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Southern HVAC® Welcomes Bryan Benak as Chief Executive Officer
Press Release (ePRNews.com) - MAITLAND, Fla. - Mar 18, 2019 - Southern HVAC® Corporation has announced the appointment of Bryan Benak as Chief Executive Officer. Southern HVAC, an MSouth Equity Partners portfolio company, is one of the largest consolidators of residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical businesses in the Southeastern United States. Prior to joining Southern HVAC, Bryan Benak served as a Vice President at Service Experts LLC. Mr. Benak is looking to improve on the organization built by Mike Stucky, former CEO and 30-year veteran of the building supplies industry.
On February 26th, MSouth Director Charles Stubbs informed Southern HVAC employees, "Today we are announcing the retirement of CEO Mike Stucky. Mike championed expansion efforts and oversaw operations in three states with more than 400 team members in 10 offices representing 7 service brands. Recently, Mike decided it was time to turn over the reins and spend more time with family." Mr. Stubbs continued, "We are excited to share that Bryan Benak will be stepping into the role of CEO of Southern HVAC. Bryan's experience includes 25 years of operations, sales and general management expertise, particularly with multi-unit service organizations."
A known leader in the residential HVAC industry, Bryan Benak previously served 9 years as part of Service Experts' executive leadership team, where he supported U.S. operations for more than 70 service locations. Prior to that, he spent 17 years at The ServiceMaster Company, where he had regional and corporate U.S. responsibilities for several of their brands, including Terminix, ARS/Rescue Rooter and Merry Maids.
Bryan Benak responded, "I am extremely excited to be joining the Southern HVAC team and look forward to leading this dynamic company into the future. In the short time since its inception in 2016, Southern HVAC has doubled in size annually through acquisitions and increased market share. We expect to continue our strong revenue trend and eventually service customers throughout the southeastern U.S."
Marketing Director Rob Haines added his support: "Within the past year we have hired impressive finance leadership from global franchisers like Burger King, who have successfully implemented uniform accounting, reporting, I.T., phone and marketing platforms. Now with Bryan's sales growth experience we expect to further our goals with a renewed focus on excellence in sales and operational performance."
Headquartered in Maitland Florida, Southern HVAC® operates home service businesses in the Southeastern U.S. The company provides central air conditioning repair, heating repair, HVAC system sales and installation, full plumbing and electrical services, including whole-home generators, pool heating, and smart home products for residential homes, apartment buildings and commercial businesses. For more information about Southern HVAC visit SouthernHVAC.net or email firstname.lastname@example.com. ©2019, Southern HVAC® Corp.Source : Southern HVAC
Southern HVAC
485 N. Keller Road (Suite 515)
Maitland, FL 32751


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Reno retailers gear up for the holidays as supply chain hiccups continue
JaDa Loft Boutique co-owner Monica Rios, left, chats with a buyer on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, at the retailer's new location in South Reno. Photo by Kaleb Roedel.
An hour later, this customer walked out of Learning Express Toys & Gifts in South Reno with six large bags filled with over $ 500 worth of wrapped toys.
For Frederito and Siepel, this sale officially kicked off the pre-summer vacation shopping season.
âI think people are hearing the news that is pouring out about supply chain issues and it's starting to be heard that advance buying is going to be bigger than ever this year,â Frederito said. âAnd I feel like the more people see someone getting a Christmas present in the store, it entices others to go,â maybe I should take a few things. "
"We're starting to see it more and more as the weeks get closer."
For more than a year, the toy industry has been supported by purchases from families stuck at home during the pandemic. Disposable family income has shifted from movie theaters, amusement parks, and restaurants to toys, as parents searched for ways to keep their children entertained.
But growing challenges rock the industry – including plant closures, computer chip shortages and clogged ports – as it prepares for the crucial holiday shopping season, an eight-week window that can represent an eight-week window. more than half of a retailer's annual sales.
As a result, stores like Learning Express, which opened in August 2020, are seeing the kind of surge in demand that usually doesn't happen until late fall. In anticipation, Frederito and Siepel began ordering toys for the holiday season in July, rather than waiting until October as they would in a normal year.
âWe have a warehouse where we store all the products and filter them through the store as we go,â Frederito said. "The strategy was to order now and get it now to avoid shipping delays later."
âIt's hard to be small and local,â Siepel said. âWe try to be competitive with our prices compared to big box stores. But I think we've done a good job and have full shelves over the holidays, which is the goal. "
"A VERY Lean YEAR"
In Midtown, the owner of Carter Bros. Ace Hardware, Tim Carter, had long taken for granted his ability to order whatever he needed and then watch the goods fill his store.
This is no longer the case.
In early fall, the Carter hardware store is strewn with empty shelves. It's been like this for months, no matter how many times he places an order.
A year ago, for example, Carter Bros. Ace Hardware ran out of jars. Orders placed last year started to "dribble" a few months ago, Carter said.
As the holiday shopping looms, Carter said he plans to order traditional Christmas items like faux trees, tree stands and lights, but found that "hardly any of this type of item is not yet available â.
Carter said he hopes that will ease as Halloween approaches, but as demand continues to outweigh supply amid pandemic disruptions, he expects a "very year. skinny for Christmas decorations "available at its hardware store.
The challenges facing Carter's Hardware are a testament to the extent and persistence of chaos wreaking havoc on the global economy, as manufacturers and the transportation industry face a relentless pandemic as shipping season approaches. holiday shopping.
At JaDa Loft Boutique, which recently opened a second location at The Crossing in Meadowood Square in South Reno, owners Monica and Victor Rios said supply chain grunts forced them to cancel orders placed there. months for summer clothes that were going to arrive in the fall.
That's why, Rios said, they made sure to order well in advance and keep their inventory in stock so they weren't stuck with bare clothes racks and empty shelves when shopping season. holiday season is coming.
âA store like this wouldn't look good if you only had a few items,â said Victor Rios. âWe have a lot of cargo to come out because of the concerns we've had with shortages and delays. You have to take the risk – there is a lot of money we have in our storage space, but there is no way around it.
The owners of JaDa Loft opened their first location in northwest Reno in December 2020. Despite opening in the face of the pandemic, the clothing store has seen sales increase every month, Rios said.
It gave them the confidence to âpull the triggerâ to expand to South Reno this fall, even if it went against conventional retail wisdom.
âMost businesses are going to say that you want to have, at a minimum, a full year of sales before you look to grow,â said Monica Rios. âBut we felt relatively comfortable because this place is very busy and the visibility is phenomenal. And we have a really phenomenal clientele.
Rios predicts that they will see an increase in the number of customers purchasing Christmas items as temperatures drop. She said they will be offering free gift wrap soon and plan to extend their hours of operation as holiday shopping resumes.
Meanwhile, Clay Hall, vice president of sales at Reno Type, a direct mail and printing services company, told the NNBW in August that supply chain disruptions are having a huge impact on the industry. promotional products.
Hall said a COVID outbreak at a deep-water port in China has saved about 25% of promotional products entering the United States, a deadlock that he says "will persist for months."
As a result, some Reno Type customers are forced to settle for items that are not their first choice. It also forced customers to buy vacation items in the middle of summer rather than wait until fall.
âIf you wait until mid-October, November, you'll either get what's left or you won't get anything,â Hall said. âBecause the good things will go away. "

subset: commoncrawl


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After Weeks Of Upwards Momentum, DeFi Tokens Including Yearn Finance And Chainlink Face A Price Drop
DeFi tokens that have dominated the crypto market over recent weeks took a hit in recent days with yield farming project Yearn Finance leading the decline by dropping 10% over the past 24 hours.
Yearn Finance was one of the earliest DeFi success stories with its price starting below $5,000 in July and since rallying to exceed $30,000. As DeFi picked up steam, other tokens including Chainlink and Compound surged. However, over the past days altcoins and popular DeFi tokens have faced a correction even as Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen positive price movements.
Bitcoin and Ethereum both experienced a brief pump yesterday following The Federal Reserve's announcement that inflation would be allowed to rise above 2% for the foreseeable future. Despite Bitcoin and Ethereum's recent strength, altcoin prices have fallen.
The price drops come as sentiment surrounding DeFi seems to be slowing. On Friday, September 11 Bloomberg published an article calling out the copy-and-paste nature of the decentralized space citing recent SushiSwap drama. Co-founder of research firm Coin Metrics, Nic Carter, told Bloomberg that the SushiSwap saga revealed to many in the crypto communtiy that a large number of DeFi products are overvalued.
The DeFi boom is reminiscint of the 2017 ICO craze which saw the launch of tons of tokens, many of which folded, taking investor money with them. It's likely many DeFi projects will similarly die out, leaving behind only the strongest projects. Following the price drop this week, influencers in the crypto space quickly took to Twitter to defend DeFi.
Several argued that as the Ethereum ecosystem grows more capital and higher yields will be accessible. Many chose specific projects to advocate for, mostly Yearn Finance.
Regardless of short-term price movements, DeFi projects will continue expansion efforts. A recent tweet from Messari researcher Ryan Watkins outlined some recently rolled out Yearn features including entering automated market maker, lending and stablecoin markets.
By Emily Mason


