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Current Events
Suits Seek Choice For Poor Youths
A conservative advocacy group took its crusade for parental choice in education to the courts in June, demanding that groups of low-income parents and children in Chicago and Los Angeles receive state vouchers for private school tuition.
In suits filed in Illinois and California state courts, the parents and children named in the cases argue that the local public schools are unconstitutional because they offer an education that is inadequate, unsafe, and lacking in parental control and involvement. "These people do not really enjoy access to the American dream,'' says Clint Bolick, the vice president and litigation director for the Institute for Justice, the Washington-based group that organized the suits. "They do not enjoy the opportunity to send their children to a safe, decent school.''
The lawsuits cite various provisions of the state and U.S. constitutions in seeking rulings that would allow the children named to leave the public schools and take their share of state education funding with them. The Chicago suit, for example, points out that the Illinois constitution requires the state to "provide for an efficient system of high-quality public educational institutions and services.''
"By any objective measure,'' the lawsuit argues, "defendants have not provided'' the Chicago students with "efficient or highquality public educational institutions.'' The appropriate remedy, the suit contends, would be to allow the children to take their "pro rata'' share of state education funding--currently about $2,500--and use it to enroll in private schools or other public schools.
The lawsuits are an attempt to achieve through the courts what advocates of private school choice have been unable to obtain through most state legislatures or Congress. But a number of legal analysts are skeptical that the strategy will be successful. "If they get to trial, it will be an interesting seminar to rattle the cage of the establishment,'' says John Coons, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who supports the voucher concept for low-income families. "But it just does not seem likely that any judge will give them a forum to air it; that is, it won't get past a motion to dismiss.''
Findings Favor Mainstreaming
The degree to which severely disabled students can, or should, be integrated into regular classrooms has been one of the hottest debates in special education in recent years. A new federally financed study conducted by the California Research Institute at San Francisco State University is sure to add fuel to that fire.
The study, the results of which were published in May in a newsletter of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, suggests that severely disabled students' degree of success in school may be directly correlated with the amount of time they spend in regular classrooms.
The finding, says Pamela Hunt, coordinator of the study, "certainly helps decide the argument for more inclusion for kids with disabilities.''
Research conducted on the issue to date has found that students who spend more time in regular classrooms may do better in a single area. No other study so far, Hunt asserts, has linked integration to positive outcomes "across the board.''
The students in more mainstream settings, the researchers found, had better communication and social skills than their lessintegrated peers. They also had achieved more of the objectives outlined for them in their individualized education plans and were seen as more independent. Moreover, the students' parents had better expectations for their future, and both teachers and family members said the children had more frequent "normalized, friendly'' interactions with nondisabled classmates.
Teachers Declared Public Officials
The Connecticut Supreme Court in April issued a ruling that could make it much tougher for teachers in the state to prove they have been slandered.
In overturning a $10,000 damage award to a junior high school teacher who had been accused of physically and verbally abusing students, the court ruled that teachers are "public officials.'' That designation will make it more difficult for a teacher to prove character defamation because the burden of proof in such cases is greater for public officials than for private citizens.
"Robust and wide-open debate concerning the conduct of the teachers in the schools of this state is a matter of great public importance,'' Justice Robert Callahan wrote. "In the classroom, teachers are not mere functionaries. Rather, they conceive and apply both policy and procedure.''
The decision brings to four the number of states in which courts have ruled that teachers are public officials. Arizona, Illinois, and Oklahoma are the other three. In contrast, judges in four other states--California, Maine, Texas, and Virginia--have said teachers are not public figures.
The Connecticut case involved John Kelley, a former science teacher in Groton. Although the state board of education found some confirmation of allegations that Kelley improperly touched and verbally harassed students, it declined to take away his license. Kelley then sued one of the students who brought charges against him, parents of several others who accused him of harassment, and members of the Groton school board.
A superior court jury ordered two of the eight defendants--a school board member who gave a copy of the complaint to a local newspaper and a parent who tried to talk another potential witness into testifying against the teacher--to pay Kelley $10,000 in damages. But before an appeals court could review the decision, the state's highest court took up the case and overturned the judgment and monetary award.
Truants' Parents Do Time In School
The Paterson, N.J., school system and a local judge have come up with a new strategy to combat chronic student absenteeism: They are putting the parents of truants to work in the schools.
Since February, Nestor Guzman, a municipal court judge in the city, has sentenced at least 30 parents of habitually truant students to spend between one week and a month each scrubbing graffiti off school walls, serving as hall monitors, filing papers, and performing other menial tasks.
While elsewhere around the country, judges have sentenced parents to attend school with their truant children, Paterson is believed to be the only district that requires parents to perform services for the schools.
Local school officials already are hailing the initiative as a success. After only two months, average daily attendance rose to 93 percent, up from 91 percent in the 1990-91 school year. The program, says Laval Wilson, Paterson's new superintendent of schools, "indicates to parents that they have a major responsibility legally to get young people to school, and, if their young people are not going to attend, there are some personal penalties associated with it.''
Critics of punitive measures such as those used in Paterson say the programs are short-term cures that do not address the root of the problem. "I have deep concerns about whether it's going to result in anything in the long run,'' says William Rioux, the executive director of the National Committee for Citizens in Education. Too many children, he argues, see no value in an education. "Mandating parental involvement is tempting because it's so frustrating to take the longer, more time-consuming route, but that is the only one that's going to pay off over time. You can't force people to do something they don't really see the innate value of.''
Whittle's Coup Sparks Reaction
The news set the education world abuzz: Chris Whittle, the chairman of the communications and marketing firm that bears his name, had persuaded Yale University president Benno Schmidt Jr. to quit his prestigious post to lead the Edison Project, a company effort to create a system of innovative for-profit schools.
The project has a grandiose goal: to redesign the elementary and secondary school from the ground up and then open as many as 1,000 private schools nationwide that would charge tuition no greater than the average perpupil cost of public education, currently about $5,500 a year. Some educators and business leaders have doubts about the economics of Whittle's plan. Others contend that the project will shift attention from public school reform and help drain the public sector of its most able pupils.
But most observers agreed that by hiring an educator who has been at the helm of one of the nation's pre-eminent universities for the past six years, Whittle has heightened the credibility and visibility of his fledgling project. "People take things quite seriously when the president of Yale resigns to do something,'' said Theodore Sizer, the head of the Coalition for Essential Schools. "That is quite a coup.''
Schmidt admits that his decision to take the new post was a difficult one. "This was an opportunity to contribute to the future of the country,'' he says. "Those of us in the greatest higher education system in the world really need to worry more about the foundation of the system because it is not working well.''
As news of the move became known, some people quickly criticized Schmidt for choosing to make his contribution in the private sector. Arthur Levine, the chairman of the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard University's graduate school of education, says the move "is sending entirely the wrong message to the education community. It would have been exciting for Benno Schmidt to move into public schooling.''
Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities, a book Schmidt says influenced his decision to join the Whittle project, agreed with Levine. "If it is idealism which motivates him, I don't understand why he needs to commercialize his intelligence,'' Kozol says. "Why not set up a nonprofit foundation and not give deference to the almighty dollar?''
"If they are successful,'' Kozol warned, "they will have put the first nail in the coffin of public education as we know it.''
Schmidt says such remarks miss the point of the enterprise. "This is a kind of research-anddevelopment effort, funded with private dollars, that the public school system can benefit from if we are successful,'' he asserts. "I think this is the best thing that can happen to public education.''
Students Avoid The Written Word
It's common knowledge: Kids don't read much on their own these days. But a newly released study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that U.S. students don't read much for school, either.
The survey of 25,000 students, conducted in 1990, found that 45 percent of 4th graders, 63 percent of 8th graders, and 59 percent of 12th graders read 10 pages or fewer a day for school; the data show that students read less each day in 1990 than they did two years earlier. And 22 percent of the high school seniors said they do not have homework assigned or do not do what is.
Outside school, the new study found, nearly a third of 8th and 12th graders never read for fun.
In addition to surveying students on their backgrounds and classroom activities, the 1990 assessment included six questions designed to determine how much students understand of what they read. Overall, the results indicate that students have a difficult time going beyond a general understanding of a written passage to discuss and explain what they have read.
Since 1969, NAEP--a congressionally mandated project--has tested a national sample of students in reading, writing, mathematics, and other subjects. A report issued earlier this year showed that student performance in reading in 1990 was roughly at the same level it was in 1971. The new report, however, was based on separate assessments conducted in 1988 and 1990. The results cannot be compared with the earlier findings, but they contain a wealth of data on students and instructional practices that provide a snapshot of America's classrooms.
For example, the study found that despite research evidence about the effectiveness of discussions, writing, and group projects related to reading, most classrooms continue to rely on textbooks and workbooks. Assignments from newspapers, magazines, novels, poems, and reference books are given much less frequently.
In contrast with the relatively little time spent on outside reading and homework, the study found that many students spend hours in front of the television; 62 percent of the 4th graders, 64 percent of the 8th graders, and 40 percent of the 12th graders said they watch at least three hours of television a day.
Copies of the report, Reading In and Out of School, are available for $3.75 each from the U.S. Government Printing Office, Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328. The stock number is 065-000-00-501-8.
No One Is Listening
Most public-service advertising campaigns aimed at urban African-American teenagers are completely ineffective. In fact, no communications medium can penetrate the subculture of black urban teens with messages promoting positive behavior. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new study paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The study--conducted by Motivational Educational Entertainment Productions Inc., a blackowned firm--suggests that these youths are caught up in a social system that encourages dangerous behavior and shuns nonconformists. And, it declares, they are as alienated from their African-American traditions as they are from the white mainstream.
"No messenger and no message is really working,'' says Thomas Gore, vice president of communications for the foundation. "We thought the messages being brought by athletes and rock stars were probably getting through, but they were not if they had to do with lifestyles or prohealth or pro-social messages.''
The study's authors recommend convening black communicators, filmmakers, music-video producers, and public-health experts "to seek a way for this nation to speak effectively to its most alienated children.''
Vol. 03, Issue 09, Page 1-24
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On June 16, the US Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury (collectively, the "Departments") released additional guidance under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), as amended.
The guidance consists of a frequently asked question (FAQ) and a draft model form to help participants request information from health plans regarding nonquantitative treatment limitations that may affect their mental health or substance use disorder benefits or to obtain documentation to support an appeal after an adverse benefit determination involving such benefits.
MHPAEA requires parity between mental health and substance use disorder benefits and medical and surgical benefits. This generally means that a plan's coverage limits on mental health and substance use disorder benefits may not be more restrictive than its coverage limits on medical and surgical benefits. Such limits include financial requirements (e.g., deductibles, co-pays, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket limits) and treatment limits (e.g., limits on the number of days or number of visits covered and other limits on the scope or duration of treatment).
FAQ on Eating Disorders
The FAQ clarifies that eating disorders are mental health conditions. Accordingly, treatment of an eating disorder may not be subjected to limits that are any more restrictive than those applicable to medical and surgical benefits under a plan.
Model Participant Request Form
The draft model form is intended to help participants request both general and specific information from plans regarding mental health or substance use disorder benefits. It can be used after a claim denial by a plan or more generally, regardless of whether there has been a claim for benefits. Participants are not required to use the proposed form, but the availability of the form may increase the number of requests plans receive for this information.
The general request seeks information about limits on mental health and substance use disorder benefits generally or on a specific condition or disorder. The specific request asks for items such as
- specific plan language regarding limits,
- the factors used to develop limits and the evidentiary standards used to evaluate such factors,
- the methods and analyses used to develop limits, and
- any evidence used to establish that limits apply no more stringently to mental health and substance use disorder benefits than medical and surgical benefits.
To avoid potential penalties, plans must respond within 30 days of the date of a request. The Departments are soliciting comments on the draft model form by September 13, 2017.
Next Steps
Plans may consider reviewing the draft model request form to ensure that they are prepared to respond to any document requests. The guidance also provides a good excuse for plans to revisit their claims and appeals documents and procedures to ensure that they satisfy ERISA, which requires that some of this MHPAEA-required information be provided automatically in connection with a claim denial. Using an ERISA-compliant claim denial form may reduce the number of participant requests on the proposed forms. In addition, plans should examine any limits they impose on eating disorder treatment for compliance with the parity requirements.

