text
stringlengths 201
1.04M
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
SHANTADURGA TEMPLE, VASCO DA GAMA
Shantadurga Temple is located in Ponda, about 35 kms from Panaji. The temple dates back to 1730 when the foundation stone was laid, but was completed in 1738. In 1966 it was renovated. The presiding deity is Goddess Shantadurga, who is believed to be the mediator between Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva. It is an important temple for Goan Hindus and is clean and peaceful. During festive occasions, the Goddess is carried on a golden palanquin in a procession. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Get your heart beat up, your feet moving and your face smiling. Class will consist of a warm up, a technique section with movement across the floor, and some continuous work on various dance combinations.
Bluegrass and Bobcats
Missoula’s premier vocal ensemble Dolce Canto and Artistic Director Peter Park present “Bluegrass & Bobcats” at 7:30 p.m. at St. Anthony Church, 217 Tremont St. Joining the group will be guest artists the Montana State University Chorale and the award-winning bluegrass artists Monroe Crossing.
Dolce Canto and Monroe Crossing will collaborate to present Minnesota composer Carol Barnett’s The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass, having recently presented this piece together in New York City’s Carnegie Hall. This unique composition blends the traditions of the Catholic liturgy and classical choral singing with contemporary poetry and traditional bluegrass instrumentation.
Clark Fork Coalition Volunteer Training
5:00 PM at
Clark Fork Coalition offices
Trainings will be offered throughout the year to help volunteers prepare for on-the-ground projects. The first volunteer training will cover: Watersheds 101; What is the Clark Fork Coalition? Restoration 101; Snow Survey Projects; More about the Corps
From 5-7pm at the Coalition offices, 140 S. 4th St. W. in downtown Missoula. Snacks will be provided.
All Ages
(406) 542-0539 | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
I chose to use Crafty Sentiments - Lady Bird And Butterflies although it seems as the image is a bit different from the site and I am not sure why it's different. I went with a very CAS card. (CAS- Clean And Simple) as I have a hard time to put a lot of embellishments, and this card I wanted the image to be shown since it's such an adorable one.
For our second sponsor from Creative Hands I chose to use Astronaut Boy. Here I wanted to get a little space feeling so I found a piece of scrap paper with some stars on it that I thought was perfect. It is good to save some scrap paper, you never know when it can come to use again. I save most of my papers when I cut them in pieces just for the fact that you never know when it can come to use.
Monday, May 23, 2016
It's Monday again and a new week and that means that we have a new challenge over at The Outlawz and Monday Greetings. This weeks sponsor is: Alicia Bell. I chose to useEtiqueta Floresthe theme for this weeks challenge is: Circles.
I actually loved doing this challenge, and went with maybe not my usual colors to make something different. I think it turned out good and love the colors that I chose for the card as well.
I am not gonna go on with this entry, I will just let you decide what you think of the card yourself.
I hope you will have a great week ahead and hope to see you join in on the fun challenge we have this week.Next weeks challenge is: Anything Goes!!!
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Yes, I know it's not Monday but Thursday. I am a bit late on posting this weeks Monday Greetings Challenge. I thought I had done one in advance, but not the case this time. I have to get started in doing them and put schedule time on them from now on.
Sunday, May 15, 2016
This weekend is a busy weekend, but why rest when you have full of activities all weekend. The oldest son had a sleep over at school, but he couldn't fall asleep so I had to get him around midnight. Saturday morning rise and shine and get ready for my little man's soccer games, who I am also the coach for. I just had to drive my older son back to school for some more fun with the friends.
Sunday means drive to my niece who lives around 1hr 15 min drive away to attend her Confirmation day. They grow up so fast that I have trouble catching up in their lives. Anyhow, I made a card for her Confirmation so she would remember it and think back that she got it from her auntie. It is so much more fun to give something that you have done yourself and put your heart in.
I never put much on my cards but I am very pleased with how this card turned out even if, for my taste, is a lot of embellishments. Sometimes you needs to get out of your comfort zone and just go go for it and that is what I did this time.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Well, I have to tell you now when it's official for real, I am now currently a DT over at Morgan's ArtWorld.
Please hop over and see my first card and the presentation and the other lovely cards from the talented DTs. This challenge has the theme: Add Sparkle.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Wow, the sun and the warm weather has finally arrived to the southern part of Sweden and I am loving it. This past weekend we had a high of 20C (68F) and its continuing this week.
It's Monday and that means that we have a new challenge over at The Outlawz. This weeks Monday Greetings Challenge theme is: Living on the Edge - die cut or decorate the edge of your card.
If you are not a member I highly suggest to join in on the fun. There are challenges for everyday of the week and also one that goes monthly. It's a terrific group with loads of talented ladies that will help you in any way they can.
Monday, May 2, 2016
May is finally here and I am loving it, not only because my Birthday is this month but this is when it's becoming nicer weather wise and that summer is around the corner. L.O.V.E summer and warm weather.
Yes, I lived in the state of Florida; USA for 8 years and moved back to Sweden with it's four seasons, but I am finally after about 8 years living here getting use to the weather again. Some days atleast :)
This weeks challenge theme is: April Showers Bring May Flowers and our sponsor for this week is the talented Lacy Sunshine, and I chose to use the image Queen Anne's Lace for this weeks card. Below the picture you will see a list of what Promarker pens I have used.
I hope you will come and play along this weeks challenge and I can't see what you can create using this weeks theme.
Feel free to comment what you like about the card.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
It's me again, and I hope you are having a fabulous day where ever you are in the world reading this. I am so excited to be able to present this card for you. I have as you may remembered been selected as being a GDT at the talented KennyK Stamps. Not only did I get the chance to color the monthly freebie but also a little special deal as well.
I got 3 images and one being the freebie, but I wanted to draw them all so therefore I combined them all in one card. The Freshman is this months freebie and Fabby Farah and Ginger Gem is for a special $1 deal.
On this card you will find the Freshman being to the left and Ginger Gem in the middle and Fabby Farah to the right. I think they all turned out great. I don't know if you can tell that Fabby Farah has a sparkly dress on.
If you are not signed up for the newsletter over at KennyK Stamps I highly recommend it, you will receive a freebie every months and not to speak of the great $1 deal for the other two fabulous images this month.
Below the pictures you will find the list of all the colors I have used. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Different Types Of Textures Of Natural Hair
Hair is a very unique thing created by god. Hair can change the entire looks of a person. A person would look completely different with and without hair. And god has also made various types of hair textures for man. Only a single person can get 2-3 different types of hair textures at the same time.
You cannot describe hair textures by defining only one or two types of hair textures. And hair texture depends a lot on the geographical region of a person, for example African people always have a definite type of curly hair, called kinky hair. And apart from this, there are various other types of hair textures.
And after reading this article, you will be able to identify the texture or textures of your hair. And identifying the hair texture will allow you to choose the right hair care product for your hair and you will also be able to take care of it properly.
Curly Hair Texture
Curly hair is a type of hair texture, in which the entire hair remains coiled, but it is not so tightly coiled as the African hair texture, but it is more coiled than wavy hairs. Curly hair is like spring, if you pull it straight it will jump back and it will again become coiled. The locks of curly hair can be of many types, for example, the curls can be slightly coiled, or they may even be extremely coiled. In that case, the hairs often resemble a powder puff and the hairs always look very voluminous.
If you pull the locks of curly hair, you will notice the locks are S-shaped. There are various advantages and disadvantages of curly hair. One advantage is that it always looks very much swelled up, and one disadvantage is that, if the locks become dry, they tangle very easily.
Also Read
Straight Hair
Straight hair is completely strait from the roots to the tips. Normally straight hairs are very fine, but sometimes they can be thick as well. Straight hair is great for experimenting with any kinds of hair styles. People with curly or wavy hairs, often go to hair stylists to make their hair straight, because straight and silky hair looks very gorgeous.
Hair styles like layers, bangs, v-cut etc, look great on straight hairs. Straight and silky hair is very less prone to tangling and they are also very easy to maintain but, one of the main disadvantages of straight hair is, if the hair style is not right it can look very boring.
Wavy Hair
Wavy hair is the combination of curly and straight hair. Wavy hairs are not as coiled as curly hairs, and they are also not so straight like straight hair. Wavy hair is a naturally beautiful hair. It is full of volume, and compliments any kind of face cutting. Wavy hairs are usually thick and you don’t have to apply any styling products to keep the hair manageable. Wavy hair becomes completely straight, when the hair is wet, and it becomes wavy as soon as the hair becomes dry.
Kinky Hair
Kinky hair is the hair texture of African people. The hairs are very tightly coiled, and they are very coarse to touch. Kinky hair is very coarse and if proper condition is not done, the hairs break off easily and that is why the hair takes a lot of time to grow and mostly remain short. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Week Two in Firenze
Waking up to the sound of rain, seemingly serene, I opened my windows to smell and feel the air come in my room. Immersing myself in the culture and difference of the Italians has been a wonderful challenge. I’m discovering emotions and qualities of myself in this new world. I have always found great contentment in all things involving visual pleasure. My emotions over rule my thoughts, and my conscious is on a bit of a roller coaster. I never realized how my predictable life in America had me on it’s leash. Last weekend visiting Cinque Terre, I attempted to take photos with my eyes, while gazing at the ligurian coast. It was beautiful and tranquil, blasting with colors. I deeply enjoy the quality of life here and anticipate the days ahead. My classes are extremely enlightening and I’ve had no struggle staying focused. The teachers are passionate and assertive. This is the beginning of an incredible journey, I look forward to sharing more.
Post navigation
Oh, if you find a bar in Firenze called Blue Moon (I think!) and there’s a handsome older gentleman there named Amarilldo, please tell him I said Hello. We met there 12 years ago and he gave me a ride on his motorcycle. Have fun!!! 🙂 | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
"MILK" Just the word itself sounds comforting!
"How about a nice cup of hot milk?" The last time you heard that
question it was from someone who cared for you--and you appreciated their
effort.
The entire matter of food and especially that of milk
is surrounded with emotional and cultural importance. Milk was our very
first food. If we were fortunate it was our mother's milk. A loving link,
given and taken. It was the only path to survival. If not mother's milk
it was cow's milk or soy milk "formula"--rarely it was goat,
camel or water buffalo milk.
Now, we are a nation of milk drinkers. Nearly all of
us. Infants, the young, adolescents, adults and even the aged. We drink
dozens or even several hundred gallons a year and add to that many pounds
of "dairy products" such as cheese, butter, and yogurt.
Can there be anything wrong with this? We see reassuring
images of healthy, beautiful people on our television screens and hear
messages that assure us that, "Milk is good for your body." Our
dieticians insist that: "You've got to have milk, or where will you
get your calcium?" School lunches always include milk and nearly every
hospital meal will have milk added. And if that isn't enough, our nutritionists
told us for years that dairy products make up an "essential food group."
Industry spokesmen made sure that colourful charts proclaiming the necessity
of milk and other essential nutrients were made available at no cost for
schools. Cow's milk became "normal."
You may be surprised to learn that most of the human
beings that live on planet Earth today do not drink or use cow's milk.
Further, most of them can't drink milk because it makes them ill.
There are students of human nutrition who are not supportive
of milk use for adults. Here is a quotation from the March/April 1991 Utne
Reader:
If you really want to play it safe, you may decide to
join the growing number of Americans who are eliminating dairy products
from their diets altogether. Although this sounds radical to those of us
weaned on milk and the five basic food groups, it is eminently viable.
Indeed, of all the mammals, only humans--and then only a minority, principally
Caucasians--continue to drink milk beyond babyhood. "Indeed, of all
the mammals, only humans--and then only a minority, principally Caucasians--continue
to drink milk beyond babyhood.
Who is right? Why the confusion? Where best to get our
answers? Can we trust milk industry spokesmen? Can you trust any industry
spokesmen? Are nutritionists up to date or are they simply repeating what
their professors learned years ago? What about the new voices urging caution?
I believe that there are three reliable sources of information.
The first, and probably the best, is a study of nature. The second is to
study the history of our own species. Finally we need to look at the world's
scientific literature on the subject of milk.
Let's look at the scientific literature first. From 1988
to 1993 there were over 2,700 articles dealing with milk recorded in the
"Medicine" archives. Fifteen hundred of theses had milk as the
main focus of the article. There is no lack of scientific information on
this subject. I reviewed over 500 of the 1,500 articles, discarding articles
that dealt exclusively with animals, esoteric research and inconclusive
studies.
How would I summarize the articles? They were only slightly
less than horrifying. First of all, none of the authors spoke of cow's
milk as an excellent food, free of side effects and the "perfect food"
as we have been led to believe by the industry. The main focus of the published
reports seems to be on intestinal colic, intestinal irritation, intestinal
bleeding, anemia, allergic reactions in infants and children as well as
infections such as salmonella. More ominous is the fear of viral infection
with bovine leukemia virus or an AIDS-like virus as well as concern for
childhood diabetes. Contamination of milk by blood and white (pus) cells
as well as a variety of chemicals and insecticides was also discussed.
Among children the problems were allergy, ear and tonsillar infections,
bedwetting, asthma, intestinal bleeding, colic and childhood diabetes.
In adults the problems seemed centered more around heart disease and arthritis,
allergy, sinusitis, and the more serious questions of leukemia, lymphoma
and cancer.
I think that an answer can also be found in a consideration
of what occurs in nature - what happens with free living mammals and what
happens with human groups living in close to a natural state as "hunter-gatherers".
Our paleolithic ancestors are another crucial and interesting
group to study. Here we are limited to speculation and indirect evidences,
but the bony remains available for our study are remarkable. There is no
doubt whatever that these skeletal remains reflect great strength, muscularity
(the size of the muscular insertions show this), and total absence of advanced
osteoporosis. And if you feel that these people are not important for us
to study, consider that today our genes are programming our bodies in almost
exactly the same way as our ancestors of 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.
Milk is a maternal lactating secretion, a short term
nutrient for new-borns. Nothing more, nothing less. Invariably, the mother
of any mammal will provide her milk for a short period of time immediately
after birth. When the time comes for "weaning", the young offspring
is introduced to the proper food for that species of mammal. A familiar
example is that of a puppy. The mother nurses the pup for just a few weeks
and then rejects the young animal and teaches it to eat solid food. Nursing
is provided by nature only for the very youngest of mammals. Of course,
it is not possible for animals living in a natural state to continue with
the drinking of milk after weaning
Then there is the matter of where we get our milk. We
have settled on the cow because of its docile nature, its size, and its
abundant milk supply. Somehow this choice seems "normal" and
blessed by nature, our culture, and our customs. But is it natural? Is
it wise to drink the milk of another species of mammal?
Consider for a moment, if it was possible, to drink the
milk of a mammal other than a cow, let's say a rat. Or perhaps the milk
of a dog would be more to your liking. Possibly some horse milk or cat
milk. Do you get the idea? Well, I'm not serious about this, except to
suggest that human milk is for human infants, dogs' milk is for pups, cows'
milk is for calves, cats' milk is for kittens, and so forth. Clearly, this
is the way nature intends it. Just use your own good judgement on this
one.
Milk is not just milk. The milk of every species of mammal
is unique and specifically tailored to the requirements of that animal.
For example, cows' milk is very much richer in protein than human milk.
Three to four times as much. It has five to seven times the mineral content.
However, it is markedly deficient in essential fatty acids when compared
to human mothers' milk. Mothers' milk has six to ten times as much of the
essential fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. (Incidentally, skimmed
cow's milk has no linoleic acid). It simply is not designed for humans.
Food is not just food, and milk is not just milk. It
is not only the proper amount of food but the proper qualitative composition
that is critical for the very best in health and growth. Biochemists and
physiologists - and rarely medical doctors - are gradually learning that
foods contain the crucial elements that allow a particular species to develop
its unique specializations.
Clearly, our specialization is for advanced neurological
development and delicate neuromuscular control. We do not have much need
of massive skeletal growth or huge muscle groups as does a calf. Think
of the difference between the demands make on the human hand and the demands
on a cow's hoof. Human new-borns specifically need critical material for
their brains, spinal cord and nerves.
Can mother's milk increase intelligence? It seems that
it can. In a remarkable study published in Lancet during 1992 (Vol. 339,
p. 261-4), a group of British workers randomly placed premature infants
into two groups. One group received a proper formula, the other group received
human breast milk. Both fluids were given by stomach tube. These children
were followed up for over 10 years. In intelligence testing, the human
milk children averaged 10 IQ points higher! Well, why not? Why wouldn't
the correct building blocks for the rapidly maturing and growing brain
have a positive effect?
In the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1982)
Ralph Holman described an infant who developed profound neurological disease
while being nourished by intravenous fluids only. The fluids used contained
only linoleic acid - just one of the essential fatty acids. When the other,
alpha linoleic acid, was added to the intravenous fluids the neurological
disorders cleared.
In the same journal five years later Bjerve, Mostad and
Thoresen, working in Norway found exactly the same problem in adult patients
on long term gastric tube feeding.
In 1930 Dr. G.O. Burr in Minnesota working with rats
found that linoleic acid deficiencies created a deficiency syndrome. Why
is this mentioned? In the early 1960s pediatricians found skin lesions
in children fed formulas without the same linoleic acid. Remembering the
research, the addition of the acid to the formula cured the problem. Essential
fatty acids are just that and cows' milk is markedly deficient in these
when compared to human milk.
Or is it? Fifty years ago an average cow produced 2,000
pounds of milk per year. Today the top producers give 50,000 pounds! How
was this accomplished? Drugs, antibiotics, hormones, forced feeding plans
and specialized breeding; that's how.
The latest high-tech onslaught on the poor cow is bovine
growth hormone or BGH. This genetically engineered drug is supposed to
stimulate milk production but, according to Monsanto, the hormone's manufacturer,
does not affect the milk or meat. There are three other manufacturers:
Upjohn, Eli Lilly, and American Cyanamid Company. Obviously, there have
been no long-term studies on the hormone's effect on the humans drinking
the milk. Other countries have banned BGH because of safety concerns. One
of the problems with adding molecules to a milk cows' body is that the
molecules usually come out in the milk. I don't know how you feel, but
I don't want to experiment with the ingestion of a growth hormone. A related
problem is that it causes a marked increase (50 to 70 per cent) in mastitis.
This, then, requires antibiotic therapy, and the residues of the antibiotics
appear in the milk. It seems that the public is uneasy about this product
and in one survey 43 per cent felt that growth hormone treated milk represented
a health risk. A vice president for public policy at Monsanto was opposed
to labelling for that reason, and because the labelling would create an
"artificial distinction". The country is awash with milk as it
is, we produce more milk than we can consume. Let's not create storage
costs and further taxpayer burdens, because the law requires the USDA to
buy any surplus of butter, cheese, or non-fat dry milk at a support price
set by Congress! In fiscal 1991, the USDA spent $757 million on surplus
butter, and one billion dollars a year on average for price supports during
the 1980s (Consumer Reports, May 1992: 330-32).
Any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk.
This includes antibiotics, pesticides, chemicals and hormones. Also, all
cows' milk contains blood! The inspectors are simply asked to keep it under
certain limits. You may be horrified to learn that the USDA allows milk
to contain from one to one and a half million white blood cells per millilitre.
(That's only 1/30 of an ounce). If you don't already know this, I'm sorry
to tell you that another way to describe white cells where they don't belong
would be to call them pus cells. To get to the point, is milk pure or is
it a chemical, biological, and bacterial cocktail? Finally, will the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) protect you? The United States General Accounting
Office (GAO) tells us that the FDA and the individual States are failing
to protect the public from drug residues in milk. Authorities test for
only 4 of the 82 drugs in dairy cows.
As you can imagine, the Milk Industry Foundation's spokesman
claims it's perfectly safe. Jerome Kozak says, "I still think that
milk is the safest product we have."
Other, perhaps less biased observers, have found the
following: 38% of milk samples in 10 cities were contaminated with sulfa
drugs or other antibiotics. (This from the Centre for Science in the Public
Interest and The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 29, 1989).. A similar study
in Washington, DC found a 20 percent contamination rate (Nutrition Action
Healthletter, April 1990).
What's going on here? When the FDA tested milk, they
found few problems. However, they used very lax standards. When they used
the same criteria , the FDA data showed 51 percent of the milk samples
showed drug traces.
Let's focus in on this because it's critical to our understanding
of the apparent discrepancies. The FDA uses a disk-assay method that can
detect only 2 of the 30 or so drugs found in milk. Also, the test detects
only at the relatively high level. A more powerful test called the "Charm
II test" can detect 4o drugs down to 5 parts per billion.
One nasty subject must be discussed. It seems that cows
are forever getting infections around the udder that require ointments
and antibiotics. An article from France tells us that when a cow receives
penicillin, that penicillin appears in the milk for from 4 to 7 milkings.
Another study from the University of Nevada, Reno tells of cells in "mastic
milk", milk from cows with infected udders. An elaborate analysis
of the cell fragments, employing cell cultures, flow cytometric analysis
, and a great deal of high tech stuff. Do you know what the conclusion
was? If the cow has mastitis, there is pus in the milk. Sorry, it's in
the study, all concealed with language such as "macrophages containing
many vacuoles and phagocytosed particles, etc."
Well, at least human mothers' milk is pure! Sorry. A
huge study showed that human breast milk in over 14,000 women had contamination
by pesticides! Further, it seems that the sources of the pesticides are
meat and--you guessed it--dairy products. Well, why not? These pesticides
are concentrated in fat and that's what's in these products. (Of interest,
a subgroup of lactating vegetarian mothers had only half the levels of
contamination).
A recent report showed an increased concentration of
pesticides in the breast tissue of women with breast cancer when compared
to the tissue of women with fibrocystic disease. Other articles in the
standard medical literature describe problems. Just scan these titles:
There are many others. There are dozens of studies describing
the prompt appearance of cows' milk allergy in children being exclusively
breast-fed! The cows' milk allergens simply appear in the mother's milk
and are transmitted to the infant.
A committee on nutrition of the American Academy of Pediatrics
reported on the use of whole cows' milk in infancy (Pediatrics 1983: 72-253).
They were unable to provide any cogent reason why bovine milk should be
used before the first birthday yet continued to recommend its use! Doctor
Frank Oski from the Upstate Medical Centre Department of Pediatrics, commenting
on the recommendation , cited the problems of occult gastrointestinal blood
loss in infants, the lack of iron, recurrent abdominal pain, milk-borne
infections and contaminants, and said:
Why give it at all - then or ever? In the face of uncertainty
about many of the potential dangers of whole bovine milk, it would seem
prudent to recommend that whole milk not be started until the answers are
available. Isn't it time for these uncontrolled experiments on human nutrition
to come to an end?
In the same issue of Pediatrics he further commented:
It is my thesis that whole milk should not be fed to
the infant in the first year of life because of its association with iron
deficiency anemia (milk is so deficient in iron that an infant would have
to drink an impossible 31 quarts a day to get the RDA of 15 mg), occult
gastrointiestinal bleeding, and various manifestations of food allergy.
I suggest that unmodified whole bovine milk should not be consumed after
infancy because of the problems of lactose intolerance, its contribution
to the genesis of atherosclerosis, and its possible link to other diseases.
In late 1992 Dr. Benjamin Spock, possibly the best known
pediatrician in history, shocked the country when he articulated the same
thoughts and specified avoidance for the first two years of life. Here
is his quotation:
I want to pass on the word to parents that cows' milk
from the carton has definite faults for some babies. Human milk is the
right one for babies. A study comparing the incidence of allergy and colic
in the breast-fed infants of omnivorous and vegan mothers would be important.
I haven't found such a study; it would be both important and inexpensive.
And it will probably never be done. There is simply no academic or economic
profit involved.
Let's just mention the problems of bacterial contamination.
Salmonella, E. coli, and staphylococcal infections can be traced to milk.
In the old days tuberculosis was a major problem and some folks want to
go back to those times by insisting on raw milk on the basis that it's
"natural." This is insanity! A study from UCLA showed that over
a third of all cases of salmonella infection in California, 1980-1983 were
traced to raw milk. That'll be a way to revive good old brucellosis again
and I would fear leukemia, too. (More about that later). In England, and
Wales where raw milk is till consumed there have been outbreaks of milk-borne
diseases. The Journal of the American Medical Association (251: 483, 1984)
reported a multi-state series of infections caused by Yersinia enterocolitica
in pasteurised whole milk. This is despite safety precautions.
All parents dread juvenile diabetes for their children.
A Canadian study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
Mar. 1990, describes a "...significant positive correlation between
consumption of unfermented milk protein and incidence of insulin dependent
diabetes mellitus in data from various countries. Conversely a possible
negative relationship is observed between breast-feeding at age 3 months
and diabetes risk.".
Another study from Finland found that diabetic children
had higher levels of serum antibodies to cows' milk (Diabetes Research
7(3): 137-140 March 1988). Here is a quotation from this study:
We infer that either the pattern of cows' milk consumption
is altered in children who will have insulin dependent diabetes mellitus
or, their immunological reactivity to proteins in cows' milk is enhanced,
or the permeability of their intestines to cows' milk protein is higher
than normal.