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Return to: College of Public Affairs and Community Service
Main Office
Chilton Hall, Room 122
Mailing address:
1155 Union Circle #310919
Denton, TX 76203-5017
Fax: 940-565-3141
Pamela Sybert, Coordinator
The Center for Public Service promotes the service, public affairs, public interest and applied research goals of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service and of the university. Students, faculty and staff are involved in a variety of research and service projects that contribute to the welfare and development of individuals and of communities. The center's programs include aging and health services, urban social development, environmental education, volunteerism and international exchange. The center coordinates a number of service-learning experiences.


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How One Woman Won the Fight Against McDonald's Coffee Stirrers
Here's a story that's almost too strange to believe, but I assure you it's all true. It involves McDonald's coffee, their now-defunct stirrer, and illegal narcotics. It all started in the 1970s, when the disco was loud, the pants were wide, a small coffee from McDonald's cost 15 cents, and cocaine use was rampant.
McDonald's has always been big. The massive corporation hit the "1 millions burgers sold" milestone in 1955, a number that grew to 20 billion by 1976. Alongside their burgers, McDonald's has sold coffee since the very beginning, with a small cup costing only 15 cents back in the '70s. McDonald's coffee went without any sort of controversy for years, only to be pulled into the limelight after scalding 79-year-old Stella Liebeck in 1992. But back in the '70s, people were lovin' it, just like they were loving their cocaine.
Back in the '70s, the rhinestones were shiny, and cocaine was friggin' everywhere. Because experts and public health officials generally thought the drug was benign, people began taking it in droves, even flagrantly selling coke paraphernalia in magazines. While not everybody had the means to buy ivory drug sniffers, an estimated 11 percent of Americans had done coke by 1979.
Here's where McDonald's coffee stirrers come in. As you could've guessed, people had started using the free spoon-shaped stirrers that came with their coffee as a means to snort cocaine and PCP. In fact, reports say that a dose of cocaine was often called a "McSpoon" because of the way it was ingested. In 1979, the war on drugs was in full swing and a smaller coup against drug paraphernalia was waged that same year with the DEA's Model Drug Paraphernalia Act, which lists a number of ways an object can be classified as paraphernalia.
Enter Joyce Nalepka, the former President of the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth. Nalepka was a concerned citizen who had somehow caught wind of the sinister use of McDonald's spoon-shaped stirrers. She went on a personal crusade to get the stirrers banned from all McDonald's stores.
"I have one more statement that will take about two minutes, that I think is important," Nalepka said during a hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice in 1979.
"It is an important statement from the business community. The paraphernalia industry has told us several times that the McDonald's Restaurant coffee stirrer makes an adequate cocaine spoon. That disturbed me. [...] Last evening at 6 o'clock Mr. Edward Schmidt, president of McDonald's Restaurants, gave me permission to announce to you that McDonald's will either redesign or discontinue the item altogether."
So, how had Nalepka done it? All it took was a simple phone call to McDonald's president, Ed Schmidt. After initially refusing Nalepka's pleas, Schmidt reconsidered his stance after being asked to think of his kids. Schmidt eventually conceded.
On December 11, 1979, a tiny blurb came out in The Hour announcing the discontinuation of the stirrers: "It has been brought to our attention that people are using them illegally and illicitly for purposes for which they are not intended," said spokesperson Doug Timberlake, citing Nalepka's hearing. While the stirrers were officially taken off the market, this didn't stop people from finding a way to them and using them for drugs. One undercover officer in Columbus, Ohio, reported McSpoons being sold "ten to a bundle in that town and twelve to a bundle in Detroit." These days, you can find 20 stirrers labeled "used" on Ebay for $29.99.


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Posted by Larry Gleeson June 30,2020
Los Angeles, CA — Five Indigenous filmmakers have been chosen to participate in the 2020 Sundance Institute Native Filmmakers Lab, reimagined and expressed digitally this year on Sundance Co//ab. The Lab is at the core of the Institute's commitment to supporting Indigenous storytellers since its founding.
At the Native Filmmakers Lab (June 29–July 10), Fellows will workshop scripts of their short films under the expert creative mentorship of Indigenous Program alumni and other established filmmaking professionals serving as Advisors along with the Sundance Indigenous Program staff, led by Indigenous Program Director N. Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Mescalero Apache). The Lab encourages Fellows to hone their storytelling and craft skills in a hands-on and supportive environment. Following the Lab, Fellows will receive a year-long continuum of support.
"We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting our annual Native Filmmakers Lab in an exciting digital format on our Co//ab platform that allows for virtual participation by our Lab Fellows from where they are socially distancing," said Runningwater. "Given this extremely challenging time as we struggle with the impact of Covid-19 in our homelands, it is important to organize a safe space for Indigenous storytellers to come together to develop and share their work."
"The Indigenous Program will continue the tradition of providing mentorship and support to our Native Lab Fellows as they carry on with their work," said Runningwater. "As Indigenous peoples our connection to each other and our communities is strong. Drawing upon our ancestral strengths of adaptation and resilience we plan to make this year's Lab a great success and provide the inspiration and support that our Lab Fellows need to bring their films to fruition and to audiences around the world."
The filmmakers serving as Creative Advisors for this year's Native Lab include: Kerry Warkia (Papua New Guinean) (Vai, Waru, The Legend of Baron To'a), Rashaad Ernesto Green (Gun Hill Road, Premature), Elegance Bratton (Walk for Me, Pier Kids), Cherien Dabis (Amreeka, May in the Summer), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot/Sámi) (Bihttoš, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open) and Joan Tewkesbury (Thieves Like Us, Nashville). Peer Advisors for this year's Native Lab include Razelle Benally (Oglala Lakota/Diné Nations) (I am Thy Weapon, Raven), and Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga/Wynadotte Nations) (Little Chief).
Artists and projects selected for the 2020 Native Filmmakers Lab:
Rob Fatal [they/them] is a Two Spirit Mestiza/o/x filmmaker, new media artist and storyteller exploring decolonial aesthetics. Working in multiple analog and digital mediums allows Fatal to reimagine their own multi-lineage indigenous storytelling tradition for our current time which Fatal refers to as the "indigenous post-apocalypse". Fatal is often drawn to mediums like filmmaking and performance which bring together community and people to achieve a desired vision or work. Fatal finds community and culture to be their greatest artistic inspiration. To create with the collective minds of unique individuals is a practice that brings to them a great spiritual catharsis; a feeling of joy and power tied to the realization of what people working together can accomplish when in harmony: a home, a shared reality, justice, and healing. Fatal's work has been screened internationally at the British Film Institute Flare Festival, Fringe! Queer Film & Art Festival in London, Vancouver Antimatter Media Arts Festival, Frameline SF LGBTQ Film Festival, Outsider Fest Austin, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Broad Museum. Fatal's films are distributed by Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Center.
Keanu Jones is Mexican Clan born for Big Water Clan and is from Grand Falls, Arizona. He is a member of the Navajo Nation. Surrounded by family and the way of living on the Navajo Nation, his artistic identity has been greatly informed by his upbringing. This will continue to be reflected in the narratives he wants to explore.
In 2015, he was recognized with 15 other young filmmakers at the Student White House Film Festival. Then in 2018, he was recognized for his short film at the Navajo Film Festival. Keanu graduated from Navajo Technical University with a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing and New Media.
Amanda Strong is a Michif (Métis, Cree, Chippewa, Assiniboine, European and Polish Ancestry) interdisciplinary artist with a focus on filmmaking, stop motion animations and media art. She is currently living and working on unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Strong received a BAA in Interpretative Illustration and a Diploma in Applied Photography from the Sheridan Institute. With a cross-discipline focus, common themes of her work are reclamation of Indigenous stories, lineage, language and culture. Strong is the Owner/Director/Producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc. (SFP). Under her direction, SFP utilizes a multi-layered approach and unconventional methods that are centered in collaboration on all aspects of their work.
Strong's work is fiercely process-driven and takes form in various mediums such as: stop-motion, 2D/3D animation, Virtual Reality, gallery/museum installations, published books and community-activated projects.
She was selected by renowned filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin to win the Clyde Gilmour Technicolour Award. In 2017 she won the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Mid Career Artists award, the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Film and Media Artist in 2016 and, in 2013, Amanda was the recipient of K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Film and Video. Her films have screened across the globe.
Fellowship for Indigenous Canadian film artist made possible with support from the Indigenous Screen Office.
Artists-in-Residence selected for the 2020 Native Filmmakers Lab:
Sundance Institute's Indigenous Program
The Indigenous Program champions Indigenous independent storytelling artists through residency Labs, Fellowships, public programming, and a year-round continuum of creative, financial, and tactical support. The Program conducts outreach and education to identify a new generation of Indigenous voices, connecting them with opportunities to develop their storytelling projects, and bringing them and their work back to Indigenous lands. At its core, the Program seeks to inspire self-determination among Indigenous filmmakers and communities by centering Indigenous people in telling their own stories.
The Sundance Institute Indigenous Program is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Oneida Indian Nation, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Nia Tero Foundation, SAGindie, Indigenous Screen Office, New Zealand Film Commission, Jenifer and Jeffrey Westphal, Indigenous Media Initiatives, Felix Culpa, Sarah Luther, Susan Shilliday, and an anonymous donor.
Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and media to create and thrive. The Institute's signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Co//ab, a digital community platform, brings artists together to learn from each other and Sundance Advisors and connect in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as The Farewell, Late Night, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Eighth Grade, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, RBG, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Top of the Lake, Winter's Bone, Dear White People, Little Miss Sunshine, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, State of the Union, Indecent, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
(Source: Sundance Press Release)