subset: commoncrawl


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Above Life's Storms
These are down times, said by most, affecting all, coast to coast,
Very hard times economically, touching in many ways you and me,
But, those in God can rise above, all these down times, spoken of,
High above, with God's power, through the darkest times and hour.
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Reviews for Alone With You
Marisa Silver is one of California's most celebrated contemporary writers…(whose) best stories are prickly and nimble, satisfyingly acute… so good it might give you vertigo.
The stories in Alone With You are portraits of everyday sorrows, but Silver keeps hope alive, even when it's on life support. Her characters often feel powerless, then discover what they can do….Silver makes clear with devastating simplicity, that tendency to change course works to our advantage…If we can adapt, forge new ground on which to stand, we survive….Silver understands this truth and passes it along to her characters with grace and insight as they grapple with change, revelation and the complexities of modern life. These are clear-eyed, unsentimental stories that resound with resilience.
Unwellness is woven through these eight beautiful and brutal stories from Silver (The God of War), who gives readers finely wrought slivers of lives…and the intermingling of hope and despair…Silver infuses her characters with a fatalistic resilience that's revealed through tiny, perfect details.
…these moments of bleak epiphany and emotional purgatory showcase [Silver's] strengths as a writer.
Marisa Silver's Alone With You is a triumph for the short story. Funny and surprising and unsentimental, the collection finds in dark situations a persuasive hope. Every story is striking both in its emotional complexity, and in the wry clarity with which it's told.
Alone With You is heartbreakingly honest, and thus lends itself to reading in multiple sittings. It is her unsentimental style, however, coupled with her fresh language, that makes the collection so profound.
The intricacies of these short stories are so masterfully weaved together that they form a seamless tapestry reflecting raw slivers of contemporary Americana.
Alone With You is as satisfying as the perfect meal.
Alone With You: Stories is one of the most compelling and honest portrayals of human nature written by a (relatively) new author that I have read in a long time. Emotions are treated like the multidimensional and exquisitely complex things they are rather than the boiled down version we are often treated to in contemporary literature. The intricacies of these short stories are so masterfully weaved together that they form a seamless tapestry reflecting raw slivers of contemporary Americana. The harshness of some of the stories is blunted by the skill with which Marisa Silver presents them to the reader.
Silver tells eight quietly haunting tales about love, memory and making ends meet.
What makes Marisa Silver's portraits of contemporary American life so powerful is her unblinking gaze, her willingness to look imminent disaster straight in the eye. And what makes her characters unforgettable is the combination of bewilderment and resilience with which they navigate this precarious life. Alone With You is a beautiful collection: urgent, clear-sighted, wide-ranging, profound.
What New Yorker can't relate to the title of Marisa Silver's latest book of short stories ($15)? Savor the understated, brilliant, and darkly funny writing in snippets. Especially great: 'Pond.'
A 'dark and resonant new story collection.'
The blending of her talents makes for accomplished narrative, delicate but sure, held together by expertly constructed point of view. Tender in her seriousness, refined yet absolutely contemporary and stylish, Marisa Silver is doing something balanced and minutely considered, something very nearly seamless.
Marisa Silver's stunning new collection Alone With You, a title that holds both the possibility of shared-breath intimacy as well as the most profound kind of loneliness, a subtle foreshadowing of what lies beneath the cover. This reading is not light emotional fare and while her stories are riveting, they deserve slow and concentrated dedication.
…a polished, incisive collection…Each of these eight stories drives unflinchingly toward a moment of unexpected and inevitable clarity about the precariousness of the world and the resilience it requires.
Short stories to be savored, these are recommended for a wide range of readers…[a] moving collection.
Alone With You, a collection of wondrous stories by Marisa Silver, will endure. Each story shatters the commonplace with the telling detail that evokes crucial events in human lives. She is a real writer; the breath of life infuses her work.
A collection of eight stories, all brutally honest, gripping and profound, Alone With You by Marisa Silver brings snapshots of damaged ordinary life to the reader with almost effortless grace.
Whether you choose Alone With You or another of her short story collections, pick one up immediately.
Alone With You is a stunning collection of eight short stories that will haunt the reader long after the last page.
Longing swells each of the eight stories in Alone With You, as Silver investigates 'aloneness' and the dear and inevitable distance between people in loving relationships. These stories stand out because of their high tolerance for complexity, never opting for a single note. The situations here don't settle on the neat broad themes of loss or connection, but there are always surprises, nuances, changes of heart.
The wide range of settings and characters in these eight stories attests to Marisa Silver's prodigious imagination…Her style is breezy…its clever snap can be captivating…and Silver's observations can be spot-on.
That our lives unfold before us with a chilling ambiguity and no particular regard for our preferences is the truth that Silver reveals. She does so with a sympathy and affection so wide and deep that when we've finished the book, we want more.
[In] Alone With You, Marisa Silver explores the impact of collateral damage, whether sustained in war or life…Silver's characters manage somehow to emerge as credible realists, unafraid of the rigors of making do. Even in the darkest moments, their stories are illuminating as they find the courage to face who they are…fierce…brisk and keenly observed.
Alone With You offers eight extraordinary portraits of life's tender humiliations as well as its sharp, rude jolts. Marisa Silver's virtuosic range seems endless, and yet her ear and heart are in each case mining for a precise kind of undoing: when the fog suddenly lifts and people manage stark contact with themselves, if only for a fleeting moment. These moments are brought to bear with deftness, compassion, and an eerie, unflinching grace.
Her new collection (eight stories, three first published in The New Yorker) showcases her uncanny ability to tap into the unsettled nature of our times.
Alone With You is a jewel. Actually a cache of many gems, each one complete and powerful in both the feelings that they evoke and the eloquent way in which they unfold.
Silver…excells at Joycean epiphanies.
A stunning collection, sad in all the best, thinking ways.