The April 18, 1992 British Medical Journal has a fascinating
study contrasting the difference in incidence of juvenile insulin dependent
diabetes in Pakistani children who have migrated to England. The incidence
is roughly 10 times greater in the English group compared to children remaining
in Pakistan! What caused this highly significant increase? The authors
said that "the diet was unchanged in Great Britain. Do you believe
that? Do you think that the availability of milk, sugar and fat is the
same in Pakistan as it is in England? That a grocery store in England has
the same products as food sources in Pakistan? I don't believe that for
a minute. Remember, we're not talking here about adult onset, type II diabetes
which all workers agree is strongly linked to diet as well as to a genetic
predisposition. This study is a major blow to the "it's all in your
genes" crowd. Type I diabetes was always considered to be genetic
or possibly viral, but now this? So resistant are we to consider diet as
causation that the authors of the last article concluded that the cooler
climate in England altered viruses and caused the very real increase in
diabetes! The first two authors had the same reluctance top admit the obvious.
The milk just may have had something to do with the disease.
The latest in this remarkable list of reports, a New
England Journal of Medicine article (July 30, 1992), also reported in the
Los Angeles Times. This study comes from the Hospital for Sick Children
in Toronto and from Finnish researchers. In Finland there is "...the
world's highest rate of dairy product consumption and the world's highest
rate of insulin dependent diabetes. The disease strikes about 40 children
out of every 1,000 there contrasted with six to eight per 1,000 in the
United States.... Antibodies produced against the milk protein during the
first year of life, the researchers speculate, also attack and destroy
the pancreas in a so-called auto-immune reaction, producing diabetes in
people whose genetic makeup leaves them vulnerable." "...142
Finnish children with newly diagnosed diabetes. They found that every one
had at least eight times as many antibodies against the milk protein as
did healthy children, clear evidence that the children had a raging auto
immune disorder." The team has now expanded the study to 400 children
and is starting a trial where 3,000 children will receive no dairy products
during the first nine months of life. "The study may take 10 years,
but we'll get a definitive answer one way or the other," according
to one of the researchers. I would caution them to be certain that the
breast feeding mothers use on cows' milk in their diets or the results
will be confounded by the transmission of the cows' milk protein in the
mother's breast milk.... Now what was the reaction from the diabetes association?
This is very interesting! Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, the president of the
association says: "It does not mean that children should stop drinking
milk or that parents of diabetics should withdraw dairy products. These
are rich sources of good protein." (Emphasis added) My God, it's the
"good protein" that causes the problem! Do you suspect that the
dairy industry may have helped the American Diabetes Association in the
past?
I hate to tell you this, but the bovine leukemia virus
is found in more than three of five dairy cows in the United States! This
involves about 80% of dairy herds. Unfortunately, when the milk is pooled,
a very large percentage of all milk produced is contaminated (90 to 95
per cent). Of course the virus is killed in pasteurisation--if the pasteurisation
was done correctly. What if the milk is raw? In a study of randomly collected
raw milk samples the bovine leukemia virus was recovered from two-thirds.
I sincerely hope that the raw milk dairy herds are carefully monitored
when compared to the regular herds. (Science 1981; 213:1014).
This is a world-wide problem. One lengthy study from
Germany deplored the problem and admitted the impossibility of keeping
the virus from infected cows' milk from the rest of the milk. Several European
countries, including Germany and Switzerland, have attempted to "cull"
the infected cows from their herds. Certainly the United States must be
the leader in the fight against leukemic dairy cows, right? Wrong! We are
the worst in the world with the former exception of Venezuela according
to Virgil Hulse MD, a milk specialist who also has a B.S. in Dairy Manufacturing
as well as a Master's degree in Public Health.
As mentioned, the leukemia virus is rendered inactive
by pasteurisation. Of course. However, there can be Chernobyl like accidents.
One of these occurred in the Chicago area in April, 1985. At a modern,
large, milk processing plant an accidental "cross connection"
between raw and pasteurised milk occurred. A violent salmonella outbreak
followed, killing 4 and making an estimated 150,000 ill. Now the question
I would pose to the dairy industry people is this: "How can you assure
the people who drank this milk that they were not exposed to the ingestion
of raw, unkilled, bully active bovine leukemia viruses?" Further,
it would be fascinating to know if a "cluster" of leukemia cases
blossoms in that area in 1 to 3 decades. There are reports of "leukemia
clusters" elsewhere, one of them mentioned in the June 10, 1990 San
Francisco Chronicle involving No. California.
What happens to other species of mammals when they are
exposed to the bovine leukemia virus? It's a fair question and the answer
is not reassuring. Virtually all animals exposed to the virus develop leukemia.
This includes sheep, goats, and even primates such as rhesus monkeys and
chimpanzees. The route of transmission includes ingestion (both intravenous
and intramuscular) and cells present in milk. There are obviously no instances
of transfer attempts to human beings, but we know that the virus can infect
human cells in vitro. There is evidence of human antibody formation to
the bovine leukemia virus; this is disturbing. How did the bovine leukemia
virus particles gain access to humans and become antigens? Was it as small,
denatured particles?
If the bovine leukemia viruses causes human leukemia,
we could expect the dairy states with known leukemic herds to have a higher
incidence of human leukemia. Is this so? Unfortunately, it seems to be
the case! Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin have statistically
higher incidence of leukemia than the national average. In Russia and in
Sweden, areas with uncontrolled bovine leukemia virus have been linked
with increases in human leukemia. I am also told that veterinarians have
higher rates of leukemia than the general public. Dairy farmers have significantly
elevated leukemia rates. Recent research shows lymphocytes from milk fed
to neonatal mammals gains access to bodily tissues by passing directly
through the intestinal wall.
An optimistic note from the University of Illinois, Ubana
from the Department of Animal Sciences shows the importance of one's perspective.
Since they are concerned with the economics of milk and not primarily the
health aspects, they noted that the production of milk was greater in the
cows with the bovine leukemia virus. However when the leukemia produced
a persistent and significant lymphocytosis (increased white blood cell
count), the production fell off. They suggested "a need to re-evaluate
the economic impact of bovine leukemia virus infection on the dairy industry".
Does this mean that leukemia is good for profits only if we can keep it
under control? You can get the details on this business concern from Proc.
Nat. Acad. Sciences, U.S. Feb. 1989. I added emphasis and am insulted that
a university department feels that this is an economic and not a human
health issue. Do not expect help from the Department of Agriculture or
the universities. The money stakes and the political pressures are too
great. You're on you own.
What does this all mean? We know that virus is capable
of producing leukemia in other animals. Is it proven that it can contribute
to human leukemia (or lymphoma, a related cancer)? Several articles tackle
this one:
1."Epidemiologic Relationships of the Bovine Population
and Human Leukemia in Iowa". Am Journal of Epidemiology
112 (1980): 80
In Norway, 1422 individuals were followed for 11 and
a half years. Those drinking 2 or more glasses of milk per day had 3.5
times the incidence of cancer of the lymphatic organs. British Med. Journal
61:456-9, March 1990.
One of the more thoughtful articles on this subject is
from Allan S. Cunningham of Cooperstown, New York. Writing in the Lancet,
November 27, 1976 (page 1184), his article is entitled, "Lymphomas
and Animal-Protein Consumption". Many people think of milk as "liquid
meat" and Dr. Cunningham agrees with this. He tracked the beef and
dairy consumption in terms of grams per day for a one year period, 1955-1956.,
in 15 countries . New Zealand, United States and Canada were highest in
that order. The lowest was Japan followed by Yugoslavia and France. The
difference between the highest and lowest was quite pronounced: 43.8 grams/day
for New Zealanders versus 1.5 for Japan. Nearly a 30-fold difference! (Parenthetically,
the last 36 years have seen a startling increase in the amount of beef
and milk used in Japan and their disease patterns are reflecting this,
confirming the lack of "genetic protection" seen in migration
studies. Formerly the increase in frequency of lymphomas in Japanese people
was only in those who moved to the USA)!
An interesting bit of trivia is to note the memorial
built at the Gyokusenji Temple in Shimoda, Japan. This marked the spot
where the first cow was killed in Japan for human consumption! The chains
around this memorial were a gift from the US Navy. Where do you suppose
the Japanese got the idea to eat beef? The year? 1930.
Cunningham found a highly significant positive correlation
between deaths from lymphomas and beef and dairy ingestion in the 15 countries
analysed. A few quotations from his article follow:
The average intake of protein in many countries is far
in excess of the recommended requirements. Excessive consumption of animal
protein may be one co-factor in the causation of lymphomas by acting in
the following manner. Ingestion of certain proteins results in the adsorption
of antigenic fragments through the gastrointestinal mucous membrane.
This results in chronic stimulation of lymphoid tissue
to which these fragments gain accessChronic immunological stimulation causes
lymphomas in laboratory animals and is believed to cause lymphoid cancers
in menThe gastrointestinal mucous membrane is only a partial barrier to
the absorption of food antigens, and circulating antibodies to food protein
is commonplace especially potent lymphoid stimulants. Ingestion of cows'
milk can produce generalized lymphadenopathy, hepatosplenomegaly, and profound
adenoid hypertrophy. It has been conservatively estimated that more than
100 distinct antigens are released by the normal digestion of cows' milk
which evoke production of all antibody classes [This may explain why pasteurized,
killed viruses are still antigenic and can still cause disease.
Here's more. A large prospective study from Norway was
reported in the British Journal of Cancer 61 (3):456-9, March 1990. (Almost
16,000 individuals were followed for 11 and a half years). For most cancers
there was no association between the tumour and milk ingestion. However,
in lymphoma, there was a strong positive association. If one drank two
glasses or more daily (or the equivalent in dairy products), the odds were
3.4 times greater than in persons drinking less than one glass of developing
a lymphoma.
There are two other cow-related diseases that you should
be aware of. At this time they are not known to be spread by the use of
dairy products and are not known to involve man. The first is bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE), and the second is the bovine immunodeficiency virus
(BIV). The first of these diseases, we hope, is confined to England and
causes cavities in the animal's brain. Sheep have long been known to suffer
from a disease called scrapie. It seems to have been started by the feeding
of contaminated sheep parts, especially brains, to the British cows. Now,
use your good sense. Do cows seem like carnivores? Should they eat meat?
This profit-motivated practice backfired and bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
or Mad Cow Disease, swept Britain. The disease literally causes dementia
in the unfortunate animal and is 100 per cent incurable. To date, over
100,000 cows have been incinerated in England in keeping with British law.
Four hundred to 500 cows are reported as infected each month. The British
public is concerned and has dropped its beef consumption by 25 per cent,
while some 2,000 schools have stopped serving beef to children. Several
farmers have developed a fatal disease syndrome that resembles both BSE
and CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Disease). But the British Veterinary Association
says that transmission of BSE to humans is "remote."
The USDA agrees that the British epidemic was due to
the feeding of cattle with bonemeal or animal protein produced at rendering
plants from the carcasses of scrapie-infected sheep. The have prohibited
the importation of live cattle and zoo ruminants from Great Britain and
claim that the disease does not exist in the United States. However, there
may be a problem. "Downer cows" are animals who arrive at auction
yards or slaughter houses dead, trampled, lacerated, dehydrated, or too
ill from viral or bacterial diseases to walk. Thus they are "down."
If they cannot respond to electrical shocks by walking, they are dragged
by chains to dumpsters and transported to rendering plants where, if they
are not already dead, they are killed. Even a "humane" death
is usually denied them. They are then turned into protein food for animals
as well as other preparations. Minks that have been fed this protein have
developed a fatal encephalopathy that has some resemblance to BSE. Entire
colonies of minks have been lost in this manner, particularly in Wisconsin.
It is feared that the infective agent is a prion or slow virus possible
obtained from the ill "downer cows."
The British Medical Journal in an editorial whimsically
entitled "How Now Mad Cow?" (BMJ vol. 304, 11 Apr. 1992:929-30)
describes cases of BSE in species not previously known to be affected,
such as cats. They admit that produce contaminated with bovine spongiform
encephalopathy entered the human food chain in England between 1986 and
1989. They say. "The result of this experiment is awaited." As
the incubation period can be up to three decades, wait we must.
The immunodeficency virus is seen in cattle in the United
States and is more worrisome. Its structure is closely related to that
of the human AIDS virus. At this time we do not know if exposure to the
raw BIV proteins can cause the sera of humans to become positive for HIV.
The extent of the virus among American herds is said to be "widespread".
(The USDA refuses to inspect the meat and milk to see if antibodies to
this retrovirus is present). It also has no plans to quarantine the infected
animals. As in the case of humans with AIDS, there is no cure for BIV in
cows. Each day we consume beef and diary products from cows infected with
these viruses and no scientific assurance exists that the products are
safe. Eating raw beef (as in steak Tartare) strikes me as being very risky,
especially after the Seattle E. coli deaths of 1993.
A report in the Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research
, October 1992, Vol. 56 pp.353-359 and another from the Russian literature,
tell of a horrifying development. They report the first detection in human
serum of the antibody to a bovine immunodeficiency virus protein. In addition
to this disturbing report, is another from Russia telling us of the presence
of virus proteins related to the bovine leukemia virus in 5 of 89 women
with breast disease (Acta Virologica Feb. 1990 34(1): 19-26). The implications
of these developments are unknown at present. However, it is safe to assume
that these animal viruses are unlikely to "stay" in the animal
kingdom.
Unfortunately it does. Ovarian cancer--a particularly
nasty tumour--was associated with milk consumption by workers at Roswell
Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, New York. Drinking more than one glass
of whole milk or equivalent daily gave a woman a 3.1 times risk over non-milk
users. They felt that the reduced fat milk products helped reduce the risk.
This association has been made repeatedly by numerous investigators.
Another important study, this from the Harvard Medical
School, analyzed data from 27 countries mainly from the 1970s. Again a
significant positive correlation is revealed between ovarian cancer and
per capita milk consumption. These investigators feel that the lactose
component of milk is the responsible fraction, and the digestion of this
is facilitated by the persistence of the ability to digest the lactose
(lactose persistence) - a little different emphasis, but the same conclusion.
This study was reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology 130 (5):
904-10 Nov. 1989. These articles come from two of the country's leading
institutions, not the Rodale Press or Prevention Magazine.
Even lung cancer has been associated with milk ingestion?
The beverage habits of 569 lung cancer patients and 569 controls again
at Roswell Park were studied in the International Journal of Cancer, April
15, 1989. Persons drinking whole milk 3 or more times daily had a 2-fold
increase in lung cancer risk when compared to those never drinking whole
milk.
For many years we have been watching the lung cancer
rates for Japanese men who smoke far more than American or European men
but who develop fewer lung cancers. Workers in this research area feel
that the total fat intake is the difference.
There are not many reports studying an association between
milk ingestion and prostate cancer. One such report though was of great
interest. This is from the Roswell Park Memorial Institute and is found
in Cancer 64 (3): 605-12, 1989. They analyzed the diets of 371 prostate
cancer patients and comparable control subjects:
Men who reported drinking three or more glasses of whole
milk daily had a relative risk of 2.49 compared with men who reported never
drinking whole milkthe weight of the evidence appears to favour the hypothesis
that animal fat is related to increased risk of prostate cancer. Prostate
cancer is now the most common cancer diagnosed in US men and is the second
leading cause of cancer mortality.
Is there any health reason at all for an adult human
to drink cows' milk?
It's hard for me to come up with even one good reason
other than simple preference. But if you try hard, in my opinion, these
would be the best two: milk is a source of calcium and it's a source of
amino acids (proteins).
Let's look at the calcium first. Why are we concerned
at all about calcium? Obviously, we intend it to build strong bones and
protect us against osteoporosis. And no doubt about it, milk is loaded
with calcium. But is it a good calcium source for humans? I think not.
These are the reasons. Excessive amounts of dairy products actually interfere
with calcium absorption. Secondly, the excess of protein that the milk
provides is a major cause of the osteoporosis problem. Dr. Hegsted in England
has been writing for years about the geographical distribution of osteoporosis.
It seems that the countries with the highest intake of dairy products are
invariably the countries with the most osteoporosis. He feels that milk
is a cause of osteoporosis. Reasons to be given below.
Numerous studies have shown that the level of calcium
ingestion and especially calcium supplementation has no effect whatever
on the development of osteoporosis. The most important such article appeared
recently in the British Journal of Medicine where the long arm of our dairy
industry can't reach. Another study in the United States actually showed
a worsening in calcium balance in post-menopausal women given three 8-ounce
glasses of cows' milk per day. (Am. Journal of Clin. Nutrition, 1985).
The effects of hormone, gender, weight bearing on the axial bones, and
in particular protein intake, are critically important. Another observation
that may be helpful to our analysis is to note the absence of any recorded
dietary deficiencies of calcium among people living on a natural diet without
milk.
For the key to the osteoporosis riddle, don't look at
calcium, look at protein. Consider these two contrasting groups. Eskimos
have an exceptionally high protein intake estimated at 25 percent of total
calories. They also have a high calcium intake at 2,500 mg/day. Their osteoporosis
is among the worst in the world. The other instructive group are the Bantus
of South Africa. They have a 12 percent protein diet , mostly plant protein,
and only 200 to 350 mg/day of calcium, about half our women's intake. The
women have virtually no osteoporosis despite bearing six or more children
and nursing them for prolonged periods! When African women immigrate to
the United States, do they develop osteoporosis? The answer is yes, but
not quite are much as Caucasian or Asian women. Thus, there is a genetic
difference that is modified by diet.
To answer the obvious question, "Well, where do
you get your calcium?" The answer is: "From exactly the same
place the cow gets the calcium, from green things that grow in the ground,"
mainly from leafy vegetables. After all, elephants and rhinos develop their
huge bones (after being weaned) by eating green leafy plants, so do horses.
Carnivorous animals also do quite nicely without leafy plants. It seems
that all of earth's mammals do well if they live in harmony with their
genetic programming and natural food. Only humans living an affluent life
style have rampant osteoporosis.
If animal references do not convince you, think of the
several billion humans on this earth who have never seen cows' milk. Wouldn't
you think osteoporosis would be prevalent in this huge group? The dairy
people would suggest this but the truth is exactly the opposite. They have
far less than that seen in the countries where dairy products are commonly
consumed. It is the subject of another paper, but the truly significant
determinants of osteoporosis are grossly excessive protein intakes and
lack of weight bearing on long bones, both taking place over decades. Hormones
play a secondary, but not trivial role in women. Milk is a deterrent to
good bone health.
Remember when you were a kid and the adults all told
you to "make sure you get plenty of good protein". Protein was
the nutritional "good guy" when I was young. And of course milk
is fitted right in.
As regards protein, milk is indeed a rich source of protein--"liquid
meat," remember? However that isn't necessarily what we need. In actual
fact it is a source of difficulty. Nearly all Americans eat too much protein.
For this information we rely on the most authoritative
source that I am aware of. This is the latest edition (1oth, 1989: 4th
printing, Jan. 1992) of the "Recommended Dietary Allowances"
produced by the National Research Council. OF interest, the current editor
of this important work is Dr. Richard Havel of the University of California
in San Francisco. First to be noted is that the recommended protein has
been steadily revised downward in successive editions. The current recommendation
is 0.75 g/kilo/day for adults 19 through 51 years. This, of course, is
only 45 grams per day for the mythical 60 kilogram adult. You should also
know that the WHO estimated the need for protein in adults to by .6g/kilo
per day. (All RDA's are calculated with large safety allowances in case
you're the type that wants to add some more to "be sure.") You
can "get by" on 28 to 30 grams a day if necessary!
Now 45 grams a day is a tiny amount of protein. That's
an ounce and a half! Consider too, that the protein does not have to be
animal protein. Vegetable protein is identical for all practical purposes
and has no cholesterol and vastly less saturated fat. (Do not be misled
by the antiquated belief that plant proteins must be carefully balanced
to avoid deficiencies. This is not a realistic concern.) Therefore virtually
all Americans, Canadians, British and European people are in a protein
overloaded state. This has serious consequences when maintained over decades.
The problems are the already mentioned osteoporosis, atherosclerosis and
kidney damage. There is good evidence that certain malignancies, chiefly
colon and rectal, are related to excessive meat intake. Barry Brenner,
an eminent renal physiologist was the first to fully point out the dangers
of excess protein for the kidney tubule. The dangers of the fat and cholesterol
are known to all. Finally, you should know that the protein content of
human milk is amount the lowest (0.9%) in mammals.
Sorry, there's more. Remember lactose? This is the principal
carbohydrate of milk. It seems that nature provides new-borns with the
enzymatic equipment to metabolize lactose, but this ability often extinguishes
by age 4 or 5 years.
What is the problem with lactose or milk sugar? It seems
that it is a disaccharide which is too large to be absorbed into the blood
stream without first being broken down into monosaccharides, namely galactose
and glucose. This requires the presence of an enzyme, lactase plus additional
enzymes to break down the galactose into glucose.
Let's think about his for a moment. Nature gives us the
ability to metabolize lactose for a few years and then shuts off the mechanism.
Is Mother Nature trying to tell us something? Clearly all infants must
drink milk. The fact that so many adults cannot seems to be related to
the tendency for nature to abandon mechanisms that are not needed. At least
half of the adult humans on this earth are lactose intolerant. It was not
until the relatively recent introduction of dairy herding and the ability
to "borrow" milk from another group of mammals that the survival
advantage of preserving lactase (the enzyme that allows us to digest lactose)
became evident. But why would it be advantageous to drink cows' milk? After
all, most of the human beings in the history of the world did. And further,
why was it just the white or light skinned humans who retained this knack
while the pigmented people tended to lose it?
Some students of evolution feel that white skin is a
fairly recent innovation, perhaps not more than 20,000 or 30,000 years
old. It clearly has to do with the Northward migration of early man to
cold and relatively sunless areas when skins and clothing became available.
Fair skin allows the production of Vitamin D from sunlight more readily
than does dark skin. However, when only the face was exposed to sunlight
that area of fair skin was insufficient to provide the vitamin D from sunlight.
If dietary and sunlight sources were poorly available, the ability to use
the abundant calcium in cows' milk would give a survival advantage to humans
who could digest that milk. This seems to be the only logical explanation
for fair skinned humans having a high degree of lactose tolerance when
compared to dark skinned people.
How does this break down? Certain racial groups, namely
blacks are up to 90% lactose intolerant as adults. Caucasians are 20 to
40% lactose intolerant. Orientals are midway between the above two groups.
Diarrhea, gas and abdominal cramps are the results of substantial milk
intake in such persons. Most American Indians cannot tolerate milk. The
milk industry admits that lactose intolerance plays intestinal havoc with
as many as 50 million Americans. A lactose-intolerance industry has sprung
up and had sales of $117 million in 1992 (Time May 17, 1993.)
What if you are lactose-intolerant and lust after dairy
products? Is all lost? Not at all. It seems that lactose is largely digested
by bacteria and you will be able to enjoy your cheese despite lactose intolerance.
Yogurt is similar in this respect. Finally, and I could never have dreamed
this up, geneticists want to splice genes to alter the composition of milk
(Am J Clin Nutr 1993 Suppl 302s).
One could quibble and say that milk is totally devoid
of fibre content and that its habitual use will predispose to constipation
and bowel disorders.
The association with anemia and occult intestinal bleeding
in infants is known to all physicians. This is chiefly from its lack of
iron and its irritating qualities for the intestinal mucosa. The pediatric
literature abounds with articles describing irritated intestinal lining,
bleeding, increased permeability as well as colic, diarrhea and vomiting
in cows' milk-sensitive babies. The anemia gets a double push by loss of
blood and iron as well as deficiency of iron in the cows' milk. Milk is
also the leading cause of childhood allergy. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Gifts For Christmas
It's Christmas. Time to haul out the holly, deck the halls, and grab one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer. Dude's collection of Gifts for Christmas is here to expedite your efforts to decorate, spread, and drink up the Christmas cheer. Browse our gift-giving and Christmas-themed product reviews by the hundreds, and by the time you're finished your Santa sack will be bursting with everything from Christmas swag to Christmas spirit. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
“We talk about lifesaving transplants. This is a life-giving transplant, a new category,” said Dr. Allan D. Kirk, the chief surgeon at Duke University Health System, who was not involved in the research.
“Biologically, organs of the living and the dead aren’t all that different,” he added. “But the availability of deceased donors certainly could open this up to a much broader number of patients.”
The operation, detailed in a case study published in The Lancet, followed 10 other attempted uterus transplants from deceased donors in the United States, Turkey and Czech Republic. It was the first successful uterine transplant in Latin America.
Infertility affects more than one in 10 women of reproductive age worldwide. The subject in this study, born without a uterus, received the organ from a 45-year-old woman who had delivered three children naturally. The donor had died of a stroke.
Seven months after the 10-hour transplant surgery — after menstruation began, and once it became evident that the patient’s body had not rejected the organ — doctors implanted the uterus with one of the patient’s own eggs.
A six-pound baby girl was delivered through cesarean section in December 2017, according to Dr. Dani Ejzenberg, a gynecologist at the Hospital das Clínicas at the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, who led the research.
In the future, patients may be able to turn to organ banks instead of searching for volunteers, and living donors could avoid risky complications such as infections or serious bleeding.
In time, researchers hope to decrease side effects and costs by lowering the amounts of immune-suppressing drugs that recipients must take. But more cases will be needed to assess whether long-term outcomes differ between living and deceased donors.
One of the greatest challenges ahead, Dr. Kirk said, will be understanding the social perceptions of the new option.
