gernal de Agudos "General José de San Martin"
|Responsible Party:
|Medtronic Cardiac Rhythm and Heart Failure
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|Other Study ID Numbers:
Reveal Chagas
|First Posted:
|February 27, 2012 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|October 12, 2016
|Last Verified:
|October 2016
Chagas Disease
Reveal XT
Implantable Cardiac Monitor
Chagas Disease
Heart Diseases
Cardiovascular Diseases
Euglenozoa Infections
Protozoan Infections
Parasitic Diseases


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A broad palette of shuffled drum grooves for anything from classic rock to modern pop.
Theres something about those swung eighth and sixteenth notes not only theoretically, but physically. The moment you nudge those seemingly insignificant notes back, you instantly get a completely different feel and rhythm. Playing shuffled grooves, on the other hand, is far from simply backing off on notes its a subtile art of timing and finesse. Listen to greats like Bernard Purdie, Jeff Porcaro and Steve Jordan, who all have immortalized and reinvented the shuffled groove in numerous timeless songs, and youll hear it.
The Shuffled Backbeats MIDI pack comes with a comprehensive collection of MIDI inspired by classic songs spanning several genres, all with that distinct swing feel. Expect the unmistakable blues-tinged rock backbeats, the ghost note-ridden AOR grooves as well as a host of laid-back variations, perfect for any ballad or soul track.
This is the ultimate broad-stroke palette of grooves for use in any creative context from classic rock to modern pop.


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ATV-3 launch
ESA's third Automated Transfer Vehicle, Edoardo Amaldi, has been launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, with a night-time liftoff at 05:34 CET (04:34 GMT). Edoardo Amaldi is the heaviest payload ever launched by an Ariane rocket. Watch replay
More pictures of ATV are available on ESA's Flickr photostream.