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"...writers write for the same reason readers read — to find out the end of the story." --Ann Turner
"Writing is like any athletics or dancing — it has to be practiced every day because otherwise the writing muscle goes flabby.... A writer doesn't run out of ideas — a writer runs out of time."--Jane Yolen
"For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written....It is the communal cooking pot, the Street, all over again. It is our need to know we are not alone."--Virginia Hamilton
"I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head." --Kate DiCamillo
"I make pictures for the child in me. My work is actually my way of playing. That's why I think children enjoy my books; they recognize me as one of their own."--Brian Pinkney
"There is a space shared between the writer and her books, within which all is up for grabs." --Cynthia Voigt
The links below will take you to collections of videos and resources by and about children's authors and illustrators.


text: LinkedIn is now even more powerful in the Czech Republic as the user base increased to 1.4 million users. The HR Intelligence Report 2021 is designed to bring you the latest insights from selected industries including IT, Finance & Sales, Marketing & Media, Engineering, and Services. Download it now for free.


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We'll admit we sorta stole this idea from Engadget — we're going to give away a couple free invites to GMail… but we're going to have a little contest first.
You have from now (right now! go!) until COB Friday to submit a review of any piece of technology purchased (stolen, borrowed, or just run through its paces extensively in the store) within the last month. Something you think would be of interest to our community of BS-hatin' readers. The top two entries (the Grand Prize For Technology Review Writing Winner and the Loser Who Came Closest To Winning) will be published next week and given invites to GMail directly from me. Non-winning submissions may be published at the discretion of the editorial staff. Read more for all the legal yada yada.


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Students, professor recognized for achievement
A group of local high school students have garnered national attention.
Haashim Shah and Graham Wilcox, seniors at Vestal High School, were recently named semifinalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship competition. They join approximately 16,000 students recognized nationwide, according to a news release.
The scholarship program will award 7,500 scholarships, totaling $44 million, in the spring.
Also recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Program, now in its 62nd year, were Daria Chaplin, Anika Dalvie, Eli Holmes and Sheng Slogar.
These four Vestal High School students placed among the top 5 percent entered in the competition. They have been named Commended Students, receiving letters of commendation from their school and from the National Merit Scholarship Corp.
More than 1.6 million students entered the 2017 competition by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Nationwide, the corporation recognized 34,000 Commended Students.
For Vestal High School administrators, the students' achievements are an honor to the entire school.
"We are very proud of our semifinalists and Commended Students, and of all the students at Vestal who challenge themselves on a daily basis to reach their full potential," said International Baccalaureate Honors Facilitator Sally Lowenstein. "National Merit recognition for these students is an honor for us all."
A lifetime of educating
Sandro Sticca has spent the past half-century educating students at Binghamton University.
The Vestal man, a professor of French and comparative literature, took his first job with the school as an instructor in the spring of 1964.
Through the years, the Italian-born professor has gained recognition, authoring more than 40 books in English and Italian, receiving five international awards and founding three academic journals: Mediaevalia, Studies in Christian Thought and Tradition, and Studia Italica.
This month, he received his most recent accolades.
Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo recognized Sticca with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and he also received a special citation from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, recognizing him for "demonstrating a proven commitment to meaningfully enriching the cultural and educational environment of Broome County and the Greater Binghamton area," according to the document.
Sticca's tenure at Binghamton University has included developing new courses and coordinating events held on campus, such as the Medieval Conference.
In July 1983, Sticca became the first American to be knighted into the Order of the Knights Templar in Italy. He has been awarded two honorary degrees from Utica College and Accademia Internazionale in Italy.
Born in Tocco da Casauria, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Sticca emigrated to the United States after high school, served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and later received a B.A. magna cum laude from Utica College and an M.A. in English literature from Syracuse University. He was a Fulbright scholar at the Sorbonne from 1962-63, and earned a Ph.D in French and romance philology from Columbia University in 1967.
In 1965, Harpur College officially become a part of what is now Binghamton University. Sticca marked his 50-year anniversary as a faculty member in 2015.
In Stories to Share, reporter Katie Sullivan spends time with the Southern Tier's most fascinating people. She's looking for stories that will make you laugh, cry or be inspired. Know of someone who should be featured? Email her at firstname.lastname@example.com, and follow her on Twitter @ByKatieSullivan.
Lupardo named champion of kinship care


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…Via this fantastic commercial. Actually, I'd never heard of the advertiser  before — it's Halfords, kniktnsrbd
which, according to its Twitter feed, is the U.K.'s "leading retailer of automotive, leisure and cycling products." It also seems to be a leader in supporting Free-Range Kids! (And, okay, nostalgia. But it's legit!)
Let's hope seeing all the fun that kids can have outside, on their own, reminds everyone to celebrate Saturday's holiday: TAKE OUR CHILDREN TO THE PARK…AND LEAVE THEM THERE DAY! Spread the word![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qrCRPnqlms]


text: Categories Photos Gallery of Shadows Too Post author By nicktinkl Post date August 18, 2017 No Comments on Gallery of Shadows Too Zeiss Super Ikonta B, Portra 400 Tags Building, Details, Shadows ← Gallery of Shadows → Dew Leave a Reply Cancel replyYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Email * Website Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ


text: Chacco Blue presents breeders with an immensely successful jumping star for his young age. After winning the jumping index at the Stallion Performance Test, he has won over thirty show jumping classes judged on style and ability. At the German Young Horse Championships 2003 he was already one of the best; in 2004 he won the final qualification with 9.2. The Championship title within reach, he missed out on winning the overall championship because the wrong fence was jumped in the final jump-off. Jumping spectacular rounds at the Young Horse World Championships in Lanaken he demonstrated that he is one of the best horses in his age group. Grandsire Cambridge was a son of the popular Caletto I (in those days, a successful championship horse ridden by Michael Rüping) out of "Hilgunde" by thoroughbred Marlon xx and further down in the ancestry; the legendary stallion "Lord". His strongly modeled dam "Contara" by Contender won many (Grade A) classes and was also successful in World Cup classes. His first foals are captivating types and have loose movement.