“People don’t identify themselves by their kidneys,” he said. “But we’ve learned that transplanting faces and hands feels different to people. Is the uterus very personal, or is it just another organ?” | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
TOp categories
I'm Jenna Kutcher
I'm a girl who took a $300 Craigslist camera and turned it into a million dollar empire. I love yoga pants, mac and cheese, and working from home with my dogs in my lap. My mission? To help others own their awesome and do what they love every darn day!
GOal Digger
PERSONAL
Our Go-to Purchase for Our New Home
PERSONAL
You know this girl loves to decorate and make our home a sanctuary. When we sold the Kutcher craftsman, I sold pretty much all our furniture along with it. Something in me knew we just needed a fresh start in our new home and when we moved in we took some time to live in the space before making any big decisions about furniture.
I thought it would be fun to take you along for the ride as we find pieces we love and finish making every nook and cranny of this place our own.
One big thing I knew we needed was new living room furniture, our new home was modern country where our old was midcentury modern. To start, we’ve added an Article sofa and leather chairs and let me tell you, the experience is nothing like another company (that will remain nameless) that requires an entire weekend dedicated to assembly. Everything about the experience was elevated from a flat shipping fee to upgrades like in-room delivery and assembly. We had Article sofas in our last home and parting with them made my heart break, but I knew whatever our next Article purchase would be, it would be a good one.
I could go on and on about how seamless the furniture order was, but I especially love their modern and mid-century styles. This Sven Birch Ivory sofa is to die for with it’s crisp lines, single bench seat (no more cleaning out those cushions!) and comfy down-filled cushions. It’s also a fraction of what other furniture stores charge. Article makes that possible by being an online-only brand and selling directly to their customers — no middleman upcharges. And if there’s anything I love more than this sofa, it’s being able to shop for it in my sweatpants from the comfort of home. From day one we found ourselves lounging on it (and the dogs love sunbathing on it too!)
Complimenting the sofa are these two leather chairs we picked out. The Nord Charme Tan chairs combine a Danish and mid-century design and the most buttery leather I’ve ever seen. We have a pair of them and they pull the space together so well! Our new home is coming together and we chose this special spot to share and celebrate our big news, because home is where this new chapter is starting and we couldn’t be happier!
TOp categories
I'm Jenna Kutcher
I'm a girl who took a $300 Craigslist camera and turned it into a million dollar empire. I love yoga pants, mac and cheese, and working from home with my dogs in my lap. My mission? To help others own their awesome and do what they love every darn day! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The Pussycat Dolls performed “Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)” for the first time on television on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” The Dolls, who are currently on tour with Britney Spears, wore Indian-inspired outfits as they danced to A.R. Rahman’s Oscar-winning song from Slumdog MIllionaire. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Habib al-Shartouni: Striking the Head of Collaboration
Al-Akhbar is currently going through a transitional phase whereby the English website is available for Archival purposes only. All new content will be published in Arabic on the main website (www.al-akhbar.com).
Al-Akhbar Management
Shartouni does not want to be lionized by comrades, friends and supporters.
Habib al-Shartouni, who was convicted for the assassination of Bashir Gemayel after the Lebanese parliament elected him president under the gun-barrels of Israeli tanks in 1982, wants to break the silence in which he has shrouded himself for years.
Since escaping from Roumieh prison in the wake of the collapse of General Michel Aoun’s government in 1990, Shartouni has shunned media and political attention. He spends his time at an undisclosed location with his family, and in reading and writing, while closely following the news from Lebanon and the rest of Arab world and developments in Palestine.
Shartouni spoke to Al-Akhbar about his past, present and future, and about his case, which has been forgotten by his former comrades in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and other advocates of resistance and struggle. Whether that neglect is deliberate, careless, or inadvertent, he has candid questions to ask about why it has been 30 years and it is still unresolved.
The campaigners “are a group of friends and patriots from outside the party, and also some party members who feel indebted to an action that helped rid the country of the humiliation the occupier tried to impose on it.As a resistance fighter, Shartouni does not want to be lionized by comrades, friends and supporters. He believes resistance is a duty, the only means by which the country can regain its rights and achieve victory over an enemy like Israel and its local clients. But he makes no secret of his satisfaction that friends and sympathizers of diverse faiths, sects and political beliefs have lately launched a campaign to champion his cause and secure him justice.
“You can’t really call it a campaign, as there is no official entity, political party or sect backing it,” he says. “And you can’t call it ‘my’ cause. It was never about me. It is the cause of a country and society that was facing a threat at a time when the enemy was trying to impose its terms on the entire region,” he says.
Rather, the campaigners “are a group of friends and patriots from outside the party, and also some party members who feel indebted to an action that helped rid the country of the humiliation the occupier tried to impose on it,” he says. These supporters were outraged by the lenient treatment – amounting to “encouragement” -- accorded to Lebanese agents of and collaborators with Israel, and feared what that would mean for the country’s future, he says. But they encountered a host of difficulties and impasses.
They continue, nevertheless, to seek justice for Shartouni within the framework of Lebanese law, and the principles on which the Lebanese state was founded, he maintains.
But why has it taken so long for his case to be pursued in the courts? Have Lebanon’s ostensibly pro-resistance political groups been lax in this regard?
“Right from the start, they have ignored this issue, as though it wasn’t relevant to the launch of the national and then Islamic resistance after 1982,” he says. “Given the timing, after the occupation, it marked a strategic turning-point between two courses: succumbing to a plan to destroy Lebanese and Palestinian resistance and weaken Syria, and subjecting the region to an era of Israeli tutelage; or defeating the occupation and ushering in a different era.”
This could have consolidated national unity and benefited everyone in Lebanon, Shartouni argues, were it not for the terrible mistakes made subsequently, as a result of which the region is being subjected to a fresh foreign onslaught and renewed internecine conflict.
Nevertheless, Shartouni maintains: “Imagine if two-thirds of the country had remained under occupation, with the rest inevitably going the same way, and Bashir Gemayel had become president with absolute power, both constitutionally and on the ground.”
He argues that his is therefore “not so much a legal case, as a political and national one,” though it has been neglected by the very groups that benefited from and acquired power and privilege as a consequence of Bashir Gemayel’s assassination.
The Lebanese constitution should make it possible to enact legislation that acknowledges that “failure to condemn collaboration, even at the very top, threw the door wide open to new collaborators who appeared after the end of the war,” he says.”
He is convinced that “striking at the head of collaboration” at the time helped thwart a scheme to establish a Greater Israel and turn the region into a collection of sectarian mini-states under its tutelage.
Shartouni is convinced that “striking at the head of collaboration” at the time helped thwart a scheme to establish a Greater Israel and turn the region into a collection of sectarian mini-states under its tutelage.Was Shartouni let down by his SSNP comrades? He insists they cannot be blamed “as individuals” for any shortcomings regarding himself, the families of the party’s martyrs, or even that of its founder Antoun Saadeh. “Throughout the history of the party they have never shirked their national duty, despite the unexpected sacrifices they had to bear,” he explains.
“But the party as an institution which formally represents them gradually abandoned the principles and goal established by the leader [Saadeh], even when he was still alive.” It became no different to other Lebanese political parties “which serve the considerations and interests of individuals.” So while boasting of the heroic deeds of its members, it turns its back on those who sacrificed on its behalf and loathes to recognize or feel obligated to them.
“They will probably tell you that Habib Shartouni didn’t give these answers, and that you interviewed someone pretending to be him. As far as they are concerned, I stopped existing in 1982.”
While the party treated him as a burden, he says he took care not to expose it to harm. He suffered 30 years of imprisonment, torture, and exile, losing his family ties and everything he owned, but was never forgiven for simply saying that “I did what I was asked to do.”
Yet he remains committed to the principles of the party’s founder, although he believes the time for the regional unity Saadeh advocated will only come when people become convinced of the need for it, and that it will be some time before that happens.
Shartouni avers that he has not lived in Lebanon since he left jail in 1990. “I have been away from the Lebanese arena for 30 years, despite claims by the Gemayel family and Phalange party that I travel freely in Lebanon and cross the borders whenever I want, or that I was seen in Ashrafieh or wherever. Such talk is only aimed at stoking the kind of antagonisms and loyalties that sustain the sectarian parties.”
They will probably tell you that Habib Shartouni didn’t give these answers, and that you interviewed someone pretending to be him. What does Shartouni think of the Lebanese Forces (LF) being part of the current political order in Lebanon? “It’s true that Bashir Gemayel established the LF, and that they stood out from the other civil war militias not only in terms of their size and organization, but also in the massacres and crimes they committed,” he replies. “But after Bashir’s project – which became an American-Israeli project, even though it sometimes had Arab funding -- was terminated, the LF became just another sectarian political party, like most Lebanese parties. It would no longer be right to accuse them of collaboration, especially as we have had collaborators springing up everywhere, as well as Muslim parties who share their political orientation, claiming to champion independence but under Western and Gulf auspices.”
He points to the recent Koura by-election as evidence of the LF’s organizational skills. “They knew how to manage the political game and influence the public mood, and managed to win in a district that was historically pro-SSNP, and which for that reason had been subject to a number of attacks by them and their allies,” he says.
Shartouni is confident about the future of the resistance in Lebanon, remarking that it draws on a legacy that dates from the 1930s, though it has had different ideological expressions. But he believes that the greater act of resistance lies in building a state that is capable of defending the country, and that the Lebanese have performed feats of heroism that show they are capable of achieving this.
I am not a fan of assassination. But I had to make a sacrifice. His death saved the country. He will not discuss details of the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. That, he says, is long story that he will tell in due course.
But if he could go back in time, would he still have done it? “You cannot go back in time,” he replies. “I am not a fan of assassination. But I had to make a sacrifice. His death saved the country. A minority may consider him to have been the leader of the Christian resistance, as though there was a Muslim occupation that made this necessary, or as though we are living in the dark ages of religious wars – not in republics, nations and societies, but only as feuding religious groups – or as if it was even a resistance that used to murder people based on their ID cards, violate their property and honor, and treat all other sections of society as enemies rather than defending them,” he says.
“That was the isolationist school which had its glory-days before its salafi and takfiri counterparts took over its glorious work,” he adds. “They are all a threat to a society composed of minorities.”
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Tags
Comments
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2013-04-16 11:17.
Lol hezbollah ,leftist progressiste are the fachist one plo raped killed 40 000 christian in lebanon rob 70 millions in lebanese banks and commited plenty of massacre in christian towns like damour and jounieh you progressive Always hide your self behind progressive rants to commite your crimes every where you go you Always think its yours 70% of lebanon was christian before the syrian plestinian génocide on lebanese now only 30% in 1990 and now 40%....its not ok for us to ally with Israël to create a non arab christian state but its ok for you force up on us an arab identity and to create another syria or palestine you force people to adapte to your belief and acusing people of doing what you guys have been doing for Moore then 1500 years every where yo go you bring misery and trouble
Althu I oppose the philosophy of the SSNP, Shartouni's assasination of Bachir Gemayel was a great & heroic deed given that Bachir sided & allied himself with the Israelis who came to Lebanon as invaders & occupiers.
Samir Geagea killed Tony Franjieh, Rashid Karami, & Dany Chamoun as well as thousands of civilians, & yet was granted a pardon from the Lebanese government. Habib Shartouni certainly deserves a pardon.
As Hariri said Lebanon will be the LAST country to make peace with Israel. By then, the Palestinians will be a majority in Palestine/Israel ,and the Palestinians in Lebanon will get to choose where to go back (it will not be just Gaza or West Bank). Israel will be renamed Palestine like the way Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe. Israel will then be remembered in the future, the way Rhodesia is remembered today. Does anyone remember Rhodesia?
bashir was killed but the resistance is still alive, as demonstrated by the koura election.
today, the traitors and the collaborators are losing their syrian and iranian masters while the resistance, which bashir gemayel founded, is getting stronger... the traitors are panicking and all they can do is help the syrian regime murder little children in houla and elsewhere, just like they murdered the christians in lebanon in the past... it's just disgusting how evil these people are... but no matter how many children they kill, their end is near.... bashir gemayel is smiling from heaven.
hahahahahahaha...hehehehehehe
Mark is always amused for some reason. It shows how sophisticated are the people who see bashir gemayel smiling from heaven.
Look at the last paragraph in the above article. I am sure the biggot bashir gemayel ( who by the way I see him roasting in hell on a skewer like a chicken)
would not have liked that for the LF to re-emerge in the country, they will have to make alliance with the takfiri and salafi groups. Hahahahahahahaha.
you can curse bashir gemayel as much as you want but finally all human rights organizations... human rights watch... amnesty international.. the un human rights council.. and many others are documenting in extensive reports that bashir gemayel was right.... they are documenting what the syrian baathist regime actually does: killing children, torture, rape of children, etc etc etc.... the most evil behavior one can think of!!!!!!.... and it was bashir gemayel who was the head of the spear who fought this evil in lebanon... it was bashir gemayel who revealed the true nature of the baathist regime while everybody was calling this regime "nationalist" and kissing hafez assad's shoe... it was bashir gemayel who made a speech about the hama massacre while many lebanese (including sunnis!!!!) simply ignored what assad did in hama.... and today, bashir is being vindicated by the world!!.... bashir was right: the syrian baathist regime is a terrorist regime..PERIOD. that's why bashir is smiling in heaven.., and the child killers, murderers, collaborators, and traitors that bashir gemayel fought are gnashing their teeth...... so yeah we are happy!!!! bashir's opponents may be able to butcher a few more hundred or thousands of children... but i assure you their end is near!!! god bless bashir gemayel, evil's worst enemy.
If God laughs at Sabra & Shatilla massacres, zionists like Mark can have him. A twisted shill and zionist
eunuch who should file for residency in Israel. Lets see how long this goy enjoys being spit on as a
Christian whose "savior is the son of a whore and boiling in excrement" as The Chosen say in their books.
The worst crime the Syrian Baathist regime did in Lebanon was to intervene in Lebanon in 1976 and save the Lebanese Fascists by crushing the Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance, which enabled the Fascists to commit more massacres in the future.
Yes, that is why they massacred any group that was different from them, even their closest allies...Palestinians, Muslims, Armenians, Syrian workers, Orthodox Christians, Marada, NLP ETC ETC. The only group they did not kill were their Israeli masters. Thank God they are weak today and can not commit any more massacres.
the LF training centers in jbail were right next to shiites, who were never touched. the ssnp had active members (not armed of course) in the eastern areas. but the reverse was not the case. orthodox christians were in highest LF ranks. the areas under the LF had freedom of speech. the top LF leaders were openly criticized in full freedom all the time by anybody in society for your information. that doesn't happen in syria. or under saddam hussein. or under hezbollah. or under qaddafi. or anywhere in the arab world where they jail you of worse for criticizing the leader (until now). but massacres were taking place in qaa against the christians, and in damour, and in deir ashash, and in deir mellet and and and... because there was no LF there to defend them.. so the christians had the right to defend themselves.. of course, mistakes happen. for example, sabra and chatila. that was a crime of course committed by elie hobeiqa, but he was kicked out of the LF and was embraced by hafez assad, bashar assad, and sayyed hasan nasrallah (who physically embraced hobeiqa and was his ally in the elections). so terrorists don't stay in the LF for very long because the nature and ethics and morality of the party causes them to leave. bad guys in the LF usually end up allied with syria and its allies in lebanon. because terrorists are comfortable being with each other.
so no, the LF is not the cause of the massacres. just take a look around you. today 100 dead in iraq. last week 1300 dead in syria... no LF there!!! the problem is that killing and murder is acceptable in the muslim middle east. people rejoice when israeli teenagers are murdered before entering a nightclub, just because they are of the jewish religion.. that's the ethics of the region, which are contrary to the LF's ethics.
The massacres by the LF in Karantina, Black Saturday, Eintoura, Ehden, Tel Zaatar ETC ETC is known by all Lebanese. It is interesting though that you mentioned the killing of Israeli settler children on the bus, but not the massacres and war crimes committed by the Israeli enemy in Lebanon such as in Qana, Lebanon. You must be one of those SLA member hiding in Israel choking on Israeli Matso balls.
tall zaatar was not a massacre. it cost months and many dead to dismantle that terrorist fort that was attacking the local population. ehden, it was hobeiqa... karantina, another terrorist fort.... the bottom line remains: the christian population has never celebrated the murder of children... but the palestinian population have many times openly celebrated the killing of children.... like i said, yes the LF made a few mistakes, but the ethics and morality of the LF remains much much much superior to that of the palestians, syrian, ssnp, etc etc... that's a fact..... the syrian regime is today murdering children with knives, and raping girls in front of their parents for heavens sake... bashir saw the evil of that regime and fought it, while the ssnp and chartouni support it... the LF was the only force that fought the forces of evil in lebanon, and that's something to be proud of, whether you like it or not.
"Palestinian population have many times openly celebrated the killing of children". A FEW Palestinians celebrated the killings of Israelis on the bus who were mostly age 18 and older and who are members of the Israeli military (not few children who happened to be on the bus). Palestinians NEVER specifically targeted children by bombing them in Occupied Palestine or anywhere else? Israelis and their Lebanese puppets danced over the bodies of murdered children. The bottom line is that Israel and its Fascist allies killed many times more children in battle than vise versus.
You can claim otherwise all you want about what happened in the past. The fact is I have a future in Lebanon. Unless you do what Geaga did and ally yourself with the Sunni Islamists and call Israel Lebanon's only enemy, you do not have any future in Lebanon.
oh please.. palestinians danced in the streets after 9/11 and after every terrorist attack killing teenagers going to a disco, jewish civilians celebrating a holiday etc etc... killing civilians is condoned by most palestinian clerics, who teach that jews are the sons of apes and pigs.... murder and killing and evil is all they know what to do..... and of course you have a future in lebanon... because bashir gemayel's dream succeeded.. and the LF is there to keep lebanon free... BUT.. would you have a future if assad's shabbiha are in lebanon right now and slaughtering your children like they did in houla? hmmm? something you should think about.
The LF lost the Christian vote in Koura, but won the Sunni Hariri and Salafists vote, which enabled them to win. In Lebanon, ONLY those who worked for Israel are called traitors. If the Syrian and Iranian regime vanished today, the M14 would still be a weak minority in Lebanon. If Bashir Gemael looked up from hell, he would be horrified to see LF "Christians" owned and run by the Sectarian Sunni groups including those who calls them "infidels".
In Lebanon, the only traitors are those who worked for Israel. If the Syrian and Iranian regime collapses, no won in M14 can take on The M8 resistance who fought Israel. Today, the LF is nothing but tools for the Sunni sectarian Salafists and other puppets of KSA. If Bashir Gemael was looking up from hell, he would see an LF owned and controlled by Sunni Muslims who he hated.
oh no, you are very confused. those who work for israel like fayez karam and ziad homsi are released after a just few months in jail and are welcomed and celebrated by ministers in the hezbollah-controlled government.... remember, minister fatoush welcomed ziad homsi in an open-air celebration and hezbollah said nothing. the true traitors are those who work for syria and iran only... like the foreign minister who gives excuses everytime syrian shells fall on a lebanese border village and kills lebanese civilians. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Fox Cable Income Up 47%
Operating income for News Corp.'s cable-network-programming sector was up 47% to $196 million on revenues of $630 million in the first quarter of its 2005 fiscal year (which actually ended Sept.30, 2004), the company said in releasing its latest financial numbers.
News Corp. reports its financials according to Australian accounting principles. That will change next quarter, however, with the company's move this month to the U.S.
That cable sector growth was driven by ad rate bumps at Fox News Channel and FX and affiliate revenue growth at its regional sports nets, according to the company. FX's Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me were singled out for their ratings success and increased ad dollars.
On the broadcast side, the Fox network lost $35 million less than last year thanks to double-digit income growth attributed to higher ad prices and lower program costs, offset somewhat by a 12% decline in ratings and the lack of the Emmy awards, which aired in the comparable 2004 quarter.Owned TV stations income was up slightly thanks to lower programming costs and the addition of local newscasts in some markets. Neither the Fox Broadcasting or stations numbers were broken out.
Total television income, which includes the international STAR TV in China and India, were up 30% to $233 million on revenues of $1.004 billion.
On the production side, the filmed entertainment sector came in at $285 million for the quarter, or down about 13% from $328 million for the same period last year.
News Corp. attributed that difference primarily to the boost in first quarter FY2004 income from the syndicated releases of Angel and Judging Amy, as well as continued contributions from syndication workhorse, M*A*S*H. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Link List
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Nobody knew health care could be so complicated? Er, except everybody but Mr Trump. And yes, it's a huge behemoth of a system, but the devil is in the detail. It's when you throw in all the special interests, political considerations, back-scratching, etc. that it quickly gets complicated. But before all that happens, there are only three basic choices when it comes to providing medical insurance, and they are easy to grasp. Choosing among them, though, has become much more of a political choice than an unloaded purely economic one.
Here's what we had before the Affordable Care Act (ACA): private insurance, either from one's employer or purchased individually. For this to work, of course, just as any other business, insurance companies must make a profit, and that's harder when customers get sick; purchasers actually using their insurance isn't good for the bottom line. That's why there's so much talk about people with "pre-existing conditions". These are people who insurers know will cost them money and that's why people with "pre-existing conditions" were essentially uninsurable before the ACA, except as members of large employee pools comprised primarily of healthy people who had to buy in as a condition of their employment. And that's why insurance companies used to charge women, older people, smokers, and so on more; they were more likely to cost money. And that's why insurance companies also had policies such as lifetime caps on benefits. To stay in business, insurers have to make a profit. It's their reason for being. This system can work well for healthy people and insurance companies.
The second option is something like the ACA, where everyone, pre-existing condition or not, can buy insurance -- an appropriate thing to point out on Rare Disease Day 2017. As with auto insurance, the only way this is financially viable is if everyone is required to buy in; just as good drivers subsidize unsafe drivers, healthy people subsidize people more likely to use healthy insurance. Thus, the hated "mandate", the requirement that everyone buy in or be penalized on their taxes. Many detractors of the ACA believe the mandate can simply be eliminated, that a replacement for the ACA can cover as many people, as cheaply, without one. But, that's impossible. This is the same kind of privitized system that has worked without major snags for many years in Switzerland, for example. There, insurance is compulsory, and insurance companies must offer a basic plan which they aren't allowed to profit from although people can purchase bells and whistles, which is how the insurers make a profit.
The third option is the public option, often these days described as Medicare for all. Government-supplied health insurance, paid for by tax dollars. It's cheaper than the first two options in large part because it's non-profit, and the infrastructure required by private insurers to validate or deny claims doesn't exist. National health has worked well in many rich countries for decades, keeping costs down and providing access to medical care to all.
And that's it. There's no other "terrific" "cheaper" alternative anyone has thought of that can replace the ACA. The only options are a system that's totally private; something like the ACA with its mandate; and national health. Unfortunately, this wasn't very well explained when President Obama was working on the Affordable Care Act, and it's not being explained now. The Republicans in control of Congress aren't going to give us national health;and while it seems that many of them would be happy going back to what we used to have before the ACA, opinion polls are showing that people are less and less happy with that option. Will Trumpcare be Obamacare renamed, then? We'll have to wait and see.
In any case, whatever system we adopt, we've still got problems. Although the rising cost of medical care in the United States has slowed some with the ACA, at almost 18% of GDP health care spending here is the most expensive in the world, far exceeding that of any other high-income country, most of which have national health care (e.g., source). In part it's because of the high cost of medical care, the higher use of expensive technology (e.g., MRI's, mammograms and C sections) and the exorbitant cost of pharmaceuticals. And this is even with limitations imposed by insurance companies to control costs. In addition, the cost of individual premiums has soared for people who aren't eligible for government subsidies to help cover the cost of insurance, in part, because fewer healthy people have purchased insurance than companies anticipated. And deductibles and co-pays have risen sharply. Insurance companies still have to turn a profit to stay in the health insurance marketplace.
So, even if Trumpcare is as terrific and as cheap as we've been promised, it's hard to see how it will cut the high cost of medical care, and make us a healthier nation. That is complicated, especially when private profit, rather than public health, is its fundamental basis.
Friday, February 24, 2017
Conflict and war can have an enormous impact on demography and population health. When active fighting breaks out in an area it can lead to large and chaotic population movements - if you’ve been paying attention to the news about conflict in the Middle East you’ve most likely seen images of huge populations fleeing countries like Syria and Iraq and the resulting influx of millions of refugees arriving in places such as Europe.
The chaotic settings in which these populations find shelter are often rife with sanitation, hygiene and other problems. Difficult, strategic decisions must be made on behalf of humanitarian agencies regarding how best to allocate limited funding to properly address the needs of these populations. Unfortunately reproductive health isn’t normally a high priority – although it really should be. One of the best ways to improve the health of a population is to address morbidity and mortality in very early childhood. Everyone in a population goes through the childbirth bottleneck. Everyone has a biological mother. Targeting these age and sex groups can have far-reaching impacts.
Most of my work focuses on health issues along the Myanmar-Thailand border and while there has been a decrease in fighting recently, in the very near past there was active civil war and sporadic flows of refugees seeking safety in the mountains on the Thai side of the border. By the early 1980s there were many small refugee and internally displaced person camps scattered along the border. In the mid-1990s (between 1994 and 1998) most of these smaller camps were consolidated into one of 9 currently existing camps. Today, Maela refugee camp, roughly 60 kilometers north of Mae Sot, Thailand, is the largest of these camps with a current population of roughly 37,000. It has been in existence now for over 30 years.
