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This is my third recipe from the brunch section of The Newlywed Kitchen. There are still a few more I'd like to try from this section like the blueberry cinnamon streusel muffins, orange blackberry scones, and the chunky monkey banana bread, but I must stay on track and move onto the next section next weekend. I'm sure I will revisit these other recipes after this project.
Mark is usually the pancake maker. He's helping me pick out recipes and this was one of his selections. I had a feeling it was the one he was going to pick, but it was a tougher decision than I thought it would be.
This recipe is said to yield the softest, most tender pancakes and well, I would have to agree. I'm sure it had something to do with the combination of buttermilk, baking powder and baking soda. The addition of pineapple to the batter made the texture a little chunky but in a good and tasty way. The pancakes were topped with buttered coconut rum syrup which was quite easy to make using the recipe in the cookbook. They were also topped with toasted coconut which I'm not sure you can buy. I ended up buying the coconut flakes and toasting it myself in the oven for about 7 minutes at 325 degrees. The final topping was a couple of dollops of whipped cream.
Instead of making 6 pancakes, I made 4 large, plate sized pancakes and it was more than enough to feed the two of us. We were able to eat about 3/4ths of it along with a couple of strips of bacon and saved the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. They were just as good the next morning as they were the day before.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Posted by gapey at 6:29 PM
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subset: commoncrawl


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Becoming Los Angeles: My Speech at the Natural History Museum's Exhibit Opening | KCET
Becoming Los Angeles: My Speech at the Natural History Museum's Exhibit Opening
The new permanent exhibition Becoming Los Angeles opens on Sunday at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. I had a small part in the press preview on Wednesday and got to say a few words about what "becoming" might mean to Angeleños:
Story continues below
Visitors come to this museum for different reasons. To be informed, of course. To be entertained, if only a little. To daydream (my favorite reason). Or to quicken the imagination
These are "good enough" reasons to visit the Natural History Museum. And today we have an even better reason.
"Becoming Los Angeles" is an exhibition that is informative, entertaining, and stylishly imaginative. But it has a more ambitious reason to claim our interest: "Becoming Los Angeles" will help us find ourselves.
We've been lost in these latter decades, ever since the mythologies of 20th century Los Angeles ceased to be very believable. We've been waiting for something better to take the place of the romantic myths and the menacing ones that said our Los Angeles was really some other place.
Some place other than the flawed semi-paradise we've made, but instead a fantastical place -- a bright city to answer all of our desires, no matter how extravagant or the noir city of regrets and blighted dreams.
We no longer can afford to lose Los Angeles in the glare of its glamorous sales pitch or out of despair for what we've made of it or -- worse -- because of our willful amnesia about its history.
If we're to be sustained by the place where we are, we need to see Los Angeles from a perspective that has more of us in it and more of our ordinariness. It needs to be a perspective more encompassing than allowed by nostalgia, forgetfulness, or irony.
What we need is a long view -- a view of our place that necessarily extends from the Native American Tong'va to the immigrant Cambodians who live on my block and a view that necessarily includes nature as an actor in our crowded landscape with its own historical claims.
Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, insisted that Americans had not yet become "native" to their land. His subject was rural life. This exhibition focuses on the Los Angeles region. But the question is true for both places and true on the same terms: How do we become "indigenous" to this place?
It seems to me only by deepening and widening our imagination. Built-out, transformed into the northernmost capitol of the tropics, maximally diverse, more urban, and more grown up, Los Angeles requires imagination to extend one's understanding across its tragic, sacred, human, and humanizing body.
Easy contempt for Los Angeles as the "capitol of sprawl" -- as an illegitimate place -- has obscured the region's complicated history in which geography, nature, and the presence of all of us are in continual dialog. With the deepening and widening of our imagination, we acquire a "sense of place." But for many of us a "sense of place" is elusive and perhaps for that reason not even desirable.
Yet that sensibility is the hardest won achievement of living in Los Angeles. With a "sense of place," we become implicated in history and in the memories that narrate our individual stories and the stories we have in common.
Those stories aren't perfect. They're necessarily flawed. But in them are answers to how others have made their home here and how we might achieve a durable home in Los Angeles.
"Becoming Los Angeles" is crowded with stories that remind us that Los Angeles is not an unmixed Eden, that indigenous people were active figures in the landscape changing it even as we still do, and that the past resonates and insinuates itself into our lives, going underground like the Los Angeles River and returning to the surface to water new hopes.
One of the vitrines in "Becoming Los Angeles" contains a small, nondescript bottle. Inside is water that was snatched from the millions of gallons that poured through the newly opened gates of the Los Angeles Aqueduct on November 5, 1913. Called on to say some dedicatory words as the water cascaded down, William Mulholland - the project's master builder - is supposed to have said, There it is. Take it.
"It" isn't just the water of the Owens Valley. It might be all of nature. It might be the conflicted hybridization of landscape and people from which our place is made. It might be the city of Los Angeles: Colonial city. Captured city. City of edges. Mestizo city. City of utopias. Anxious city.
And it might be the place we've will find at last to be our home.
"There it is. Take it." Taking was how we formerly understood the idea of Los Angeles. This exhibition shows us becoming Los Angeles.
There it is. Courageously, imaginatively, knowingly, perhaps even joyfully, I invite you to become all of it.
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The Artist wins big at Critics' Choice Awards
The silent-film sensation The Artist remains in pole position for Oscar glory after triumphing at last night's Critics' Choice Movie Awards in Hollywood. It won four gongs - best picture, best score, best costume design and best director for Michel Hazanavicius.
"I made a silent movie," the French director Hazanavicius joked in English while accepting the award. "I don't like to speak so much."
The awards, now in its seventeenth year and referred to as "the ninth most exciting night in Hollywood" by hosts Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer, are voted for by 250 members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
The evening's other big winner was The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel about black maids and their white employees during the


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WISE, Va. — Gov. Terry McAuliffe renewed his pitch for expanding health care to the poor Friday by touring a field hospital set up at a county fairgrounds, where people had camped out for days for the chance to see a dentist or doctor.
McAuliffe flew to the Remote Area Medical expedition in far southwest Virginia, where the line for free dental and medical care was 1,500 long by 4 a.m. Friday, when organizers started turning people away.
"That just breaks your heart," said McAuliffe (D), standing in a horse barn that served as a makeshift doctor's office, with bedsheets strung up between examination tables to provide a measure of privacy.
McAuliffe chatted there with a single mother who comes to the clinic every year to get treatment for asthma and to see the dentist. The woman told him that she can get insurance through her job as a foodservice worker but that the premium would consume half her paycheck. He told her that he was "working hard so we can get health care for everyone when they want it, not just once a year."
The free clinic springs up at the Wise County Fairgrounds every year. Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, began offering medical services in Third World countries 30 years ago but today focuses on poor parts of America, including this scenic but economically depressed swath of Appalachian coal country.
The event took on added political significance this year, as McAuliffe continues his push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
Since taking office in January, McAuliffe has pushed to expand Medicaid coverage to 400,000 uninsured Virginians. The federal government has offered to pay most of the $2 billion-a-year cost under the health care law known informally as Obamacare. But the Republican House of Delegates, skeptical that Washington can afford to keep that promise, has blocked expansion.
McAuliffe said in June that he would find a way around the legislature and expand health-care access unilaterally. He reiterated that intention Friday, accompanied by Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) and Health and Human Resources Secretary William A. Hazel Jr. "There are different vehicles and avenues that we can [use to] provide health care," he said. "We're doing an analysis. We have teams working around the clock on this."
At the same time, he appeared to be trying to lower expectations that he will come up with something as far-reaching as enrolling 400,000 people in Medicaid, saying whatever he announces in September will be "only a step."
He also renewed efforts to drum up public pressure on Republicans who oppose expansion, urging patients to lobby local legislators for it and calling on Republican delegates to visit the clinic.
"I would go back and remind everybody to call their members of the House of Delegates," he said.
Republicans, who question McAuliffe's legal authority to expand Medicaid without legislative approval, dismissed his visit as a photo op. "It is going to take more than a few photo opportunities to explain to the people of Virginia why he's ignoring the legislature, the law and the Constitution," Matthew Moran, spokesman for House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), said via e-mail.
In remarks to reporters, McAuliffe noted that any effort to enact expansion on his own will be "within the confines of what we're allowed to do."
The three-day clinic, which relies on more than 1,000 volunteers, will serve as many as 3,000 people before it ends Sunday. The vast majority of patients — more than 70 percent — come for dental care, Brock said.
Every year, hundreds of people have every one of their teeth pulled there. Then they put their names into a denture lottery, with the hope of being picked to get a set of false teeth made for them at the next year's event. Forty-six people were picked from a list of 700 to get dentures this year.
"They pull thousands of teeth here. At the end, they'll have buckets of teeth," said volunteer Jennifer Lee, Virginia's deputy secretary of health and human resources and an emergency room doctor.
Medicaid expansion would not fully alleviate the dental situation. Medicaid does not cover routine dental care for adults or dentures. But Medicaid does pay for emergency tooth extractions, so patients would not have to wait a year to have a bad one pulled.
"I just had an 18-year-old have a full mouth extraction because she's never had dental care," said Beth Bortz, who runs the Virginia Center for Health Innovation. "It's not unusual."
She said patients often want their good teeth removed, too, because they associate teeth with pain. She said health-care providers counsel them to keep them.