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Reinforcement Learning, Teaching AI to Play
In this post, I will demonstrate and explain Reinforcement Learning code I developed. You will learn how one can train an AI agent to master Atari games and understand the technology behind DeepMind's AlphaGo, the first computer program to defeat professional human Go player. This will be fun and, surprisingly, simple, so let's dive in.
OpenAI Gym
gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. Big standardized datasets have proven pivotal in development of deep learning algorithms. Similarly, collection of test problems, environments, as provided by
gym aids in evaluation of reinforcement learning algorithms when an agent learns to take actions in response to observations from environment to "solve it". All that comes below is enabled by the work of guys at OpenAI. Hat tip to them.
The CartPole Problem
CartPole-v0 environment is a reinforcement learning (RL) equivalent of Hello World!. As such, it is sufficiently simple to get us started. It is a form of the classic control problem of inverted pendulum where we balance a pole by moving a cart it is attached to either left or right. The environment is considered solved when the average reward is greater than or equal to 195.0 over 100 consecutive trials. You can check the environment's spec's at its wiki.
To train an agent for this environment, I will use the SARSA reinforcement learning algorithm. This is an on-policy learning algorithm (which means that it uses the same policy to generate both current $a_t$ as well as the next action $a_{t+1}$). The name SARSA comes from the fact that the update rule for a Q-value depends on the tuple $(s_t, a_t, r_t, s_{t+1}, a_{t+1})$, where $s_t$, $a_t$ and $r_t$ are state, action and reward at time $t$ respectively.
The concept of Q-value is simple one. You just need to understand that we need a value to optimize that describes the reward the agent has harvested during a period of gameplay. First, define Value function $V^{\pi}(s)$ which is an expected sum of discounted rewards upon starting at state $s$ and selecting actions according to policy $\pi$:\[V^{\pi}(s) = E[R(s_0)+\gamma R(s_1)+\gamma^2 R(s_2) + ... | s_0=s,\pi].\]
$R(\cdot)$ gives the immediate value of reward and the discount factor $\gamma$ expresses how much we care about past values of it. Q-value function is then just V function for a particular action $a_t$ for each state $s_t$. They are related with:\[V^\pi(s) = \sum_{a \in A} \pi (a|s) * Q^\pi(a,s).\]
Given the above definitions, the SARSA algorithm updates the Q-value by an error-term adjusted by the learning rate $\alpha$ as follows:\[Q(s_t,a_t)\leftarrow Q(s_t,a_t)+\alpha[r_{t+1}+\gamma Q(s_{t+1},a_{t+1})-Q(s_t,a_t)]\]
In my implementation I approximate the Q-values for each action with a linear function and select an action with $argmax(w^Ts)$.
Here is the implementation (full code here):
The algorithm works very well and we are able to solve the environment as early as after 60 or so episodes.
Atari Games
After successfully training an agent on a simple problem, I jumped on something more complex. That is, teaching agent how to master Atari games. I focused on the game of Breakout. This problem is very different from the previous one in that as input to our model we receive images of the game screen. Learning something from this complex input requires a model that is capable of abstracting features from it. This is why I decided to harness the power of a deep convolutional neural network.
The Deep Model
For my implementation, I chose the DQN model and algorithm that was used by DeepMind to learn how to play Go. I extended it by few recent developments from the field of deep reinforcement learning including the dueling DQN and double DQN. I also used the Prioritized Experience Replay Memory to train the agent on samples from past to prevent it forgetting about past experiences. The full code is available at my GitHub.
Here is the model in code:
You will see that the model architecture is pretty big. This is why the researchers at DeepMind had to train it for 50 million frames to achieve great results. You will notice that I am using a custom loss function. It allows me to update Q-values only for actions that were observed and also avoids the problem of weighting outliers too heavily that otherwise occurs with mean squared loss.
The Huber loss is implemented as follows:
Epsilon-Greedy Policy
I used
RMSProp optimizer as it was also the one used in the original paper. Once the memory has been initialized with sufficient number of samples, then the network is retrained on each step by sampling a random batch from memory. The policy implemented is Epsilon Greedy Policy and it differs from the previously described SARSA algorithm in that it is implemented as an off-policy algorithm. That is, it chooses the next action in greedy fashion, in order to maximize the next reward.
Checkpointing and Visualizations
Initially, I was getting hardly any improvements, even after many hours of training. I learned the hard way that ample and frequent checkpointing, logging and visualizations are absolute musts in training deep learning models. I found it the most convenient to define these with Keras's
callbacks and use
TensorBoard for monitoring them. Here is an example of callbacks used to update mask of custom loss as well as to add custom visualization to TensorBoard.
For further examples of implementing callbacks in RL, check out the keras-rl repo.
After about 3000 episodes of training, my agent is able to play the game quite well :)
In this post, I have demonstrated that reinforcement learning problems can be solved with reasonably simple, yet very powerful algorithms, I also pin-pointed some critical aspects of training a DL/RL model. The reinforcement learning field has made great leaps forward in past years and it appears to be staying on this track. I am personally really excited about applying RL in robotics and how will AI developed once it receives a physical body with means to experience and explore its environment.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
Supplementary Info
Below, I am listing some important personal takeaways. You will benefit from adopting them, especially if you didn't do much of a practical DL/RL previously.
- Make sure you can fit a tiny dataset/simple problem
- Before adopting and adapting reference implementation, test that it works
- Make changes incrementally and test that they produce expected results. First get something that works, only then make it nice.
- For RL, you don't need neither BatchNormalization nor Dropout. Regularization is in general much less important than in other settings.
- Visualize loss, metrics, parameter updates, Q-values, actions and more throughout the training (Callbacks and Tensorboard are your friends)
- Periodically visualize the agent as it plays
- Get proper hardware for training. Either good desktop or remote resources.
I also created a Reveal.js presentation where I go through these and other highly relevant and mainly practical aspects of deep learning models and training. Check it out here.
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Our Pricing includes three meals daily and rooms per/person figuring double occupancy. In April we had ten and a half ladies from the Sew Haut Sisters with us for three days and two nights. A great time was had by all! they loved their rooms and the food and are booking their fall retreat with us as well. Cindy and I look forward to seeing them again. Our rates are $80.00/person(ten person minimum) per night of stay check-in and out times are subject to our occupancy on the day you leave we are usually flexible on these details. But will clearify them on booking.
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Activision has confirmed today, via a fourth quarter 2016 earnings report, that a full-fledged sequel to the hit game Destiny is still on course for 2017.
During the presentation, Activation noted that the sequel will release later this year, managing to broaden the franchise's global reach.
"Full Destiny sequel in 2017 to broaden the franchise's global reach, which along with follow-on content plans, sets the stage for growth." Publishing CEO of Activision, Eric Hirshberg confirmed in a call following the earnings report that "development is going great, and it is indeed on track for release this fall."
Last year we learned that Bungie was still "on schedule" for 2017. Eric Hirshberg from Activision noted that the demand for content from the community has been overwhelming, but the team has put together a new strategy for Destiny 2; allowing a more steady flow of content to keep players engaged.
"Beyond that, the incredible demand for Destiny content has somewhat outpaced our ability to deliver upon that demand, and going forward along with our partners at Bungie, have put together what we believe is a very smart approach that will allow us to deliver the steady stream of great content to keep our players engaged and keep our universe alive and growing in the wake of that sequel," said Hirshberg.
Destiny 2 is set for a fall 2017 release date; no mention of the game's platforms as of yet.