One thing that is easy to miss in an age of constant news bombardment is that these populations, these refugee camps, don’t just disappear with the news cycle. Sometimes refugee camps last for a very long time. Today there are second-generation refugees who were born, and continue to live, in Maela camp.
Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, a field station of the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, operated the only antenatal clinic in Maela camp until this past December (2016). Recently we analyzed records and data from our experiences in providing contraceptives to refugee women in this long, drawn-out refugee setting. Given the current dire refugee situation of the world, we thought our experiences might have relevance not only for the current refugee situation but also for the future, given that many people will likely be living in large refugee settings for the foreseeable future.
The first thing that became obvious from our analysis is that obtaining a good understanding of basic demographics can be rather difficult. Information really is a first casualty of war – gaining a handle on data about the population can be difficult even decades later. Furthermore, population counts can have political implications, or conversely, population estimates are sometimes the result of political sentiments. For Maela camp there are two main sources of population counts – one comes from the humanitarian agency that provides food (the Thai-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC)) and the other is from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that provides humanitarian and social services. Until very recently UNHCR counts have systematically been much smaller than TBBC counts.
Population estimates have varied widely by the reporting source. We estimated the reproductive age female population for Maela camp by year using data from both TBBC (black) and UNHCR (blue) population estimates. A loess curve (solid line) is fit to the data
points and 95% confidence intervals for the curve are shown in dark gray.
Our data also show that, when provided in a socio-cultural appropriate manner, men and women in refugee settings willingly uptake contraceptives. The population we work with can properly be considered a high fertility (or natural fertility) population meaning that, with some exception, families are large and people are happy with that. But even in a high fertility population contraceptives have important health implications. Men and women should be able to regulate their family size and spacing if they choose. Unintended pregnancies can result in incredible burdens, especially in already difficult settings, with health consequences for children, families, and entire communities leading to intergenerational transfers of poverty and nutritional deficits [1,2]. Households with few working-age adults and many dependents tend to be households with economic and nutritional deficiencies.
We also note that funding has a huge impact on the uptake of contraceptives and even the type of contraceptives that are chosen. Yes, men and women in the camp chose to readily use contraceptives, but the availability of contraceptives and the type of contraceptives available were directly influenced by funding. In this setting and in others, most of that funding could best be described as “rescue funding”, with reproductive health services normally operating on small and dwindling budgets but occasionally being “rescued” by a new source of funding. Given the importance of reproductive health (including the availability of contraceptives) and the dependence of reproductive health services on funding, funding agencies should carefully consider what they fund and should give careful consideration to funding cuts.
It is hard to draw direct, causal relationships between something like reproductive health funding and reductions in morbidity and mortality because there are complex relationships between health care delivery and health outcomes. However, we do know that during the time that SMRU operated the antenatal clinic in Maela camp both maternal and neonatal mortality decreased drastically. From 1986 to 1990 there were about 499 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births while in 2006 – 2010 there were 79 per 100,000 births [3]. In 1996 there were approximately 43.5 deaths for every 1,000 neonates and by 2011 there were 6 per 1,000 [4,5].
When funding was available, refugees in Maela camp willingly chose to use contraceptives leading to safer, better-planned pregnancies, which leads to health improvements of mother and child. A focus on reproductive health in conflict and refugee settings is extremely important and can have a drastic impact on population health. When people are given the opportunity to be more in charge of important parts of their lives, they are more likely to break out of difficult poverty cycles, and subsequently go on to live healthier lives. We believe this is a good thing.
Friday, February 3, 2017
One hears a lot of Doomsday pleas that we should cut back on our consumption of carbon fuels, eat less meat, fish less, and so on--or else! Or else what? Or else, as it's often expressed, we'll destroy the planet! Scientists speaking to each other about agricultural sustainability or climate change use less excessively inflammatory rhetoric, though even they can engage in catastrophism when the public media cameras are on. Concern for the future is understandable, but exaggeration is not sensible if you stop to think about it. Crying "Wolf!" can backfire, because the Earth is not in imminent danger!
Human activity, even if we let our population rise to 10 or more billion and burn every single last chunk of coal and drop of oil, will not destroy the Earth. No amount of energy conservation and sustainability will save the Earth from destruction, because it's not headed that way anyhow, and people haven't the power to destroy it (though, would we be able to come close with a nuclear WWIII?).
Indeed, it's possible that imminent catastrophe rhetoric reinforces the reactionary view that this is scientific nonsense and we should just close climate-change government-sponsored web sites and de-fund environmental science.
Part of the problem is that this is like the frog in a boiling kettle: the water gets hot so gradually that the frog doesn't notice it until it's too late. We humans are not very good at long-term thinking or planning, perhaps because longterm thinking wasn't possible or useful as we evolved, when each day's food, safety and mates were what was at stake. When change is slow, as global warming is, people often feel less inclined to self-denial today in exchange for a viable tomorrow.
In addition, sociologically speaking, climate change messages can be seen as a scientific or 'left-wing' elite telling everyone else that they have to scale-down, while at least some have noticed the fact that the same elite fly all over the world to have meetings, promote their books, and deliver their message (and flying is among the worst CO2 polluters).
In fact, most of what is being said by science, even taking scientists' vanities, frailties, and grant-hungers into account, is basically right. The climate clearly is changing, the seas rising, agricultural patterns changing, many species endangered. Of course, there have always been changes in patterns of rainfall, temperature, and vegetation, though the time scale generally has been glacially slow, so to speak, with the possible occasional exception of major meteorite strikes or huge volcanic eruptions etc. The current speed is one reason human activity seems surely to be at least partially responsible.
Another important point isn't that climate is changing, but that the pace we're seeing today may not be reversible even if our behavior is contributing, because our ability to change the course of geoclimate might be limited.
But that doesn't mean that the science-deniers and their ilk hiding their head in the sand are right. They're as self-willed ignorant as scientists say they are. They are pretending that the science is wrong, when the real truth is that they don't like the answers the science is giving us.
The real risk
If climate is always changing, and Save the Earth is a misleading slogan, the problem is that even if the Earth is not in danger, we are! And that is the very, very personal and selfishly short-sighted reason that we should slow down global warming if we can, increase use of renewable energies, keep funding climate sciences, and so on. Let's take a look at the wolf that really is at our door, and making enough evidentiary noise that we can't miss it. What is at stake is not the Earth, but the kind of constancy we, like any species, rightfully feel comfortable with.
In fact, climate change does pose very serious, very real, and potentially dire risks. There are at least a few likely, foreseeable consequences of climate change:
1. Threatened lifestyles. On the more mundane side, having to change where and how we live, what we eat, how we interact with each other, and so on, are major dislocations of lifestyle. Being animals, we like our 'territory' to be familiar and feel safe. The levels of ill-will and unhappiness that would ensue major cultural upsets due to climate change and its consequences, would be upsetting to a great many people. There may indeed be changed patterns of wealth, lifestyle, disease in us and/or our animal and plant food sources. We may exhaust some minerals vital to our technological support systems. Even peacefully, gradually adapting to a lower-consuming lifestyle could avoid this, but would be disruptive; even if we lived very well in lower-consuming times in the past, social and psychological factors will be strained if our life-ways are changed too much or too fast.
2. Mass dislocation. Most cities and urban concentrations are near natural waterways. That's because they were founded over many centuries when water-borne trade and transport of goods etc., the stuff that makes concentrated populations possible, was the only real means of large-scale transportation. So, if water levels rise along coasts and major lakes or rivers, or if waterways dry up, there will be dislocations that make todays middle east refugees look like tiddly-winks by comparison. If tens of millions of Londoners and New Yorkers (not to mention residents of China or India) need to relocate, they'll have to go where there already are people. This mass internal migration will be seen by the 'recipients' as 'Yugely' more of a threat than refugees today pose.
3. Exacerbated inequality and suffering. Other large-scale dislocations of many sorts will mean economic deprivation for some who were well off, and new privilege for others. Climate change alters agricultural areas, drying some up and making others flourish. Food being one thing people really do fight over, one can anticipate major economic dislocation and very large-scale competition for the new food producing areas, by those whose breadbaskets dried up. This means war and potentially on a massive scale. With 10 billion people, and industrial-scale weaponry (including nukes), the suffering will potentially be massively unprecedented.
In the overall scheme of things, a few island populations imminently needing relocation is an enormous event for the islanders but not a terribly large event globally. But when cities become inundated, and food hard to come by, when refugees number in the many millions, and they're armed, well, that may be a definition of Arm-aggedon (forgive the pun).
We should be talking turkey to the public. Even if climate change is human-accelerated, it is not the first time there has been major climate change. The Earth, and even the human species, will survive it. Scientists should not be pressed by the intentionally uneducated into over-stating the case. The planet is not in danger. But in a sense there really is a wolf knocking at the door, and it is worth saving the planet as we know it.
What is in danger is our way of life. And that's something humans kill for.
Comments
We always welcome comments, but we moderate them to reduce spam, gratuitous unkindness and so forth. Because we moderate comments, they won't appear on the blog until one of us publishes them, but we try to do that in a timely way.
We've had to make a change to the commenting page. People had told us that Blogger was eating their comments, so now, rather than embedding comment editing with the posts, it has to be done on a separate, full page. Unfortunately, the 'reply' option has disappeared so comments will just follow one another. We'll see how this goes. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
UINT CSerialPort::CommThread(LPVOID pParam)
{
// Cast the void pointer passed to the thread back to
// a pointer of CSerialPort class
CSerialPort *port = (CSerialPort*)pParam;
// Set the status variable in the dialog class to
// TRUE to indicate the thread is running.
port->m_bThreadAlive = TRUE;
// Misc. variables
DWORD BytesTransfered = 0;
DWORD Event = 0;
DWORD CommEvent = 0;
DWORD dwError = 0;
COMSTAT comstat;
memset(&comstat, 0, sizeof(COMSTAT)); //initial comstate 2015-11-21 chaochao
BOOL bResult = TRUE;
// Clear comm buffers at startup
if (port->m_hComm) // check if the port is opened
PurgeComm(port->m_hComm, PURGE_RXCLEAR | PURGE_TXCLEAR | PURGE_RXABORT | PURGE_TXABORT);
// begin forever loop. This loop will run as long as the thread is alive.
for (;;)
{
// Make a call to WaitCommEvent(). This call will return immediatly
// because our port was created as an async port (FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED
// and an m_OverlappedStructerlapped structure specified). This call will cause the
// m_OverlappedStructerlapped element m_OverlappedStruct.hEvent, which is part of the m_hEventArray to
// be placed in a non-signeled state if there are no bytes available to be read,
// or to a signeled state if there are bytes available. If this event handle
// is set to the non-signeled state, it will be set to signeled when a
// character arrives at the port.
// we do this for each port!
bResult = WaitCommEvent(port->m_hComm, &Event, &port->m_ov);
if (!bResult)
{
// If WaitCommEvent() returns FALSE, process the last error to determin
// the reason..
switch (dwError = GetLastError())
{
case ERROR_IO_PENDING:
{
// This is a normal return value if there are no bytes
// to read at the port.
// Do nothing and continue
break;
}
case 87:
{
// Under Windows NT, this value is returned for some reason.
// I have not investigated why, but it is also a valid reply
// Also do nothing and continue.
break;
}
default:
{
// All other error codes indicate a serious error has
// occured. Process this error.
port->ProcessErrorMessage("WaitCommEvent()");
break;
}
}
}
else
{
// If WaitCommEvent() returns TRUE, check to be sure there are
// actually bytes in the buffer to read.
//
// If you are reading more than one byte at a time from the buffer
// (which this program does not do) you will have the situation occur
// where the first byte to arrive will cause the WaitForMultipleObjects()
// function to stop waiting. The WaitForMultipleObjects() function
// resets the event handle in m_OverlappedStruct.hEvent to the non-signelead state
// as it returns.
//
// If in the time between the reset of this event and the call to
// ReadFile() more bytes arrive, the m_OverlappedStruct.hEvent handle will be set again
// to the signeled state. When the call to ReadFile() occurs, it will
// read all of the bytes from the buffer, and the program will
// loop back around to WaitCommEvent().
//
// At this point you will be in the situation where m_OverlappedStruct.hEvent is set,
// but there are no bytes available to read. If you proceed and call
// ReadFile(), it will return immediatly due to the async port setup, but
// GetOverlappedResults() will not return until the next character arrives.
//
// It is not desirable for the GetOverlappedResults() function to be in
// this state. The thread shutdown event (event 0) and the WriteFile()
// event (Event2) will not work if the thread is blocked by GetOverlappedResults().
//
// The solution to this is to check the buffer with a call to ClearCommError().
// This call will reset the event handle, and if there are no bytes to read
// we can loop back through WaitCommEvent() again, then proceed.
// If there are really bytes to read, do nothing and proceed.
bResult = ClearCommError(port->m_hComm, &dwError, &comstat);
if (comstat.cbInQue == 0)
continue;
//没有输入
} // end if bResult
// Main wait function. This function will normally block the thread
// until one of nine events occur that require action.
Event = WaitForMultipleObjects(3, port->m_hEventArray, FALSE, INFINITE);
switch (Event)
{
case 0:
{
// Shutdown event. This is event zero so it will be
// the higest priority and be serviced first.
port->m_bThreadAlive = FALSE;
// Kill this thread. break is not needed, but makes me feel better.
AfxEndThread(100);
break;
}
case 1: // read event
{
GetCommMask(port->m_hComm, &CommEvent);
if (CommEvent & EV_RXCHAR) //接收到字符，并置于输入缓冲区中
//ReceiveChar(port, comstat);
//AfxMessageBox("Receive char");
ReceiveString(port, comstat);
if (CommEvent & EV_CTS) //CTS信号状态发生变化
::SendMessage(port->m_pOwner->m_hWnd, WM_COMM_CTS_DETECTED, (WPARAM) 0, (LPARAM) port->m_nPortNr);
if (CommEvent & EV_RXFLAG) //接收到事件字符，并置于输入缓冲区中
::SendMessage(port->m_pOwner->m_hWnd, WM_COMM_RXFLAG_DETECTED, (WPARAM) 0, (LPARAM) port->m_nPortNr);
if (CommEvent & EV_BREAK) //输入中发生中断
::SendMessage(port->m_pOwner->m_hWnd, WM_COMM_BREAK_DETECTED, (WPARAM) 0, (LPARAM) port->m_nPortNr);
if (CommEvent & EV_ERR) //发生线路状态错误，线路状态错误包括CE_FRAME,CE_OVERRUN和CE_RXPARITY
::SendMessage(port->m_pOwner->m_hWnd, WM_COMM_ERR_DETECTED, (WPARAM) 0, (LPARAM) port->m_nPortNr);
if (CommEvent & EV_RING) //检测到振铃指示
::SendMessage(port->m_pOwner->m_hWnd, WM_COMM_RING_DETECTED, (WPARAM) 0, (LPARAM) port->m_nPortNr);
break;
}
case 2: // write event
{
// Write character event from port
WriteChar(port);
break;
}
} // end switch
} // close forever loop
return 0;
} | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Policies & Terms of Purchase
RETURNS
If you are not satisfied with your purchase, please contact us for a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) request within 10 business days of the receipt of the product. If the item is returned unopened in the original box, we will exchange it, offer you store credit, or offer you a refund, less 10% restocking fee, based on your original method of payment. The product must be returned within 10 business days of the issuance of the RMA. All products must be packed in the original packaging, including any accessories, manuals, documentation and registration that shipped with the product. A 15% open box fee in addition to the 10% restocking fee (totaling 25%) will be assessed on any sealed product that is opened or removed from its original packaging.
Please note that we do not permit the return of the following products:
1. Special orders and products that are custom configured to your specifications.
2. Products sold "as is" or "used" or that have been installed or used after receipt.
3. NFA items that require ATF Transfer after the start of paperwork.
4. Illumination devices, electronic sights, optics and night vision equipment.
NOTE: We recommend that you use a carrier that offers shipment tracking for all returns, and either insure your package for safe return or declare the full value of the shipment so that you are protected if the shipment is lost or damaged in transit. If you chose not to use a carrier that offers tracking and insure or declare the full value of the product, you will be responsible for any loss or damage to the product during shipping.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) offers limited tracking capabilities and that there is a 30-calendar-day waiting period before USPS will initiate a trace. The customer is responsible for shipping charges both ways on returns, as well as for shipping charges on shipments that are refused.
WEBSITE DISCLAIMER
Other items available for sale not listed on this website include discontinued parts or parts for firearms no longer produced. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding parts for firearms no longer produced (such as Vietnam era upper receiver units, obsolete fire control parts, etc.).
All items on this website are subject to change without notice. This includes item availability, one-of-a-kind items, and pricing.
USED FIREARMS
The seller provides all descriptions for used items. All descriptions for used items are honest and based on actual items being offered for sale. Items being sold in this manner will be marked as such. All sales on used items are final. Photos will be provided when available. All machine guns are considered used unless otherwise noted.
GENERAL FIREARM SALES
All firearms, magazines, receivers and restricted law enforcement items are sold and shipped in accordance with all existing federal, state and local laws and regulations. Firearms will ONLY be shipped to licensed FFL dealers. Many of the firearms, magazines and parts for sale on this website may be restricted or prohibited in your area. Please check your local and state regulations before ordering.
All new firearms are shipped in the original manufacturer's box, with magazine(s), accessories and applicable warranty. Firearms requiring warranty work must be returned to the factory within 1 year of purchase for repair. Accessories and special order items not normally sold by our store will not be covered under warranty even if these products are part of an integrated firearms package, unless we have guaranteed the entire package in writing. Please contact the original manufacturer for warranty information on all accessories and special order items.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
If you encounter any problems with your order or the checkout process, or if you have any questions about the status of your order, simply contact our customer service staff through our Contact Us page.
CONSUMER DATA PRIVACY
We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it.
The Credit Card Billing Information, Shipping Information, and Contact Information in our checkout process are required in order to process your order and deliver the product to you. We store some information for accounting reasons. Your information will not be shown to third parties not involved in the transaction, nor used to send you any unrequested information. The entire Checkout process is handled through a secure SSL-encrypted connection.
The Credit Card Billing Information is sent directly to our payment provider who processes your credit card transaction. The credit card information is neither recorded nor stored by us, and it can only be accessed by our payment provider. Each transaction has a very high level of security. Your credit card details are sent directly to the payment provider over a secure SSL-encrypted connection. They are not processed on our servers at any stage of the transaction, nor are they stored on our server.
SECURE TRANSMISSION
All information collected during the checkout process is transmitted via industry standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) featuring 128-bit encryption. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate creates an encrypted link between a Web site and a visitor's Web browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the Web site and the browser remains private and secure.
ORDER FULFILLMENT
All orders are shipped promptly from our warehouse or in-store inventory within 3 - 10 business days using UPS, FedEx, or USPS. Tracking numbers are available for items shipped via UPS and FedEx.
ONLINE PRICE & DESCRIPTION ERRORS
Our online inventory changes every day. Occasionally an item may appear on the site by mistake or the item's description may contain a typographical error. We do not guarantee that titles, descriptions, pictures or prices on our site are error-free. We reserve the right to refuse any order including but not limited to orders for items with errors in the description or price. In the event that we cancel an order we will not charge the customer's credit card or we will refund the money.
If an item's description contains an error such as incorrect price and a customer makes the order, we will not process the order without first contacting the customer. If the order is mistakenly shipped, we may advise the customer to return the item in an unopened condition and we will refund the customer. By placing an order, the customer agrees that seller will be the final arbiter of discrepancies in the online catalog.
AMMUNITION PURCHASES
You must be 18 or older to purchase rifle or shotgun ammunition and 21 or older to purchase handgun ammunition. All ammunition will be shipped ground with adult signature required. Always make sure to use the correct ammunition for your specific firearms. Check your local laws for any other regulations.
NFA Transfers: (National Firearms Act Items)
All NFA transfers will be charged a fee of $60 for any Machine Gun, Suppressor/Silencer, AOW (Any Other Weapon), Destructive Device, and Short Barreled Rifle.
ADDITIONAL SHIPPING & HANDLING POLICIES
AMMUNITION sales are FINAL - Returns cannot be accepted for ammunition.
All Transferable Machine Guns are shipped for a flat fee of $95.00 via FedEx Ground to a licensed Class 3 Dealer of your choice. All other firearms and suppressors are shipped for a flat fee of $25.00 via UPS Ground. Your dealer will send us the proper paperwork for this first transfer, we prepare and fax the Form 3 transfer to BATF immediately, and then once the transfer clears BATF we ship the gun to your dealer. You're in-state dealer then prepares Form 4 paperwork, which you will sign and also have signed by the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in your locale (Sheriff, Chief of Police, State Police Chief, etc... only need for one to sign). You return the completed Form 4's to the in-state dealer, along with (2) passport size photos, (2) fingerprint cards, (1) citizenship authorization, and a transfer tax check made payable to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for the onetime per item transfer tax. A $200.00 transfer tax applies to Short BBL Shotguns, Short BBL Rifles, Machine Guns and Suppressors; a $5.00 transfer tax applies to items classified as Any Other Weapons - "AOW". This paperwork is mailed to BATF and when this transfer clears you go pick up your gun. We email/contact our customers each step of the way, so you will know when your gun arrives in state and the next transfer, from your dealer to you, can begin.
Transfer Fees:
$15 PER FIREARM TRANSFERED
NFA TRANSFERS $60
Any firearm left over 30 days will be considered
abandoned and will become the property of ZOMBIE TACTICAL at no
charge. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The control panels inside an elevator cab should be located to the right of the elevator door when facing the door from inside the cab. Where possible, control panels should be on both sides of the door. Avoid using heat sensitive buttons, as people relying on braille or tactile numbers have no means of knowing when or if a button has been pushed. Additionally, because they use touch to locate buttons, every heat-sensitive button they touch will be activated.
Elevator panels should be slightly inclined from vertical to make the buttons easier to read without crouching down. It also makes it easier to read braille and tactile characters.
All panel buttons should be raised at least 1.5 mm in height from the panel’s surface and should be no smaller than 19 mm in any direction on the surface. The call buttons on each floor should be organized in a logical pattern that is consistent within all elevators in a building.
Raised Arabic numerals, letters and other symbols should be placed to the left of the elevator’s call buttons on a colour/brightness-contrasted background. They should be at least 16 mm tall and raised from the surface of the panel by at least 0.8 mm. Characters should be in a sans serif font and not in an italic, oblique, highly decorative or unusual form. The same information indicated for each button through raised characters should also be provided just below them in uncontracted braille.
Use larger, backlit buttons, which are easier to see for people with low vision. Consider using buttons at least 50 mm in size with 38 mm dual illumination numerals (i.e., constant backlit numbers). Ensure there is good contrast between the background and the buttons.
Where provided, the panel that indicates the current floor location should be positioned so that the centre is no more than 1,830 mm from the finished floor. The floor identification information should contrast in colour and brightness to its surroundings in the elevator.
Elevator location floor information should be indicated both audibly and visually:
Visual characters should be at least 60 mm high.
Voice annunciation should be used to identify floors and the direction of travel. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Anywhere in South Africa Installation and repairing of telephones ,ADSL, ISDN and data lines, worked for Telkom SA as a Technician for 10 years and promoted to an Operational Manager in the cable maintenance for 13 years, Managing of staff, approving of overtime , leave of staff ordering of coporate clothing and tools for t...[more]
Pretoria, Gauteng National Diploma degree at TUT in 2012(CUM LAUDE) Busy with my Btech.I'm only left with 2 subjects and my project before i get my Bachelor degree. I have one year of work experience as a Radio Network Planning Engineer at Huawei Technologies under the 8ta project.These are the tasks I was required...[more]
Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape I have enough experience that l have gain while l was working at Telkom , started as a student technician then a contract worker, working with cables, pabx , system and findings faults. l am a kind of a person who works hard to be the best in everything l do , finding solutions to any problems that ...[more] | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
After placing an order we will send you a sample of your chosen Brink & Campman runner so you can check the colour, design and quality. Upon confirming we will then manufacture your custom made to measure runner to arrive to your door in 7-14 working days.
The Qashqai Range is features border designs inspired by African tribal patterns and is at home in both traditional and modern interiors.Our Brink & Campman runners are of the most supreme quality, woven using traditional Axminster techniques. They’re made using the industry renowned combination of 80% wool and 20% polyamide yarn, giving the most luxurious yet hardwearing pile available.
To purchase the items in your basket and proceed with your order using our secure online purchasing facility, click on the "Checkout" button on the shopping basket screen. You will then be given the option to enter your email address and password if you are an existing user of the site, or you can choose to pay directly. You will then be transferred to our secure server provider Sagepay or PayPal to complete your order.
You will be asked to provide certain information we need to enable us to process your order such as your preferred delivery address and payment details. It is your responsibility to provide us with sufficient information to process you order.
We will acknowledge receipt of your order by email. This is not our acceptance of your order, but confirmation that it has been received. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The student health clinic sponsored by the health fee (see below) will be closed from December 20, 2010 and will be reopening January 10, 2011 in a new location.Laney Student Health Services, with nurse Indra Thadani, remains in its present location (Tower 250) in the Laney Tower building.