In a tent where people waited for a vision exam, McAuliffe knelt beside Martha Deel, whose only job is caring for her brain-injured son. Fifty-one years old, she looked decades older. After her exam, she said she would line up to see a doctor for "the girl stuff."
"We're fighting hard for health care," he told her.
As McAuliffe moved on, Deel — amazed that she had just had a talk with the governor — high-fived the health-care workers. "That was just awesome!" she said.
McAuliffe spoke to about 100 people in a tent waiting to see a dentist. Gilda Mountcastle, who'd been waiting for care since 5:30 a.m. Thursday, called out from the back of the crowd to say she would not have access to a dentist or eye doctor without the clinic.
But she told a reporter afterward that she did not support Medicaid expansion, which she saw as a government handout.
"We're hardworking, hillbilly mountain people," she said. "We're too proud to beg and bum."


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Runtown No Permission
Soundgod, Runtown follows up with the official music video to his latest offering 'No Permission' featuring South African Rapper, Nasty C.
asty C drops heavy bars on this one , while Runtown switches his flow with a rap verse as well. Video was shot in Johannesburg , South Africa. Directed by Teekay.
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Edward Lear was a nineteenth century writer of nonsense poems
When and Where was he Born?
12th May 1812, Highgate, London, England.
Family Background:
Edward Lear was the youngest of twenty-one children of Jeremiah Lear a Stockbroker and his wife Ann. Brought up by his eldest sister Ann.
From his sisters Ann and Sarah who taught him to draw.
Timeline/Biography of Edward Lear:
1816: Lear's father became a defaulter with the Stock Exchange and the impecunious family had to abandon their fashionable way of life. Lear was brought up by his sister Ann, then 21 years old and his mother has nothing more to do with him.
1826: He begins to earn his living as an artist whilst still living with his sister.
1830: In June he starts work on "Illustrations of the Family Psittacidae or Parrots". (November) He quickly gains a reputation as an ornithological artist when the first two volumes of the Parrots are published. Becomes an Associate of the Linnean Society.
1831: Edward Lear begins a collaboration with John Gould on the "Birds of Europe". Visits Amsterdam, Berne and Berlin with Gould.
1832: He starts drawing the animals at Knowsley Hall for Lord Stanley during July.
1835: He goes to Ireland with the Bishop of Norwich and his son Arthur Penryn Stanley and becomes interested in landscape painting.
1836: Goes on a walking tour of the Lake District. His eyesight begins to get worse.
1837: Edward Lear visits Belgium, Germany and Switzerland on his way to Rome.
1838: Travels to Southern Italy and begins painting in oils.
1839: Walking tour in Central Italy.
1841: Returns to England. In September he publishes "Views in Rome and Its Environs." Returns to Rome in December.
1842: Visits Sicily.
1845: He returns to England in May.
1846: Edward Lear publishes "Illustrated Excursions in Italy". " Publishes The first edition of "A Book of Nonsense" under the pseudonym Derry Down Derry. Publishes "Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary at Knowsley Hall. Gives drawing lessons to Queen Victoria and then returns to Rome.
1847: Visits Sicily and Calabria and witnesses the revolution.
1848: In April because of the political state in Italy he leaves Rome and Moves on to Corfu, Athens, Marathon and Thebes where he becomes ill. Moves to Maltab during December.
1849: Travels to Cairo and Sinai then returns to Malta. Returns to England in July and prepares for the entrance examination to The Royal Academy Schools.
1850: Taken on as a student at the Royal Academy.
1851: He publishes "Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania". Meets Alfred and Emily Tennyson.
1852: Introduced to William Holman Hunt who teaches him painting. Goes to live with Hunt at Hastings and meets other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Publishes "Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria.
1853: The damp English weather is bad for his health and he leaves for Egypt during December.
1854: Travels up the Nile and then returns to England.
1855: Publishes the second edition of "A Book of Nonsense". Goes to Corfu but becomes lonely and depressed, a condition, which he suffered from throughout his life.
1856: Edward Lear travels to Albania and Greece.
1857: Returns to England for the summer and Corfu for the winter.
1858: Travels to Bethlehem, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Winters in Rome.
1859: Lear returns to England in May but returns to Rome in December.
1860: Returns to England and works on his major oil painting "The Cedars of Lebanon".
1861: Death of his sister Ann on 11th March. He visits Florence and then winters in Corfu. Publication of the third edition of "A Book of Nonsense".
1862: "The Cedars of Lebanon exhibited at the Great Exhibition in March but is not well received. Returns to Corfu.
1863: He publishes "Seven Ionian Islands".
1864: Edward Lear leaves Corfu for Athens when the island is ceded to the Greeks. Summer in London. Winter in southern France.
1865: Writes his first full length nonsense story "The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple Popple". Returns to England but then moves on to Venice as he is commissioned to do painting by Lady Waldegrave. Winters in Malta.
1866: Returns to England. Thinks about proposing marriage to Gussie Bethell. Travels to Egypt and Jerusalem. Returns to England. Winter in Cannes. Writes the "Owl and the Pussycat" song.
1868: Travels to Corsica then returns to England. Winters in Cannes.
1869: Publishes "Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica".
1870: Buys land in San Remo and decides to settle down. In December he finishes "Nonsense Songs and Stories", "Botany and Alphabets".
1871: Moves into Villa Emily. In December he finishes "More Nonsense".
1872: Spends summer in England. Travels towards India but turns back at Suez.
1873: Travels to India again and visits Bombay.
1875: Leaves India and Ceylon. Spends summer in England.
1876: Publishes final nonsense book "Laughable Lyrics"
1877: Brief visit to Corfu to see his friend who is ill.
1878: Summer in Switzerland.
1880: Buys new land for building. Last visit to England during February. In September he returns to Monte Generoso, Italy.
1881: Summer in Monte Generoso at the Villa Tennyson.
1884: Edward Lear sells the Villa Emily
1885: Spends summer in Brianza.
1886: Completes payment for the Villa Tennyson building work.
1887: Abandons his long held plan to illustrate Tennyson's work.
Ironically he wished to be known for his landscape painting but is more often known as the "Father of English Nonsense".
Written Works:
1841: "Views in Rome and Its Environs"
1846: "Illustrated Excursions in Italy". "A Book of Nonsense" (under the pseudonym Derry Down Derry). "Gleanings from the Menagerie and Aviary at Knowsley Hall.
1851: "Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania".
1863: "Seven Ionian Islands".
1865: "The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple Popple".
1866: "Owl and the Pussycat"
1869: "Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica".
1871: "Nonsense Songs and Stories".
1872: "More Nonsense Songs".
1876: "Laughable Lyrics"
(1889): "Nonsense Drolleries".
(1900): "The Jumblies".
Never Married though contemplated proposal to Gussie Bethell.
When and Where did he Die?
29th January 1888, San Remo, Italy.
Age at Death:
Site of Grave:
San Remo, Liguria, Italy.
Places of Interest:
British Library.


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I have supported President Trump without qualification before and during his presidency. I support him now but not on "Red Flag" gun confiscation.
This issue has been on my mind for some time. Today, Chuck Baldwin's message has added to my worries of losing my constitutional rights and Pastor Baldwin outlines the many dangers associated with "Red Flag" laws and my freedom.
I fought out of the fox-hole for my and your Constitutional Rights and I won't support a law that gives some whiny individual that might not like me, fabricate some story about my behavior, that might cause a gestapo type door busting raid on my home in the middle of the night. It is too dangerous for me not to speak up.
I urge all to read Pastor Baldwin's message, call your Senators and Representative in Washington, D.C. and oppose any type "Red Flag" law(s) that ignores my constitutional right, locks me up, and makes me prove my innocence. Don't think this couldn't happen!!!
I'm disappointed in President Trump in taking a position that appears to support "Red Flag" legislation...........don't wait for someone else to take action, we must individually take action and urge all our friends to do the same. We are dangerously close to losing a major constitutional right if we sit back and "let someone else do it".
Call your US Senators and Representative at your earliest opportunity.....and don't stop with one call. Call many times. God help us.
Harry Riley
By Chuck Baldwin
August 22, 2019
As I said in this column last week, Republicans Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are joining forces with liberal Democrats to soon enact "red flag" gun confiscation laws. I also reported on the push for the enactment of other gun control measures such as universal background checks being promoted on Capitol Hill and by the White House here.
Yes, Donald Trump is calling for "red flag" gun confiscation laws and universal background checks. Trump said, "I have an appetite for background checks. We're going to be doing background checks. We're going to be filling in . . . the loopholes."
I urge readers to watch my 8-minute video exposing Donald Trump's betrayal of his promise to protect the 2nd Amendment and share it with as many of your friends as you can. If we don't convince our U.S. senators to reject these egregious gun control measures, THEY WILL BE PASSED, AND TRUMP WILL SIGN THEM INTO LAW. We have about two or three weeks to convince our senators to reject these new gun control laws. That's it.
Please watch the video and share it with everyone you can.
If law-abiding gun owners don't call their U.S. senators en masse, and I mean posthaste, you are very likely to wake up one morning around 4am to the sound of a SWAT team breaking down your door to confiscate your guns, prepared to kill you or any member of your family who resists. Why? Perhaps because a gun-hating neighbor hates you having guns or a relative doesn't like you and is looking for any way to "teach you a lesson" or your ex-spouse is looking for any way to "get even" with you or an anti-gun cop with a grudge wants to send a political message or a family doctor or school teacher overheard one of your children talk about how many guns daddy has and became alarmed, etc., ad infinitum.