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75 x 190cm
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In my last Loot from Japan update, I showed off the massive boost I've done to my Miku figurine collection. For my second I'd like to show off more Miku loot. This time around, though, it's all about the music.
In Australia, if you were to walk into a CD shop (if, uh, we have any left that aren't JB Hi-Fi) then the chances of finding a Hatsune Miku CD are, literally, zero. It's just not going to happen. In Japan, meanwhile, good luck finding a CD shop that doesn't have a vocaloid section now. And 90 percent of vocaloid CDs are going to star Hatsune Miku. That's an anecdotal claim, but certainly that has been consistent in my experience so far.
Now some of the vocaloid sections are quite small; most CD shops will only have a couple stashed away in a corner of the anime music section. But, every so often you'll come across something that will take your breath away, like when I walked into a CD shop to find three shelves of vocaloid CDs. Not just that, but also printed, published, Hatsune Miku novels. That's how serious fans are about this digital girl. They publish fanfictions about her.
(Apologies for the low quality of the photo. You're not meant to take photos in shops, naturally, so these were taken on the sly using an iPhone).
Anyway, I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to add to my Miku music collection, so I grabbed three CDs that I felt looked interesting:
Hatsune Miku Orchestra
This has immediately become my favourite Miku CD in my entire collection. The tracks in this one are slightly moodier, slightly edgier, slightly less party boppy, which characterises so many Miku tracks (not that I have a problem with those at all, obviously, but I do appreciate variety). There was also a great deal more consistency among this one's tracks than we see in many other Miku CDs, which behave more like compilations. The downside is that this is an older CD and uses a more primitive version of Miku's voice bank, but it is nonetheless a classic example of what can happen when people try and do something a little more artsy with Miku.
My pick of the tracks:
I mostly picked this CD on the strength of its cover, which is gorgeous. Rookie mistake, because while it's bad, it also doesn't have anything that makes it stand out from the rest of my Miku CDs, and in fact there's a fair amount of cross over with some of the CDs I've already got. That in itself is not unusual for Exit Tunes CDs.
Mind you, hard comments aside, I was able to pick up through this CD a couple of favourite tracks that I didn't previously possess. Such as the below, which is adorable (and also in Miku Mirai on the 3DS, which I will have a review for up tomorrow).
Attractive Museum
This was another CD I picked up largely because I thought the cover was adorable, but this time I got lucky. This is one of OSTER Project's CDs, and OSTER Project is surely the most proficient technician when it comes to vocaloids (given that they were the one to really launch Miku's popularity, that's to be expected).
Anyway, this CD has a nice range of bouncy and calmer songs, but my favourite is surely this jazz club themed one:
I was planning on that being all I bought on this particular CD shopping excursion, but then I rounded the corner and saw a wall of shelves twice as long as the vocaloid one with end-to-end game music CDs. Figuring that I would surely find one particular game music CD that I've been looking for for a while I started browsing, and then spotted it:
Persona 4 Original Soundtrack
This is a double disc whopper of a soundtrack that has every single music track from the game. This is important because there are actually quite a few Persona 4 CDs that have been produced, but none of them had one particular song that I wanted, so I was hoping the original full soundtrack would have it. Which, thankfully, it does:
The amusing thing is that I'm not even the kind of person that buys music CDs, but the Japanese music industry is far more too my taste and so, even though I would still not worry about J-Pop CDs and the like, the fact that there are these game and vocaloid sections in music shops would have me visiting them again on a regular basis if I lived here.
- Matt S.
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld


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Thursday, February 9, 2017
10:30 am PST / 11:30 am MST / 1:30 pm EST / 2:30 pm AST
"Collaboration and Communication — Exploring the Roles of Nutrition and Mental Health Providers"
Objective: Explore the roles and responsibilities of mental health care providers, including dietitians, in the effective provision of nutrition care to clients living with mental health conditions in community settings.
Watch the Recording
Related Resources
Rachel Hicks, "5 considerations for working with populations with mental illness," Dietitians of Canada Practice Blog, October 6, 2016.
|Rachel Hicks
Registered Dietitian
|Kelly Matheson
Clinical Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Educator, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health


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There's drunk. There's really drunk. Then there's this guy.
An Amsterdam man had the shock of his life on Friday night when he found a drunken British tourist in his bed.
The tourist had apparently been unable to find his way back to his hotel and managed to climb in through an open 1st floor window on the Oetgensstraat in the eastern area of the city. Once in, he went to bed.
The apartment owner, named by local broadcaster AT5 as Eric, had left the window open when he went out so his cat could come and go. When he came home, he spent some time watching television and then went to bed. But his bed was occupied.
"I woke him up and asked him who he was,' Erik said. 'He said something like 'Am I not in a hotel?' He really did not know where he was. Totally away with the fairies."
Eric called police, who took the hapless tourist off to the station. He was interviewed but so drunk that police think he had no idea what was going on, AT5 said. He has since been released without charge.
According to the Telegraaf, the tourist was in Amsterdam with a group of friends but had lost both them and his phone. The police had managed to get in touch with a friend who helped the tourist find the hotel where he had been staying.