New Clinic to Open!
On Monday, January 10, 2011, we are opening a new student health clinic, the Peralta Wellness Center, in the Laney College Student Center, Room SC410A (on the fourth floor). The new clinic will be open on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9-5. Services offered will include pregnancy testing, family planning, birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, HIV testing, pap smears, health education, mental health counseling, TB testing, immunizations, vaccinations, flu shots, whooping cough (pertussis) immunizations, physical exams, and doctor visits and referral services. More information is available on the FAQ page. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The latest news on avoiding dairy products if you are lactose intolerant, have milk allergies, are a vegan, or want to keep kosher.
The Lactose Intolerance Clearinghouse Has Moved.
My old website can be found at www.stevecarper.com/li I am no longer updating the site, so there will be dead links. The static information provided by me is still sound.
For quick offline reference, you can purchase Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog as an ebook on Smashwords.com or Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com or a whole lot of other places that Smashwords is suppose to distribute the book to. Almost 100,000 words on LI, allergies, milk products, milk-free products, and the genetics of intolerance, along with large helpings of the weirdness that is the Net.
I suffer the universal malady of spam and adbots, so I moderate comments here. That may mean you'll see a long lag before I remember to check the site and approve them. Despite the gap, you'll always get your say. I read every single one, and every legitimate one gets posted.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Three of the meals are of special interest to dairy-free families as true alternatives to normally dairy-laden products.
Mac & No Cheese - WF/GF Recipe
Kids with food allergies can now enjoy another American classic - macaroni and cheese! Ian’s combined brown rice pasta with a rich ’no cheese’ sauce to create a delicious macaroni and cheese dish made without wheat, gluten, milk, casein, eggs, nuts or soy.
Ian’s French Bread Pizza is a great-tasting meal for anyone with allergies! Don’t limit yourself to homemade pizza; enjoy the taste of thick, hearty wheat and gluten-free French bread with a zesty Italian sauce, plus nutritious dairy and casein-free mozzarella cheese. French Bread Pizza is made without wheat, gluten, milk, casein, nuts or eggs. Contains soy.
About Me
I'm lactose intolerant. I wrote the book on the subject. Literally. Milk Is Not for Every Body: Living with Lactose Intolerance is its name.
I've researched everything on the subject of lactose intolerance for 30 years. I know just about everything about living without dairy products. That means I've been able to help people with dairy protein allergies, vegans, those who want to keep kosher, and others who want to reduce, limit, or eliminate dairy from the diet.
I keep an eye out for information that might be useful. You can see a lot of it at my website, Steve Carper's Lactose Intolerance Clearinghouse (www.stevecarper.com/li). The Milk Free Bookstore and the Product Clearinghouse sections have something for everybody. But the site got too big to update regularly and too cluttered to find information easily.
That's why I started this blog. It really does cover the planet for lactose- and dairy-related items. I think I have the only blog in the world that does this.
So please check it out regularly. Send me items you think may be of interest. Ask me questions: I answer every one, either here or by email. [email protected] | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Blogging Basics: 3 Productivity Boosting Approaches and Tools
Earlier in this blog post series, we talked about how each social network is just a little bit different and our approach to each one should be carefully crafted. At the time, I cautioned against simply using social media integration tools to broadcast the same thing across your social networks. I stand by that advice wholeheartedly, but there are still plenty of useful tools you can use to streamline your social networking process.
Here are 3 types of tools that are worth checking out:
#1 Integrating and Managing Your Streams: Hootsuite.com
By connecting your accounts, you can view all your social networking streams in one places, instead of logging into each site individually. It also allows you to schedule posts to publish at specific times that you choose.
Hootsuite provides some analytics, but many of the features are available with a Pro account and can get quite expensive. Depending on how much you use Hootsuite, this may or may not be worth it. A Pro account is also useful if you have more than 5 profiles to manage and/or you have a number of members on your social networking team.
Other similar tools in the marketplace include SproutSocial.com, Tweetdeck.com
#2 Getting Your Analytics: Twentyfeet.com
TwentyFeet provides you with a dashboard of social networking analytics for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more. It also can bring in your analytics for bit.ly, if you happen to use that as a link shortening service. They actually call it an “egotracking service,” but it’s more meaningful than something like Klout, which reduces social networking into a popularity contest.
The site allows you to compare the analytics from various sites to see where you might increase or adjust your efforts. The service also notifies you whenever something noteworthy happens in your accounts.
A basic account with one Facebook account (not Page) and one Twitter account are free. There are monthly fees if you want to add anything from there, but the cost of analytics is more affordable than provided with Hootsuite.com.
If you’re looking for something more in-depth, but more expensive, you can look at a service like Trackur.com. Or if you’d like to track where people are talking about you and your brand, do a free search at SocialMention.com. At this site, they’ll give you an idea of the sentiment in the mentions
#3 Timing Your Posts: TweetWhen.com and Tweriod.com
There’s something to be said about finding the optimal time to participate in social networking. After all, you want to ensure you reach the biggest percentage of your targeted audience as possible, right? While, there are plenty of studies out there to help you find the optimal time, it always depends on your own unique audience, so you have to analyze things yourself.
A couple of tools that might help you include TweetWhen and Tweriod.
TweetWhen analyzes your audience for you and gives you an optimal time to tweet, based on when you are most likely to get the best response. Because you don’t have to log into your account to use this service, you can also use it to gain intelligence on the best times for other Twitter users like your competition and other likeminded tweeters. However, it’s important to realize that TweetWhen’s data is based on when you’re actually tweeting, so if you tweet more at certain dates and times, these are more likely to be favored in the results.
Tweriod is a service that looks at the activity of your followers to determine your best time to tweet. The logic is, you should be more active when they’re active. Taking the data from TweetWhen and Tweroid together can help you figure out ways to adjust your participation in Twitter for best results.
Technology is out there to help us and you can certainly use it to your advantage to make it easier and more efficient to participate in social media…without looking like some kind of bot that is just auto-broadcasting everything. Find the right tools for you and it will be much easier for you to manage your social media participation.
Stayed tuned next week as I bring you more Social Media tips and trick to grow your blog as a business! ~Greg Watson
About Kelli Miller
My husband (Ricky) of 20 years, our three wild and wonderfully different boys, five totally spoiled little dogs, a plethora of wild cats, and I live at Miller Manor! It is a 100 year old Colonial Style Farmhouse that is surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland, in a small town on the coast of Southern Alabama.
Comments
Kelli you are so inspiring to watch. I found myself totally in awe of all the things that you mention in your videos that you have on the go. Thank you so much for providing this information to those of us that are just starting out in blogging. You inspired me to work towards getting a Youtube video together (one of those magic days when hair and makeup align). Keep up the great work! You are listed on my blog as one of my daily inspirations and you truly are! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Dr. Alvarez noted that natural gas, which is increasingly available due to a boom in domestic shale gas production, has several potential environmental and economic advantages over coal and oil. However, he also emphasized that these benefits will only fully materialize if natural gas production and distribution is done correctly. He described this qualification as a “big if.”
Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions Throughout the Supply Chain
Many people believe that natural gas can be a gateway fuel to catalyze the United States’ movement away from carbon-intensive fuels and toward a cleaner energy economy because natural gas-fired power plants emit only half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour of electricity as do coal fired ones.
Dr. Alvarez confirmed this potential benefit but stressed that CO2 emissions from electricity generation are only part of the story. In fact, natural gas production can also contribute to (worsen) climate change through greenhouse gas emissions that occur during earlier stages of the supply chain.
To fully understand the climate tradeoffs between different fuels, their associated greenhouse gas emissions must be accounted for at each stage of the fuels’ lifecycles, from production to use.
Accounting for Methane Leakage
Natural gas’ climate impacts are not limited to the CO2 emitted during combustion. Rather, natural gas also contributes to climate change if the gas (methane), itself a potent greenhouse gas, escapes or “leaks” to the atmosphere during earlier stages of the supply chain.
In comparing natural gas to coal or oil, it is essential to keep in mind the amounts and different warming properties of both CO2 and methane. Because CO2 and methane persist in the atmosphere on different timescales and contribute different levels of warming, the total emissions of both greenhouse gases from different fossil fuels and the properties of the gases themselves must be accounted for and compared.
Building a More Nuanced Accounting Model for Emissions
Prior studies have used Global Warming Potential (GWP) to compare the relative warming effects of different greenhouse gases and fossil fuels, but Dr. Alvarez argued that GWP can be misleading.
Specifically, because GWP looks at warming effects at only a single point in time (e.g., 100 or 200 years after emissions), it obscures the dynamics of emissions of different greenhouse gases, which, due to their specific lifecycles, create warming impacts on different timescales. For example, over a 100-year period, methane has 25 times the global warming impact of CO2 but if you consider a 20-year period instead, methane’s impacts are 72 times worse. These differences are due to the fact that an individual molecule of methane causes more warming than CO2 in the short-term, but methane also remains in the atmosphere for a comparatively short duration of only 12 years. CO2, on the other hand, causes less warming per molecule, but remains in the atmosphere much longer so its warming effects are more persistent.
To address this limitation, Dr. Alvarez and his colleagues have generated an alternative metric, which they dub Technology Warming Potential (TWP). TWP compares different fuels’ overall contributions to climate change across all greenhouse gases and timeframes. The figure below, taken from Dr. Alvarez’s study, shows the TWP for natural gas relative to three different fuel sources and uses.
The horizontal line on each graph (TWP = 1.0) represents the point at which natural gas has the same climate change impact as the alternative (conventional) fuel source. Points below this line signify that the climate impact of natural gas is less than that of the fuel to which it is being compared; points above signify higher climate impacts. For example, graph C shows that a natural gas power plant has roughly half the global warming impact of a coal power plant over a 200-year time horizon, but at time zero, natural gas’ climate benefits are lower—only 20 percent better than coal due to methane leakage.
Methane Leakage and Uncertainty in Leakage Rates
While the relative CO2 emissions of different fossil fuels are well known, a key unknown in the fuel comparisons is the rate of methane leakage from natural gas wells. Graphs A and B in the figure above assume that the rate of methane leakage from the natural gas supply chain is 3.0 percent of the total gas produced. Graph C assumes that this rate is 2.1 percent (the difference is based on varying assumptions about supply chains). The actual leakage rates are unknown, yet assumptions about natural gas’ benefits rely heavily on these leakage rates. For example, natural gas use in cars would provide climate benefits after 25 years instead of the 80 years shown in graph A if methane leakage were reduced from 3.0 to 2.0 percent. At 1.6 percent or less, natural gas would always have net climate benefits over gasoline.
The methane leakage rate is critical. As shown in the figure below (also from Dr. Alvarez’s study), when methane leakage rates, as represented on the y-axis, are lower, it takes less time to achieve net climate benefits from natural gas. The points at which the curves intersect the y-axis are the leakage thresholds below which natural gas has climate benefits over the conventional fuels for any time scale considered.
Dr. Alvarez emphasized that the threshold levels are not the only important points to consider. If, for example, the leakage rate of methane was found to be 4.0 percent, natural gas power plants would initially be worse for the climate than coal, but they would not be worse forever. In this scenario, beginning around 25 years after the conversion from coal-fired power plants to natural gas-fired ones—and continuing on into the future—there would be net climate benefits from having moved away from coal.
Summing Up
If natural gas is to replace other fossil fuels, then it is critical not only to understand the relative climate impacts of CO2 and methane, but also to find ways to minimize methane leakage in the natural gas supply chain. Dr. Alvarez concluded his presentation by mentioning that EDF is currently working with several companies in the natural gas industry to better measure and reduce the level of uncertainty about methane leakage at every stage of the natural gas production process. During the question and answer session, he mentioned that “green completions” of hydraulically-fractured shale gas wells could be a cost-effective strategy for reducing methane leakage. Green completions represent one key step in resolving the “big if” of whether natural gas production and distribution are being carried out correctly so that the theoretical climate benefits of natural gas can be realized in reality and when considered on any timeframe.
Dr. Alvarez’s powerpoint presentation is available for download here, and the webinar recording is available for viewing here: | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Get A Payday Loan in Fort Myers Beach, Florida
Fort Myers Beach Get A Payday Loan
Click on the green button on the top right of the website to access the #1 resource list of private money lenders for real estate, get a payday loan in Florida.
You
[back to top] You can download your credit card information into Quicken or Quickbooks.
Payday cash loans since you can use cash to pay for anything, a solid emergency fund is the best insurance of all.
Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities.
At least the get my license part, Its kind of a no brainer to be the Real estate guy in your friends group too btw, get a payday loan in Fort Myers Beach.
These links will bring you to the company's secure website so that you can apply for a loan and get additional information on their services.
Besides, there may be few people who can lend you money right this very moment.
See the Loan Cost & Terms page for more details.
Get A Payday Loan
In those types of circumstances, the home owns you, get a payday loan in 33931
Please if anyone can tell me something better I will appreciated.
Because emergency loans are often used by people in financial distress, they can have high interest rates.
investors to fund a
Golden is also concerned about the fees on area residents the permits would entail.
Fortunately, companies like Cedar Ed have no-obligation processes meant to help you explore your options with some of the best banks and lenders, get a payday loan.
After ProPublica contacted AmeriCash about the borrowers case, it decided to tell the court that her debt was now satisfied.
The guild 2 loan money as discussed in Market Concerns—Longer-Term Loans, the Bureau has seen evidence that covered longer-term loans with balloon payments have higher default rates than similar loans without balloon payments and that borrowers appear to refinance these loans, or reborrow shortly after the time the balloon is due, in order to cover the balloon payment.
Testimonials
This position is not pretty large, but practical. The top check-cashing nbsp;the outlines, & position ever are unbelievably lengthy nevertheless the customer service will probably be worth the wait. Their finest tries to move the range efficiently and quickly. Alisa. You've the person that is wrong. I walked inside had built a call rather than. However, I'm glad for the information. If I might eliminate my opinion I would. I want the top foryou. Firstrate income-tax and notary services around! Family operated and owned.Zeta Beg14 July 2015
Wonderful customer service and was observed rapidly. The teller called Rosario (today the manger) has superb customer service skills, patient, and courteous. I'll certainly comeback in the future. Freindly, staff that is effective! Michael & they were very attentive, plus Ana were great-they helped me out swiftly. For any aid financially they should be checked by you out, they will do their finest that will help you inside your scenario! I like this carwash and it is frequented by me pretty much every week. The guys who operate listed here are wonderful - and yeah, exactly what does which have regarding anything, although they check out be quickly over fifty?Taria Long Iv09 February 2016
I'd highly recommend visiting. Came below to offer silver jewelry and some undesirable gold. Had such an incredible encounter! This shop has an excellent choice of gorgeous diamond rings at affordable rates. Also, in the event you acquire rare coins or historical files like characters, this is your goto area. Undoubtedly coming-back! He was likewise incredibly straightforward and straight-forward although Eileen wasn't simply unbelievably valuable. Below although I will often have my guard up in these types of companies it had been nothing but straight-forward dialogue, fair-pricing and fantastic customerservice.Rey Stansel09 May 2016 | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Close the toilet lid in Japan! - movie -
Before you watch this movie, it is easier to understand if you know that most Japanese modern toilet seats are heated up with electricity in winter.
Message in this movie
Let's close the toilet lid so that we can stop producing CO2. Let's start something that we can do for the enviroment, then we can stop the global warming. In the snow seasons, close the toilet lid to save our planet. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Listen to Mark Hamilton and you will find…
If you are looking for answers on whatever you need in your life? Now you have found it through Mark Hamilton and Neothink. He’ll lead you the new dimension that you will have the full capacity for accurately understand reality. Expand your curiosity and listen to Mark Hamilton and you will find what you’re looking for.
Al | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Selective inhibitors of human pancreatic α-amylase (HPA) are an effective means of controlling blood sugar levels in the management of diabetes. A high-throughput screen of marine natural product extracts led to the identification of a potent (Ki = 10 pM) peptidic HPA inhibitor, helianthamide, from the Caribbean sea anemone Stichodactyla helianthus. Active helianthamide was produced in Escherichia coli via secretion as a barnase fusion protein. X-ray crystallographic analysis of the complex of helianthamide with porcine pancreatic α-amylase revealed that helianthamide adopts a β-defensin fold and binds into and across the amylase active site, utilizing a contiguous YIYH inhibitory motif. Helianthamide represents the first of a novel class of glycosidase inhibitors and provides an unusual example of functional malleability of the β-defensin fold, which is rarely seen outside of its traditional role in antimicrobial peptides. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Tobacco sales suspended in Zimbabwe
Sales at two of Zimbabwe's three tobacco auction floors were suspended amid near-chaos when small-scale tobacco growers protested angrily at the prices offered by buyers. The small-scale growers were infuriated by what they saw as unrealistically low prices, though in US dollar terms the prices were little different from those on the opening day of the sales in the two previous years. At the largest of the three floors, where the volume of leaf sold was tiny, the price averaged 167 US cents a kilogramme, down 3.5 per cent from 173 cents last year. Sales were halted after small-scale growers protested at the prices paid and large-scale farmers tore up their tickets, designating rejection of the sale.
The problem is not the prices but the exchange rate. In 2001, the tobacco market was distorted by the yawning gap between the official exchange rate of Z$55 to the US dollar and the parallel market rate, which rose above Z$325 to the US unit during the tobacco sales season. This meant that buyers could source foreign exchange at the official rate and buy tobacco on the floors at prices well above those ruling in world tobacco markets. As a result the average floor price almost doubled last year from 169 US cents a kg in 2000 to 318 cents. But the actual export price averaged only 175 cents, so the apparent surge in prices was the result not of better tobacco or increased demand but currency manipulation. In a move to stamp out this practice, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has imposed new strict rules, so that all purchases are made in foreign currency.
Growers warned the government that even assuming prices rose to an average 200 cents in 2002, at the official exchange rate, the local currency price of Z$110 would be about half the cost of production. This grim reality on Tuesday dawned on the small-scale growers, who initially blamed foreign buyers and their agents but turned on the government after auction officials had explained the economics of the crisis. Some demanded the cancellation of the sales until Simba Makoni, finance minister, agreed to devalue the official exchange rate. Government spokesmen have repeatedly ruled this out, leaving Makoni to choose between a special, "devalued" exchange rate for tobacco (as is the practice for gold exports), or widening the country's exchange controls to stamp out the parallel market altogether. This latter strategy, while popular with government hardliners, would be self-defeating since it would undermine other export sectors that are still able to exploit the parallel market.
The stand-off between growers and the government is likely to be resolved by a devalued rate for tobacco exports. This, however, is unlikely to revive an industry that looks to be heading for a precipitous decline in 2003. Most commercial tobacco farmers have had their properties listed for compulsory acquisition by the state. By the end of last month, 85 per cent of Zimbabwe's 6000 commercial farms were listed, covering some 10.2m hectares (93 per cent) out of a total of just over 11m hectares. This suggests that if the government takes the vast majority of commercial farms, there will be a very small tobacco crop in 2003. This season's crop is estimated at 168m kg, 17 per cent down on last year and almost 30 per cent smaller than in 2000. Tobacco is Zimbabwe's largest export, earning an estimated US$500m last year out of total exports of US$1.7bn. It is small wonder then that in Harare yesterday both growers and buyers were warning that the sale of 2002 could mark the end of the Zimbabwe tobacco industry "as we know it". (The Financial Times) | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Ever since Nintendo launched the Wii, it’s brought a version of its Virtual Console service to all of its handhelds and living room consoles. The titles available for each platform have varied with the system and the region in which you live, but broadly speaking, the VC has been used to round up titles from classic Nintendo systems including the NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBC, GBA, N64, GameCube, Genesis, MegaDrive, TurboGrafx-16, and Neo Geo. Games brought to the Virtual Console service were supposed to be as identical to their original versions as it was possible to be. While there are some issues with slowdowns or glitches in specific titles, Nintendo has hewed fairly close to this goal. But the Switch isn’t going to get a VC library — Nintendo is rolling that capability over to its Switch Online Service, instead.
“There are currently no plans to bring classic games together under the Virtual Console banner as has been done on other Nintendo systems,” a Nintendo spokesperson told Kotaku. It’s fair to note that the VC service, while providing some limited features for certain titles, like save states, always was a bit of a slapdash affair. It’s not at all clear, for example, why a title like Final Fantasy III / VI (in North America) would be available only for the Wii, but not on its successors, the Wii U or 3DS. Similarly, the living room consoles never saw the same GB, GBC, and GBA titles that were released for the 3DS on their virtual console.
Nintendo Switch
Some companies have already brought classic game ports to Switch, and this work will continue, but there’s no plan to launch a unified Virtual Console service like what Nintendo has debuted for its other consoles. Instead, the company will launch a Switch Online Service for $19.99 a year, $7.99 for 3 months, or $3.99 per month. The new service will include the ability to save games in the cloud — a capability that Switch owners have been clamoring for since the Switch launched last March. You’ll also have the option to pay $34.99 per year instead of $19.99, but then back up the saved games from eight devices to the cloud under a single family account rather than paying on a per-device basis. And assuming the library of available games grows like older VC libraries, you’ll get access to a wide range of titles over time without having to buy them again on every device. We generally prefer ownership over eternal renting at ExtremeTech, but with prices as low as $20 per year, it’s hard to argue that the overall cost is a burden.
Nintendo has announced that there’s a library of 20 classic games that’ll be available to Switch Online Service subscribers when the service launches in September, including Balloon Fight, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros. 3, Donkey Kong, Ice Climber, The Legend of Zelda, Mario Bros., Soccer, Super Mario Bros., and Tennis. The Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app will apparently still be used to “enhance the online experience for compatible games through voice chat and other features,” and an unspecified list of Special Offers will be made available to members as well. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
i have a missprint you know how dumbledore right hand was black well on the cover he was holding his right hadd up and it was fine a friend told me it would b worth some money day but ill never sell it bc i love all my hp books even though i only have 4,5,6,and 7
It's not a mistake. They had it like that so it wouldn't spoil the book. In chamber of secrets, hermy(Grawp) reads what a horcrux would do to you. If you read carefully then seeing that would say"Dumbledore got a horcrux attack!" | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Matt Taylor goes one on one with John Clayton from the Washington Post, ESPN's Field Yates, former Colt Joe Staysniak, and John Harris, the football analyst for the Houston Texans, from the NFL Scouting Combine. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Maine’s Gingrich trading in her bat for field hockey stick
Former University of Maine softball star Courtney Gingrich will return to the school and play field hockey this fall, coach Josette Babineau announced Thursday.
The Lititz, Pa. native, who played goalie for Warwick High School, recently wrapped up a solid four-year softball career.
The first baseman hit .234 this past season with five homers and 22 RBIs.
She led her high school field hockey team to a pair of Section and League championships, along with the Pennsylvania District III title as a freshman.
Story continues below advertisement.
“We are excited to have Courtney join the field hockey program,” said Babineau in a press release. “She will work hard this summer and in preseason to regain her field hockey skills and I feel she has the potential to do so. She will also bring a lot of team experience and her leadership skills will also be beneficial to our program.”
Maine will return Brittany Fleck, who was the Black Bears’ only goalie after Lizzie Anderson left the program during the season. Fleck was a freshman this past season.
Gingrich will back up Fleck but could see playing time depending upon on how quickly she progresses, said Babineau.
Husson heading to nationals
Husson University’s men’s golf team will depart Sunday for the NCAA Division III national tournament, which will be held May 13-16 at the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Luce, Fla.
Husson qualified for the tourney by winning the NAC championship this fall, with a two-day stroke total of 631. The Eagles won 10 consecutive tourneys in the fall before finishing second at the New England Intercollegiate Golf Association tournament.
Husson is making its third straight NCAA appearance. It finished 29th out of 35 teams last season.
Bangor’s Porter honored
University of Maine-Farmington outfielder Erin Porter was named to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District I third team.
The Bangor native achieved a 3.93 grade point average while majoring in elementary education. Nominees must be starters or key reserves on their teams and must obtain a 3.30 GPA.
Porter batted .327 for the Beavers this spring with four doubles and nine RBIs. She was also a three-year starter on UMF’s women’s basketball team. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
On the morning of Friday, June 26, my girlfriend coaxed me awake, smiling, eager for me to hear the decision from SCOTUS that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were declared unconstitutional. In our groggy relief, we held each other quietly, then got ready for the day.
It was hot — three-digits hot — and we were on our way to a friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner. Our phones buzzed with texts and updates. My ex-husband called, excitedly asking me if I heard the news.
It was a day of unadulterated positivity and a rainbow-ed Facebook.
My internal celebration was quiet but shot through with emotion, a feeling of reprieve and maybe some sense of closure. Retrospectively, my demure response to SCOTUS was a preemptive bracing for the forthcoming media shitstorm, which seemed inevitable.
The week following the decision proved to be a week of fear-mongering — bigotry meekly disguised as persecution of religious rights — as well as a week of a national media too attentive to politicians like Ted Cruz. Crying and angry, I said to my girlfriend: “We did win, right?”
Maybe I’m too sensitive. But maybe as a predetermined subject of a heated “issue” I am owed my sensitivities.