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A writer knows he is working well when people start to hate him. V. S. Naipaul has always warmed to this aspect of the enterprise. For more than fifty years, he has, with enviable regularity and evident delight, brought his readers the bad news from four continents. His prophecies never fail to outrage, all the more when they are right: In the 1960s, he pronounced the failure of Black Power politics in the Caribbean before it left the cradle; in the 1980s, he followed the logic of Muslim fundamentalism to its grim conclusions while Mohamed Atta was still in shorts. But perhaps no prediction has been more widely reviled—and passionately rebutted—than a single off-the-cuff comment Naipaul made after the publication of A Bend in the River in 1979. Asked about the future of Africa, he said it didn't have one.
How strange, then, that Naipaul's new book should be a searching inquiry into Africa's past with an eye to its future. The Masque of Africa retraces Naipaul's steps from forty years before, when he first went to Africa to write about the dictators slashing up the continent. Now he returns to examine wounds deeper beneath the surface: the remnants of earth religions that have survived the conquests of Christianity and Islam. With extraordinary sensitivity, Naipaul registers the beauty of these traditions but also captures their cruelty. The Masque of Africa is full of sacred groves and magic herbs—but also boiled cats and severed horse heads. For all his claims to hold no views, Naipaul has barely concealed his agenda behind these portraits of belief. The spiritual resources of Africa are, he thinks, like its natural resources, tragically limited—and, in many cases, morally blinding. As if issuing instructions for how to build a civilization from scratch, Naipaul tells us which indigenous ingredients can be added and which must be kept out. It comes as little surprise that his ideal Africa turns out to be one capable of producing a writer like himself.
For something personal is drawing Naipaul back to the continent. It has to do with his own beginnings, growing up in Trinidad in the 1930s and '40s. As a Hindu child in Port of Spain, there was nothing sacred about the island—the sacred places were all back in India. As for the blacks Naipaul encountered, few of their native beliefs would have survived slavery. One of Naipaul's great aims as a writer has been to trace the tributaries of Trinidad's various peoples back to their sources. He has investigated the India of his ancestors, the eradication of the original Amerindians of Trinidad, the lands of Muslim conquest, and now the origins of African belief. Taken together, the books constitute a longue durée history of the island. They do not attempt to reenchant it—that has never been Naipaul's goal—but they provide a narrative order for people to make sense of what has happened to them.
Readers of Naipaul are by now familiar with his travel routine. First, there is the inevitable snafu of arrival. Naipaul likes to head straight to the nearest international hotel—the less character, the better. In Lagos, Nigeria, he is picked up by the wrong driver, taken to the wrong room, and forced to call one of his fixers to straighten things out. Then come the money problems. Each time he sits down with a witch doctor, he fixates on the bill like a man in a gypsy cab. The meetings themselves often go nowhere. At one consultation with a Nigerian babalawo, Naipaul is invited to see some shrines in the soothsayer's yard:
In a corner, looking like something lavatorial and disagreeable, were the three shrines with the oracles the babalawo had made with his own hands. For the believer it would have been a high moment, being permitted to see these sacred things; but for me the moment came with a noticeable tickle in my nostrils: a touch of asthma on the way.
What is happening here? This is more a comedy of discomforts, it seems, than an effort to get to the bottom of things. But that is Naipaul's way: His honesty about his failures to connect with people makes us better able to appreciate his breakthroughs. Part of the pleasure of reading him is watching his frustration cool into comprehension. Naipaul may be the last writer to believe in the author's ability to capture objective truth if he concentrates hard enough. This faith opposes every strain of contemporary thinking and yet, when fanatically applied, produces the impression that Naipaul misses nothing.
The problems with The Masque of Africa come where Naipaul's anthropology slips into sophistry. He repeatedly suggests, for instance, that Africa's addiction to bush meat has stifled its agricultural development. Less ludicrous is his claim that the demands of the earth religions compete with those of modern society. It's not so much traditional African belief itself that worries Naipaul, but rather how Africans' adherence to "tradition" abets their resistance to squarely confronting the challenges of the modern world. Renouncing the ways of the West may be psychologically satisfying, but Naipaul believes people are mistaken to think they can insulate themselves from its advances. He sees this dynamic particularly at play in South Africa, where, increasingly, tribal traditions cover for a lack of political imagination. In Soweto, Naipaul visits Winnie Mandela, "soft in body," who, much to his amazement, still consults the graves of her Xhosa ancestors. But Naipaul never spells out why these beliefs cannot be successfully combined with viable politics. Syncretism of any kind is out of the question for him. "The people of South Africa had had a big struggle," he writes. "I expected that a big struggle would have created bigger people, people whose magical practices might point the way ahead to something profounder."
Naipaul finds his bigger people among the Pygmies. In one of the most surprising passages of the book, he meets Mobiet, a Peace Corps volunteer–turned-freelancer, whom local Pygmies have initiated into the mysteries of the Gabonese forest. Naipaul listens to Mobiet describe at length the power of the eboga initiation rites: "I know that if you analyse all the plants of Gabon you cannot activate the healing process unless you know the language of the plants." This is the sort of assurance that Naipaul would have skewered, or at least skeptically probed, in one of his earlier books, but here he simply takes Mobiet at his word. "Initiation had worked for him," he writes, and approvingly notes Mobiet's decision to have his children educated in America. By contrast, Naipaul reserves his greatest disdain for Africans who see their culture as a satisfactorily closed system. In Johannesburg, Naipaul meets Joseph, a Zulu traditionalist, who rails against Western hygiene, bans on polygamy, and animal rights activism. "Why do you want the animal to be slaughtered in another way which you think is more humane?" he asks Naipaul. This sort of sentiment repels him. "It was impossible," Naipaul writes, "for any rational person to feel that any virtue could come from the remains of these poor animals."
The Masque of Africa is streaked with blood: throats of cows slit for sacrifice, bats shot from the sky with slingshots, horse heads for sale in the market—even human body parts available for the right price. Worst of all, Naipaul's favorite pet is everywhere on the menu:
The best way of killing a cat, assuming you had invited someone to dinner and didn't want to create a scene, was to stretch the animal's neck, the way people in England killed a rabbit. But when you did that you could be badly scratched. The surest way—if your guests didn't mind the racket—was to put a cat in a sack and beat it with a stick until it was dead. Another good way was to drown it. You used a sardine as bait to attract the cat to a container with water, and then you poured and poured water. The cat swallowed a lot of water and the virtue of this method was that it was much easier afterwards to tear the bloated cat's skin off.
Naipaul's disgust here seems genuinely to override his other responses. "The thought of this everyday kitchen cruelty made everything else in the Ivory Coast seem unimportant," he writes. The kind of check on the senses required for killing animals in close quarters is for Naipaul a damning commentary on the society at large. The proximity between animals and animism itself ironically allows for more brutality: Outside of your tribe's totem every animal is fair game. Not to see this man-on-animal cruelty means not to see man-on-man cruelty, either. "During the elections the ANC and its rival call each other cockroaches, snakes, and dogs," a South African tells Naipaul. "During intense debates where animal metaphors are used, real blood will flow."
The blood of animals running through this book is a sustained commentary on African blindness. The way out of this blindness, Naipaul suggests, is to join up with what he has called "universal civilization" and abandon all pretensions to local self-sufficiency. It is a hard creed, but nevertheless a corrective for much of what passes these days for communitarian commitment. Consider The Masque of Africa in comparison to the most popular African-travel book of our time: Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. In Kenya, Obama meets his half-brother Mark who is there on a break from his studies at Stanford as a physicist. "You don't ever think about settling here?" Obama asks. "There's not much work for a physicist, is there, in a country where the average person doesn't have a telephone," Mark answers. It's a perfectly pitched, Naipaulian response. But Obama is not satisfied: "Don't you ever feel like you might be losing something?" His half-brother replies: "Other things move me. Beethoven's symphonies. Shakespeare's sonnets. I know—it's not what an African is supposed to care about. But who's to tell me what I should and shouldn't care about?" For Obama this is still not enough. As A Masque of Africa shows, something precious always is lost in the bargain for modern civilization, but for Naipaul it is worth the price if it yields a man who wants to hear and see things for himself.
Thomas Meaney is an editor of The Utopian and a doctoral student in history at Columbia.