Plus, the FBI has just recently stated that if you believe in "conspiracy theories," you are a "domestic terrorist threat." That statement is from an FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau's Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019. That FBI designation alone could very easily precipitate a "red flag" gun confiscation order being rendered against you.
And Donald Trump himself recently demonstrated how dangerous "red flag" laws are. In a tweet on August 13, President Trump said,
Would Chris Cuomo be given a Red Flag for his recent rant? Filthy language and a total loss of control. He shouldn't be allowed to have any weapon. He's nuts!
Are you paying attention? Donald Trump was threatening to use a "red flag" law to authorize police agencies to take away an American citizen's Natural God-given right of self-defense simply because Trump didn't like what the citizen said—about him.
Folks, don't you see? Those in authority can use "red flag" gun confiscation laws against ANYONE they want and for ANY REASON they want.
In other words, there doesn't have to be a reason. Under "red flag" laws, all it takes for police to come and seize your guns is for someone to make a "red flag" accusation against you. That's it. And, yes, it really IS that easy.
"Red flag" laws not only eviscerate the 2nd Amendment, but the 1st Amendment, 4th Amendment, 5th Amendment, 6th Amendment, 7th Amendment and 8th Amendment.
The enforcement of "red flag" laws is actually much worse than you think, so says Donald Kilmer, an attorney who has litigated and defended against many state and federal gun charges.
Everyone is debating "red flag" laws like they're some new thing, but California has had variations of them for decades. We call them domestic violence restraining orders, civil harassment restraining orders, workplace restraining orders, elder abuse restraining orders, mental health seizures and prohibition orders, and, more recently, gun violence restraining orders.
They're all meant to disarm dangerous people — but they're all fundamentally flawed.
None of these red flag laws would have prevented recent mass shootings. And in my 23 years practicing law in the heart of Silicon Valley, I have litigated dozens of these cases. I've seen firsthand the practical enforcement problems that emerge in real-life cases.
These kinds of court orders are usually obtained from a judge ex parte. That's fancy Latin for: The judge only hears one side of the story, it is not your side, and you may not even know about it until after the fact. Then they immediately strip you of fundamental constitutional rights for the duration of the orders. You'll get your "full due process" hearing, but not until later.
And any violation of these orders is separately punishable as a crime. So even if you are innocent of the underlying conduct that inspired the "red flag" order, if you violate the order pending your hearing, you can still face criminal charges.
That kind of situation is ripe for danger. In one situation in Baltimore, police ended up shooting [and killing] a man when they came to collect his guns under a "red flag" law.
In one case in Southern California, a client had to pay a $1,000 ransom, that was reduced from an initial "offer" of $4,000, to get his 50-gun collection back.
Experienced counsel to defend you in a "due process" hearing will run about $15,000 in fees. If you lose and want to appeal, expect to spend another $25,000 to $100,000 in fees and costs. And even with all of that, you might still lose.
To win these hearings, you have to refute an allegation that you pose a danger to yourself or others where a judge already issued a temporary ex parte order that concluded you were already a danger. Many judges will likely err on the side of caution, and against your rights.
As a practical matter, if the government's interest is in separating a potentially-dangerous person from guns, it makes no sense to leave other guns that belong to family members in the home. So, if you live with someone that gets a red flag order issued against them, then you and others living in the same home risk losing your guns, too.
Even if you win, the judge isn't going to just hand your guns back to you at the end of the hearing. It's probably a good idea to "lawyer up" just to go through the process of recovering your guns, so you don't go to jail or prison for accidentally breaking an obscure firearm law or regulation. You wouldn't want to set off a red flag.
Law-abiding gun owners better get a big whiff of reality SOON and realize that if they are going to maintain the right to keep and bear arms much longer, THEY must step up to the plate and defend that right—and I mean RIGHT NOW.
The NRA is compromised and is in complete disarray and is offering NO HELP. Donald Trump has already proven he has ZERO fidelity to the 2nd Amendment (or to the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, for that matter). Most Christians and conservatives are in a state of deep denial and hibernation, believing that their yellow-haired savior would never betray them, in spite of the fact that he has already betrayed them—repeatedly.
It is up to individual freedomists and gun owners who are willing to fight for their right to keep and bear arms to fend off this assault against our 2nd Amendment liberties. Reinforcements are not coming; it is up to YOU AND ME.
How much does the 2nd Amendment mean to you? Each of us will determine the answer to that question by what we do or do not do RIGHT NOW.
P.S. I, again, URGE readers to watch my 8-minute video regarding Trump's betrayal of the 2nd Amendment and the push for the enactment of "red flag" gun confiscation laws and share it with everyone you can. In the video, I also include the phone numbers for both the White House and U.S. Senate, where you can call and voice your opposition.
P.P.S. Here is my video Open Letter To Our Legislator, Judges And Lawmen regarding "red flag" gun confiscation laws. Please watch it and share.
© Chuck Baldwin
Views: 568
Dear Congressman John Carter. ( Senators Cornyn, Cruz )
No Red Flag Gun Laws .
Taking away guns gives control to governments. The founders of this nation knew that regardless of the form of government, those in power may become corrupt and seek to rule as the British did by trying to disarm the populace of the colonies. It is not difficult to understand that a disarmed populace is a Controlled Populace.
Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the U.S. Constitution.
It must be preserved at all costs. : "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed."
Dear Congressman : The Millions ++ Law Abiding Armed Citizens of this Nation , will they obey and follow this Insane Leftist proposed Law .????????????
Will The Millions ++ Law Abiding Armed Citizens of this Nation become A " VENEZUELA " ?????????????
Please : No Red Flag Gun Laws .
Thank you Sir .
PresidentTrump might be leading the GOP senators into showing their true un Constitutional colors ????
I think Rubio & Scott of Florida went for the cheese in the trap.
We need to flood the politicians with calls and E mails .
D.C. Switchboard .. 1-202 225 3121 ...
President comment line 1-202-456-1111 9:00am - 4:00pm Eastern time Mon-Fri
Call President 1-202-456-1414
From: email@example.com
To: email@example.com
Sent: 8/19/2019 6:26:48 PM Central Standard Time
Subject: From Senator Rick Scott
Dear Mr. Smyly,
Thank you for contacting me regarding the recent tragedies in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas. I appreciate the opportunity to respond. Tragedies like these are devastating, not only to the communities and loved ones impacted, but also to families across the nation as we grieve with them and keep them in our prayers.
The safety of our families is always my top priority, and I am a proud supporter of the Constitution, the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding citizens. As we work to move forward, I am committed to reviewing proposals that work to keep Americans safe. As Governor of Florida, I worked to increase safety measures in Florida's schools through the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. We also passed a "red flag" law in the state of Florida, commonly referred to as an Emergency Risk Protection Order (ERPO). When properly constructed, red flag laws are a common sense measure to keep weapons out of the hands of any person who threatens to harm themselves or others, or who is mentally unstable.
As United States Senator, I remain focused on making sure that our schools and communities are safe, and that those struggling with mental health issues or threatening harm to themselves or others cannot use a weapon. I am currently working with my colleagues to pass the EAGLES Act (S. 495), which provides law enforcement more resources to prevent tragedies and improves school safety for students and teachers. I am also a cosponsor of the Threat Assessment, Prevention, and Safety (TAPS) Act (S. 265), which will create a task force of experts to provide recommendations for a national strategy to keep communities safe from targeted violence.
Again, thank you for your correspondence. I am proud to represent every citizen in Florida and I appreciate the time you took to provide your position on this matter. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me.
Rick Scott
United States Senator
You can follow my work in the U.S. Senate on Twitter . Additionally, please do not reply to this email as this mailbox unfortunately is for outgoing messages only. If you would like to contact me again, please visit my website .
If the Red flag laws make it through both houses what will Trump do? He never should have brought this up, in doing so he may have backed himself into a corner. Why is he even talking to McCain's bitch, Graham, about this?
Personally I don't appreciate the mind games he is playing, be straight up and quit bullshitting with people.
This is one of the many reasons I was apprehensive about a Trump candidacy in 2016.
This red flag here in FL is news to me.I guess I haven't been watching but I intend to do a search and see if I can find the exact language in it.Not that that will help if it's already passed,but I'll know what they plan to do/try.
Mike Hill Florida representative in Pensacola will be introducing a bill to Repeal Red Flag Laws .He did it last year but got no help & it was blocked from getting on the floor for a vote. We need to Support him.
Mike Hill will also be introducing a Heart Beat bill to help stop abortion .
Office number .. 850 494-5690
Cain killed Abel with a rock.God blamed Cain for this,not the rock.
The Bias Against Guns
Why Almost Everything You've Heard about Gun Control Is Wrong
By John R. Lott, Jr.
Published: March 2003
Cover of The Bias against Guns
300 pages
In his bestselling classic, More Guns, Less Crime, John R. Lott, Jr., proved that guns make us safer. Now, in his stunning new book, The Bias against Guns, Lott shows how liberals bury pro-gun facts out of sheer bias against the truth.
With irrefutable evidence, Lott shoots gun critics down and gives you the information you need to win arguments with those who want to ban guns.