Humans — Americans especially — worship at the altar of certainty, the known thing. We are cultural and political cartographers, incredulous about all things until we feel we are inundated with sufficient data to progress. But when does our need for knowing become an inability to accept the strange (or stranger)?
I don’t mean to be fully damning: Our curiosities and longing for knowledge serve us again and again. But often we find ourselves in service to certitude.
When I arrived in Eugene four years ago, I left behind a conservative Midwest city nestled close to one of the Great Lakes. For me, replanting in Pacific Northwest soil allowed the opportunity to renovate and expand my understanding of self. Not because Oregon runs blue, and Eugene a deep blue, but because for centuries vagabonds, hopefuls and wanderlusts looked for fuller lives by descending into the Willamette Valley. Many Eugeneans are transplants, weirdos, rejects and misfits ad infinitum, looking not for assimilation so much as as the freedom to just be. Be: that conundrum of a word shirking away from definitives.
So amidst the saturating media coverage and political semantics, as well as the personal versus political, what’s actually next for LGBTQ equality?
I think the answer to that is less certain than we may desire. The answer includes a full embrace of otherness, within the queer community and out.
The only thing we can know fully is our experience of self (and even that is an interminable kind of knowing). Everything else hinges on trust. When your daughter tells you she’s gay, that it’s been painful to come out, fraught with doubt and confusion, you trust this, no? It’s not your experience, but you invite her in and trust her words as truth.
Of course you do. We all should. Her world is strange to you only because it’s not your own, which is never reason to estrange, and which calls for caution (i.e., thoughtfulness, intentionality) when seeking to better understand.
When asked to face the other (that is, those outside our class, race, sexual orientation, gender, etc.), we balk — not out of malice but discomfort. Change hurts. Newness hurts, its contractions conflicting with our instinct for stability.
We are a culture of identity, for good and ill, for progress but also segregation. The queer community finds itself at an odd, tense and charged crossroads. So much of our gain in equality stems from the power of identity. Identity explained, nuanced, solidified, made known. We should respect this and respectively move forward into a justice marked by embrace of the other without condition.
Lest I’ve made it seem the road forth is only theoretical and without tangibles, here are some suggestions for forward travels toward fuller LGBTQ equality: Let’s allocate our efforts on trans rights; let’s really, actually embrace fluidity in all its extrapolations; let’s examine our own language, especially when we call queerness an “issue.”
Finally, when in doubt, let’s always question our own privilege and its manifestations.
Critic and theorist Maggie Nelson argues that “it’s the binary of normative/transgressive that’s unsustainable, along with the demand that anyone live a life that’s all one thing.” I think she’s right. We (as in, Americans) have been setting up and reinforcing this dichotomy for too long.
I’m a gay woman but was once married to a man. Michael and I spent five years together, slowly and thoughtfully building a union. Then we reversed the direction, quietly loosening the seams of our home. Each pull, each act of removal was tender, honoring and full of ache.
We bought new pans together for his new apartment. We told our families. We unraveled.
I blamed myself for not knowing myself better. At 25, I thought, and felt it right, to marry Michael. At 25, I didn’t know I was gay. Even retrospectively, it’s hard to articulate where this knowledge about myself was located. Definitives were elusive.
But there was also hope in all the angst. Michael and I suspected we’d not only survive the grief, but would thrive in what would become the more honest, congruent narrative of our relationship. Paradoxically, it was the love Michael and I have for each other that eased us through divorce and supported me while I came out. It wasn’t absolutes or certainties; it was trust in the unknown thing, faith in love.
If humans long for stability, as we always will, then let us long for the kind of stability found not in environment, structure, institution or rule. But let us long for our certainty of love, to love in the face of pain and change. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Copyright 2008-2012 The Zaftig Redhead. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, February 17, 2012
A Republican/Libertarian friend told me this week that we progressives need to get back on message and talk about jobs and the economy. I told him that HIS troops are the ones that need to be back on that message. As for me, I'm quite happy to talk about birth control (and the insanity of the GOP's quest to take it away from women) from now until November. This shit is working for me and my peeps, thanks. And here's why --
Democracy Corps has just published an important polling memo that gets right to the heart of why the birth control battle could matter so much in this year’s elections.
The firm’s poll finds that one of the most important factors powering Obama’s gains against likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney has been the president’s improving numbers among unmarried women -- a critical part of the present and future Democratic coalition.
Among this group, Obama now leads Romney by 65-30 -- and there’s been a net, a whopping 18-point swing towards the President among them in the past month. Color me unsurprised.
After unmarried women dropped off for Dems in 2010 and were slow to return to the Dem fold in 2011, Obama is now approaching the 70 percent he won among them in 2008. If Dems play this right, it could encourage the perception that the GOP is backward-looking and lost in a social-issues wilderness, perhaps hastening the already widening gender gap that will be so crucial to the outcome this fall.
JUICY SUBSCRIPTIONS
IT'S TIME FOR A SQUEEZE PLAY!
The Zaftig Redhead -- political, opinionated, and redheaded -- a dangerous combination tailor made to speak truth to power. The problem with politics today is that it's become more about complex plans and partisan bickering than about the basics of kitchen table economics and overcoming the hurdles of everyday life. You don't have to learn the ins and outs of politics to participate in a meaningful way; instead it's time politicians learned about us -- We, the People. I've listed some of my favorite sources to give you even more of the juicy scoop, hoping that you'll put the squeeze on your elected officials and teach them a thing or two in the process. Just remember, you don't have to be an expert to have an opinion and speak your mind. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Description
This is a true one of a kind opportunity. Take control of your business destiny by investing in this prime location for your company. 2240 SF under air for office space, retail, storage, two bathrooms, and the massive fenced in yard, the possibility are endless. With Dearborn St and South McCall Rd improvements coming in June of 2020 you will want your business to be a part of that. Come check this property out.
School Ratings & Info
Description
This is a true one of a kind opportunity. Take control of your business destiny by investing in this prime location for your company. 2240 SF under air for office space, retail, storage, two bathrooms, and the massive fenced in yard, the possibility are endless. With Dearborn St and South McCall Rd improvements coming in June of 2020 you will want your business to be a part of that. Come check this property out.
280
S
Mccall Road
Englewood,
FL
34223
Price: $340,000
Status: Active
Updated: 31 min ago
MLS #: D6107153
0
Beds
0
Baths
0
½ Baths
0.5
Acres
2,240
SQFT
$152
$/SQFT
1953
Built
Neighborhood:
Palm Grove Resub
County:
Sarasota
Area:
Englewood
Property Description
This is a true one of a kind opportunity. Take control of your business destiny by investing in this prime location for your company. 2240 SF under air for office space, retail, storage, two bathrooms, and the massive fenced in yard, the possibility are endless. With Dearborn St and South McCall Rd improvements coming in June of 2020 you will want your business to be a part of that. Come check this property out. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
There are times when she is gentle, but there are also times when she is not gentle, when she is fierce and unrelenting toward him or them all, and she knows it is the strange spirit of her mother in her then.
– “Her Mother’s Mother” by Lydia Davis
Every oldest daughter of an oldest daughter is named Elizabeth. We are all Elizabeths, except one.
I pick her up, the one not named Elizabeth—my oldest—at her apartment in Mar Vista. She’s packed only one suitcase for the trip and when she sees me, asks if she should drive. I am crying again so I say OK.
We stop at the house in Van Nuys to pick up my mother. It’s near the wash and has been remodeled often, the courtyard bricked in, a fountain in the side wall, jasmine and rose bushes and stone steps leading to the back. Every room smells like cigarette smoke and when she comes out, my mother looks smaller, thinner, cheekbones severe, her green eyes dark. I let her take the front seat. It is, after all, her mother who has died.
I watch her closely. She plays with the radio station, one hand over her mouth. My daughter, thank God, has enough sense to put on a cd, to talk about trivial things, like the length of the flight, where we are staying in Binghamton.
On the plane, getting us seated is a hassle. My mother wants to sit by the window and she’s been assigned an aisle. For a moment I’m reminded of our childhood. Her bouts of depression, her anger, how she used to, as punishment for some slight—perhaps the dishes were not completely dry—ignore us for long periods of time. Mom, I would cry. Mom, Mom, Mom—please talk to me. But she would continue puffing on her cigarette, switching through television channels or reading some thick hardcover book. I was wind outside a window.
Being on hospice doesn’t mean I’ll be dying tomorrow, although I’ve hoped it would be that easy. If only I could take my last breath while sleeping—one last inhale, roll over and be gone, leaving only a deep stillness in my room. But, despite the suffering, I want more time to prepare my children on how to keep up the house, the yard, to nurture the staghorn ferns and entice the glossy white dendrobiums hanging from the patio trellis into blooming. Everything I’ve ever possessed seems to be closing in on me. I’ll need to loosen my grip on all of the precious things I’ve garnered during my seventy-one years. My garden beckons outside the bedroom window. The dogs bark and the cat hisses, but the mute plants can only signal for attention by denying their plumes. Surely, my children will remember me stumbling out with the hose every morning, but will they care about the tender fronds and buds unfolding to reveal the tiny miracles inside of their world?
My dog’s ashes are currently in a small silver gift box on my bookshelf. I loved my dog, but I hate that ugly box and its stupid tassel.
When my husband and I decided to cremate Bernie, we thought we would scatter his ashes along one of his favorite hiking trails, but doing so is illegal where we live. I hated the idea of us furtively dumping a baggy of remains in the always-crowded park. It didn’t feel like an appropriately jubilant celebration of his life.
I read an essay a few months ago by David Rakoff called “Another Shoe,” which details his second bout with cancer at 49. His first was lymphoma in his twenties, and now there is a tumor in his shoulder, probably caused by the radiation he had the first time around. This newest cancer threatens to cause the removal of his entire left arm, which, you can imagine, is a particularly daunting notion for a writer. (The best part of the essay comes when he practices what life would be like with one arm, literally tying one hand behind his back and trying to go about his day.) The biggest thing he takes away from the experience is extreme gratitude for not losing his arm, and this: the decision to live without letting the fear of death swallow him whole. He also accurately observes that we are all dealt a fair amount of crap in this life, and the best way to respond is to simply get back to the business of grocery shopping, getting our hair cut, paying our parking tickets, and loving the people we love—because life continues on, whether we are participating or not.
When I was obsessing about a dog, I was concerned about my son being a singleton. I wondered if perhaps being alone with parents wasn’t such a great thing, that he needed a buffer–someone with whom he could conspire, even if the conspiracies were fantastical and impotent. Someone playful, didn’t nag. Liked to chase small objects endlessly, joyfully, unlike me.
“It was here that I was dying,” appears on the first page of René Belletto’s novel Dying. And in the end this is really nothing more than a thesis statement for what is more meditation than novel. While reading Dying, I was often reminded of another work that seems to challenge genre conventions: Minotaur, by Israeli novelist Benjamin Tammuz. Dying mixes and matches its genre influences throughout. Though elements of adventure and spy narratives are prevalent, the foundation of the story is romance, much like Tammuz’ masterpiece. But instead of presenting a great novel of love and desire as Tammuz did, Belletto indulges more in philosophy. Dying reads less as a novel than a journal of fictional thoughts exploring a theme.
She’s in her wheelchair
when we first see her,
her frame too frail to support
a precipitous weight gain.
With her back to us,
she looks through a picture window,
unmoving as we enter,
our steps cautious, voices low.
It’s my boyfriend and I,
my dad and stepmother.
Our greetings rise in pitch
and my grandmother turns,
smiles: “Oh, well look at this.”
I hug her sloped shoulders,
place a kiss on her cool cheek;
others do their version.
We chat about the usual—
where we’re living these days,
folks we’ve seen, “those darn
Mariners, just can’t catch
a break.” I circle the dim room,
pausing to handle and remark
on the odds and ends
that line every available surface—
The sock monkey, Beanie Babies,
plastic Kewpie dolls; model cars
and a tiny 747, testament
to my grandmother’s Boeing days.
And the bulletin boards!
Old news clippings,
photos of first husband
and every child and grandchild,
Reno and Maui trips
with her last love, long dead.
“I don’t know how I wound up
with all this junk,” she says,
her bright eyes a giveaway
(she knows, loves it).
Then, with conversation steering
to a close, comes a story
Of a pregnant cat my grandmother
would watch for hours at a time
some days, sit at her window
and just watch this cat
as it slunk around the bushes
across the street. Until one day
last week when she stopped appearing—
poof, gone.
“I’m just sure she went into those
bushes to have her kittens,
see. And I’m worried about her,
because you know I just haven’t
seen her and I’m afraid some-
thing might have happened.
I tell you I’ve been at that window
every day just waiting for her.”
We say our goodbyes shortly after.
From the parking lot, I glance
up to find my grandmother back
at her window, waiting anxiously
for that cat of hers to reemerge
a mother, as she, Grandma,
is a mother, as she will always
be a mother, even in dying.
There aren’t words for the confusion I feel about stepping out on the internet stage again. After living at our father’s house for the summer while he slowly sailed out to sea, my brother and I are stumbling into daylight as if from battle: scarred and weary and dazed.
I was strolling down the street with my sister, tossing mini gummy bears into my laughing throat, when death paid me a brief visit. I was simultaneously strolling, laughing, talking, and swallowing, when a single mini gummy bear slid down my windpipe. No sooner had the little red bear made its confused dash for destiny than I coughed him right back up onto the pavement. I would say death flashed before my eyes that day, but in fact death is always before my eyes, like a retinal ghost at the corner of my vision. But in that instant, there unfolded a very specific picture of my death-by-gummy and all that would follow after.
I’m not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of dying in a way that guarantees I will be a laughingstock to all future descendents, possible literary biographers, and collectors of arcane death-related trivia.
I hope it won’t sound morbid to say I often picture what the world will be like after I am dead. A tasteful service, a few well-spoken eulogists in basic black throwing around words like “insightful” and “lovely,” and I gently depart this good life.
In time, while my bones lie quietly mouldering in a suitably picturesque cemetery (I would prefer London’s Abney Park Cemetery, if anyone is taking notes), some graduate student desperate for an original thesis topic will unearth a thin collection of my essays and stories, long out of print, and so earn himself a PhD from a small but well-respected East Coast liberal arts college. For a decade or two, my name will serve as an extremely obscure reference to be bandied about academic halls by pretentious undergraduates suffering from secret feelings of crippling inadequacy, and then again forgotten. I will have a Wikipedia entry, but only a stub.
Or why not think bigger? Perhaps a few of my more quotable musings, torn from chronology and context, will find their way into a brightly bound gift book, where they will join crafters of epigrams like Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde on the Barnes and Noble impulse purchase rack right by the cash register. Precocious and unattractive teens will aspire to emulate me, like that one month in high school when I dressed like Fran Lebowitz every day. There will be an automatic Summer Block quote generator on the internet but it won’t work that well.
Contrast then the death that appeared before me that day with my sister, my unruly epiglottis, and that fateful confection: I die from choking on a gummy bear. Instantly, the world forgets every single thing I have ever accomplished in my life up to that moment.
When you die by choking on a gummy bear, you are forever enshrined in memory as a clumsy, gluttonous, and luckless oaf. No matter that you graduated at the top of your medical school class, that you donated money to orphans, that you produced a delightful little one-man show to mixed reviews. No matter that you were thin and fit, a dedicated drinker of vivacious green spirulina concoctions and a regular fixture at charitable 10K races about town, where your financial generosity was matched only by your otherworldly lung capacity. No matter that you had never tasted a gummy bear before in your entire life: you are now officially the swollen-bellied slob who was so ravenous and ill-coordinated that they died while shoving gummy bear after gummy bear into their flapping maw, just like they probably did every other day of their life before Fate finally caught up to them and gave them the shameful ending they deserved.
101 Hilarious Ways to Die may well outsell The Wit and Wisdom of Summer Block at Barnes and Noble come some future holiday season, but that’s not how I plan on being remembered.
One of Dad’s oldest and dearest friends Betsy was visiting from New York when my brother Chris, my husband and I went to Dad’s house to do some chores for him. Dad had been persistently prodding her to go through his library in the basement, thousands and thousands of art books, literature, mythology, to sift through them and take what she wanted. He’s been nagging all of us to do the same. It’s the housekeeping of dying.
What I discovered in my attempt to select books for this month’s column is that there are more books for me to read than I have time. So, I’ve decided this month’s focus would be about the “little press”. To me every independent press is a champion in its own right, but there were a couple presses in particular that stood out for me this month. While these two selections are only two among many worthy titles, I really felt like these were outstanding. I like books of all shapes, sizes, styles and (okay, sorry non-fiction, you . . . not so much) I try to be as well rounded as possible however; I do tend towards shorter books when in a pinch for time. I’ve come to learn though, shorter books are equal if not more time consuming than a novel or short-story because they are replete with thought-provoking sentences, images and often, complex paragraphs of poetry. A shorter text requires a bit more commitment from my brain. I cannot flip the pages as easily, partially because I want so much to savor the words and sentences, so I read slowly (that and I seem to have horrible reading comprehension or ADHD) and thus, a fifty page book takes me almost as long as if it were two hundred and fifty. What does all this mean? Quite simply put: Good writing is good writing regardless of length.
Jeremiah balanced himself against the doorframe, his head loose on his neck, swinging from side to side like a pendulum. He motioned for me with his hand. I staggered his way inadvertently colliding with him at the front door.
Gary approached, intervening. He bucked for us to stay put, to crash at his place for the night citing how much alcohol the two of us had consumed over the preceding six hours.
“There’s more than enough room,” he said.
“I’m fine,” Jeremiah replied, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. “I’ve only had two beers.”
“And how many shots, how much wine?” Gary rejoined, “You smell like a damn orchard.”
“Do you mean vineyard?” Jeremiah countered with a wry smile. It was the same smile he gave when he was kicking your ass in Madden. It was the oh-how-do-you-like-that-shit? smile.
Jeremiah reeked of booze. Fumes of beer, liquor, and wine mixed with the nicotine from his breath produced a yeasty, acerbic combination. The inherent problem in Jeremiah taking to the wheel intoxicated—other than the obvious: he was intoxicated—was not so much the absorption of beer and liquor into his veins. The problem was the wine. Jeremiah simply could not handle wine. Never could. It made him off-kilter, a bit askew in his perception of reality and his ability to function in said reality. It was sort of a running joke within our circle that Jeremiah left zigzagging from Sunday services after communion was given just from the sheer tart quality of the grape juice on his palette.
I was a cheap drunk and hence stuck with my preferred Friday night beverage of choice, Hurricane. Hurricane is a malt liquor with 8.10% ABV and part of the Anheuser-Busch family of beers. BeerAdvocate.com gives Hurricane a resounding grade of D+ with a further comment for beer drinkers the world over to “avoid.”
I find this rating a bit unfair, particularly from the perspective of a teenager in the 1990’s with limited income save for the greenbacks earned by way of cutting grass in the summer time and chopping wood in winter.
Extremely potent compared to popular American lagers: Once again, drink less, get drunk quicker. I didn’t drink for the taste. Not to mention, easily the biggest con of Hurricane was that, like OE800, it smells like bottled and capped skunk piss. Pop it open, turn it up, don’t think twice, it’s alright.
Never lifted at parties: The fact of the matter is people do not see a black, orange, and green case of Hurricane in the refrigerator and rogue one. They think, “Who in God’s name brought that?” move the case to the side so as to retrieve a can from someone else’s stash thus leaving my alcohol to keep cold and ready when the time was right to crack open another.
The latter was ultimately the deciding factor from my teenage perspective. Hurricane, Black Label, and King Cobra were my Big Three in those days. The lineup rotated as to which one I drank on a designated weekend. Unlike most, if not all of my friends, I never found myself in one of those “where the fuck is my beer?” moments at parties. My beer was always on the bottom shelf, untouched, except by me.
The only time anyone ever even touched one of my malts was when Brandon Shepherd grabbed one, held it up to his mouth like a microphone, and began singing, “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions. Then, in the same motion, he passed out on the couch.
On days when the income was feeling a bit expendable and I was feeling grandiose and luxurious, I would step my game up and purchase a Mickey’s but those days were rare and few and far between. Not to mention, I loathed Natural Light for its redneck-specific designation on the drinking scene and avoided it at all costs, buying malt liquor instead. But I digress.
Other than Hurricane and a single can of Budweiser—whose slogan I unremittingly recited throughout the course of the night much to the protest of my cousin Gary—I downed a single mixed drink Gary had concocted.
Bleeding Liver
100 mL Vodka
15 oz. Fruit Punch Gatorade
Mix together. Shake very well. Add ice. Serve.
Character Profile
Gary was my first cousin (standing in the middle in the picture to your left. That’s me on the right. My cousin Robbie on the left) and Jeremiah’s fellow classmate at Randolph-Henry High School in Charlotte Court House, Virginia—Graduating class: 1997.
As a young child, the third Hyde of the family, Garland Hyde Hamlett III, to be exact, had this intense fascination with WWF and WCW action figures and collectibles. Each year when Christmas rolled around and Santa Claus slid his morbidly obese, cherry red ass down the clay brick chimney, he would place under Gary’s Christmas tree some new wrestling action figurine.
By the time my aunt Julie, uncle Butch, and cousin Tiffany arrived at our home in Phenix for breakfast on Christmas morning, Gary was itching like a dog with mange to pull out his plastic men and toss them into the roped ring he had been given the prior Christmas. In turn, the Steiner Brothers—Rick and Scott—would gang up on an aging yet still shirtless Rick Flair or involve themselves in an illusory confrontation with the tag team duo of the Road Warriors.
This background is important for at times this imaginary play world of wrestling was implemented in the real world and my skinny self doomed from the start no matter how much milk I drank or Spinach I ate. (Yes, I arduously bought into the Popeye philosophy that a helping of spinacia oleracea would sprout Sherman tanks on my biceps and in turn help me bring down my own real life Bluto, Gary.)
Gary was my elder by two years, might as well have been ten, and was much bigger than I was then and still so even today. He does not recall putting me through the torture I am about to describe to you the reader. When you are on the giving end (as Gary was), I imagine it is but a faint memory pushed to the back of your mind with no resounding quality—just an ordinary day in an ordinary week. On the receiving end (as I was), however, it becomes burnt into one’s memory as if a fiery orange cigarette cherry snubbed out on the backside of one’s hand.
When I visited my Granny and Papa Hamlett in Drakes Branch, Gary, as sneaky and vengeful as ever, somehow found a constant lure and always managed to trap me in our grandpa’s bedroom. My cries for help were quickly silenced by the threat of pain I was soon to endure being even more painful if I called out for aid. He was also pompous to the fact that unlike other kids his age he already had underarm hair—and a jungle of it at that. As consequence, he jerked me immediately and without delay into a headlock and buried my pre-pubescent face in his armpits.
“Smell it,” he would cry out, squeezing my neck tighter as if to pop my head off like a grape. “Smell it!”
I refused to smell it.
He squeezed my neck tighter.
There was sweat on my nose and cheekbones from his pits. Thick white chunks of deodorant on my lips tasted bitter. Underarm hair tickled my nose.
“I want you to smell it. I want to hear you sniff,” he growled.
Then my nostrils would flare in and out.
* Sniff, sniff *
Enduring these moments of agony, I knew that nothing could be done but appeal to the Lord above for strength in a prayer that one day all those gallons of milk I had poured into my belly since weaning from the teat would jumpstart a growth spurt in my body and all that spinach I consumed would swell my biceps like it had done Popeye before he liberated Olive Oil from the masculine and obstinate grips of Bluto’s hands.
Then I would have my revenge.
Unfortunately, this petition to the Big Man in the Sky has yet to be answered and unless I dial up BALCO or Mark McGwire and get my hands on some Human Growth Hormone, my thirst for retribution may never be quenched.
Or will it?
In a metonymic adage originating in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 play, Richelieu, Cardinal Richelieu says and I quote, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
And so with this axiom clearly portraying wit over might, the power of the written word over the physical headlock, I will thus write with my pen a very significant and hopefully embarrassing little known fact about my Blutonian cousin Gary’s musical tastes.
Gary owned and purposely bought and listened to albums by Shaq Diesel, also known as Shaquille O’Neal, The Big Aristotle, and/or Shaq Fu. If my memory serves me correctly, his favorite song was “(I Know I Got) Skillz.”
Quiz him on this.
From the actual song, begin rapping these lyrics:
Yo Jef, why don’t you give me a hoopa beat or something,
Something I can go to the park to.
Yeah, there you go, alright, I like that, I like that,
It sound dope.
Just give him a minute for the full effect to take hold, to possess his body. Then like an uncontrollable instinct or an Episcopalian speaking in tongues, Gary will begin tapping his right foot and spitting the rhyme with prepositions incorrectly ending the sentence and all:
Knick-knack Shaq-attack, give a dog a bone,
Rhymin is like hoopin’, I’m already a legend,
Back in the days in the Fush-camp section,
Used to kick rhymes like baby, baby, baby,
Every once, every twice, three times a lady,
Is what I listened to, riding with my moms,
How you like me now? I drop bombs,
When you see me, please tap my hands,
I know I got skills man, I know I got skills man…
If that does not work, if he refuses to acknowledge this reality in regards to his music selection, simply ask to see his record collection. Inside a dusty cardboard box, you are sure to find a copy of Shaq Diesel’s debut album, and to top it off, nearly every cassette ever put out by the Fat Boys. True, there is nothing really to laugh about here. The Fat Boys had rhymes so sweet they would knock anyone into a diabetic coma.