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In the heart of the Hub City just steps from Texas Tech University, The Overton Hotel & Conference Center shines brightly as the first and only AAA Four-Diamond hotel in West Texas. This downtown Lubbock landmark blends luxury rooms and fine dining with southwestern charm and big city sophistication.
Luxury Hotel Rooms in Lubbock, TX
Down-home comfort and urban elegance define the Overton experience. Designed for rest and relaxation, our fashionable guest rooms and suites have leather finishes, rustic furnishings and luxury linens to create a sanctuary of style and sophistication.View Rooms
Texas Tech University
Texas Tech University is more than just our next door neighbor. We're corporate partners in a range of academic programs and classroom initiatives, as well as the official hotel of Texas Tech Athletics. We're also the preferred hotel of students, parents, alumni and faculty.View Offers
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Wonderful Staff, modern clean rooms
We are as thankful we found this gem in Lubbock. My husband and I stopped here on a roadtrip. Dining is delicious on-site and the rooms are modern, comfortable and clean. The staff were very helpful. We will always stay here when we visit Lubbock.- katinazk
Great Hospitality at the Overton
The Overton was fantastic. Not only was our room beautiful and very comfortable but the staff went out of their way to help us. We had a piece of luggage that did not make our flight on a recent Friday night and the Overton staff had retrieved it from the airport by 7:00am the next morning. I would definitely recommend this hotel for anyone staying in Lubbock!- Mary O
Nice conference hotel
We stayed at this hotel in December during college graduation. The staff was very efficient with checking and check out process. The Pecan grille had a wonderful breakfast buffet and club lounge also had a nice offering in the morning. The rooms have ample space and are well decorated. Would definitely recommend this hotel.- kl6772
Always great
I stay here every time I am in Lubbock. I never have any problems with check in or assuring my room is ready. I get in and right into my room as soon as I get there. The restaurant and bar are great as well. This is a perfect place to stay if you are here for business or just a sporting event. Right across the street from Jones AT&T Stadium, home of my Red Raiders!- charleswP5882HK
Perfect location for a visit to Texas Tech
The Overton is unquestionably the best hotel in Lubbock. I have stayed there many times and the level of service is good and the rooms are very nice. There is an outstanding patio with fire pits and TVs where you can eat and drink. The Sunday brunch buffet is very good with far more items than one could possibly try!- Charles W
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Censorship in New Zealand: Wide-spread public brain-wash
I responded to an article in The Standard. I have replicated, slightly edited and extended that comment here.
We have to remember that any possibility to filter web-pages and the Internet in general - no matter what the initial good intention may have been - opens the door to abuse and further spreading of censorship.
Remember, this debate should not at all be about whether child-porn is good or bad. A similar debate, similarly distracted, currently takes place in other countries as well and it all boils down to the same:
- You can't just stumble across child-porn on the Internet. As has been mentioned many times already, these sites are traded by word of mouth and are mostly closed and password protected. Therefore, blocking access to these sites does not do anything to prevent normal people or even children from seeing child-porn, since they wouldn't see it anyway. In 15 years of heavy Internet use, which has led me to many dark corners of this network, I have not once stumbled across child-porn. Not once!
- It is still quite easy to overcome even this kind of filtering attempt. Thus, those who really want child-porn can still get it with very little effort. That's what transparent proxies are for. Therefore, this kind of filtering does not work in really preventing access to these sites for those intent on really seeing it.
- If the DIA or whoever is in power really would want to stop the child-porn that's out on the Internet they would only have to do one very simple thing: Call the hoster on which these images are stored and ask them to shut down the account. Believe it or not, but that works remarkably well: Child-porn is illegal in almost all countries. The hosting companies (no matter in which country) often have no idea what someone has stored in an account on one of their servers. Therefore, if they find out about it, they don't want to have anything to do with it and will very quickly respond by shutting it down. This was tested with some of those leaked child-porn lists in other countries that use child-porn as a reason to start filtering. But instead of very effectively removing this account from the Internet with a simple phone call or email, the government instead prefers to put a filtering infrastructure in place. They know where the sites are, but chose to do nothing...
Because child-porn is used (here and in other countries) just as a flimsy alibi to install a ubiquitous government controlled censorship infrastructure. Think about the children! That is the killer-argument with which these attempts are justified and the public is pacified. As a commenter on Slashdot very succinctly said when they discussed the development in New Zealand: "Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it."
As long as we are keeping ourselves pre-occupied by talking about the technical merits of the system, or waste our time by discussing minutiae in the definition of the word 'filter', or talk about how in principle we should agree to this since nobody likes child-porn, or talk about the budget for this. we are just distracting ourselves from the real issue and are playing into the hands of those who want to make censorship widely accepted.
Once the technical possibility is there, the calls to use it for other purposes will start. There will be lobbying by all sorts of groups (some openly, some secretly) to block more and more content. Remember the list is secret, so you never know what is going to be blocked. Already happens in other countries, so why should it be different here? How about 'killer games'? Let's block that as well. How about 'sites critical to the filtering effort'? Let's block that, too. How about (insert controversial subject you care about here)? Let's block that as well.
Fight the beginnings, is all I can say. By focusing on what the majority finds to be repulsive a government can get the majority to go along with any scheme, no matter how many of our freedoms are taken away in the process. That's how it always starts. Let's learn from history. People don't really change and history always repeats itself. Let's not walk into this asleep and with eyes wide shut.
But isn't this type of material alrady censored in other media already? Sure it is! Any kind of censorship is to be examined very, very critically. The problem with the Internet is that censorship here affects one of the most revolutionary communication media in the world, where for the first time ever, an ordinary person can publish their opinion to the world with little effort. This was never there before. This is widely out of control of any government, as it should be. And when the masses are not under the government's control in the way they can communicate and share ideas and opinions then governments feel very uncomfortable. They can't have that.
As a little additional crimp in the story, consider that the suggested technology doesn't always have to block your access. It can be used to switch on transparent monitoring of any accesses to specific addresses or web-sites (by letting the DIA server work as a transparent proxy), and even for the modification of the content that is returned to the user, without the user ever knowing what happend! I should know, since I have worked on transparent and content-modifying proxies in the past.
- This is not about the budget.
- This not about the technical issues behind the implementation.
- This is not about whether child-porn is good or bad
Do you want that?
Other related posts:
Blackout to demonstrate against S92A
Section 92A (three strikes law) is not a New Zealand novelty
A time when IE is NOT used by most people? Don't bet against this trend when designing a site
Comment by nzsouthernman, on 16-Jul-2009 14:21
Very well put. The thought of government controlled secretive filtering terrorfies me.
You are right on the money - the 'think of the children' line is a smokescreen to cloud Joe Public's thinking while the govt slips something like this through.
I'd like to know a) which ISP's are planning to *NOT* opt-in to this filtering and b) how soon can they sign me up?
Comment by br3nda, on 16-Jul-2009 20:07
I have stumbled across child porn.
I installed an anonymiser http client - an SSL-ed p2p thing that proxies through other people - and then went to look further inside to see what I was proxying for other anonymous users.
It was child rape images.
The sad part is, this DIA filter will do nothing to stop such things. They wouldn't pass through the ISPS' transparent proxy or DIA's filter.
DIA cannot and should never be able to see your web browser traffic when logging into your internet banking - and that's the same simple technology that is used (albeit with some p2p ontop) to enable the child porn trading i stumbled on.
It is unfortunate because the valid uses includes those in Iran or China trying to get past their government's own censorship.
(i need stronger word than unfortunate).
Comment by br3nda, on 16-Jul-2009 20:10
p.s. I hate transparent proxies - I work with port 80 technology (web services, billing gateways, proxies) so when i connect to an IP on port 80 i want the packets i send to go to the IP i thought I was connecting to.
I can't work when they reroute it somewhere else.
I can't verify that my webserver is actually listening correctly on port 80 if every connection attempt to any 80 results in a connection, even though my webserver is connection refused.
Comment by Dratsab, on 17-Jul-2009 10:15
Very well written Foobar.
like yourself, I've been traversing the internet (sometimes very aimlessly) for 15+ years and have thankfully never, ever stumbled across child porn.
However, in beauracratic circles, common sense never prevails. No matter what the realities are, this technology will be implemented a lot more widely than it currently is.
What I don't understand is why the ISP's have such huge buy-in, when they, of all people, should know what a waste of time it is.
Comment by Anonymous, on 17-Jul-2009 17:36
Very well written analysis. Another interesting question: what happens when the situation changes? Consider:
1) A judge issues a court order to censor any website mentioning a high-profile defendant (e.g. David Bain) to avoid influencing a trial. What does the DIA do then?
2) The next MMP election ends with United Future or a similar minor party holding the "balance of power", and decide that hugely expanded Internet filtering would be a rather nice bargaining chip to form a government.
3) The list expands by natural means. Bestiality is an obvious choice, then S&M, then gay porn, then straight porn, then anonymiser/proxy servers...
Comment by Mark, on 19-Jul-2009 01:06
It is always like that, they start with less questionable subjects, next thing you know, any thing that govt and those old folks from Tauranga find objectionable will be banned, be it a gay site ,communist platform, or nude photography. Also the govt argument is exactly the same as mass medication by folic acid.Why don't let users decide for themselves?
One would hope NZ ISPs stand up and stop this first step.
Comment by Stephen, on 19-Jul-2009 18:07
"What I don't understand is why the ISP's have such huge buy-in"
Oh, that's easy. Having to explain why your company doesn't want to block child porn is going to be a PR nightmare.
Comment by Paul, on 4-Sep-2009 14:25
I work primarily as a network support technician and must attend to security issues as well. In every case where we have had to deal with network policy violations concerning porn, the user has always found a way to circumvent the security controls.
Additionally, I have spent some time working with the live Linux Incognito distro to determine how we might at least be able to identify the use of this tool, (and others), on our network. I realize the average user would likely not use nor be aware of such things. However, it is certainly one way to stumble onto child porn.
I would like to see better methods to control network usages however, I certainly am opposed to government censorship. We have enough government intrusions in America as it is. More to come with the current administration, I would imagine. Non-the-less, personal liberty is far more preferable than anything "Big Brother" could ever conjure up.


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Well, it's that time again. PASS Summit 2018 is right around the corner and thousands of SQL professionals will be gathered together to network and learn. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you should be attending!
PASS Summit is a conference where you will see and meet your mentors, MVP's that you follow, other DBA's or developers that you hear from on forums, etc. Now is the time to network and form friendships, not to mention learn from the best in the industry. The pre-con sessions are an eight hour deep dive into whichever subject interests you most and are completely worth the extra money. The main sessions last anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours depending on the topic and are typically very informative and get your brain moving in directions you hadn't thought of before. I always come back with pages and pages of notes that I form into a coherent debrief for management, so they know I was paying attention. And if you pick sessions that really mean something to the challenges of your business, you can come back a hero!
Outside of the sessions, there are all kinds of hosted breakfasts, lunches, dinners, parties and off-time hangouts to help decompress after a long day of being a sponge. This is really the time to make contacts and friends that you can hope to see every year.
So check out my previous PASS Summit post here, where I talk about how to get your boss to say yes!