Praise for The Bias against Guns
"If you want the truth the anti-gunners don't want you to know... you need a copy of The Bias Against Guns." --Sean Hannity, of Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes
"John Lott's thoughtful study should be read by everyone interested in the control of violent crime, and protection against terrorism." --Vernon L. Smith, 2002 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
"John Lott's 1998 book, More Guns, Less Crime, created quite a stir among the gun-control romantics, whose expressive advocacy involves neither sound analytics nor empirical evidence. In this follow-on book, The Bias Against Guns, Lott continues the struggle, and responds to his critics, motivated by his strong conviction that analysis and evidence must, finally, win the day." --James Buchanan, 1986 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
"Another major contribution by John Lott to the evidence on the effects--good and bad--of gun-control legislation. An important supplement to his More Guns, Less Crime."--Milton Friedman, 1976 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
"As a gun-toting rock 'n' roll star all my life, I have lived firsthand the outrageous media and Hollywood bias against good guys with guns forever. I laugh in their face. John Lott is my academic hero." --Ted Nugent, recording artist and author of Kill It & Grill Itand Gods, Guns, & Rock 'n' Roll
"[Lott] marshals unimpeachable evidence on how the anti-gun crusade, driven by sins of omission and commission, might actually be costing many more lives than it saves. You'll want to have this intellectual ammunition." --Walter E. Williams, economist and syndicated columnist
"John Lott is a scholar's scholar and a writer's writer--and his book shows why. That gun ownership might bring social benefits as well as costs is a story we do not often see in the press, and Lott here explores why. With a blend of new data, evidence, and examples, he unpacks the bias against such stories in the media."--J. Mark Ramseyer,Harvard Law School professor
Instructions for Obtaining John R. Lott's Raw Data
Most of this data involves STATA 7.0 data sets. The reason for using this is that the county level data involves a much larger set of control variables than can readily be handled by other statistical packages. The data sets can be obtained by clicking on the following links which will take you to the download page:
Chapter 6: MVPS Paper Data
Chapters 7 and 8: Safe Storage, Gun Shows, Assault Weapons Data
Appendix 1: Crime Data 77-00 Data
Appendix 2: Magazine Sales Data
2002 Survey on Defensive Gun Use Data
General Discussion of the 1997 and 2002 Surveys
Confirming More Guns, Less Crime
All of the Above Sections
Op-ed's and comments about current topics by John Lott
Related Links
Order from Amazon
Order from Barnes and Noble
Other information
Dr.John Lott's CV as of 2-22-03
Washington Post Letter 3.21.03
General Discussion to claims regarding the 1997 and 2002 surveys
I'm trying to do a little research on these Red-Flag laws.
GovTracks is a good place to find and track them. They have most of the proposed legislation listed but it takes some digging to find and identify each individual bill that has been submitted for consideration.
These RED-Flag laws are very dangerous and must be stopped - BEFORE they become laws.
Please help out here folks, get those computer keyboards working and find these bills before they are voted on and approved by Congress.
Here is the one submitted by Marco Rubio of Florida.
Other numbers that have come up so far include but not limited to this;
H.R. 1287; Eric Swalwell California; https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/hr1287
And Rubio's S.7 above.
True to the Democrat's game plan there are likely to be hundreds of these Anti-Gun bills filed in congress,
The game plan is to overwhelm the system and the opposition with so much BS that we can never catch everything they submit. There are many more so let's all get digging folks.
We have to stop this BS before it's too late.
Florida needs to turn back the current unconstitutional law that our treacherous house has already passed.
More is out of the question.


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I like to surround myself with things I love and value because I believe what I often tell my coaching clients..."What you focus on, you create."
While shopping one day, I found these great dinner plates that said "I Love Family". When I brought them out, everyone smiled and there was a noticeable shift in energy. They became a great reminder of how much we love our family. That is, until the day one of the plates got a little chip on the rim.
After that our kids who were about three and seven, didn't want that "messed up, chipped plate." Suddenly these plates, these reminders of our love, became a source of discord, arguing and complaining…
"I don't want that plate! It's broken. I had it last time. Give it to someone else!"
I felt frustrated, but I also wondered, "How can I help us remember the love for family that these plates once symbolize?"
And so one Thursday I announced, "Today is a very special day. From now on, Thursday dinners are going to be called 'Chipped Plate Thursday Thanks' and whoever gets the plate with a chip in it, will be showered with statements of love and gratitude by the rest of the family."
A look of delight crossed everyone's face. Suddenly the broken, unwanted, chipped plate became something special, something wanted, something valuable.
There are many things I love about this gratitude ritual.
Many of us already know that gratitude has been scientifically proven to improve health and increase happiness, but I also believe that gratitude is one of our key feminine powers.
By practicing gratitude and presence, our eyes are open to see the beauty and abundance all around us. As William Arthur Ward said, "Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings."
Creating a gratitude practice is easy; making time to do it is usually the obstacle. However, when you realize the benefits of this simple act, who wouldn't want to reap the blessing of this soulful skill?
Interested in starting your own gratitude ritual? Here are some ideas to get you started:
Inspired? I'd love to hear which ideas you'd like to adopt or hear your creative, new ones.
Gratitude is contagious, so comment on the blog and let's create a gratitude epidemic. ;)
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by Ross Middleton
When we last spoke to CTD alum Augustine Pasin, he was a rising high school junior, seeking—and finding—new educational opportunities in China. Though he had lived in Hong Kong with his family when he was younger, he was now on his own in Shanghai, the only student at his school with English as a first language. Though classes were taught in English, Pasin pushed himself to become fluent in Mandarin, and excelled in computer science and neurology among what he calls an "intense, intelligent" group of students. Now in his first year at the University of Notre Dame, Pasin is exploring other areas of study, including international business and economics. "You don't want to tie yourself down too hard," he explains in an interview with CTD. "Even if you're really passionate, especially in your freshman and sophomore years, it's important to do as much as possible."
Augustine Pasin's curiosity was always wide in its scope-he admits to childhood plans to become an astronaut, as well as a love for art—and he didn't always know where he fit in school. An avid reader, he nonetheless struggled in his classes: his mother Jane describes reaching a "critical point" when she learned about CTD and began exploring testing for Augustine. He took the SAT® in seventh grade, and the results indicated that Augustine was more than capable of advanced learning: he went on to attend CTD's Summer Program for four years. Recalling his first class, an architecture course, Pasin describes adjusting to the "big time commitment" of homework while experiencing a new level of engagement with learning. "You could satiate knowledge every day," he says of his first class, in which he learned physics concepts through models and practical examples. "The teacher was amazing," Pasin notes, and the experience showed him ways classroom learning can extend beyond a lecture or a textbook.
Pasin continues to gravitate toward intellectual challenges, and his recent college application process further clarified his academic aims. He experienced school selection as a chance for self-inquiry, posing crucial questions while researching the best fit. "Where do I want to be? Where do I want to see myself? What sort of people do I want to interact with?" Pasin asked himself, and he advises others to do the same. "It's really important to identify what your core is, and to be able to clearly and meaningfully explain that to a university," Pasin explains. In doing this, he realized the importance of personalized instruction in his college experience, and found a home at Notre Dame.
Midway through his first year, he's discovering new pursuits in surprising ways: two programs at Notre Dame have brought nature, social justice, and close encounters with the Humanities into Augustine's life. A recipient of the selective, merit-based Hesburgh-Yusko scholarship, he has gotten the opportunity to learn from world-class guest lecturers during the school year while once again enriching his education in the summer; last year, he participated in Outward Bound, and a social service summer awaits. "I love the mission to develop leadership with the intent to pursue social justice," he says of the program.
A second initiative, the Glynn Family Honors Program gives Augustine—once certain of a future in medicine—the chance to take a deep dive into literary and philosophical texts. Through the program's focused, seminar-style courses, Pasin is no longer a stranger to reading 200 pages for a class; this long-time high fantasy and sci-fi enthusiast now gets to experience the imaginative rush of gothic fiction with a professor who's a "superstar" Frankenstein scholar.
Another 10-student course has immersed him in the writings of Hume and Descartes, and the questions raised by those thinkers seem very much on Pasin's mind. When asked what kind of CTD course he would design for a learner like him, he describes a look at the "clockwork" of our current world: a philosophical look at the values of today. "We're not living in the past anymore," explains this student of varied and changing interests. "We're living in a present, evolving society."
Ross Middleton is an independent writer and formerly part of CTD's Summer Program staff. He received his BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence. Read more by Ross Middleton


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US wave energy company Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is joining forces with Lockheed Martin to develop a 19 MW project in Australia.
The two companies have been working together since 2004 with Lockheed Martin assisting in the design of OPT's PowerBuoy technology and leading the production and system integration of the wave energy converters.
The development off the coast of Portland in the province of Victoria is one of the largest planned to date and will be partially funded by a $65.3 million grant from the Commonwealth of Australia.
OPT initially deployed one its wave-energy converters for the US Navy off the Pacific coast and is now developing a utility-scale array off the coast of Reedsport in Oregon. The company is also in the process of deploying its PowerBuoy technology in Scottish waters for testing.
"We see great potential in harnessing the vast power of the ocean," says Dan Heller, vice president of new ventures at Lockheed Martin. "By working with OPT and Australian industry on this project, we will advance wave energy in Australia and globally."
CEO of OPT, Charles F. Dunleavy, says he expects the development to create a significant number of local jobs during construction and afterwards to maintain operations.
For further information:
Related stories:
Ocean Power Technologies takes next step in wave power technology (20-Jun)
UK government launches £20 million marine energy scheme (5-Apr)
Ocean Power Technologies to develop wave energy system (27-Oct 2011)
Ocean Power Technologies to test new wave energy device in Scotland (4-Mar 2011)
Article source: http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/5261/


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|XP is just a number
comment on
|( #3333=superdoc: print w/replies, xml )
|Need Help??