Back in the day, I liked the Fat Boys too, used to beat box with my mouth at Gary’s on Saturday mornings while my uncle Butch sucked down a raw egg for breakfast. The two of us would venture out underneath the attached garage and toss lyrical heat into the fire. I would morph into Kool Rock Ski and him into Prince Markie D:
(Prince Markie D): $3.99 for all you can eat?
Well, I’m-a stuff my face to a funky beat!(Kool Rock Ski): We’re gonna walk inside, and guess what’s up:
Put some food in my plate and some Coke in my cup(Prince Markie D): Give me some chicken, franks, and fries
And you can pass me a lettuce. I’m-a pass it by.
And then Gary would pause for a moment, do the Robot, position his feet on his Max Headroom skateboard, pop an Ollie, and run his fingers through his hair like a 1988 James Dean. Peanut would call from the neighboring yard, “Yes, t-t-t-t-tune into Network 23! The network is a *real* mind-blower!”
Or at least this is how I like to remember the past.
And that was Gary.
Now he stood before Jeremiah and me, interrogating the man with the keys in his hand. Jeremiah opened the screen door, flicked his cigarette, and reached into his oh so smooth black leather jacket to retrieve a fresh smoke.
“Just a glass or two,” Jeremiah said of how much wine he’d had.
Gary hmphed. “More than that.”
“I’m fine man. I’ll drive slow. We’ll hit the back roads to be on the safe side. I pay more attention after I’ve had a few in me anyway.”
“Well if you don’t think you can drive, feel free to turn back around. Like I said, you can crash here for the night. It’s fine by me. Plenty of blankets and places to sleep.”
“Let me take one last leak before we hit the road,” I said to Jeremiah, knowing he would appreciate my common decency. I tend to urinate frequently, a result of what I suppose relates back to my recurrent bouts with kidney stones as a child. Jeremiah knew this.
Once on a short road trip the two of us took, Jeremiah was forced to stop every twenty minutes in order for me to empty my beans. I marked my territory more than a stray dog that evening.
Behind dumpsters.
On trees.
At a laundry mat.
In a 32-ounce Gatorade bottle.
In a 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottle.
Years later, I would earn the nickname “PP” by Jay Taylor, a co-worker of mine in construction. We used to carpool together. He drove. I sat in the passenger seat and read Noam Chomsky books.
In the late 1980’s/early 90’s, Jay used to play drums in a heavy metal band named Uncle Screwtape and had long, stringy hair down to his ass and was skinny as a toothpick. In promotional photos of the band, Jay wears black leather pants secured tightly by white laces running up the leg. Presently, he sports a reluctant comb-over and carries a few doughnuts in the mid-section.
Uncle Screwtape opened for Ugly Kid Joe in Texas back when Ugly Kid Joe was cool which took place during a window between June and November of 1992. They were on their America’s Least Wanted tour. The bass player for Uncle Screwtape named the band. As Uncle Screwtape’s star was on the rise, the bass player quit to enroll in college. He wanted to be an English teacher. Uncle Screwtape is a reference to a C.S. Lewis novel in which the demon uncle, Screwtape, writes a series of letters to his nephew in efforts to convince his nephew to help bring damnation to a man known as “The Patient.”
Jay used to get annoyed by how much I made him stop so that I could take a leak. We stopped at nearly every store we came upon on our way home from Buggs Island to Phenix.
I hated using a store’s bathroom without buying anything. I felt it was rude so I made a point to always buy an item. I loved Peppermint Patties so I bought one at each of my stops. I didn’t think anything of it, the abbreviation and all. The irony. Jay picked up on it.
“I hope the gods curse you with kidney stones one day so you’ll see what it feels like. Or an enlarged prostate.”
They never did. But they did curse him with the most awful foot fungus I have ever seen in my life during the summer of 2003. He had to change socks once every hour while at work. Doctor recommended. His feet looked gangrenous. Seriously. And they stunk like a rotting carcass.
It was cold that day and rainy, the evening Jeremiah and I were returning from our road trip down I-81.
“I’m not stopping again,” he said to me as I got back into the car. I had just pissed on a yellow brick wall at a laundry mat on the outskirts of Radford.
Twenty minutes later.
“Hey man, I know you said you weren’t stopping again but I really have to go. I might very well piss myself. I’ve been holding it for ten minutes now and my bladder is about to rupture. I’m pretty sure this isn’t healthy.”
“You’ve been holding it for ten minutes?” he questioned. “We just stopped ten minutes ago. Didn’t you piss?”
“I did. It was wonderful.”
“Then why do you have to go again?”
“I don’t know but I swear I do. I think it has something to do with the rain. Rain. Urine. Both are liquids. And your car idles rather fast. I think it is shaking my kidneys. I know Josh Holt had a similar problem once riding in my mom’s Corolla. It idled badly.”
“I’m not so sure about that. This may be genetic. My mom gets the dribbles.”
“The dribbles?”
“The dribbles. She can’t do jumping jacks.”
I walked down the narrow hallway and into Gary’s bathroom. A Playboy magazine lay open in a wicker basket to the left of the toilet. An exposed woman stared back at me. She was on all fours stark nude. The sheets were red. Satin sheets I suppose. Rose petals were strewn across the sheets. You know, the way most naked women wait for you.
On all fours.
Stark nude.
Ass in the air.
On red, satin sheets with roses strewn across.
“You are not getting laid tonight,” she reminded me. I thanked her for her kindness and honesty. I wondered what her dad thought. I thought about how I was a hypocrite for enjoying seeing her looking this way, naked, and how I’d never in a million years let my daughter shed clothes for money whenever I had a daughter one day.
I thought about how it wouldn’t be up to me to “let” her do anything. I would have to hope I raised her properly so that she wouldn’t strip nude for money. Then I thought about how I had paid someone to strip nude for money before. She was a friend of mine. She said she’d get naked for gas money. I had gas money.
I was 16. She was 20.
I thought about how I was thinking too much. I thought about how drinking a lot always made me think too much when I already thought too much as it was.
I focused my attention away from the girl in the magazine.
The tank lid was open, pushed off to the side. The ballcock and float were visible. The water was running and the sound sensitive to my ears. I jiggled the handle.
“Don’t be the phantom shitter,” Gary called from the front.
I pissed the most glorious piss I had ever pissed in my existence all the while my stomach flipped, sat upright, turned. Through the pangs, I determined my stomach was essentially eating itself.
Hunger had taken over and the Wu Tang album wasn’t helping the cause. The martial arts samples dubbed into the mix began to remind me of sweet & sour chicken and orange chicken and fried rice with little chunks of egg and…
When I entered back into the kitchen, I grabbed a slice of white bread in my fist and crammed it down my gullet in a matter of seconds. I proceeded to the front door.
Jeremiah turned the handle and we made our exit.
Curtains for the night.
We each walked out with a beer in our hands. Gary stood at the door shaking his head as we made our way down the front steps.
“This is the famous Budweiser beer—” I began.
“Jeez,” Gary interrupted, “Drive safe. And make that moron shut up.”
I opened the passenger’s side door of Jeremiah’s black Thunderbird and slid in. Jeremiah buckled his seatbelt, as did I.
“We are really going down the back roads, right?” I asked Jeremiah.
“Definitely. Not trying to roll into a road check this time of night. Lawson can. Kiss. My. Ass.”
“Country Road?”
“Country Road.”
“I’d say that’s a good call, our safest route.”
“And I would second that notion. You ready? Buckled up?”
“Yep. Ready to roll.”
I had ridden with Jeremiah numerous times when neither he nor I were sober so I trusted him behind the wheel. (Trusted him with my life you could say) The reasoning on my behalf had more to do with the fact that when you are wasted beyond belief anyone’s driving looks pretty good as long as you get to your destination in one piece. It was a youthful decision on both our accounts. Not very wise no matter how you slice it. “Young and dumb” isn’t a popular phrase without reason, and when you are that age, you believe yourself as well as your friends are invincible.
We knew no krypton, could not be taken down with an arrow in our Achilles heel. To boot, hardly anyone traveled down Country Road, particularly at this time of the night.
I pulled out my pack of Marlboros and lit one. Jeremiah followed, asking for a light. I lit it while he edged his way from Gary’s driveway. The outside light on Gary’s front porch turned off.
“And you’re sure you’re okay to drive?” I asked just to double-check.
I was beginning to wonder if this time maybe Jeremiah had had a little too much to drink. His body swayed as if he was without a spine or bones. Under the surface, a sense of worry had presented itself to me.
“Oh yeah, I’m good,” he answered matter-of-factly.
About a mile up the road, Jeremiah hit his left turn signal.
“We’re turning right,” I told him.
Jeremiah hit his right turn signal. “I knew that.”
Country Road was now in sight. The car inched its way closer to the turn. The two of us were laughing it up, babbling about what the night had done to us.
“I’ll tell you, that wine did a number on me this time,” Jeremiah said, his beady eyes glassy.
“That wine does a number on you every time. Did you drink one of those Bleeding Livers Gary mixed up? I think it sent me overboard into the deep. Not a good mix with Hurricane. I feel sick as shit.”
“Nah. Only some shots, some wine, and a few baa-rewskies. If I added anything else, I’d be spewing for sure and you’d be driving.”
“We wouldn’t be driving. We’d be sitting. I’m definitely not in the shape to drive.”
“True. I don’t see how you drink that malt liquor week in and week out. Shit.”
“Cheap buzz.”
Snoop Dogg interjected on the stereo, singing. Jeremiah turned up the volume and veered toward the turn.
The only problem with this was that we had not actually made it to the turn quite yet. We still had a ways to go, roughly one-hundred yards or so; and granted, though we were not flying down the highway by any means, we also were not giving the turtle a run for his money on who was the slowest specimen on the roadside this time of night.
Jeremiah looked in my direction still talking, a grin etched on his face. The cigarette hung out of his mouth and the smoke danced off the end toward the ceiling of the car.
We were driving through the gravel parking lot of a closed convenience store.
And I was fully aware we were driving through the gravel parking lot of a closed convenience store.
For some reason, what reason I couldn’t tell you then, couldn’t tell you now, I thought maybe Jeremiah had decided to stop and get a drink, get a little sugar in his system to caffeinate him properly for the thirty minute drive we were making toward home in Phenix.
That’s what I told myself at least.
As a hypoglycemic in my own right, I tend to keep a stash of foods pertinent to the glycemic index close by to hold me over when my blood sugar begins to plummet.
In an article by Charles Q. Choi, “Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies,” researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, discovered that an individual’s memory plays a certain kind of mind game and tricks us in emergency situations. The amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of gray matter, one in each hemisphere of the brain, is associated with feelings of fear and aggression and is important for visual learning and memory. When one’s nerves tense up and the sense of danger near, the amygdala lays down an additional deposit of memories that go along with the memories typically taken care of by other parts of the brain.
Therefore, individuals tend to remember emergencies much more keenly than normal circumstances. Our senses become, in a way, pronounced and our attention level expands and takes in the scenery and sounds and smells of the moment, among other things. I bring this up because when Jeremiah hit the turn signal and began trekking through the gravel parking lot of the store, reality is this: it happened instantaneously and within a matter of seconds.
I was fully conscious of the situation. It was as if time stood still, the pendulum paused in mid-air, and everything was taking place in slow motion; that Jeremiah had a beer still in between his legs just as I did should have hinted something out to me that perhaps, just perhaps, Jeremiah was not thirsty and not stopping for a Coca-Cola.
Having sensed what I sensed, I created a reasonable explanation to make sense of those senses and did not say anything to Jeremiah at first.
Jeremiah was laughing and so was I. I figured, screw it. He was in control. He has done this a million times before and I have been the passenger of those million times myself and we had always been okay, always gotten where we were going in one piece.
False alarm, I told my amygdala.
You’re totally overreacting Amy so calm the hell down.
Now I know, just as any resident of Charlotte County knows, that our African shaped county in south-central Virginia is pretty dag gone country. Some kids across the United States like to claim that their hometown or home county is small.
“All we have is a Wal-Mart and a KFC,” they say.
Well, that’s nothing.
There is not a single stoplight—not one—in all of Charlotte County.
And Wal-Mart?
Well, if you want to hit up Wally World and support sweatshop labor and American jobs being sent overseas by the thousands all for the sake of a low price, Wal-Mart is a good 45-minute-to-an-hour drive away depending on where you live in the county.
The truth of the matter is that the road we were supposed to take, even if it is called Country Road (quite literally), is paved; and the path we were currently traveling down was nothing but gray dust and rocks.
It wasn’t even a road.
It was the near half-acre parking lot of a store that closed at 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST).
Like I said, this all happened in a matter of seconds; and ten years ago the Baylor College of Medicine did not even exist to me nor did their study of “Why Time Seems to Slow Down in Emergencies.”
I could have given them that answer and saved some taxpayers’ money.
Conclusion: Time appears to slow down because your senses freak and your adrenaline begins to pump and you’re alert to the belief that you’re going to die and that you never accomplished anything in life and when my mom cleans out my room and starts to cry because I’m no longer here, she’s going to discover my porn stash and she’s going to think I’m a pervert but I’m not going to be able to explain to her that it’s completely natural for someone my age to be looking at porn; at least I’m not a Trekky I would say to her, at least I didn’t waste my life collecting stamps though I did collect matchbooks once and I’m really sorry about almost catching the house on fire. I could have told Baylor College that much.
But right now God had his finger on the pause button and I got to thinking, got to convincing myself that Jeremiah had taken a mini shortcut and was simply going to cut back through on to Country Road when we got to the end of the store parking lot.
Should have listened to me, she said. I was trying to tell you something, trying to warn you. Now it’s too late.
Jeremiah wasn’t slowing down. It became very apparent to me and Amy Amygdala who kept saying, I told you so, I told you so, that Jeremiah had made a rather grave error. He thought we had already made it to the right turn on to Country Road and had no idea that this was not a road but a gravel parking lot.
Fuck. I’m going to die.
Stones bounced underneath the black Thunderbird, clanging against the oil pan. A cloud of dust trailed behind our car like the last scene in Thelma and Louise when the helicopter zooms overhead and the car jolts airily into the pit of the Grand Canyon, a photograph of the two friends turning and turning and falling like a feather from the sky.
I reached for my seatbelt to double check it was securely fastened. The radio was blaring, the cigarette smoke dancing, and Jeremiah was singing:
Hey, now ya’ know
Inhale, exhale with my flow
One for the money, two for the…
And then I noticed a huge ditch line at the back of the parking lot that casually adjoined an embankment. I thought to myself, Oh shit!
I looked at Jeremiah and to let him know that we were about to go jetting through a ditch line at fifty-miles-per-hour, I said, “Jeremiah.”
Yes, I know. Something more immediate should have spilt from my lips. It probably was not the best first thing to say in order to aware someone that you are about to be involved in a car accident, but God had pressed the play button and we were no longer on pause. Time was moving at its normal pace. And then in fast forward. And “Jeremiah” was about all I had time to blurt out.
Jeremiah looked at me and said, “Wh—” and at that very moment before he got the “-at” out to end his reply, I think he honest-to-goodness realized he had put the turn signal on prematurely.
SLAM!
WHOP!
CRASH!
Just like the colorful callouts in the original Batman episodes with Adam West.
We collided with the ditch. The airbags deployed. We smashed into the hill that adjoined the stacked mound of grass and dirt. Hubcaps retreated. Our car crippled, we flung our metal carriage through the last ditch and then managed to land back on the road, Country Road, the same road we were supposed to be driving down in the first place.
“Are you okay, man? Are you okay,” I said to Jeremiah in panic.
A cloud of powder from the airbags circulated throughout the car. On the driver’s side floorboard a cigarette glowed orange.
My left arm had slammed against the windshield and slightly cut open my left elbow and scraped my forearm. My scar from the Gilliam shed window I had broken out as a kid began to bleed and a small amount of blood trickled down toward my wrist. The car was the scene of what looked to be a baby powder fight. The powder from the airbags was suffocating.
I was coughing.
Jeremiah was coughing.
And Snoop Dogg was singing, “It Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None).”
The airbags had chalked up both of our faces. If I had to throw out a combination of words as to what Jeremiah and I looked like when Jeremiah hit the interior light then I would have to say—and this is because of the airbag powder on our faces I may add—that we looked like drag queen circus clowns with a bad coke habit and a bad aim at putting the coke up our nostrils.
I felt like I should be panning for change outside of a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus act come to town. I felt like Jeremiah ought to be right beside me juggling with a monkey resting atop his shoulder—a white-fronted Capuchin monkey named Larry with an asparagus stalk dangling from his bottom lip. I’m sure some animal rights protester would object; but Jeremiah and I would tell them that Larry loves our traveling circus act; and then, without notice, Larry would poo in his hand and throw it at the protester and giggle…
The two of us stepped out of Jeremiah’s black Thunderbird, dazed. Jeremiah looked at me and said, apparently gazing in the direction of an imaginary car and not the one that stood before us, “You think we can make it home alright still?”
I thought airbag powder must have been clogging my ears.
The black Thunderbird, once a fierce machine on the Charlotte County highway, its-terrifying-to-spectators pink racing stripe down the side, though it had now been in a wreck, still had a believer in its capabilities. His name was Jeremiah and he had lost his damn mind.
Or at least banged his head against the steering wheel when we hit the ditch to jar his intellectual capabilities.
I cannot remember my exact words but I believe they were somewhere along the line of, “I think we should probably go back to Gary’s and call someone,” which was immediately followed by a sense of panic that the cops were going to come, tow Jeremiah’s car, and arrest Jeremiah for drinking and driving, reckless endangerment, and me for underage drinking.
The wreck had miraculously sobered me—at least mentally. I could have passed an Algebra II test at that moment and it took me three years in high school to pass an Algebra II test.
Then Jeremiah replies with something else I will never forget: “Nah, I’m good. I can make it home if we just go slow.”
It was a common reply on a trashy talk show like Ricki Lake or Jerry Springer for a guest to come back with, “Oh no you didn’t” and that is exactly what went through my head as if on cue from the producer of one of these trashy talk shows.
Jeremiah tried to plead his case. He tried to tell me that he was okay to drive and his car fine but my mind was made up. Driving back home was no longer a good idea, not an option for this passenger.
Jeremiah looked at the car, looked at me, breathed in the last of his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and then flicked the butt into the road.
“You’re right. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea. Let’s go back to Gary’s.”
So, the two of us got back into the Thunderbird, buckled our seatbelts, and putted and bounced and hopped our way back to my cousin Gary’s house. It was like riding in a horse and carriage on a road made of seashells. My window was down and I could hear the hubcap on the passenger side attempting to fall off into the road and roll away into the tree line.
Please don’t let a cop pass us. Please don’t let a cop pass us.
My dad is going to kick my ass. My dad is going to kick my ass.
When we arrived at Gary’s minutes later, I called my sister, Jennifer, at my parent’s house. She was in from college for the weekend and most likely asleep and in bed. It was 2:45 AM, after all.
Naturally, since I prayed with all my heart for my sister to pick up the telephone and not my mom, my mom indeed answered the phone.
My mom sounded alert as ever.
She has a freakish ability to do this, no matter the time. Honestly, it is weird. She never sounds groggy and she was definitely asleep when the phone rang and probably had been since 8:00 PM.
I asked my mom to give my sister the phone because I needed to talk to her. I didn’t tell my sister what had happened—the wreck and all. I just made it clear that Jeremiah and I needed a ride home. My sister came and picked both of us up. The next day, Jeremiah had his car towed from Gary’s place. Granted, it isn’t until now that I ever considered what Gary must have thought when he woke up and looked out of his window, only to see Jeremiah’s car busted to pieces and us nowhere in sight.
I believe Jeremiah’s dad, Johnnie, was onto our “someone ran us out of the road” story, as was my dad; but I am not sure still to this day that Jeremiah’s mom, Maryann, or my mom, have the faintest idea of what happened that night. I would like to think Maryann figured it out eventually, but my mom has not a clue of the truth, nor will she ever because even if I let her read this one day, this part will be edited from her copy.
Censored.
Absentis.
A few days passed. Jeremiah’s car sat in the shop being looked over by a local grease monkey in Charlotte Court House. Upon final inspection, the garage gave Jeremiah’s residence a ring on the telephone to give the full report of the damage done. (Let us keep in mind again that night Jeremiah still wanted to drive home after the wreck)
What was the damage?
Two broken axles and the car was completely totaled.
The mechanic told Johnnie the car was caput and he would haul it to the junkyard for him. Johnnie asked to have the car towed back to their house first.
When the wrecker brought Jeremiah’s car back to his house a few days later, I met Jeremiah in his front yard. We inspected the black Thunderbird and attempted to take in fully all of what we saw: our invincibility tested, our lives salvaged.
The rims on the wheels were busted. Two wheels were sunken. Because of the broken axles and two flat tires, the car drooped to one side, slouched as if an elderly man with bad posture or scoliosis. That or somebody born with a short leg. I knew a kid like that once. The front windshield was a spider web of cracks (which is why, when driving back to Gary’s, Jeremiah navigated the road by poking his head out of the driver’s side window).
The two of us peered inside the car for a closer look. The black seats were covered in a haze of white powder from the airbags, which lay deflated over the steering wheel and in the passenger’s seat. The furious Ford appeared as if it had been used in the Battle of Kursk, July 1943.
The Red Army victorious!
In the distance of Belgorod smoked a faithful battering ram with a badge of honor now headed to an aluminum and alloy grave.
“I’m glad you told me not to drive home,” Jeremiah said, his eyes still fixed on the black Thunderbird.
“Yeah, me too. Say, why did your dad have the car towed back here?”
“I think he wants me to take it all in. My piss poor decision. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t buy the story.”
[This story is broken up into two parts. Part II will appear nearing January’s end. A couple of names were changed to conceal identities.]
An unclad young woman stared at me from across the room. A straight line ran from her pointed breasts to my line of vision. I took a sip from my beer. Topless, unabashed, she positioned herself against the wall in a rather somber pose, half sobering considering the atmosphere. I took a drag from my cigarette, another sip from my beer. I wiped the froth from my lip. She had yet to blink, kept looking in my direction. Some specimen she was, I thought silently.
I exhaled a cloud of smoke and it hung heavy overhead like empty time. I walked her way. As I approached, she titled forward falling. I caught her, stood her back on the wall, and secured the loose piece of scotch tape that kept her shoulders square, her posture in perfect alignment.
Her name was Amanda. She was a sucker for the shy type. She was a late bloomer, she said.
She straddled a Harley Davidson motorcycle and wore a pair of black leather assless chaps. Amanda was one of various nude women, which served as wallpaper in my cousin Gary’s home.
He was a bachelor.
He drank whiskey.
He wore a leather beret.
He listened to Willie Nelson.
He once traded hats with Willie Nelson after a Willie Nelson concert.
They didn’t smoke marijuana together afterward.
It was getting late. The wee hours of the night tugged at my eyelids. My nostrils widened. Blood shot and dry, irritated by the cigarette smoke lingering in the air, my burning eyes did their best to water. I brought my hand to my mouth and let out a deep yawn. Jeremiah looked my way. His eyes closed. His nostrils widened. His mouth opened and springing from the pit of his stomach a deep yawn arose.
“I guess…. it’s like…. they say—” I said to him, finishing my yawn.
“Contagious is right,” he responded.
I dropped my hands to my side.
Wu Tang entered the speakers. The RZA, the GZA, Raekwon, and the rest of the Clan verbally assaulted us spitting more heat than a woodstove in winter….
You can’t party your life away
Drink your life away
Smoke your life away…
One by one, drunken teenagers and young twenty-somethings saturated in wildly wandering hormonal distress stood in a single file line down the hallway guzzling cheap American beer. With all their shouting, grunting, and vocal might they attempted to revive the once vibrant game of Waterfall that had so consumed them an hour earlier.
Their calls were moot at this conjecture in the night. Cal Adams stood tipsy on the tips of his toes, chugging a beer.
One cold can after the next, participants dropped like flies—beer foam all the while dripping from their lips and chins, giving them the impression of rabid raccoons rocking steady to the beat across the room.
I looked in Jeremiah’s direction and noticed him wobbling. His head bobbed from side to side. His hips swayed. His bones danced a jiggly, gelatinous dance. His body swayed like a drunken vessel….
He belched.
He opened the front door. We both trailed out, lit our respective cigarettes, and surveyed the scene.
Numerous friends of ours lay before us in Gary’s front yard. Some were curled up in the fetal position. Others were slumped over the rail on the stoop blowing chunks of Natty Light and Pabst Blue Ribbon from their jowls.
In spit-filled slurs slung sideways, they promised empty promises: “I’ll never drink this much again,” only to drink that much and more the following Friday down in the boonies of southern Virginia.
Phenix.
Drakes Branch.
Red Oak.
Red House.
Aspen.
Keysville.
Charlotte Court House.
We all were born and raised in a county without a single stoplight. We celebrated our boredom the same way every weekend. We had no music venues. We had no bars. No clubs. No movie theater save the drive-in.
We celebrated our existence, our invincibility at Gary’s on Scott Rd.