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Bar 140 turns it on late in sweep
Bar 140 saved the best for last in both ends of its Valley Independent Softball League doubleheader with Kut-Rite Hair Shop to register a 12-8 and 25-9 sweep.
Bar 140 never led until it went on a six-run sixth inning spree to claim the victory in the opener.
Kut-Rite took a 4-2 lead after one and held that edge until the third, when Bar 140 plated a pair to tie the score at 4. Kut-Rite regained the lead 6-5 after four and held an 8-6 advantage, when Bar 140 erupted for the game-deciding rally in the sixth. Back-to-back two-run singles by Tom Ballaro and Craig Chapman were the big hits.
Chapman led the winning offense with three hits, while driving in four runs. Ballaro had two hits, as did Ryan Doughan.
Brian Valeria's three base hits was best for Kut-Rite.
The Bar 140 infield defense consisting of John Robens at third base and the Chapman boys, Craig at first, Brett at second and Chris at short, played well in support of winning pitcher Mike Osiecki.
Bar 140 bettered themselves in the nightcap, as it plated 21 runs in the final two at-bats to turn a four-run deficit into a one-sided win.
Kut-Rite again led most of the way, 2-0 after one, 3-0 after two and 8-4 after four. Bar 140 then sent 17 men to the plate in the fifth to produce 13 runs, before they topped off the triumph with an eight-run rumpus in the sixth.
Ballaro paced the batting barrage with four hits and seven RBIs. Craig Chapman also had four hits, while driving in four runs, while Chris Chapman and Ken Manzari garnered three base hits apiece.
Mike Conlan and losing pitcher Pete Silva topped the Kut-Rite offense with three base knocks each.
Bricks & Barley rallied late to break open a tight ball game and register an 11-2 victory over The Meeting Place Restaurant and then held on to eke out a 6-5 win in the nightcap.
Boland's Cafe and Benanto Real Estate split their doubleheader, with Boland's capturing the opener, 8-6, before the Realtors rebounded to register an 8-2 win in the nightcap.
Taking a 1-0 lead after one inning, Boland's traded four runs with Benanto in the second and stayed on top the rest of the game.
Aaron Rogers, John Schepp, Wayne Britto, Steve Donnarummo and winning pitcher John Sinchak notched two hits apiece for Boland's.
Matt Thomas banged out three base hits while Doug Wenz and Brian Iacuonne had a pair each to lead the Realtors.
Wenz led the way to Benanto's nightcap win.
While going 4-for-4, Wenz poled a two-run, fence-clearing home run that highlighted a three-run third that put Benanto on top for good. He also had a run-scoring triple in the fifth and finished up with a total of five RBIs.
Rick Valenti contributed a 3-for-3 effort, while Iacuonne had a pair of safeties.
Dave Gallo went 3-for-3, including a double that produced Boland's two runs in the third.
Keith Hathway was on the mound in both games for Benanto as was Sinchak for Boland's.
Porky's Cafe/Mutiny overcame a determined Pennsylvania Steel upset effort in both games to make it seven wins in their last eight games with a sweep of the Steelmen.
Chris Wallace's one-out double in the bottom of the seventh inning gave Porky's/Mutiny a 9-8 win in the opener.
After Penn took an early 3-0 lead, Porky's/Mutiny got on the board with a five-run third to give them a two-run advantage.
They maintained a slim lead until the top of the sixth, when Penn pushed across a pair to tie the score at 8.
The teams remained knotted until the bottom of the seventh, when Sean Qualey singled and, after a fly out, Wallace came through with his timely two-bagger that drove in Qualey with the game-deciding run.
Wallace was the offensive pacesetter for the victors with a total of three base hits. Enzo Zanfardino, Anthony Onofrio and Anthony Savo added a pair apiece.
Chris DiCostanzo and Jarvis Benjamin were best for Penn with three base knocks each.
Falling behind early, Porky's/Mutiny rallied late to claim a 9-3 victory in the nightcap.
A two-run first and a single counter in the third gave Penn Steel a 3-0 edge after three. Then, led by winning pitcher Mike Marchese's glovework up the middle, the Porky's/Mutiny defense zeroed the Steelmen the rest of the way while the offense plated two in the fourth and fifth innings before ensuring the win with a five-run seventh.
Marchese also was the victors' leading hitter, garnering three base hits. Drew Steele had two hits, including a bases-loaded triple in the big seventh and finished up with four RBIs. Jeff Gilbert, Sean Qualey and Wallace notched a pair of hits each.
Jon Petruny had a single, double and triple and a pair of RBIs for Penn Steel. He was losing pitcher, but excelled defensively on the mound.


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Kroger Ad Scan & Coupon Matchups | 10/25 - 10/31The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure.
Week of 10/25/17
Here is the Kroger ad scan preview along with coupon matchups.
View the Kroger Ad Scan – Cincinnati Region
REMINDER: You can find the ad matchup for YOUR Kroger region or affiliate store using the interactive Kroger Regions Map HERE. The matchup will be available the DAY BEFORE the sale begins and you can view the ad scan on Kroger.com at that time as well.
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To create your own printable shopping list, simply check the box to the left of the deal scenario. Then, print or gather your coupons and go ROCK Kroger!!
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- Top 10 Ways to Save at Kroger
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You can load Kroger Digital Coupons to your Kroger PLUS card. These are typically LIMIT 1. Several times per year Kroger will run a LIMIT 5 Digital Coupon Event, but limit will be clear when you load the coupons. Digital coupons do NOT stack with paper coupons. Check out this post on digital coupons for everything you need to know about these.
Search my Coupon Database for more coupons if you're purchasing multiples or items not on sale!Leave a comment
Leave a Comment
You sure can, Sherrel!
For the buy 5 price on 2L pop, can you mix and match brands? Like can I get three pepsi and two 7up and only pay the .77 per bottle?
You're welcome. Sorry about the mix-up.
Thank you Kroger Krazy!
same here
Hi there! I just checked the ad scan and its the old one !


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President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week with an eye on two fronts: the chaotic Middle East and the domestic political campaign, where Democrats are eager to make sure that support for Israel does not become a partisan issue in 2016.
Both categories of concern point toward a more pragmatic and realistic approach to U.S.-Israel relations for Obama that could reassure a key ally in an unstable region and soothe uneasy Democrats who backed the Iran nuclear deal. The new calibration would deprive Republicans who opposed the deal of political fodder they can use against Democrats.
"Most Democratic members of Congress are and will be relieved if tension between the president and prime minister is relaxed," said Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman from Florida who is now president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. "There is no Democratic member of Congress who benefits from tension in the American-Israeli relationship."
Having won a victory with the deal limiting Iran's nuclear program — which Obama regards as a high point of his diplomatic record — the president can now shift the conversation away from Netanyahu's opposition to the deal and focus on enforcement of the accord. The two leaders vowed to hold Iran's feet to the fire, and Netanyahu refrained from denigrating the accord.
But with the region in disarray, Obama could also genuinely say he was receptive to Israel's request for more military aid. A detailed assessment of Israel's needs will be made — and completed in the midst of the campaign season.
And while Obama said he and Netanyahu explored what concrete steps Israel might be willing to take to ease tensions with the Palestinians, the president did so with limited expectations, thus bringing hope in line with reality.
"If you go to [diplomatic] war with the Israelis for no good reason when you know you can't achieve a breakthrough on a two-state solution, you risk giving Republicans enormous leverage in the election and put your former secretary of state in an awkward position of walking away from you," said Aaron Miller, vice president at the Wilson Center.
That former secretary of state — presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton — perhaps has more riding on the condition of the U.S.-Israel relationship than any other Democrat or Republican. Clinton's husband remains a popular figure in Israel, and she has, in general, taken a tough stance in defense of Israel's security.
Still, congressional Democrats are concerned.
A Pew Research Center poll in March found that more Americans sympathize with Israel than with the Palestinians in their dispute; 65 percent sympathized with Israel and 46 percent with the Palestinians. Support for Israel was overwhelming among white evangelicals, 87 percent of whom said they sympathized with Israel.
Asked about their view of Netanyahu, Republicans said "favorable" by a margin of 47 percent to 16 percent; Democrats said "unfavorable" by 39 percent to 19 percent. Independents were almost evenly split, with 31 percent favorable and 28 unfavorable.
Senior administration officials said that U.S. politics were not the reason for tempered expectations during the Obama-Netanyahu meeting this week. One administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships, said, "I don't think it's politics driving this. It's an assessment of where things are headed."
The official said, "Of course, there is another actor in all this: the Palestinians. Ultimately, this is not a conversation between us and the Israelis."
But he added of Israel that "if they don't do something, the trends are not good ones. We don't want to see those occurring."
When it comes to fending off U.S. pressure to take steps in the West Bank to show continued support for a two-state solution, "clearly time is an ally for Bibi and an adversary for Obama," said Miller, who was involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations when he was a State Department official. "That has given rise to a certain sense of resignation in the administration." But he added that Secretary of State John F. Kerry was eager to make progress, hopeful that Israel will be open to ideas for progress.
If the Israeli government considers "anything more than what Palestinians regard as gilding the cage, then Kerry will try to build on that to do whatever he can," Miller said.
Netanyahu met Kerry on Wednesday, and the State Department later issued a statement saying the two "had a constructive meeting" and "discussed concrete ideas for stopping the violence, improving conditions on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, and moving the diplomatic process forward."
What those ideas were remained unclear.
Even though Netanyahu billed his visit to Washington as a chance to mend fences, many analysts believe he failed to address fundamental issues straining the relationship.
At the Center for American Progress, David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Politics, asked the Israeli leader what his "Plan B" was to preserve Israel as a majority Jewish, democratic state if Palestinian and Israeli leaders cannot agree on restarting peace talks. Netanyahu sidestepped the question; instead, he said that "unilateralism works less well than a negotiated solution." He said that leaving Gaza had only turned it into a "poison dagger" aimed at Israel, and he said Israel must be prepared for a long period of tension.
"I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu achieved one objective, which was to stop the bleeding in the relationship" with the United States, Wexler said. But he added that "the underlying tension and the primary question remain: Will Israel pursue policies that ensure that it remains a majority Jewish and democratic Zionist nation? That question, unfortunately, still remains unanswered. And so long as that question remains outstanding, there will be tension in the American-Israeli relationship no matter who the president is."


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Our Pastor
Currently Three Rivers Baptist Church has one elder – Kobus van der Walt.
Kobus began his studies at the then Pretoria College of Education and after he graduated at the former Potchefstroom College of Education, his teaching career commenced – a few years later he completed a BA (part time) at the Potchefstroom University (PUKKE – Now North West University – Potchefstroom campus).
During his career as principal in Carletonville, he enrolled for the degree B.Th (at PUK – Telematic). After five years of part-time studies in theology he bid the educational field goodbye, and accepted a call to the Antipas congregation in Vereeniging (see also: http://3riversbaptist.co.za/history/).