There are basically two things that really annoy me about Perl5: Subroutine arg passing and the object system. Arg passing is fixed for certain. We haven't gotten to the object system Apocolypse yet, but from the discussion on it that I've seen so far, it seems like Perl6's object system will be far and away superior to Perl5's. So I'm going to jump on Perl6 as soon as I can.
Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated
In reply to Re: Perl 6: Will we use it?
by hardburn


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Note: Before reading this, please read the "Quiverfull and the Bible" FAQ. Like the "nobleminded Bereans" (Acts 17:11), we are entitled to study for ourselves, so that we may read the Biblical text in an informed manner. That FAQ provides the background for the method of informed Bible reading used here.
Q: Doesn't the Bible say we are to receive as many children as God blesses us with, and that birth control is against His plan?
Let's look at the passage on children being a blessing, Psalm 127:3.
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
Children are indeed a blessing from God! But does the Bible teach that if we just let nature take its course, the amount of children we will have will be God's plan for us?
Look at the curse that comes upon Eve after the Fall, in Genesis 3:16: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. . ."
The King James Version here brings out very well what the original language actually said. A Hebrew interlinear, which gives a direct, word-for-word translation, reads this way: "I am increasing grief of you and pregnancy of you; in grief shall you give birth." (Emphasis added.) There are actually two different Hebrew words translated "grief" in this verse ("sorrow" in the King James). They are synonyms, both meaning "labor, hardship, painful toil." The first of these words is also used of Adam in Gen. 3:17-18, where God says to him, "in sorrow [painful toil] shalt thou eat of it [the ground] all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." God is telling the couple that the result of their sin is hardship, labor and toil.
The words to Eve in Verse 16 comprise a Hebrew poetic structure in which the whole of the phrase, "multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children" refers to the whole process of childbearing, from conception to birth. It is not just talking about "pain in childbirth," as many other translations say. The hardship and painful toil includes the whole process. This would include everything that is difficult or goes wrong for women in pregnancy, from conception to childbirth. It would include pain in labor, certainly; but it also includes miscarriage, stillbirth, difficulty in conception, and even, naturally, the "multiplication" of conceptions themselves– the ability of the woman's body to conceive more frequently than is safe or healthy for her, sometimes even before she has recovered from the last pregnancy.
The writers of the Old Testament recognized children as a blessing—but they also recognized all of the different hardships of childbearing (and of course, these are different for different women). "Multiply thy sorrows and thy conception" can mean pain and hardship in conception is increased, but it can also mean that conceptions themselves are increased. The fact that some women cannot conceive is part of the curse. But the fact that some women's bodies can conceive more often than they can bear in safety and health, is also shown in the Bible to be a result of the curse; it was not God's original plan.
But Christ came to bring justification to us from the sin that brought death and sorrow to humanity (Romans 5:12). And even before Christ came– through the ages, in fact– men have invented tools to help them deal with the toils and sorrows of tilling the ground. There is no passage in the Bible that says God, in His mercy, ever forbade men to use those tools. Neither does the Bible say God has forbidden women to decrease the toils and sorrows of their particular struggles with conception and childbirth. God does not forbid women to decrease their pain in childbirth through the tools of medication. Neither does God forbid women to decrease their conceptions through the tools of birth control.
But there was no birth control in Bible times except for coitus interruptus, and in Genesis 38:9-10, God struck Onan dead for "spilling his seed on the ground." This must have been about Onan's crime of birth control ~ since the penalty for simply not giving your brother's widow a child was only public humiliation, according to Deuteronomy 25:7.
Actually, there were many other kinds of birth control used in Bible times. The Ebers Papyrus of Egypt, which dates from 1500 BC, lists a number of barrier methods. Here is a translation of one of them: "To make a woman not become pregnant for one year, two years or three years, acacia leaves are ground fine with honey, lint is moistened therewith and placed in her vulva." Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible places the Hebrews' time in Egypt (between Joseph and Moses) from 1700-1300 BC. It is impossible, given the Israelites' presence in Egypt during the same period that the Ebers Papyrus was written, that the Israelites could have been completely unfamiliar with the methods set forth in this papyrus. And yet the Bible says nothing whatsoever about any of these Egyptian remedies. The only time a method of birth control is mentioned is the story of Onan. Let's take closer look at that story.
And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. Genesis 38:8-10
The context of this passage is Onan's unwillingness to fulfill his duty in that culture to his brother's widow. Onan married his brother's widow and "went in unto" her as a husband to a wife– but then emitted on the ground, "lest that he should give seed to his brother. This is sometimes compared with Deuteronomy 25:7, where the consequences of refusing to take a brother's widow as wife are not death, but only public shame. But the situation in Deuteronomy 25 involves only refusing to marry the widow. What Onan did was much worse. He went ahead and married her, but then selfishly refused to raise a child that would be considered legally his brother's and not his own. It wasn't that he didn't want children; it's that he wanted children only for his own profit! But the woman could not marry anyone else. His act consigned her to childlessness whether she liked it or not. And it was a great deception for Onan to pretend to do his duty to his brother outwardly, but then to go back on it in the privacy of the home. It was not for simple birth control that Omar was judged by God. It was for fraud, greed, deception and covenant-breaking. The birth control was the means by which the crime was committed. The birth control itself was not the crime.
Since this is the only place in the Bible that a method of birth control is even mentioned, and since the Bible is silent about all other then-known methods of birth control– how can we say that the Bible, implicitly or expressly, forbids birth control? The vast majority of details about individual life and choices are neither commanded nor forbidden by the Bible. God permits people to decide where to live, what kind of houses to build, what to do for a living– there are no commands, explicit or implicit, forbidding these choices. Where the Bible makes no command regarding an issue of personal choice, then to take a certain position, insist it is God's will, and expect everyone else to follow, is unfairly adding to the Scriptures and curtailing others' freedom in Christ. (Romans 14:2-4, Galatians 5:1.)
But Psalm 127:3 still says children are a blessing! Even if we don't have to have more than our bodies can safely bear, shouldn't we seek to bear as many as we safely can? Isn't the use of birth control for any other reason than the woman's health, willfully rejecting the blessing of God and therefore choosing instead the curse of barrenness?
If "A" is a blessing, it does not necessarily follow that "Not A" is not a blessing. The apostle Paul makes it clear that choosing not to marry or have children is a lifestyle blessed by God just as much as marriage is. "I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I." I Corinthians 7:7-8. Paul's use of the word "widows" here makes it clear that by "men" he means not just males, but both sexes. It is a gift of God for both men and women to remain unmarried and childless, as he was. This too is a blessing from God, for "the unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit." I Corinthians 7:34.
Also, if something is a blessing, it does not follow that an unlimited amount of that something is an unlimited blessing. The Bible says nothing like this– and it is contrary to plain logic. In Genesis 13:6, it tells of how Abraham and Lot were blessed of God with wealth, including sheep and cattle– but when "their substance was great" to the point where the land could not support all their flocks and herds, they were forced to separate from one another. Clearly the sheep and cattle were not an unlimited blessing, when they became too numerous for the land to support them.
We must also ask ourselves: are we being good stewards of the resources God has given us, when we have more children than we can financially support? Is it loving to the children we already have, to keep having more, beyond the point where we can give adequate attention to them all? Romans 8:14 says that those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God. Rather than laying down a law for ourselves about never preventing conception by any means, perhaps we should prayerfully seek to be led by the Spirit as to when we should conceive, and when we shouldn't. After all, Paul counseled in I Corinthians 7:26 that in times of distress, it is better not to make major changes in our lives. It is not always God's best to have more, and more, and more children.
But doesn't Malachi 2:15 say that the primary purpose for which the Lord created the institution of marriage was to "seek a godly seed"?
Let's look at Malachi 2:15 in its context.
Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. . . And this ye have done again, covering the altar of the Lord with weeping, and with crying out, inso much that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Malachi 2:11-15.
The context in Malachi 2:15 is about how the men of Judah, upon returning to the Promised Land following exile in Babylon, abandoned their wives in order to marry younger women from the peoples who lived in the Promised Land, who served idols. The passage makes two main points: 1) they were being treacherous to their wives: "She is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant," and 2) they were profaning the holiness of the Lord by marrying "the daughter of a strange god."
This passage is not about the primary purpose of marriage, but about the sins of covenant-breaking and idolatry. But if a "primary purpose" of marriage applies at all here, it is stated to be "companionship." The original wives of the men of Judah are spoken of as companions to their husbands– not as mothers of their children. The Lord views this covenant made with a woman, for companionship, to be just as holy and binding as any other covenant.
As for "a godly seed," the emphasis here is on "godly," not on "seed." God made men and women of Judah one in marriage so that their seed might be godly– as opposed to the seed that might come from marriage to a "daughter of a strange god," who might choose to serve the idols of their mother's people.
But modern birth control methods are dangerous and can be abortifacient! And natural family planning isn't very effective. Besides, the Bible says it is God Who opens and closes the womb. Shouldn't we trust Him with our family planning and not take matters into our own hands?
Modern birth control methods are actually pretty safe when used with a doctor's advice. Nothing is said anywhere in the Bible against doctors; in fact, Luke was a doctor. Some, but not all, hormonal birth control methods are abortifacient. Also, there are non-hormonal methods that work very well. The diaphragm, for instance, is a barrier method that has been around for decades, is safe and effective when used carefully, and is completely non-hormonal. A doctor can help you find the type of birth control that is safest for you and that you feel most comfortable with.