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- Newsmaker: Napster, the company that allows fans to swap music over the Internet for free, has stunned the recording industry again by making a deal with Bertelsmann, the conglomerate that owns BMG, one of the record companies that sued Napster for big money. Howard King, the attorney representing Metallica and Dr. Dre in their independent suits against Napster, considers the deal's affect on record labels, musicians, fans and piracy.
- Reporter's Notebook: The national press corps is supposed to lean left, but a recent study shows that political news, even on the Internet, was overwhelmingly negative. Oddly, Gore got far more negative coverage than Bush. Amy Mitchell is the Associate Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. She explains why this is and speculates on what the study's results mean for educating the electorates of the future?
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The Mercedes-Benz SL350 has been replaced with a more powerful SL400 as part of a series of subtle changes brought to the SL line-up. The move is part of a bid to stir sales of the two-year-old luxury roadster.
The SL400 is powered by Mercedes-Benz's twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6 direct injection petrol engine, unveiled in the new E400 early last year. With 328bhp and 354lb ft of torque, it delivers 26bhp and 81lb more than the naturally aspirated 3.5-litre V6 direct-injection petrol unit used by the SL350.
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Manning, Joseph C., Hemingway, Pippa and Redsell, Sarah A. (2017) Stories of survival: Children's narratives of psychosocial wellbeing following paediatric critical illness or injury. Journal of Child Health Care, 21 (3). pp. 236-252. ISSN 1741-2889
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Survival from critical illness can expose children to an array of negative physical and psychological problems. While the perspective of parents and professionals have been well documented, there is limited understanding of how childhood critical care survivors make sense of their experiences in relation to psychosocial wellbeing. We aimed to explore long-term psychosocial wellbeing of childhood survivors of critical illness through their stories. A qualitative, exploratory study using serial in-depth interviews was employed. Nine children (aged 6-15 years) were recruited to the study six to 14 months post-discharge from a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. Qualitative art-based methods were used with a responsive interviewing technique and data were analysed using Narrative Psychological Analysis. Four themes emerged: Disrupted lives and stories; survivors revealed uncertainties in their stories as they recalled their critical care event, Exposure to death and dying; talking about extreme physical vulnerability provoked anxieties, Mediating between different social worlds and identities; revealed the dynamic nature of survival, and Getting on with life; the prospective outlook survivors had on their existence despite newly manifesting adversities. Childhood survivors' stories identify challenges and adversities that are faced when attempting to readjust to life following critical illness that both enhance and impair psychosocial wellbeing.
|Item Type:
|Journal Article
|nurses, children, paediatric intensive care, survivors, narratives
|ARCHIVED Faculty of Health, Social Care & Education (until September 2018)
|Depositing User:
|Ian Walker
|Date Deposited:
|12 Jun 2017 14:43
|Last Modified:
|10 Feb 2022 16:14
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THEATER REVIEW: Sink your teeth into this "Dracula"
Director Eric Scot Frydler plays up the comedy and dials back the horror of this "Dracula."
CORONADO — 'Tis the season for extremes, and what's farther out than a good vampire story?
The most famous bloodsucker of all is at Coronado Playhouse through Nov. 28, in John Mattera's adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula."
You remember the story: poor Jonathan Harker (Kyle Young) is sent from London to the big, dingy Transylvanian castle of Count Dracula (Hunter C. Smith) to sell him some London real estate.
Dracula's ominous voice and all-too-solicitous demeanor soon creep Jonathan out, as does the way he swishes around in a colorful full-length cape vaguely resembling a comforter.
Jonathan is especially nonplussed when he learns the Count wants to buy the property closest to the house his lovely fiancée Lucy Westenra (Ruth Carlson) shares with her parents.
Of course the Count does just that, and while on his new property meets and wows Lucy, who soon after worries her parents with her increasingly pale and sickly appearance and her sudden habit of disappearing for longer and longer "walks" in the neighborhood. Even Lucy's best friend Mina (Christina Phares) seems to find the Count irresistible.
Checking Lucy into the local hospital doesn't help much; poor old Dr. Seward (Robert Shadbolt) is stumped and has to import the thickly accented Dutch Professor Van Helsing (Vander Turner) to help.
Things go from bad to worse until everybody drags out the "dime store crosses," garlic strands and a mallet ("Croquet, anyone?" cracks the Count). Eventually, the real loony — the quirky paranoid schizophrenic Mr. Renfield (Kevin Fipps) – saves the day.
Director Eric Scot Frydler plays up the comedy and dials back the horror, giving his mostly young and rambunctious cast free rein for the goofy.
One inspired example is in the person of the Westenras' ancient and nearly blind butler Charles, given to stumbling and tippling and played to perfection by veteran actor Nick Bonacker.
The tall, handsome Smith makes a convincing count, especially with that voice that can be seductive or imperious (or both).
Carlson is excellent as the Count's voluntary victim, as is Phares as Mina.
The double-cast Fipps is a hoot as the patient who catches flies to feed to his spiders, a bit less successful as Lucy's father. Shadbolt and Turner acquit themselves well as the doctors.
Special kudos to SkinTightBodyArt.com for the fabulous hand-painted leotards worn by lady vampires Genevieve Robertson and Wendy Hayne.
The details
"Dracula" plays through Nov. 28 at Coronado Playhouse, 1835 Strand Way, Coronado.
Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.
For tickets, call (619) 435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.
To read more reviews by SDGLN Theater Critic Jean Lowerison, click HERE.


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Luke 13:5-9 – "No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." And he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit and he found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' And he answered him, "Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down."
Jesus begins by clarifying that bad things don't happen only because of sin and that one sinner isn't worse than another. Jesus shares the gospel truth that everyone needs to repent from their sin and turn to God or all will die. In the parable of the barren fig tree, Jesus shows the love God has for us and his patience in us to follow him and bear fruit.
Application –
I must remember that we are all sinners dead without hope to save ourselves apart from the blood of Christ on the cross at Calvary. This means I don't have the right to rank order my sin as not as consequential as someone else's sin. What I do need to be thankful for is a loving God who is patient and gives us time to hear the message, repent to turn and follow Him. God did not give us a one and done scenario in our ability to respond to the gospel. I, in turn need to have patience with someone whom I am sharing the gospel and life with. God will place things in our path and use them to draw near to Him. My walk is not complete and I am to continue to follow Jesus daily.
Prayer –
Thank you for loving me so much that you sent Jesus to pay for my sins so I could repent and have a relationship with you. Help me to have your patience for others as I share your love and gospel.