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Should this actually be named 'bandolier'? All but two of the available bullet-holding bags are called 'ammo pouch'...--Azaram 22:15, 18 March 2007 (EDT)
- There is no 'bandolier' in the api. Quivers for arrows and Ammo Pouches for bullets. Page should be moved and edited. ZZqA 21:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
- I've started changing links to Ammo Pouch. I've fixed Template:Equipment; and most of the links currently to Bandolier are pages with that template embedded, might take a day or so for the pages listed on 'What links here' to change over. Both Ammo Pouch and Bandolier have edit history, not sure what the WoWWiki way of merging two pages with edit histories is. ZZqA 21:17, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
- Ah scratch that. Only one edit on Ammo Pouch and that was just to toss up a redirect. The edits were done to Ammo pouch (with a lower case p). Crisis averted, should be able to tidy up the rest of the needed changes soon. ZZqA 21:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


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Recently, our own Ms. Truitt wrote a review of Jekel Loves Hyde, the new book by Beth Fantaskey. The book sounded so good, I quickly headed to the bookstore to pick it up — where I discovered Fantaskey's previous novel, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side.
And being the "sucker" that I am for vampire stories (pun 100% intended), I couldn't resist Jessica's Guide and read that one first.
True confession: I read the book in only two days. And I read most of it in a single sitting, staying up way too late on a work night to finish.
So as you can imagine, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
First things first — here's what it's about:
The undead can really screw up your senior year …
Marrying a vampire definitely doesn't fit into Jessica Packwood's senior year "get-a-life" plan. But then a bizarre (and incredibly hot) new exchange student named Lucius Vladescu shows up, claiming that Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by birth—and he's her long-lost fiancé. Armed with newfound confidence and a copy of Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire's Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions, Jessica makes a dramatic transition from average American teenager to glam European vampire princess. But when a devious cheerleader sets her sights on Lucius, Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a global vampire war—and save Lucius's soul from eternal destruction.
Now, I'll be the first to admit: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is not the most AMAZING book of all time. It's not a perfect literary masterpiece. It's not likely to end up being taught in English classrooms years from now.
But Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is wholly entertaining and completely, indulgently satisfying. Fantaskey perfectly taps into the attraction readers get from a vampire-human romance, and she's not afraid to satisfy those fantasies. She gives us exactly what we want — and that's where the true success of the story comes from. She indulges our wants from a vampire romance, and she does so with expert finesse.
The plot unfolds with cinematic-like pacing, which makes it easy to keep turning the page (and, as I learned first-hand, stay up way too late reading). What's more is that Fantaskey's characters are multidimensional and its fun to watch them grow and develop — especially Jessica, as she matures and accepts her destiny — and Lucius, as he transforms from an arrogant [insert colorful word here] to a self-sacrificing and courageous, romantic hero. The romance between Jessica and Lucius is hot; it's passionate. The dynamic, back-and-forth the pair engages in throughout the novel sizzles and builds until the heart-pounding climax.
And if that's not enough to convince you that Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is worth reading — consider my next statement. This is the book Twilight fans should read when they've finished those books & want something new to read, yet aren't quite ready to move on. Lucius may not sparkle, but he's brooding, moody and self-sacrificing enough to make you say, "Edward who?" … at least for a little while.
An additional kudos goes to Fantaskey for continuing the story of Lucius & Jessica with a light-hearted sequel available on her website for free.


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Spring Skatepark is in the outskirts of Houston, Texas, at the Kuykendahl and Rankin Rd intersection. It's the largest public park that's exclusively dedicated to skateboarding in North America and has 7.000 square metres, also making it one of the largest in the world. Grindline Skatepark began carrying out the construction on the 1st February 2012 and it was later inaurgurated on the 14th August 2014. The skatepark project is immersed in the Spring Recreational Area, a large green zone in Greenspoint which also has facilities for children with special needs (Dylan Park).
You can find many different obstacles in such a large, modern park like this one, but the main highlight is the bowl which is shaped like the state of Texas and its full pipe, a snake run called the Lazy River, the pentagonal pyramid that can be considered as the centre of the skatepark, and the sets of rail-hubbas-stairs for various levels which are scattered all over.
The purpose of the skatepark is to hold exhibitions and high level competitions, as well as serving as a compliment to the Lee and Joe Jamil Skate Park in the city centre and, of course, for the residents of the local neighbourhood and Houston.
Flatrails, Handrails, Handrail with kink, Flatrail with kink, Curve rail, Pole jump.
Hubbas, Ledges, Manual pads, Curve ledges.
Full pipe, Quarters, Wallride, Mini ramps, Spines, Curvings, Pool, Waves, Transitions, Bowls.
Banks, Ramps, Bumps, Eurogaps, Streetgaps, Hips.
5, 7, 10 Stairs, Gaps, Double set 3x3.
- 23 km from Spring Skatepark Houston - Texas, United States
- 1240 km from Spring Skatepark México D.F., Mexico
- 1285 km from Spring Skatepark Tampa - Florida, United States
- 1332 km from Spring Skatepark Jacksonville - Florida, United States


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Read this tip to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Treatment and Therapies for Autism and other Autism topics.
Mid technology in the treatment of autism and related pervasive developmental disorders involves electronic devices used to aid communication. Many individuals who have autistic disorder never develop speech. However, many do have the capacity to receptively understand language. Mid technology provides the means of expressive language that the autistic individual lacks. Common devices used to help an individual express himself include a tape recorder as well as devices created especially for communication. The Voice in the Box is an augmentative communication device that contains recorded messages that correspond to buttons with images on them. The individual uses the icons on the buttons to determine what message he wants to play.
|Guru Spotlight
|Tammi Reynolds