And as for God opening and closing the womb, there are only a few Bible texts that speak of this. Genesis 20:18 says that God "closed the wombs" of all the women in Abimilek's household because Abimilek had taken Abraham's wife Sarah (thinking she was his sister). Then in verse 20, Abraham prays to God, and God heals them so that they can conceive again. Genesis 29:31 and Genesis 30:22 refer to God opening the wombs of women who had previously been barren (Leah and Rachel). Afterwards they both had more than one child. The text does not say God had to reopen their wombs each time. Finally, 1 Sam 1:5-6 says that God had closed Hannah's womb, but when she prayed, God "remembered" her and she conceived (verse 19). Later the text says God "visited" Hannah so that she had three more sons and two daughters (1 Samuel 2:21).
Reading these texts together, they do not indicate at all that God opens every woman's womb each time she conceives, or that He closes every woman's womb every time she does not conceive. These texts are not about normal female fertility at all. Instead they speak specifically of barrenness and God's specific acts to cause or heal barrenness at certain times, in certain women, for reasons unique to each situation. The human writers of the Bible texts knew, as we know today, that conception occurs after sexual intercourse and is based on a woman's menstrual cycle. As with many other physical laws of our world, God set it up to work this way.
One other verse speaks of God giving conception to a woman: Ruth 4:13, in which God causes Ruth to conceive Obed, the source of David's line of kings. This verse is speaking about a specific birth to a specific woman for a specific purpose in God's plan. Again, Bible simply doesn't say that God directly acts to give conception to every woman who conceives, or directly acts to stop conception in every woman who does not conceive.
There are many things in our world that God designed to work on their own. In Matthew 4:6-7, when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, the devil suggested that Jesus cast Himself down from the top of the temple, trusting in God to send angels to bear Him up. Jesus answered, "It is written, thou shalt not tempt [test] the Lord thy God." Jesus knew that the Father had set up the world so that gravity would cause anyone who threw himself off the temple to die. It was set up that way, and it was going to work that way unless God directly stepped in. It was wrong, Jesus said, to force God to do a miracle.
In the same way God has set up normal female fertility so that a woman's ovaries will release an egg to be fertilized once a month. If a fertile woman has sexual intercourse with a fertile man during a period when an egg is in her fallopian tubes, she is going to conceive. It's not unlike the game of "Russian Roulette." In Russian Roulette, two foolish men will put a bullet into one chamber of a six-shooter gun, and then take turns to point the gun at their own heads and pull the trigger. If the bullet is in the right chamber when the trigger is pulled, that gun is going to go off. If you play Russian Roulette and want to live, you are certainly "tempting God"!
Having sexual intercourse without birth control is not "trusting God." It's more like playing Russian Roulette. If the egg is in the right place at the right time, conception will occur. For it not to occur, God would have to do a miracle. Jesus said it's wrong to force God into doing a miracle. Tempting God is not trusting God. If you're in a position where a pregnancy would be a hardship and a sorrow (though this isn't to say you wouldn't welcome the child if it came!), you don't have to play Russian Roulette with your womb every month.
As I said before, trusting God actually means being led by the Spirit of God. Romans 8:14-16. God wants us to pray to Him for guidance on when it's a good time to have a child, and when it's not—just as we would with any other major decision in our lives.
But a woman's most glorious calling is to motherhood! Is this not womanhood's power, her best way to advance the kingdom of God?
Motherhood is certainly a wonderful thing– to bring new people into the world that we can love in a special, unique relationship. But Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36)." And Romans 14:17 says the kingdom of God is "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." God loves new children, but God also loves all the people who are already alive. He is seeking them to become "true worshippers" who "worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23)." Jesus did not differentiate here between male and female worshippers; in fact, it was to a woman that He told this truth! The most glorious call for all believers is to participate in the pure love of God, which is what worship "in spirit and truth" is, for God is love (I John 4:8). And His commandment is not that we should have more and more children, but that we should "believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another (I John 4:23)."
Jesus never told the women who traveled with Him that because they were women, they needed to go home and bear children. And He told Martha, who didn't think Mary should get to sit with the male disciples and learn of Him, but should be doing women's traditional work instead, that "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her (Luke 10:42)."
The New Testament is full of women who served God's kingdom in other ways than motherhood. Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla. Lydia, Euodia and Syntyche are all mentioned as having important roles– even leadership roles– in the churches in which Paul ministered. See Romans 16, Philippians 4:23, and Acts 16.
Make no mistake– God is pleased by a heart of devotion to Him, and if you have been expressing your devotion through childbearing, He does not disregard your labor of love. But your calling as a Christian is not primarily childbearing. Revelation 4:9-10 says that those who are redeemed out of every people and nation are "kings and priests." It does not say that only the men are kings and priests. Men and women alike are called to participate in God's glory as a holy priesthood (2 Corinthians 3:18, I Peter 2:9). This is our highest calling. God has given women the ability to be mothers, and men the ability to be fathers– but so much more besides. His gifts are for His sons and daughters alike. Acts 2:17. If we have so many children that our lives, and the lives of our husbands and older children, become consumed with childcare, are we letting the good (the blessing of children) overtake the best?
Children were precious in the Old Covenant, but in the New Covenant, Christ shows them to be so much more than simply "arrows" for their fathers. In Matthew 19:14 He makes it plain that He loves and calls them to places in His kingdom as individuals in their own right. So if we already have children, few or many, God desires that we should care for them and love them with all our hearts (Matthew 18:1-6). But if we are feeling under pressure to have even more– Galatians 5:1 says, "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Parenting is a high calling, but no one has the right to add to Scripture and claim there is only one way to serve God– not for men, and not for women either. It is being "a new creature" that matters, says Galatians 6:15, not how many– or even whether– you have children. Each Christian couple should be free in their own consciences to decide together when– and whether– to have children.
Let us walk as new creatures, in the peace and mercy of Christ.
For more information see:
Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible, Lion Publishing.
Ancient Inventions, Peter James and Nick Thorpe, Random House, 1994.
Household: Family and Household in Ancient Israel, by Michael Kruse: http://krusekronicle.
The Scripture-4-All Online Interlinear Hebrew Bible:http://www.
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Read everything by Kristen Rosser!
Spiritual Abuse Survivor Blogs Network member, Kristen Rosser (aka KR Wordgazer) blogs at Wordgazer's Words
NLQ Recommended Reading …
'Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment' by Janet Heimlich
'Quivering Daughters' by Hillary McFarland
'Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement' by Kathryn Joyce


text: August 11, 2018 Coombs, Charles I Tagged: Author (1914-1994) US author, usually known as Chick Coombs, who in 1941 modelled John Carter of Mars for John Coleman Burroughs's Sunday-newspaper comics strip of that name (see Edgar Rice Burroughs). Coombs's written output was almost exclusively of nonfiction books for Young Adult readers, a high proportion of them about flying. Of sf interest are at least two tales, Celestial Space, Inc (1954) and Mystery of Satellite 7 (1958), both of which dramatically espouse the virtues of venturing into space. [JC/DRL]Charles Ira Coombsborn Los Angeles, California: 27 June 1914died Los Angeles, California: 20 February 1994works Celestial Space, Inc (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press, 1954) [hb/] Mystery of Satellite 7 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Westminster Press, 1958) [hb/]links The John Coleman Burroughs / Chick Coombs Connection Internet Speculative Fiction Database Previous versions of this entry 03/11/2006 20/12/2011 21/08/2012 09/08/2013 05/07/2014 22/10/2014 29/10/2014 02/04/2015 08/07/2015 25/08/2015 08/01/2017


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A company's culture comes from the top. But tech might not find even Uber's tale cautionary enough to change its founder-first culture.
The plan? Convince advertisers that metrics don't matter.
What's the best way to foster a better web? Maybe fishing for more clicks and more eyeballs watching more ads isn't the way.
Misogyny in the tech industry isn't just wrong---it's a warning sign that a company is in trouble.
Snap's long-term potential won't be the story many investors will want to hear after these dismal numbers. But it's still like no other company.
The latest demand for Facebook to exercise editorial control comes from an Austrian court, which ruled the company must eradicate posts ID'd as hate speech.
For Etsy, the internet's best-known marketplace for all things artisanal, the past week has served up a heaping portion of unpleasant corporate reality.
In San Francisco, Airbnb became a prime target of the anti-tech backlash. As it approaches a possible IPO, it would like to be seen as a good neighbor.
Cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth's talk about human consciousness was my TED moment.
With threatened cuts to foreign aid, technology could help homegrown health care workers cover at least some of the gap.