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Postgame Quotes
Sept. 2, 2006
Recap | Final Stats | Notes |
Kansas 49, Northwestern State 18<?xml:namespace prefix="o" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"?>
Sept. 2, 2006
Kansas Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Mark Mangino
On special teams play:
"Our return guys did a great job. We had a punt return for a touchdown and a long kickoff return that set up a touchdown. We also had a blocked punt. We need to work a little bit though. The little things are important — snapping the ball to the punter and the punter catching it, and our kicker kicking it through the uprights. We have spent a lot of time on special teams and we are going to have to refocus a little bit more, not just on special teams but on the specialists themselves. Those are veteran guys, so we'll hope they got it out of their system.
On Kerry Meier:
"I thought he did a great job for his first night out. You could see he stayed poised. He made a few mistakes here and there but he didn't let it rattle him. You can just see that he has the ability to throw and run. I'm very pleased with Kerry's first night out. We were a little conservative at the beginning of the game, but then (offensive coordinator) Nick Quartaro said `let's let him loose.' He has the ability to make plays so we let him."
On the wide receivers' play:
"I thought they did a pretty nice job. I liked the route running that they did. The thing that is interesting about this game is that we scored 49 points on just 51 offensive plays. We had a short field on special teams. The game was really quick. I thought that overall the offense did some really good things. Special teams had some really good things and the defense came out and had their backs to the wall and held them to field goals. You can see the toughness on that defense."
On his team's performance:
"I think we are about where I thought we would be. You can see some really positive things that really excite me about this ball club. We made some mistakes that need to be corrected. I think we are where we need to be."
Running back Jon Cornish
On the game:
"I was a little scared coming out of the locker room at halftime. I needed to do a little something. Our offensive line did a great job tonight and last year's experience is really helping us now."
On the touchdown run:
"Typically, I run a little more bent over, but when I got in the open field I shifted to sprinter style."
On Kerry Meier:
"I like to call him The Magic. He does just that. He threw two touchdowns and ran for two. As a freshman quarterback, he was little bit nervous but he got into his groove and was just great."
Defensive End Paul Como
On comparing this year's defense to last year's:
"I think we're a lot different. Last year we had a few leaders but this year everyone is capable of being a leader. I think different people need to step up at different times to do what we need to do."
Wide receiver Brian Murph
On his punt return for touchdown:
"I didn't think I was going to take it to the house that quick. I thought I was going to get one this year but for the first game makes you feel good. There wasn't anything in the middle, so I just tried to make people miss and I saw the sideline open up and I just ran there."
On Kerry Meier:
"He did what I said he was going to do. He's poised and focused. I think we can go a long way with him. I think he did really well today."
Quarterback Kerry Meier:
On the game:
"I'll have to take a look at the film but there's some plays I'd like to take back but there are also plays that I thought I did pretty well. I did alright but there's always room for improvement and that's what I'm going to do next week."
On playing in his first ever college game:
"I was pretty nervous. I can't lie, but that's just part of the game. After the first play it was smooth sailing."
On opening the offensive playbook in the second half:
"We established the running game and that helped open up the passing game which is great. Whenever we can run and pass the ball we're going win some ballgames."
Head Coach Scott Stoker
On the game:
"I thought we grew up a little bit. Obviously, special teams is a killer for us. They (KU) created mistakes for us to make in the special teams department. Any time you step up and play a Big 12 school you can't afford to make mistakes on special teams. I thought we got a little better offensively in the second half considering we are so young. Give them credit. They have great players and they are heading in right direction. They had some guys injured just like we did. We just have to get better."
On his team's overall youth:
"I guess the offensive line is where it all has to start. I thought we got manhandled some in the first half, but our guys did a better job in the second half. I thought we played pretty good defense all the way through. We gave up some big plays due to missed tackles, but defensively I thought we played extremely well in the first half. I thought we didn't play as well in the second half probably because of fatigue. Overall, I think we just need to improve and I think we will because we have some young guys and we have some guys that are good athletes."
On taking a 6-0 lead to open the game:
"They had the same problems we had with special team blunders. They played good defense right off the bat. We had a chance to get into the endzone and we didn't. I think our kids expected to come here and play well, but it's critical we don't make back-to-back special team mistakes like we did."
Senior DT Tory Collins
On Northwestern State's performance:
"We played real well on both sides of the ball. We had a lot of turnovers, so we need to take care of the ball more and be more physical."
On the game:
"It was an intense atmosphere. It was a great crowd. We did some things that we messed up on. We have to go back to the drawing board and fix the things we messed up on."
Junior QB Ricky Joe Meeks
On the game:
"If you take special teams out, we have a shot at the end. The game is three phases and you have to capitalize on all three. I thought Kansas played great. We can't afford to make mistakes and you can't bring anyone else in. We have the 11 out there and that's what we have to play with."
On Northwestern State's offense:
"Offensively, we played a lot better in the second half. We still have a lot of corrections we have to make."
On Kansas' defense:
"It is very, very sound. They don't make any mistakes and play aggressive. I tip my hat to them. They played a good ballgame."
On the crowd:
"It was loud. As you can tell, I don't have much voice left. It's going to help us. It was a great atmosphere and one I had a great time playing in."


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The Minister of Tourism Asot Michael has declined comment of the announcement that Sandals Grande Antigua will be closing its doors for up to five months.
OBSERVER media was also unable to reach Prime Minister Gaston Browne for comment.
The Antigua & Barbuda Workers' Union announced at a press conference today that Sandals Grand Antigua will be closed for up to five months to do essential maintenance work.
At least 700 workers at the Dickenson Bay property will be affected when the hotel closes for the first time in 25 years. The closure will take effect from September 20.
The owner of Adventure Antigua Eli Fuller says the decision is catastrophic and he will not only have to lay off workers but may have to sell a boat.
General Secretary of the workers union, David Massiah laments the list of properties closing for varying reasons.
The announcement comes after Friday's announcement that Verandah will also be closing, affecting 200 workers.
Deputy General Secretary Chester Hughes says this closure will be devastating.
In a letter to Massiah, Chief Operations Officer, Shawn DaCosta says the Prime Minister, Minister of Tourism and the Minister of Legal Affairs were formally advised in a letter that was delivered to their offices on July 13.
Tourism Minister, Asot Michael told OBSERVER media moments ago that he has not received the letter and he is not prepared to comment until he speaks to the resort.
The property assures it will honour all obligations to its staff.
700 workers to be affected by Sandals closure
The Minister of Tourism Asot Michael has declined comment of the announcement that Sandals Grande Antigua will be closing its doors for up to five months.


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Corrie A. Boulay Esq.Family Law Attorney
Areas of Practice
- Family Law
- Child Support
- Children's' Rights
- Collaborative Law
- Custody & Visitation
- Divorce
Education & Bar Admissions
- University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, Maryland – 1997
- BA, University of Baltimore
- Maryland Bar, 1998
A 5th generation Maryland resident, Corrie A. Boulay was born in Takoma Park in 1968 and grew up in Fulton, Maryland. Corrie graduated from St. Vincent Pallotti High School in 1986; she later attended the University of Baltimore, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After earning her undergraduate degree Corrie grew her passion for law by working as a paralegal for 6 years in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Corrie gained experience in a wide variety of legal fields, including family law, criminal/traffic law, worker's compensation and personal injury. Corrie continued to work as a law clerk while attending the University of Baltimore School of Law; she received her Juris Doctor degree in 1997 and was admitted to the Maryland State Bar the following year.
Following her admission to the bar Corrie began her career by representing victims of domestic violence at the Domestic Violence Center for Howard County. Shortly thereafter Corrie founded her solo practice, specializing in family law matters.
In her spare time Corrie enjoys traveling, the Orioles and Ravens, and the theater.


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Kent Blossom Art 2018 Workshops
Celebrating 50 Years
May 27 – June 9, 2018
Kent Blossom Art Intensives are a series of two-week intensive art workshops conducted each summer at Kent State University by resident School of Art faculty and an exciting array of visiting artists. Every year, students and individual artists engage in two weeks of focused learning, experimentation and creation under the guidance of experienced artists from around the country. Visiting artists will also give presentations on their work, which are open to the public.
Choose from the workshops listed below.