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Ignore those who don't get you
I don't want to sound arrogant. I want to try to be authentic. (At least I want to try, for authenticity itself is a journey of self discovery and self excavation. But I am digressing. Authenticity can be a topic for future posts.)
The question I want to answer here is : Whom should we engage with ?
As coaches, artists, writers, possessors of our own unique voice and essence, and various industry professionals, the question often arises : who should we work with and who should we engage with in our daily professional and personal lives ?
My answer is simple : Only those who get you. And no one else. At least if you have a choice. (And if you don't have that choice currently, see how you can create that choice over coming period, so you can begin to exercise more freedom in your decisions in whom you engage with and whom you don't. Don't sell your soul. It's pathetic. Take care of your inner essence you are born with.)
Ignore those who don't get you.
If you are trying too hard to convince people, it means something is off. It means you are not in touch with your inner essence.
Because when you are in touch with your essence, you simply begin to live your path and your depth and stop wasting your resources on those who don't get you. You become very selective in who you engage with. You stop worrying about being liked by everyone (Living your essence is not a necessarily a popularity contest). You stop worrying about pleasing the masses. (Read Nietzsche on the topic of common stupidity one often witnesses in the masses versus the authentic intelligence one can come across in an individual). You begin to listen to your intuition and let decisions evolve from there.
Focus on people who get you. Ignore those who don't get you.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
What is Spiritual Anarchy ?
I have often thought of Spiritual Anarchy. The kind of anarchy which liberates the human soul and spirit from the shackles of all that is impure in our lives. (Spirituality for me has nothing to do with organized religions).
We stop living in quiet agony and declare a spiritual anarchy in our souls. If you ask me what is my life purpose. It is Unleash Your Power and Spiritual Anarchy.
I believe that human soul contains the seed for oasis of truth and volcano of love inside it, but it rarely reaches it's potential because most people make compromises with the superficial and the mundane. The search for depth is missing in most humans. That's why they live like sheep. And they suffer the pain, disillusionment and consequences of living an unfulfilled, meaningless, divisive and untrue life.
Spiritual anarchy is a path of flames. It is a path of the soul. It is a journey inside our soul for the oasis of truth and volcano of love.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
"Zen is an effort to become alert and awake"
- Zen Master
Previous Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Following my earlier article What are Golden Cages, let's look at how we can live free from the Golden Cages.
The key realization for anyone trapped in the Golden Cage is as following : The door to the Golden Cage is always open. We however choose to accept the security and the misery of the cage because of our greed, fears and mistrust about life outside the cage.
We are all unique in our experiences and we have a subconscious sense of what is important for our well being and our soul. What I may perceive as Golden Cage may not be so for you. And that is fine. As long as we are candid with ourselves and accurately look at how things are stacked in our lives, we will have a realistic sense of what are Golden Cages for us and what are not.
Once we identify the Golden Cages, the next question that comes up is How painful it is for us to live in the Golden Cage ? If the pain is below the tolerance threshold perhaps you don't need to do anything.
However if the pain is above the tolerance threshold you know deep inside that this situation cannot go on for long. And something has to change. And that's when you have to start looking at the relationship of the 3 elements : Greed, Fear and Mistrust to your tendency to not open the door and fly away. (If soul is figuratively an intense, beautiful, unique bird, a day comes when its wings open and it flies in the wild sky accepting the fate which comes of living in the wilderness of the open blue sky.)
Once we realize that life outside the Golden Cage is far more healthier, beautiful and has the intensity that we yearn for in our souls, a transformation begins to happen. The decision to let go and go beyond the greed, fears and mistrust starts deepening and we start experiencing glimpses of inner freedom. The soul accepts and revels in the intensity, joy and responsibility of living in the wild and prepares itself for the flight in the blue sky.
Previous Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
"My only concern is to set humans absolutely and unconditionally free."
- J Krishnamurti
When we are born, we inherit a country and sometimes a religion. Nobody really asks the soul which is born about their choice in these matters. It is just pushed on us. For a moment let's call country and religion similar to a box. If you look around most problems humans are creating for each other is trying to protect their own "boxes" versus others "boxes". My point is perhaps we need these boxes to some extent but as a human being, is he or she only restricted to these boxes ? Or is there a deeper essence to the person which is much deeper than any country, religion or any other boxes can bracket itself around ?
Can human essence be restricted to any one particular country or religion ? Isn't the human essence deeper, purer and belonging to the soul of the universe.
Between birth and death, aren't there moments for every human when he or she has reflected her depth which was far deeper than any country or religion can envelop. Haven't humans experienced that essence in themselves (at least in some moments between birth and death) which went deeper than any country or religion can hold.
And from that depth and that essence of the soul, can you really look at other human beings and feel they are different ? Regardless of their surface boxes of country, religion, ethnicity, color, background. Perhaps all of this was made to experience life from a sense of diversity and mutual respect.
But to let these surface boxes, become an obsession and philosophy of mutual destruction within mankind is because we were never went deeper than the structures of country and religions. We could never grasp the essence of oneness which is deeper than all man made structures. When humans were first born, did we have any country ? Did we have any religion ? All of these institutions man created. But life in its pure form which came to Earth was free of all these shackles. It was only later that we got bitten by the poison of our own sociological institutions.
I am not saying that you don't cherish whatever country or religion you are surrounded with or you like. What I am saying is, when you meet other humans who don't belong to the same boxes as yours, pause a moment and reflect, before you think that they are different from you. Maybe you will sense that at the depth we are all one as humanity. Maybe you will start to use your time and creativity you have in this life to strengthen this oneness.
This is the spiritual principle one. The principle of human oneness. And one of the foundation principles of Unleash Your Power .
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
What are Golden Cages ?
What are Golden Cages ? When we hate our toxic jobs, when we hate our toxic relationships and when we hate our toxic surroundings, but yet for some short term comfort or benefits ignore the deeper agony, these are all examples of Golden Cages.
When we wait for years inside these cages waiting for a rescuer, or a thought, or an idea, or a person or a moment, we begin perpetrating the irony of Golden Cages. The irony is that the rescuer we await for, is actually inside us. While we in vain look for the rescuer on the outside.
When we make toxic compromises in our lives which make us feel increasingly numb but yet we prefer to keep "things as they are". When we want to postpone making changes for the sake of not breaking toxic but comfortable patterns, we slowly allow ourselves to slip into the territory of soul numbness. Living like this for few years and the bird will be found hardly breathing and alive in the cage, and that bird is your soul.
As long as we are in a golden cage, are we really alive ? Or are we just awaiting a slow soul death ? These cages suck the life out of our souls much earlier than the actual physical end. The physical end which was only an outside expression of a soul death which happened much earlier. And that's the tragedy of human lives. So much potential entrapped in the golden cages of making soul crushing compromises.
The choice is for each one of us to make. A soul death in the Golden Cages for sake of protecting some comforts ? Or destroying the Cages and walking on to the path which has waited for us and finally breathing free. The principles of Unleash Your Power is : Smash these golden cages and let your soul breathe free so that love which is inside you can start breathing again.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : How to Live Free from the Golden Cages ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
What is Unleash Your Power ?
2100. Eighty six years from now. What do you think would have happened ? Do you think we would all be living exactly as we are living today ?
Often in our rush to make things perfect and enjoy perfect lives, we tend to forget that we cannot reverse the single basic law of the universe.
Which is that we only have finite time in our physical body.
By 2100, we would all be physically gone. Every single form of human life you see around including the toddlers would have either gone or on the verge of going.
How are most of us living our lives ? Obliviousness is what comes to mind. Oblivious of the inevitable finite time we all face. I think if this fact starts dawning on most of us as humans, I believe we would begin to live with more generosity and less hatred. I think our negative patterns will begin to reduce for more fruitful pursuits because we will know we only have sometime together before our whole generation would be replaced by a new one. (And ironically the new generation in 2100 may inherit many of the dysfunctional patterns from our society unless they figure out a intelligent sensitivity to detect which patterns from previous generations will not serve them and which will).
So knowing we have some finite time with us, do you still want to waste your time in thousands of insignificant distractions ? When this time you have you can use to live and work on the art and talent you have come in this life to share. And don't you sometimes realize that there is much more to you, than what you are living on many occasions ?
What are you waiting for ? God to arrive and tell you the time you have, before you begin to wake up and start doing what you really came in this life to do.
If you are an artist and a creative person and you can be a creator of something beautiful, then you owe it to yourself and to this world to let that creativity come out. It's a deeper pain when you know you have something unique and beautiful to share and you keep postponing from letting that creativity erupt from your soul.
This the essence of Unleash Your Power world movement. I started this to reach to you with the hope that we can inspire each other to let our hearts merge with the heartbeat of the earth in this life time before we are physically gone.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
"This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One just has to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural."
- Zen
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Ashish Anand ( Founder, Unleash Your Power)
The depth inside you
Do you feel sometimes that your life is getting frittered away in trivial and surface distractions of the world and everything which is really important to you, is simply getting postponed ?
Do you feel this pain ?
The pain of living an artificial life with very little depth and meaning. Do you feel like time is slowly slipping from your fingers and yet you are not taking steps towards the essence of your true being and your deeper heart ?
Are you tired of seeing the dullness and stupidity of politicians hellbent on destroying other communities in the name of "one-upmanship and paranoid rants" instead of creating anything meaningful and life giving.
Are you tired of seeing average corporate buildings being filled with people who require years of therapy for their psychosis, neurosis and dysfunctions, and yet like plague they are infecting others in the corporate environments with their poison and their dullness.
When was the last time you truly noticed something which touched your heart ?
How long that feeling remained ?
If you want to go beyond the surface distractions and immerse in the depth inside you, you will have to ready yourself for perhaps a challenging path, but possibly the only path which can touch your heart. A path of intense life.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand ( Founder, Unleash Your Power)
The magic inside you
I am not sure about everyone, but I know there is a group of humans, living and breathing in this life as our contemporaries who have magic inside them. Much more magic inside than probably what is being lived and expressed.
Why magic is not being lived is because the world can inherently be dysfunctional and caught in envy dramas at times. Instead of celebrating individual magic, mediocrity is what is tolerated and encouraged, because it doesn't trigger the envy-dramas which so many mediocrity ridden mindsets harbor.
Its not an easy world of "celebrating others and celebrating yourself" (one of the core tenets of Unleash Your Power movement). In fact the world can be more like "trash others and trash oneself".
If celebration takes precedence over envy and trashing, a lot of pain, anguish, frustration and violence will reduce, giving way to more life giving expressions. There will be more creativity, tolerance, understanding and recognizing magic in each other.
I don't know how long before this shift begins to happen. We are in 2014. How long we have to wait to see that we as humanity have tipped the scales in favor of celebration and magic instead of frustration backed violence and pettiness ? I don't think it will be in our life times. But somewhere in next 100-900 years, I am hoping the new humans who follows us, change the essence of the world to bringing more magic, creativity and joy in the world.
At least we who are living in this age of 2014 and have some time with us, can sow the seeds of magic and recognize actively what is creative, joyful and magical in human beings and actively celebrate that and rally around that.
It's time our world stops the old patterns of obsession of violence, ego frustrations, territorial anxiety, negativity, dysfunctional behaviors and all that is base in humans, and start living, recognizing and celebrating what is noble, dignified and magical in humans.
Related Article : Where is Radical Love ?
Related Article : Can you imagine to live deeper than country and religion ?
Related Article : What are Golden Cages ?
Ashish Anand (Founder, Unleash Your Power)
Ashish Anand is founder of Unleash Your Power.
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February 2015


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Playroom Organization: Blocks
Our playroom gets organized and reorganized often! Sometimes we have to make-do with what we have. We try to purchase high quality, long-term-use items that are very versatile. This post contains affiliate links to products for convenience purposes. We make a small commission from purchases made through these links but have not been paid for…… Continue reading Playroom Organization: Blocks


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Rice Tapdances on Administration's 'War on Terra' Focus
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had a tough outing with reporters yesterday. In the course of a press conference touting the administration's progress in the War on Terra, she was put on the defensive (stupid L.A. Times login required; cypherpunk98/cypherpunk works) by repeated questions about whether the President isn't just a bit too preoccupied with occupying the Iraqi oil fields, especially in light of the reappearance of Osama bin Laden and new warnings about resurgent al Qaeda activity. Among the silly and/or mutually contradictory assertions made by Rice: the President starts his day focused on anti-terra activity, and only switches to Iraq after he's had his coffee; the U.S. is making great strides in combatting al Qaeda, although the level of risk we face is essentially unchanged since Sep. 11, 2001; and there really are substantial links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that no one outside the administration even pretends to believe that these days.