text: Design Architecture Why an Office Is Not a Spaceship By Lloyd Alter Design Editor University of Toronto Lloyd Alter is Design Editor for Treehugger and teaches Sustainable Design at Ryerson University in Toronto. our editorial process Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Lloyd Alter Updated October 11, 2018 Screen capture. Houston, we have a CO2 problem/ Apollo 13 Share Twitter Pinterest Email Design Tiny Homes Architecture Interior Design Green Design Urban Design Employees deserve more than just good air quality. Remember that scene from the Apollo 13 movie, where the astronauts start bouncing off the walls and yelling at each other? Then Tom Hanks looks at the CO2 levels and realizes that, Houston, we have another problem. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Mims looks at the problem of air quality in office buildings, and writes that "the newest office buildings have more in common with spaceships than you realize." He then describes how, like in spaceships, environmental conditions are now being monitored carefully in buildings, using cheap sensors that track temperature, humidity, light, noise and odours. It isn't just Apple's new campus, either. As work takes an ever more central place in our lives, engineers, architects and scientists are beginning to view our workplaces as sealed structures that must actively manage their internal environments, while mitigating pollution and other hazards that are the cost of doing business in many of the world's most economically productive cities. © Foster + Partners/ Fresh air intake at Apple Park It wouldn't be a Mims article if I didn't have a nit to pick, and I have a few here. For one, the Apple campus may look like a space ship but in fact it is not sealed; it has a remarkable system for natural ventilation and is set in the middle of a private park full of trees. The trend in many office buildings is NOT to treat them as sealed structures. It's really no wonder that some offices have air quality problems; Mims talks to the CEO of a British building monitoring company, EnergyDeck, which... ... faces problems typical of startup founders everywhere: funding, morale and employees who get sleepy after lunch. But at least he has a handle on that last issue, because he's testing his own technology in the 670-square-foot office where his 15-person team is jammed. "By 2 p.m., the CO2 level in the office is like 1,000 parts per million," says Mr. Kott. Well, yes, that's 44.6 square feet per employee; no wonder they have productivity issues. The average space per employee in the UK is now 181 SF. So you are going to get an obvious buildup of CO2 and VOCs emitted from the dry cleaning, perfumes and deodorants from so many people packed together like sardines. Fortunately, as Mims notes, there are now sensors that can control all those things that affect us, and they are not just air quality. There are all kinds of things that affect us, that make us fall asleep in the afternoon, from CO2 buildup to lack of natural light. Mims concludes his discussion with Mr. Kott and his sardines: The solution, he says, is an HVAC system that dynamically responds to both carbon-dioxide levels and levels of airborne particulate matter, pumping in fresh air while filtering out pollutants. It's remarkably similar to the kind of air-circulation systems that NASA uses—on spaceships. Or, alternatively, one could give each employee enough room to actually breathe, enough air volume to actually dilute all those VOCs a bit, enough space to have some CO2 eating plants, enough windows to give natural light. A good HVAC system is obviously important, but 44 square feet per person is abuse. Apollo 13 fix with duct tape and cardboard/Screen capture In Apollo 13, three astronauts were packed into a lunar module designed for two, and really were in a spaceship in a hostile environment where, when you open a window, you die. They had a problem and they fixed it with cardboard and duct tape. Even in space, they didn't need such high-tech solutions. We don't need such high-tech solutions on Earth; we need humane environments as well as good air and light, inside and out.


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Last week I was a guest blogger for Stacy over at Not Just a Housewife. It was a pleasure sharing one of my latest DIY projects with her readers and I couldn't wait to share it with you! Enjoy!
{DIY No-Sew Drape Hem}
A few weeks ago, I purchased drapery panels for our large set of windows in our Great room. This particular area of our home was challenging because I had to come up with FIVE panels to cover all of the windows. Five panels can add up quickly and be rather expensive. Purchasing custom made panels was just out of the question. So I decided to go with a 84" inch two tone grommet panel from Bed, Bath and Beyond. The only problem was that I needed 86" inch panels. The length of the top of our windows to the floor was over 86" inches long and 84" panels would look like flood pants on a 8 year old little boy. Nothing drives me more crazy then drapes that don't hit the floor. So I decided to do a little customization of my own for very little time and money. And it was so simple and easy that anyone can do it!
{What You Need}
Hemming Tape
Cuticle scissors
White fabric pencil
Binder clips
I initially hung up the drapes to see how they would look and also to measure exactly how much extra material I would need. Look at the picture above, see the drape on the far left not hitting the floor whatsoever? See all of the molding under the drape? Yes, I did too, and it was driving me nuts!
{The Before}
Here is a close up, way too much molding showing at the bottom. Here is what you can do to fix it.
1. Measure how much space you have from the bottom of the curtain to the floor. In my case, I had a little over two inches.
2. Examine your hem to make sure you have enough material to cover what you need. I didn't even have to measure to see that I had plenty of material to work with.
3. I took cuticle scissors and cut the hem, one little stitch at a time. This was probably the most time consuming part, however, I became a more efficient as I found my groove.
4. You will even have to let out the hem on each side of your drape, I only let mine out through the end of the lining. Do not let out the whole side hem, that is not necessary for what we need to do.
5. After letting out the bottom and part of the side hems, I determined I had 3 inches of material to work with. I only needed two inches, so I would have to fold up 1 inch from the bottom to give me those extra two inches.
6. Next, you will have to fold over the sides again and secure it with a binder clip.
7. You will then have to decide how much hemming tape you will need to slip under the newly formed side hem. Cut your hemming tape to the desired length and slide under your crease. Make sure the hemming tape is flat and completely hidden. Preheat your iron to medium heat without steam. Place and hold iron on the drape for 3 seconds. Repeat until your entire hem is bonded. DO NOT apply iron directly to adhesive tape. Turn item right side out and iron fabric for an additional 3 seconds. Here is my newly formed side crease.
8. You will now have measure the bottom. I folded over an inch of material which was the desired length in which I measure in Step 5. I marked every ten inches with a fabric pencil and measured to be sure the whole bottom length of the drape was folded over evenly at one inch.
9. I held each measured ten inch section with binder clips. I felt binder clips were a lot easier to use than pins and they allowed me to easily place the hemming tape underneath the hem. Repeat Step 7 by measuring and cutting sections of hemming tape and inserting them under your folded hem. Iron the hemming tape into place until it has fully bonded with the fabric. Let the drape cool and then hang!
{The After}
10. The drape now lays flush against my carpet. No more floods!
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial today on No-Sew Drape hems. It truly was an easy project, and I now have 4 more drapes to do!
I am linking up to the following parties today!
Fingerprints on the Fridge - Feature Yourself Friday
At The Picket Fence - Inpiration Friday
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating - Flaunt it Friday
The Shabby Nest - Frugal Friday


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If you are wondering what to do in order to help your wife with the things in the property in order to have time for other things, there are many ways to make a good surprise for her.
One option is to take some of the tasks about cleaning and organizing in your hands, but that probably doesn't sound very nice to you. Another option is to organize that in a magical way. But how that could happen? It's easy if you know where to order a good cleaning service, like swprofessionals.co.uk. What you can expect from them or could carpet cleaning in Kingston with https://www.swprofessionals.co.uk/cleaning-services/ be a good present for someone? You can meet professionals, who are ready to take the advantage to meet each specific needs and do the job fast and accurate. And yes, that could be a wonderful surprise, because usually in the busy days we are living, the last thing we have time is for cleaning.
Another point for that idea is that your wife would be very grateful for your thought and your gesture about her. Imagine how happy she would be if she came back home and see everything shine and bright. Carpet cleaning in Kingston is offered by the snow white professional team, which is very well trained and works precisely on the task you give. Knowing very well, that every client and every space have a specific requirements, the specialists are counting on the good communication before to start.
Like that everybody can receive the best satisfaction and enjoy completely the finished job. You can call the snow white professionals not only for carpet cleaning in Kingston, but also for the windows and for any other part of the space, that needs to be clean. You can count on them for the spring cleaning and also for a regular house keeping. If you don't have any time for leaving a property, you can count on end of tenancy cleaning specialists, as well. Try by yourself how is the feeling to see happy someone that you love, by realizing a thought full of care and desire to make a nice surprise. It is remarkable, check it by yourself.


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Gather around and prepare yourself for a story of joy, despair, and a game that you probably didn't play, but maybe should have.
The game is Monolith's Guardians of Middle-Earth, and it arrived for the Xbox 360 and PS3 on a cold December morning in 2012. One could argue that Monday Night Combat was technically the first console MOBA, or that Happy Wars scratched that itch with it's crazy 30-player action, but GoME was a classic multiplayer online battle arena in the line of DotA or LoL. There was a map with three lanes, an isometric view, towers, jungle creatures, and most importantly, a great line-up of both canon and non-canon heroes pulled straight out of Lord of the Rings lore. Hell, it even had one of those "very MOBA" trailers that looked way less epic than the music led you to believe!
By now you may be wondering why I continue to refer to GoME in the past tense. I mean, you can technically go buy the game on either console or PC right now, so the game is still a thing, right? Sure, it's still a thing the same way Halo 3 online multiplayer is currently still a "thing." The difference is, Halo 3's online multiplayer lasted for around five years before it started winding down. Guardians of Middle-Earth, one of my favorite games of 2013 and the most fun I've ever had in a MOBA game, "died" less than a year after launch.
Why GoME was Great
I have heard time and time again that MOBA games simply "don't work" on consoles. I've heard several reasons, ranging from "Controllers aren't precise enough" to "Console gamers aren't interested in MOBAs." I am not here to talk about whether a console MOBA can work on a console, but rather to tell you that Guardians of Middle-Earth did work on a console. It worked so well, that after several months of playing nothing but this game, I found myself in the top 10 player list, which isn't something I have achieved for any other game... ever. As with many leaderboards, this doesn't mean I was the best at this game. It simply means that I played the crap out of it over those few months! I wasn't playing to be a top-10 player, I was playing because it was some of the most fun my wife and I have had playing an Xbox 360 multiplayer game.
The game is played using the left stick to move, the right stick to aim auto-attacks and abilities, and the face buttons to activate three regular abilities and a single "ultimate" ability. Abilities with an area effect don't require aiming, and show the range of effect when you queue the ability to use it. GoME features various options that, when enabled, allow even more control over attacking and casting abilities. Each 3-lane map (there were 1-lane maps as well) featured jungle creatures that offered minor personal stat bonuses when killed, along with shrines at the top, bottom, and middle of the map that provide slight HP regen and resistance bonuses for the whole team.