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Top 10 Strongest Saiyans in "Dragon Ball Z/Super"
Jeremy enjoys anime when not working as a chemist or building manager.
Saiyans in "Dragon Ball Z"
One of Dragon Ball Z's earliest reveals was that Goku, protagonist of the original Dragon Ball anime, actually isn't human, but Saiyan, a warrior race mostly exterminated by Frieza.
Saiyans resemble humans in appearance but have tails and various transformations that make them far deadlier. From Great Apes to Super Saiyans, we've seen dozens of Saiyans wielding incredible power—which reign supreme? Discounting fusions and non-canon characters, these are the ten strongest Saiyans in Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super!
10. Cabba
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan 2
The first Saiyan we meet from Universe 6, Cabba displays excellent cunning, using various tricks to catch Vegeta by surprise despite the big power gap between them. With Vegeta's help, he quickly masters the Super Saiyan form, and although he's swiftly defeated by Golden Frieza in the Tournament of Power, he manages to briefly hold his own against Legendary Super Saiyan Kale.
9. Caulifla
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan 2
Like all pure-blood Saiyans, Caulifla's name is a vegetable pun, cauliflower. Like Cabba, she stems from Universe 6, the dimension that Universe 7 battles in the Tournament of Destroyers.
While Universe 6 Saiyans tend to be more gentle than Universe 7, Caulifla bucks the trend with her fiery personality and thirst for battle. With help from Goku, she reaches Super Saiyan 2 remarkably quickly, and her fusion with Kale (into Kefla) turns them into one of the strongest Tournament of Power warriors.
8. Kale
Strongest Transformation: Legendary Super Saiyan
Kale is Universe 6's equivalent to Broly, a legendary Super Saiyan who only emerges once in a thousand years. Though shy and timid, she's remarkably strong once transformed, able to hold her own against Super Saiyan God Goku. Kale's only issue is low base power; if she ever raises that up through training (or Zenkai, healing after damage), she'll be even deadlier.
7. Yamoshi
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan God (possibly)
Yamoshi is an ancient figure shrouded in mystery. We know he was the original Super Saiyan, and he bears a striking resemblance to Vegeta, suggesting Vegeta may be his descendent. Beyond that, Yamoshi's exact capabilities are unknown, with some sources suggesting he may have mastered the Super Saiyan God and even Golden Great Ape forms in addition to base Super Saiyan.
6. Gohan
Strongest Transformation: Mystic Gohan
Goku's first son, Gohan proves a fierce combatant from a young age, holding his own against foes like Nappa, Frieza, and Cell before his teenage years. Several sources both in and out of the universe state that Gohan has greater potential than Goku and Vegeta (partially due to his half-human, half-Saiyan status), which culminates in his unique Mystic Gohan form.
Gohan's only weakness is his distaste for battle, meaning he tends to forgo training unless there's a direct threat to the world, allowing the pure-blooded Saiyans to surpass him—until he once again expands his limits.
5. Future Trunks
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan Rage
Vegeta and Bulma's half-Saiyan son, Future Trunks initially time-traveled to warn the Dragon Team about the Android threat, and he returns much later for help against Goku Black.
During this time, Trunks unlocks his unique Super Saiyan Rage form, putting him on a level comparable to Super Saiyan Blue. Trunks is also a skilled swordsman, channeling ki into his blade to create the Light Sword, which can turn into the Sword of Hope after absorbing a Spirit Bomb.
4. Goku Black
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan Rose
Goku Black is actually a Kai (deity) who stole future Goku's body. Then, he exploited the Saiyan healing powers to quickly obtain near limitless strength, as well as his unique pink-haired Rose form, a variant of Super Saiyan Blue.
Not only is Black immensely powerful and cunning, he also teams up with his future self (Future Zamasu), creating a deadly duo who can fuse into Fused Zamasu.
3. Vegeta
Strongest Transformation: Super Saiyan Blue Evolved
Vegeta is consistently the Z-team's second-strongest fighter after Goku. While hotheaded, Vegeta's an intelligent warrior who trains harder than anyone. In the anime, he even unlocked the perfected version of Super Saiyan Blue before Goku, though Goku had moved on by that point...
2. Goku
Strongest Transformation: Ultra Instinct
Whether using his myriad Super Saiyan forms or unique combat techniques (Spirit Bomb, Instant Transmission, etc.), Goku is usually the one who handles the arc's big threat. In Dragon Ball Z, he's the only singular Saiyan to unlock Super Saiyan 3, and in Super, he goes far beyond, mastering Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken and Ultra Instinct, making him the only one able to match Jiren in the Tournament of Power.
1. Broly
Strongest Transformation: Legendary Super Saiyan
Broly's an enormous threat in any media, especially his canon Super rendition. This is actually his kindest version, but he goes berserk when his father Paragus is killed, unleashing his Legendary Super Saiyan form. Goku believes Broly is stronger than even Beerus, a God of Destruction, and Broly dominates Goku and Vegeta's Blue forms at the same time; they only beat him by fusing into Gogeta. Even then, Broly rivals the fused warrior, showcasing just how formidable he is.
Non-Canon Saiyans and Fusions
Today we explored the ten best canon Saiyans, but you'll find more lethal opponents in non-canon sources (such as Dragon Ball Heroes), like Cumber, Turles, and Xeno Goku. Saiyans can also temporarily fuse, either via the fusion dance or Potara earrings, into warriors far stronger than the individuals combined, Vegito and Kefla being prime examples.
We'll see if more canon Saiyans emerge in future material, but for now, vote for your favorite and I'll see you at our next anime countdown!
© 2020 Jeremy Gill


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Audience profile
A Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Functional Consultant is responsible for performing discovery, capturing requirements, engaging subject matter experts and stakeholders, translating requirements, and configuring the solution and applications. The Functional Consultant implements a solution using out of the box capabilities, codeless extensibility, application and service integrations.
At course completion
- Identify platform components.
- Understand administrator options.
- Effectively model data.
- Build a basic model driven application on the Power Platform.
- Build a basic canvas application on the Power Platform.
- Manage user's access to data and functionality using security.
This course is designed for persons who are aspiring to the Microsoft 365 Enterprise Admin role and have completed one of the Microsoft 365 work load administrator certification paths.


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Lev joined Cognizant's growing Salesforce practice in March 2020, allowing us to continue to serve our customers flexibly and nimbly, while having the backing of a global company that maximizes our reach and the impact we can have on our customers. As part of Cognizant, we're further cementing Lev as the leading Salesforce consultancy for marketers across the world, bringing our deep strategic thinking and technological expertise to marketers for top global brands.
Join the Team
We hire the best and brightest in the industry. Sound like you?
Keep scrolling. You might just "Lev" it here.
All applications must be submitted through the Cognizant site. Please note that our job postings may represent multiple openings.
Get updates on Lev, including open roles, recruitment events, and Levster spotlights, and discover why #LevLife is the best life.
Lev is a digital consultancy that hires some of the sharpest talent in the country. We come from varied backgrounds, but we all work together to meet our customer's needs. Our company is full of passionate, sharp, and vibrant people—and our #LevLife culture is centered around a deep care for our customers and for each other.
Relationships are the hallmark of our business, and we believe that the strongest relationships are sincere and trustworthy. We do the best for ourselves and our clients by being as open about our failures as we are about our successes.
Apathy and inactivity are a roadblock to progress, so we adhere to the principle of bias for action. We don't let our fear of failure stop us from immediately working on a solution.
The daily grind is full of commitments and distractions, but we never let that prevent us from lending a hand wherever and however we can. In addition, we acknowledge that asking for help when needed is a sign of strength. We're all in this together.
Every action, every offer of help, every little bit is worth appreciation. We work better together when we know that our relationships are founded in gratitude.
If you didn't notice, the first letter of the first four values spell out 'HAHA' – which leads us to our last (but not least) core value: we take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously.
We value our people, so we're proud to offer competitive compensation and some pretty cool benefits, too.
- Open PTO
- Remote Work Opportunities
- Paid Parental Leave
- Life Insurance, Short Term Disability,
and Long Term Disability
- Medical, Dental & Vision Insurance
- Wellbeing & Family Care
- 401(k) with Match
- Professional Training & Certification
- Affinity Groups
At Lev, we believe in celebrating everything that makes our Levsters the unique, talented, incredible experts they are. That's why we established OneLev and our Lev affinity groups; to create a #LevLife of inclusivity, to applaud the uniqueness of those around us, to support our communities, and to assist in creating equal opportunities at all levels.
Our current affinity groups are Lev Gives Back, Black Levsters Matter, Lev Pride, Lev Asians, Lev LatinX, and Lev Ladies.
SEE WHAT #LevLife IS ALL ABOUT
Yes! I see the perfect job for me and want to fill out an application, but I'm receiving an error message when I try to submit it. What should I do?
Great! We're so excited to review your application. If this happens, simply send an email to email@example.com.
I don't see a job posted that's just right for me yet, but I'm really interested in Lev. Is there a way to get on Lev's radar for future opportunities?
Absolutely! Cognizant offers a Talent Community where you can be notified of new opportunities of interest to you. Check it out here.
First, let us apologize. We review our applications as we receive them to the best of our ability. Either way, you'll hear from us – good or bad. We know the job search can move fast and candidates deserve to have an answer.
I want to get a better idea of what it's like to work at Lev. What would you recommend I check out to learn more?
For starters, you should definitely check out our profile with The Muse, then head on over to our Instagram and LinkedIn company profiles.
Levsters like to use the hashtag #LevLife when posting about their experiences, so you're sure to get some more insight there, too.