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- Dr Rajesh Shah
During George Vithoulkas's visit to Bombay in January 1994, Dr. Rajesh Shah interviewed him discussing various vital aspects of homeopathy practice. Following are some of the excerpts. Some more part of the interview will be published in the next issue.
George Vithoulkas on Homeopathy
by Dr. Rajesh Shah, M.D.
Homeopahty Times, 1994
Dr. Rajesh Shah (R.S.): Your concept of essence has become popular worldwide. How do you understand the term essence and perceive essence in the patient?
George Vithoulkas (G.V): The understanding of essence can be of great help in remedy selection. For example, fear of being alone is common to may remedies, but is expressed different by each remedy. This individual expression forms the essence of the remedy. These differences are very important to understand drug differentiation between the remedies. It is in a different way that the same symptom will be describe in each remedy. This was something that I realized and describe later on as essence of the remedy. I would describe the differences between the remedied under the same rubric.
R.S.: Do you think that you can prescribe a remedy, without its so called essence being present?
G.V: You can certainly prescribe the remedy without its essence being present. There are different ways of prescribing and when we make a decision upon a remedy we don't make it on essence, we don't make it on causative factor, we don't make it on key –notes. We make it on combination. When the individual is sick on combination. When the individual is sick on mental-emotional level, this psychopathology forms a very important tool for the selection of the remedy, which I call the essence of the case. If the individual is sick on physiological (physical) level only, you may not get the essence at all.
R.S: It is a common complaint that in your seminar you do not teach generously; give minimum possible and very few cases people generally expect a lot more from you especially when get to learn directly from you. Please comment!
G.V: This is not true; usually my seminars are based on long cases. While teaching with such cases, I say everything that cancans the case say everything that concurs that case. My students/participants can follow up to see the whole thing. I am the only teacher, I believe, who gives information about how I find the remedy. I show the system. People have their own ideas about what is good teaching, have my own! It is a matter of perception, what is good and not good for me the student should get my way of thinking, not the product. Even if I give 100 cases, it will still be incomplete but if the get my way of analysis in depth, it will be more useful then many cases.
R.S: How do you place the value of dreams in your case-analysis?
G.V: I place the value of dream as a value of any one symptom. A dream which is repeated is valuable. I do not inflate the dream because I have seen that certain people who have done this, have gone wrong eventually, I do not make interpretation of dreams, because id you give one dream to a class of 100 student, you will have 95 different interpretations!
R.S: How often do you use so called acute remedies as constitutional e.g. Aconite, Belladonna, Camphor etc? How do you differentiate acute and chronic remedies?
G.V: Aconite is more of constitutional remedy than acute. Belladonna is roughly 20% chronic and 80% acute. Belladona works very well in psoriasis and diabetes. I do not differentiate between acute and chronic. I also prescribe Sulphur, Calcaria, and Phosphorus as acute remedies.
R.S: What are the reasons according to you, due to which homeopathy has not been recognized for its efficacy in the treatment of infective diseases?
G.V: Infectious diseases have the peculiarity that they do not give time to the homeopathy to act, bad the right remedy should be immediately established, otherwise we may lose the patient. This fear is a great handicap that we have against allopathic medicine under which everyone dies without any consequence. On the contrary the doctors have the sense that they have done their duties and have done the best possible. This unfair situation is holding us back in establishing the real efficacy of homeopathy in infectious diseases. From personal experience I would say that good homeopathy is much superior to antibiotics and I am prepared to prove it in a controlled experiment, but bad homeopathy can be disastrous and this is the whole difficulty. The results do not depend on standard medicines but on high standards of knowledge.
R.S: What is your viewpoint on the idea of understanding the remedies with the help of fairy-tales?
G.V: This is exactly what I mean confusion can ensue from such fantasies that can damage homeopathy tremendously. I am not against new ideas as long they are tested properly.
R.S: Who influenced you the most in your homeopathic life?
G.V: Definitely, it was Kent and Hahnemann. I felt I had a deep connection and understanding of their writings all others add small pieces but nothing substantial.
R.S: Do you or not agree in the belief that the constitutional remedy remains the same throughout the life?
G.V: There are some cases, very few indeed, with no miasmatic complication, who are the people with beat health on this planet. Those will require one remedy over a long period of time and for different aliment and perhaps throughout their life, end of their vitality- they will require other remedies as well to ameliorate the last day of their suffering but the over whelming majority. I would say 95% of the people today would definitely require more than one remedy at various stages in life.
R.S: What about the core remedy idea?
G.V: Core remedy is the deep remedy, which is in the core in the deepest part of individual which we have to find! The remedies other than the core remedy are superficial remedies! And the we go the previous life? This pure nonsense, which comes from idea and not from experience. Experience is different. When you want to cure, one cannot do it only with ideas! There was another idea that only certain remedies were acting homeopathically, like the Magnesiums, the Mercuries the Calcareas and Sulphur, Nux-v, Ars, throw it away! I say how can you do this? People believe it. They threw away a case of Nux-v. Without Nux-v you will never cure that person in your life. First Nux-v, and then Sulphur. There are some people who say oh, but he was Sulphur from the beginning. The core remedy was Sulphur I say, nonsense unless you give Nux-v first, Sulphur will not act. The essences at this moment is Nux-v, the essence later is Sulphur. You will see the changes in the person, from fastidious he has become sloppy, he doesn't care about order and he has become lazy. It doesn't matter how many times you give Sulphur, it won't act. When you have to treat you cannot say, yes but my theory say, I have to find the core remedy! If that case is a strong Nux-v case, how can you get away with it?
R.S: At the end of almost 200 years, how do you look at the status and the future of homeopathy at the international level?
G.V: Homeopathy is on the ascendant. Quite obviously it is becoming more and more popular and no comparison can be made to what it was 20 year ago. The future of homeopathy will be brighter. I see colleges and hospitals in Europe and the U.S.A where homeopathy will be taught at the university level. I believe a transformation in medicine will take place and eventually homeopathy will occupy 80% of teaching and practice in therapeutics. I believe that far in future, treatment will be given by stimulation of the remedy, with some specially designed stimulator. Eventually the technology will take over.
R.S: What is your most significant contribution to homeopathy?
G.V: The Expert system (VES) that I have created with the help of the Belgian university of Namur and the materia medica. I am writing only six volumes so far through I started writing it six years ago.
R.S: What is your message to the students of homeopathy?
G.V: If homeopathy gives you joy and enthusiasm when you study it, then continue and you will become a great healer but if you feel bored with your studies and you do it only for the sake of having a lucrative profession, I advice you to give it up immediately, other wise you will feel sorry the rest of your life.


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Care for Those with Limited Income
CHRISTUS Point of Light Clinic is located in a medically under-served community 30 miles southeast of Houston in Dickinson, Texas. Led by family practitioner, Sister Ricca Dimalibot, M.D., and family nurse practitioner, Andres Gil, MSN, RN, NP-C, the Clinic opened in 1989 in response to a growing need for healthcare providers in a low-income area between Houston and Galveston. Twenty-eight years later, the Clinic continues to provide quality, affordable healthcare to thousands of men, women and children annually.
CHRISTUS Point of Light Clinic Address and Hours
2401 Termini Street, Suite 100-D
Dickinson, TX 77539
- Monday through Friday: 8:00 am. – 5:00 p.m.
- Closed for lunch daily from Noon – 1:00 p.m.
- Phone: 713.803.1830
Clinic Providers
CHRISTUS Point of Light Clinic's primary physician, Sister Ricca Dimalibot was born and raised in the Philippines.
Sr. Ricca earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Medical Technology and graduated as a Medical Doctor from Our Lady of Fatima College of Medicine. In addition, Sr. Ricca holds a Master of Arts Degree in Theology from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri.
Sr. Ricca completed her residency in Family Medicine at CHRISTUS St. Joseph Hospital and at The Methodist Hospital, both in Houston, TX. Upon completing her residency, Sr. Ricca became board certified in family medicine. Before joining the CHRISTUS family, Sr. Ricca worked as a physician in both Africa and Central America.
Sister Ricca Dimalibot, M.D.
CHRISTUS Point of Light
Andres obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, FL. Andres practiced as an Intensive Care Unit RN for 7 years before going back to school to get a Master of Science in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Andres also has a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from Southwestern Adventist University.
Andres plays a major role at Point of Light clinic assisting Dr. Ricca in caring for the many patients Point of Light serves daily. Andres also assists the CHRISTUS School Clinics on a remote basis, through the use of tele-medicine, and with health promotion programs.
Andres hobbies are reading, playing video games with his children, and playing music.
"My favorite part of my job is being able to educate my patients about their health, getting them involved in the plan of care and having the opportunity to approach their well being in a holistic manner."


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Do you have any questions? Anyone already made these and can answer? You guys are awesome!
6 thoughts on "BCM P&Q: Philadelphia Blueberry Corn Tart and Esquimaux Pops for Grown-Ups"
It was a little hot for weekend baking here, so I doubled the filling for the tart and bought an angel food cake and turned the tart into a trifle…