One of the big critiques I've heard for games like DotA and LoL is the amount of time that can pass before something exciting happens. This is not the case with GoME, with team and group fights happening within lanes or around shrines within seconds of the start of a match. After that, the action continues, as towers with lower HP (and attacks that double with every consecutive hit) require heroes to stay in lane to defend them, and do more damage to players who like to rush early. The maps are also much smaller than DotA or LoL maps, and a bit smaller than Heroes of the Storm maps.
GoME has the most interesting loadout system of any MoBA I've seen. You can create various "belts" that contain slots for seven gems. There are a variety of gems with various stat bonuses based on their color. However, you can also add relics to your belt. These relics take up various gem slots depending on their effects, and require specifically colored gems to be placed in them. For instance, if you were building a DPS "striker," you would want to use red (attack/crit) and yellow (speed) gems, but a relic you want to equip may require some purple (cooldown) or blue (ability) gems instead. The gems and relics you place first in your belt are activated first, with each gem activating every two levels (up to fourteen), and relics being activated at specific levels depending on which relic was chosen. You can certainly create a belt that is all one color, but you are sacrificing using other helpful relics that mix up the color of gems a bit.
This loadout system allows for great experimentation with various guardians and play-styles. I've seen some crazy combos work, such as running a DPS as a tank. You don't usually see this kind of dramatic customization in PC MOBAs. The relics also provide balance to the game. I should also mention that four one-time use potions (consumables) can be added to each loadout. Each can be activated once per game for a very short buff. All of these items are only available to purchase using in-game gold. There is no pay-to-win in this game.
Finally, GoME features both known and unknown characters from the Tolkien universe that are simply a joy to play. Gandalf can shield himself and has an ultimate that sends fireworks to the sky that damage players in an area. Sauron swaggers around with a giant mace and has an ultimate that damages, slows, and fears every enemy player on the map at once. Frodo can put on the One Ring to become invisible at the cost of losing health every second. While invisible, the screen has the crazy blurred effect seen in movies, which is a great touch! The voice acting for each guardian is also generally entertaining and/or funny, if not spot-on.
If you've made it this far, I hope I've piqued your curiosity. You may even be thinking about looking this game up to see if it's on sale somewhere. Perhaps you are a fan of both The Lord of the Rings and MOBA games, and this sounds like a perfect combination of the two! Let me assure you that. yes, it could have been that. It was well-balanced, the loadout system allowed for a massive variety of play-styles and hero builds, and the tight controls and awesome abilities made it extremely fun to play, even for my wife, who had never touched a "classic MOBA" before GoME. (Though she played Monday Night Combat all the time, so she wasn't unfamiliar with the concepts.)
Those first few months were glorious. Monolith was active in updating the game and listening to the community, and players were excited at the potential of such an easily-accessible game getting into the hands of more and more players. Who knows? Maybe we could see official GoME tournaments some day! Take that, DotA and LoL!
Why GoME Sucked
Netcode. We hear that term thrown around all the time while discussing various online games, but what is it, exactly? In old online games like Quake, "netcode" referred to the source code of a game that handled communication between a game's server and its clients. For developers, that word still means the same thing, albeit modern netcode is certainly more complicated than it used to be. However, consumers tend to use the word "netcode" as a reference to anything even remotely related to online play in a game. As in, "I shot that guy but he didn't die! This netcode SUXS!!1"
Let me be very clear that, when I say this, it's not just as a consumer, but as someone who is also familiar with programming and game development.
The netcode in Guardians of Middle-Earth SUCKS.
From launch date to today, GoME players have suffered from many of the following issues:
- When the host quits the match, everyone else gets booted.
- When someone who is not the host quits the match, everyone else gets booted.
- Everyone gets stuck on the match loading screen.
- Everyone else gets booted in the middle of a game, leaving the host by themselves
- Everyone else gets gets booted from the match at the start and the host is by themselves.
- Everyone gets stuck on the match loading screen.
- Getting booted from the match lobby for no reason.
- Horrible lag effecting movement, abilities, etc.
- Getting put into a completely different game while matchmaking with a party.
- Getting put on the opposing team while matchmaking with a party.
- Getting left out while the rest of your party joins a game.
This list doesn't even account for the matchmaking system itself, which seemed to have no awareness of player levels, prestige, length of time in queue, etc. It was bad. It is still bad. I don't have the source, but I remember that, at one point, one of the developers actually admitted that their multiplayer testing took place on a closed network.
Yet we continued to play this game.
But wait, there's more! Just a couple months after launch, Monolith released a patch that they said would fix most of the multiplayer issues. The community was more than excited. Monolith hadn't necessarily been forthright with the bugs they were working on, but we knew they were active in the community, and that they were aware of what was going on.
The patch was released. Almost nothing was fixed. Dropping in games seemed to lessen from 50% to around 25% depending on who you were, but it was still there along with the slough of other issues. No sir, the biggest thing the patch did was add a huge new bug, affectionately labeled the "Gold Mode Glitch" by players.
This wasn't just any old bug, it was a game-breaking glitch that actually kept paying customers from playing the game online with friends. Basically, whenever the game was launched, there was a good chance that the game would go into "Gold Mode," also known as the "you-haven't-paid-for-this-game-yet mode." That's right, players could not play the game they paid good money for. There were plenty of various workarounds for this bug. Some worked for some people, but oftentimes the best way to get around gold mode was to just restart the game over and over again until the bug went away.
We restarted over and over and continued to play this game.
The community was outraged over this issue, and Monolith promised a fix. It took a long time, but they finally released a patch that they claimed physically removed the "gold mode" check when the game starts up. PS3 versions of the game seemed to work fine after this fix was released. Xbox 360 versions of the game remained unchanged. The new workaround involved removing all of your downloaded content (new guardians, maps, etc) before launching the game, then re-downloading all of it. It was a huge hassle.
You would think that all of this is enough to break any game. Nope, there was room for one more bug in Monolith's growing entomology experiment.
To address constant complaints about lag issues in their game, Monolith released a final patch that they said would solve in-game latency. Much to no one's surprise, the update made things worse.
This update introduced what the GoME community and many other online gamers refer to as "ice skating." As you can see in the short video above, ice skating happens when a game aggressively tries to predict your movements and actions before they happen. If you are running one direction and quickly move the opposite direction, the game can take upwards of 1-2 seconds to catch up to your commands. Also, any abilities you use take an additional second or two to activate. This bug was completely random, and could start at any time in the game. When it did happen, it essentially turned a hero into food for the opposing team. People would often quit a game as soon as the skating glitch started happening. I don't blame them.
We skated and restarted and continued to play this game.
At this point, Monolith had essentially thrown up their hands about the "Gold Mode" glitch, and almost completely stopped posting in the community forums. The forum admin, who was not directly part of Monolith, informed us that she was passing along our bugs to the team, but we never heard any responses, and there was never a new patch to fix a single existing bug. Instead, Monolith decided to update their only purely-human ("elite") matchmaking playlist to offer less gold for playing, while buffing their humans-and-bots playlist to offer more gold. Bots in this game are terrible, but the majority of players moved to where the gold was. Thus, the only truly competitive matchmaking queue in this game died in what seemed like a final "fuck you" to every single fan and player who had stuck with this game for so many months.
The player population dropped drastically, meaning you were generally going to either wait a long time to play a game with humans, or settle for playing a game with horrible bots that often ended up being horribly unbalanced. Members of the community, including yours truly, took it on ourselves to arrange various events and tournaments to bring back old players and entertain new players. This worked for a few months, but pretty soon even old players just moved on to new games, and new consoles.
Why?! Why would we put ourselves through such hell for what seemed like a quick, LotR-licensed cash-in?
Because, when it worked, Guardians of Middle-Earth was the most fun my wife and I have had on a console in years, and we're not alone in those feelings. In fact, to this day, at least two or three of my old GoME friends are still playing at any given moment. It's kind of crazy how good this game was... when it worked.
I don't doubt that the developers at Monolith felt bad about leaving a game they worked hard on in such a broken state. The studio is known for some fantastic titles like F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. 2, and the Condemned series. Not to mention the fact that their upcoming game, Shadows of Mordor, looks quite promising as well. I think that Monolith is really good at creating engaging single-player experiences, and it seems that, after Guardians of Middle-Earth and the slightly less broken Gotham City Impostors, they may want to stick to their single-player guns for a while.
The Mithril Lining
If you've stuck with me this far, wow! Let's end things on a positive note, shall we?
There is no doubt in my mind that, had Monolith released a working game and continued to support it with new guardians and balance/fix patches, it could have been HUGE. The ease of entry for new players combined with the massive variety in loadouts and play-styles, tight controls, and action-packed gameplay places Guardians of Middle-Earth far above many popular PC online battle arena games in my book.
There are many lessons to learn from this bitter-sweet tale of success and failure, but there is still a glimmer of light creeping out from behind those dark clouds. GoME has shown it's fans that "classic MOBAs" can completely work on consoles. More importantly, GoME has shown us that these kinds of games aren't just for the PC master race anymore. Maybe one day there will even be a console MOBA that entices PC gamers to step down from their glimmering thrones to play amongst us peasants!
Eh, let's not get too carried away.
Matt "Smi1ey" Dunn is a former mobile gaming journalist (which is why you haven't heard of him) and newly-minted member of the TAY crew. Learn more about him and get in touch here!