“This is the famous Budweiser beer,” I said flicking my cigarette, walking back into the house. “We know of no brand produced by any other brewer which costs so much to brew and age. Our exclusive beechwood aging produces a taste, smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in no other beer at any price.”
“Get this bumbling idiot some water,” Gary said.
“Who me?”
“Yes, you. And tell your buddy, what’s his name—” He pointed in the direction of my friend Derek who was passed out on the couch with a cigarette still in his mouth. It had burned its way down to the filter.
“Derek?”
“Yes, Derek. Derek Smith. Tell him not to come over to my house again unless he’s wearing a shirt. Do I need to post a sign on my front door that reads, ‘No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service;’ huh, do I?”
Derek rarely wore a shirt anywhere. He wasn’t some macho asshole. He just didn’t like to wear a shirt. Half the time he didn’t wear pants. That night at Gary’s he had on pants: camouflage cargo pants. Derek had signed up for the National Guard. He was due to leave for boot camp in a few weeks.
Derek used to sit in the parking lot at B&D Mart in our hometown of Phenix, Virginia, in the broad daylight in his tighty-whitey boxer-briefs with a Camel unfiltered hanging off his bottom lip, shaving his face with the Norelco electric razor his parents had given him. He shaved his face everyday with that razor. He kept it charged in the A/C adapter, this all despite having minimal facial hair at the time. The type of facial hair you have when you’re in high-school.
Unless you were Dwayne Davis.
Or Jimmy Lovelace. Also known as Paco. Or Mustapha. Whether he looked Mexican or Arab depended on the season.
If it was summer or fall, Jimmy looked Arab. If it was winter or spring then Mexican.
Jimmy got the nickname Paco when the two of us enrolled in summer school after 9th grade. We both had flunked Algebra II.
There was a kid named Deron that used to always ask him for lunch money. He hassled Jimmy a lot. Gave him a lot of shit.
Then one day Deron walks up to Jimmy, sort of nudges him. They were serving tacos that day.
“Yo Paco. Let me hold a dollar. I need a Taco, Paco.”
It’s been fifteen years. I still call Jimmy, Paco. He passed Algebra II that summer. I didn’t. I took it once again in 10th grade. Third time’s a charm.
The year before, we pleaded with Jimmy for nearly an entire semester in 8th grade to shave the Superman logo in his chest hair.
“My mom would kill me.”
“How the fuck is your mom going to know,” I asked him. I was pissed. Jimmy used to do anything I’d tell him like bark for a piece of chewing gum in 7th grade. Now he protested.
“Bark for a piece of gum and I’ll give you a piece. It’s Teaberry. Teaberry is fucking awesome,” I said chewing. “Man, this is some good ass gum.”
“I’m not barking for a piece of gum,” Jimmy whispered back. Our teacher had her back to us.
“Guess you won’t be getting any gum then. By the way, your breath smells like dog shit. Did you eat a turd for lunch?”
A few minutes passed. I had swallowed my gum by that point. I used to always swallow my gum despite my mom telling me it would take seven years to come out the other end.
That was bullshit. I remember seeing chewing gum in my shit when I was six years old.
“Ruff!”
“What was that,” Mrs. Clark said.
When Jimmy barked, I had switched over to Sugar Babies and had crammed my mouth with a handful of the caramel and chocolate treats developed in 1935 by the James O. Welch Co.
I began choking on my own saliva.
The saliva was thick and sugary.
It tickled my throat.
“Who just barked,” Mrs. Clark demanded.
I started to laugh. My eyes watered. I had too many Sugar Babies in my mouth.
Jimmy was shaking with laughter. I was shaking with laughter.
Old, fat women in bikinis, I thought to myself. I was trying to think of something not funny. It wasn’t working. I could hear Jimmy barking over and over in my head.
I started to cough. I thought my eyes were going to burst out my head.
Then I threw up on my desk. It looked like cat shit, kind of. I thought Jimmy was going to throw up too. Jimmy used to always throw up when other people threw up. I used to always throw up when other people threw up too. I remember once in 1st grade when Larry Wade poured milk over his tuna ball that sat on top a piece of lettuce in his lunch tray. Someone had dared Larry an orange push-up he wouldn’t eat the milk, lettuce, and tuna mixture.
Larry did.
This overweight kid I used to call Skipper threw up watching Larry eat. He called me Little Buddy. His mom worked at a chocolate factory. Every Valentine’s Day she would come to our class for Show and Tell. The Skipper’s real name was Chad.
When Chad threw up, I threw up. Then other kids started throwing up all the way down the table. My cousin Brandon threw up. He was in the middle of an argument telling all the other kids that Santa Claus didn’t exist when he stopped to throw up. He had a rat-tail. So did Erik Ragsdale. I’m not sure if Erik threw up.
Jimmy’s mom knew everything her children did. He was terrified to go against her or do anything he thought would upset her in the slightest. His older sister would later become pregnant out-of-wedlock, carry the baby the entire length of the pregnancy having never been to the doctor for a single check-up, and go into labor one day at the high school. She was a teacher.
She had graduated college, had a salary job, and was still terrified of her mother.
Jimmy would later tell me about the situation. He prefaced it by saying, “Man you aren’t going to believe this shit.” The conversation went sort of like this.
JIMMY: By the time I get off work, get to my locker, and check my phone I have like ten missed calls from my mom. One missed call after the next. One new voicemail.
“Jimmy,” my mom said. “Please call me when you get this. Call me as soon as you get this.”
She was extremely upset.
Crying. Fucking delirious sounding, man.
Naturally, I’m thinking someone has died. Somebody has definitely died. I start to panic a little. I’m almost scared to call her back. What if something happened to my dad or sister? I’m a little fidgety, antsy about returning the call. I’m going to do it. I just need to calm down first. I light a cigarette. I’m shaking. I’m hot-boxing that bitch. Then my phone rings. I look down at caller ID. It’s my mom.
She’s sucking back snot.
“What’s the matter I ask her? Mom, what’s the matter?”
“Melissa had a baby,” she says.
(Jimmy pauses, looks at me, eyes big as saucers, and laughs)
ME: Yeah man, that shit came through the grapevine. I heard about it all the way in Charlottesville. I didn’t even know she was pregnant.
JIMMY: Neither did I.
ME: What did you say?
JIMMY: The first thing that came to mind: “Are you fucking kidding me?”
That triggers my mom to bawl more.
“When the hell did she get pregnant,” I asked her.
I was floored. Dude I was fucking floored. My sister had a baby. Do you believe that shit? She was fucking pregnant for nine months and never told anybody. I mean shit. How do you pull that shit off? Thing is, you couldn’t even tell she was pregnant. You know my sister. She doesn’t exactly win the gold medal for most physically fit but still—pregnant? Nine months? Had a baby? Fuck!
(laughs)
Suddenly me dating a black chick isn’t the worst thing in the world for my parents.
(laughs)
ME: How’s that situation going?
JIMMY: Same ole, same ole. Don’t come home unless you’re single or got a white girl on your arm.
(He pulls on a cigarette)
ME: Your folks need to be more understanding. Do they realize you don’t even look white? You look like you’re from the United Arab Emirates. And you’re balding prematurely.
JIMMMY: Hey, fuck you.
Finally, the owner of B&D confronted Derek about his lack of outerwear. He was shirtless and had on no pants. He wore army boots and white boxer briefs. He had been polishing his boots since we got off from school.
He was standing at the Coca-Cola machine, trying to straighten a dollar bill on the side of the machine. I sat at the picnic table with some other friends: Rick, Ricky, and Brian.
Brian had a stuttering problem. If we were all having a down day, we used to get Brian to sing “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive for kicks.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen nothin’ yet
Here’s something that you never gonna forget
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen nothin’ yet
Brenda, the co-owner of B&D Mart (the “B” stood for “Brenda”), knocked hard with her knuckles against the drive-up window that was duct-taped shut. Derek looked her way. I looked her way. She had a mean snarl on her face and pointed at Derek.
“You stay right there,” she said. You couldn’t hear her but you could read her lips. She was fuming. Then she proceeded out the front door and began berating Derek.
She finished, turned around, walked back inside. She stood at the window looking outside at us.
Derek looked at me and said, “Shit. What’s her problem?”
“You don’t have on pants,” I said.
Gary turned his attention back to the fizzled out game of Waterfall. Then Jeremiah stumbled back into the picture, wobbling across the carpet like a pregnant woman, her water about to burst.
He squinted.
“Are you alright,” I asked Jeremiah.
No response.
He narrowed his eyes even more trying to fix his pupils on one of the three of me he saw. Assuming he was staring into the image of me located in the middle of the other two blurred images of my form, he asked if I was ready to leave. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Bench and Occasional Table by Jeffrey a Day
Jeffrey a Day Reveals The H20il Bench and Occasional Table
Jeffrey A Day, the project leader of the award winning work Bench and Occasional Table by Jeffrey A Day illustrates, H20il is a fresh look at common everyday occurrence; it takes the properties of water and oil and transposes that organic quality into a piece of static furniture. Using two species of wood as a vehicle to create the feel of how oil reacts in water. The custom legs created for this bench is cast in a small foundry with green sand. The legs are offered in Brushed, Hammered and Raw with flashing still attached.. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
When the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left for New York early this week to address the UN General Assembly, the mission was clear - vociferously pitch for UN reforms that will pave the way for his country to gain a permanent place in the Security Council.
For more than a decade, India has been calling for expansion of the council by including developing countries to ensure it is more representative.
Being the world's largest democracy, India argues that it is a natural contender for a place in the council - also being sought by Germany, Japan, Egypt, Brazil, South Africa and some other nations.
But how far has India convinced the world that it deserves a better deal in the current geopolitical situation?
Wary China
Of the five permanent members (P-5) with powers to veto any resolution, three - Britain, France and Russia - have openly supported India's case, thanks to India's intense lobbying.
In addition, some African and West Asian nations have endorsed India's claim.
For every potential candidate there will be opposition from the region or from somewhere else
Professor Thomas G Weiss
The other two members of the P-5 group, the United States and China have not stated their formal positions.
US support is crucial for any expansion of the council while China has traditionally been opposed to the expansion of permanent members of the Security Council.
It feels that the time is not yet ripe for discussion on the subject.
China, which fought a brief war with India in 1962, is yet to resolve its border dispute with Delhi.
Beijing is also wary of Japan gaining entry to the council.
India has also not bagged wholehearted support in its own backyard, South Asia.
Unsurprisingly, Pakistani officials this week made it clear that Islamabad was opposed to India becoming a permanent member.
If India gains an a upper hand in the international stage, Pakistan fears it will lose hold on the issue of the disputed region of Kashmir.
"For every potential candidate there will be opposition from the region or from somewhere else, making the case difficult," says Professor Thomas G Weiss, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.
Nepal's ties
India's eastern neighbour, Bangladesh, is yet to make any official pronouncements on the issue.
The will of the big powers is likely to determine council expansion
Tense relations, ranging from border disputes to water sharing, may sway Dhaka's decision.
Though informal discussions are taking place, Bangladesh is not expected to decide soon and will analyse the trend among the P-5 nations.
Nepal has closer cultural and economic ties with India and despite reservations in certain quarters, Kathmandu is expected to come out in support of Delhi.
Being one of the largest donors to Nepal, Japan would also bank on Kathmandu's support.
Sri Lanka, which looks to Indian economic and military co-operation, is another country that has had mixed relations with India.
But on Tuesday it expressed support for a collective bid by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan for permanent slots.
So will the lack of unanimous support in the region affect India's chances?
"Not necessarily," says Rahul Roy Chaudhury, research fellow for South Asia at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
"I think at some stage Delhi will need to take these countries into confidence on this issue. But the key issue is the possibility of expanding the council. It is unlikely that the P-5 countries will become P-8 or P-9 in the short term," he says.
The will of the big powers is likely to still hold sway.
"If the council is expanded the likelihood is that the present permanent members will not give up their veto. Nor are they likely to accept that new members should have a veto as well," says Professor Weiss. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Ginger Miso Soba Soup
This has been a week made up entirely of Mondays. After the holiday deluge of over-eating, over-drinking, under-exercising and just generally not being the kindest to my body, this first week of January has been about recovery and hitting the reset button, and I know I’m not alone. We’re all in the midst of some sort of holiday detox, whether that means big kale salads and green smoothies, or simply paring back a bit from all the excesses of the season.
It’s still very much winter here – albeit a coastal winter, gentler than those of you in the midwest and east coast are currently experiencing – but still cold. The northern light is lower and even bluer than I imagined it could be when we first moved here over the summer. I can’t feign much interest in juice cleanses, but I do like the idea of a clean start. In the calm that follows – or rather begins – a new year.
I’m craving big bowls of healthy, healing… green. It’s the time of year for big, hearty bowls of grains and roasted vegetables, and certainly less sugar, but most of all: soups – flavorful, healing broths packed with goodness to warm you up from the inside out.
When it comes to soup, I like lots of texture, particularly that lovely contrast between a warm, nourishing broth, and lots of fresh, raw veggies piled on top, that so often pops up in Asian-inspired recipes. I’ve been imagining a hearty miso soup for a while now, stocked with warming garlic and ginger, swirls of buckwheat soba noodles, chunks of tofu and a heaping of veggies. The vegetables – in this case handfuls of chopped scallions, shitake mushrooms, lacinato kale leaves and radish sprouts – cook a bit when added to the soup, but maintain their freshness and a bit of crunch. Not particularly authentic, but nonetheless soul-satisfying.
The flavorful, ginger-y miso broth can easily be made in advance, and warmed up when chilly days beg for a restorative soup filled with fresh veggies (whatever you happen to have on hand at the moment). Happy Weekend!
Instructions
Make the Broth: Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat, until shimmering. Add the onion, garlic and ginger, and cook for a few minutes until softened. Add the soy sauce, and stir to combine. Cook for another minute. Add the stock, cover and bring to a boil. Remove the lid, and let simmer uncovered for another 10 minutes.
Ladle a half cup or so of the broth into a small bowl. Stir in the miso and whisk until dissolved. Pour the miso broth into the pot and cook for a minute or two to heat through (but don’t let come to a boil).
Assemble the Ginger Miso Soba Soup: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the soba noodles according to package directions, about 3 minutes. Alternatively, cook the soba noodles in the simmering ginger broth, prior to adding the miso. Add the mushrooms and kale and cook for a minute or two to soften.
OR Divide the soba, mushrooms and kale leaves (for crunchier veggies) between two large bowls. Add the tofu. Pour the miso broth over the top and sprinkle with the scallions, sprouts, sesame seeds and chile flakes (if using). Serve warm.
Did you make this recipe?
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. Making a purchase through one of these links pays me a small referral fee at no added cost to you. These tiny fees add up, and help keep the blog running. Thank you for supporting Fork Knife Swoon!
Never Miss a Recipe!
Make this recipe? Let us know what you think!
Comment Policy: Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! The most helpful comments include recipe feedback and ratings, along with information on ingredients you may have added or substituted, or advice to other commenters. Disrespectful or abusive comments will be deleted. I do my best to respond to each and every comment, but it may take me a day or two to get back to your question. Thank you so much for following along! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
More neighbors say they saw Zimmerman’s injuries
Neighbors of George Zimmerman say he had bandages on his nose and head the day after he shot dead Trayvon Martin, supporting statements by the neighborhood watch volunteer that he was beaten in a confrontation with the black Florida teenager.
[…]
Zimmerman later sought medical treatment for injuries including a broken nose, his former lawyers have said.
Jorge Rodriguez, Zimmerman’s next-door neighbor, told Reuters that when he saw Zimmerman the day after the incident, “he had two big, butterfly bandages on the back of his head, and another big bandage…on the bridge of his nose.” He was talking to a police detective in his driveway.
Rodriguez’s wife Audria also said she saw the bandages and a third neighbor, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, agreed with the Rodriguez couple’s account. “I saw two bandages on the back of his head, and his nose was all swollen up,” said the witness, who had watched from a nearby second-floor window.
The neighbors spoke to Reuters on Sunday and Monday, saying they felt they owed him their public support after he was charged with second-degree murder.
Apparently Zimmerman has been sobbing uncontrollably and wants to call Trayvons mother to apologize for killing her son. The guilt is consuming him.
“The neighbors spoke to Reuters on Sunday and Monday, saying they felt they owed him their public support after he was charged with second-degree murder.” That sort of statement ought to get their testimony disqualified.
I haven’t lied on this website. The local nutters would be fooling themselves if they thought that there were a need, or something to be gained, by lying. Anon un-RINO is like Mad Dog though, simple-minded, and in need of the last word. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
From a capacious SUV to the fastest production Corvette ever created, these are the top finishers according to Robb Report readers.
As we close out 2018 with a look back at the automotive stories that Robb Report readers steered to the most, Bob Dylan’s declaration that “the times they are a-changin’” certainly rings true. Despite our copious coverage of the world’s top supercars, the story that drew the most visitors to the four-wheel category was a three-row SUV. Such practicality. In all fairness, the other four favorites are about muscle cars and a concept, so the gearheads can relax.
In fifth place is Ben Oliver’s exclusive on Ares Design’s tribute to the Ferrari 250 GTO. Why mess with a masterpiece? For Ares CEO Dany Behar, it is question he takes to heart when it comes to his plans for an homage to the famed Ferrari 250 GTO. “It’s a modern reinterpretation, not a copy,” says Bahar. “It’s a showcase for what our designers can do.”
Currently, the concept calls for either a Ferrari F12 or 812 Superfast donor car and would comprise a run of as little as 10 examples. According to Bahar, however, it may just stay on the drawing board. “In my view, the 250 GTO is the most iconic car ever produced, and the Holy Grail of motoring. Maybe people will think that some cars don’t need to be redone. We’ll listen.” Read the full story at: Exclusive: Ferrari‘s 250 GTO Gets a Controversial Redesign
No. 4: Corvette ZR1
Corvette ZR1
Photo: Jim Fets
One of the four-wheelers found in our June issue’s Best of the Best feature, the ZR1 is the fastest and most powerful production Corvette ever made. How fast? Propelled by a 6.2-liter, pushrod LT5 V-8 (with a 2.6-liter Eaton supercharger), to a top speed of 212 mph and leaps from zero to 60 mph in right around 3 seconds. In other words, if speed is your need, this is the quintessential Corvette. Read the full story at: Best of the Best: The Corvette ZR1 Is One of the Highest-Tech Sports Cars on the Planet
No. 2: Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye
It almost takes longer to say its name than for the 2019 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye to crush zero to 60 mph. With 797 hp, it travels that distance in 3.4 seconds and can reach a top speed of 203 mph, thanks to its 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V-8. Naturally, the engine’s soundtrack is nothing short of sinister. Read the full story at: The Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye Looks Like a Muscle Car from Mordor
No. 1: BMW X7
The auto story with the largest reach was about BMW’s very large X7 sport utility vehicle. With a height of 71 inches, the X7 is also longer than the marque’s X5 and the Mercedes-Benz GLS. Its dimensions can fit three rows or 75 cubic feet of cargo space (with second and third row folded down).
BMW’s X7 arrives at dealerships in March.
Photo: Courtesy of BMW.
Of the two versions available, the 456 hp xDrive50i model can cover zero to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds with the aid of its eight-speed automatic transmission. Read the full story at: BMW Goes Big with the New X7 | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Tailwind Nutrition Multiserving
Tailwind mixes with water to meet all your calorie, hydration, and electrolyte needs, without upsetting your stomach or making your taste buds revolt. Just toss it in a bottle or hydration pack, shake, and GO!
Complete calories, electrolytes, and hydration: Ditch the gels, chews, and pills, and go all day with just Tailwind.
Hydration pack love: Dissolves on contact with water and cleans up with a quick rinse. No film, aftertaste or science experiments!
All natural: Crystal clear with no dyes, preservatives or 4-syllable magical ingredients.
Gluten free/vegan/no soy/no dairy
USAGE
Each serving is 100 calories. For endurance workouts, mix 2-3 scoops per 500-750ml of water to sip over an hour. Adjust to your personal calorie needs during training, using hunger as a guide.
When it’s dialled in, you’ll feel satisfied and energetic, not hungry or full. On hot days, keep the same calories per hour, but increase water. To use in combo with other foods, reduce Tailwind intake by the calories you’re consuming elsewhere to avoid overloading the gut.
The caffeinated flavours, Raspberry Buzz, Green Tea Buzz and Tropical Buzz, contain caffeine. Not recommended for children or pregnant women.
Tailwind Nutrition is VEGAN, gluten free and without soy or dairy.
The New Caffeinated Colorado Cola flavour is on our next container which is due to dock on October 14th, 2019
Just completed 23+ miles on tailwind and water. Felt/feel great. Tried double strength bottle for the first 2 hrs (of 4+, I’m not quick) worked well with replenishing water supply from the other bottle. Found it fiddly getting stick packs in bottle while tired, so next time, I’ll preload an empty bottle with bulk tailwind and “just add water”. Delighted!
Perfect nutrition for long runs.I have been using for a few years now beside other brands and the Tailwind Nutrition indeed provides all you need. The taste is good and doesn’t cause any stomachache compare to other brands.For ultras I would recommend to mix the flavours however.
I tried Tailwind on the recommendation of several running club colleagues. I previously used gels and got on okay with them but in my last couple of marathons I hit the 20 mile stage and couldn't take on any more gels and even struggled with water. Very impressed with the ease of ordering and delivery time. Have only tried it once on a 2.5 hour run but it tasted fine and no side effects.Running a marathon in October, so looking for a belt with 2 small bottles and will try the approach of high concentrate in 2 x 300ml bottles, taking a mouthful before water stations. So far so good, and no more sticky gel wrappers!!
I recently completed the Ridelondon100 and i've gotta say these drink supplement (naked flavour, and raspberry buzz) were soooo much better than ones i've previously used. No more awkward sticky gels (and the mess of putting them in your jersey pockets until you can find a bin). Kept me fully hydrated with just the addition of 2 bananas and 2 packets of crisps. That was all i needed for the entire ride. Also met you guys at the Excel before the ride, lovely people. Would highly recommend.
For endurance workouts, mix 2-3 scoops with 500 - 700ml of water per hour. Adjust to your personal calorie needs during training, using hunger as a guide. When it’s dialled in, you’ll feel satisfied and energetic, not hungry or full.
On hot days, keep the same calories per hour, but increase water. To use in combo with other foods, reduce Tailwind intake by the calories you’re consuming elsewhere to avoid overloading the gut. For shorter workouts (<2hr), you can use less Tailwind to taste.
Just completed 23+ miles on tailwind and water. Felt/feel great. Tried double strength bottle for the first 2 hrs (of 4+, I’m not quick) worked well with replenishing water supply from the other bottle. Found it fiddly getting stick packs in bottle while tired, so next time, I’ll preload an empty bottle with bulk tailwind and “just add water”. Delighted!
Perfect nutrition for long runs.I have been using for a few years now beside other brands and the Tailwind Nutrition indeed provides all you need. The taste is good and doesn’t cause any stomachache compare to other brands.For ultras I would recommend to mix the flavours however.
I tried Tailwind on the recommendation of several running club colleagues. I previously used gels and got on okay with them but in my last couple of marathons I hit the 20 mile stage and couldn't take on any more gels and even struggled with water. Very impressed with the ease of ordering and delivery time. Have only tried it once on a 2.5 hour run but it tasted fine and no side effects.Running a marathon in October, so looking for a belt with 2 small bottles and will try the approach of high concentrate in 2 x 300ml bottles, taking a mouthful before water stations. So far so good, and no more sticky gel wrappers!!
I recently completed the Ridelondon100 and i've gotta say these drink supplement (naked flavour, and raspberry buzz) were soooo much better than ones i've previously used. No more awkward sticky gels (and the mess of putting them in your jersey pockets until you can find a bin). Kept me fully hydrated with just the addition of 2 bananas and 2 packets of crisps. That was all i needed for the entire ride. Also met you guys at the Excel before the ride, lovely people. Would highly recommend. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
sealevelsucks.com
Home Design Remodel
Basalt Worktop
Shocking Living Room Furniture Rochester Ny
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:51:10 PM. Living Room By Julie Chicoine. Pull pieces into your grouping; leave the walls for spectacular wall hangings and accessories. Don't be afraid to pull the chairs in and angle them to achieve a conversation area. It is uncomfortable and uninviting to have to bend your neck to make conversation with others in the room.
Stunning Living Room Furniture Richmond Va
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:50:59 PM. Living Room By Fleur Deblois. But don't sacrifice personality when you want to maximize space. Dress up your loveseats with accessories such as personalized throw pillows or a slip cover that reflects the look of your home. Aside from what you can put on your loveseats, don't be afraid to add plants, artwork and tabletop décor. Just make sure not to put too much as these can also become visual clutter.
Spectacular Kitchen Backsplash Wallpaper
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:50:47 PM. Kitchen By Eleanor Ducharme. We really have come a long way in cooking and kitchen designs. A modern kitchen is now quite different to early kitchens thanks to developments in electricity, water pipes and other materials. Today's modern kitchen includes so many functions and appliances those generations between us could never imagine. If you take a journey back over the history of the kitchen from the beginning, you can see what sort of luxury we have now.
Astonishing Rooster Kitchen Decorations
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:50:33 PM. Kitchen By Eleanor Ducharme. The least costly way in which to upgrade to a fresh look for dark and unloved wooden kitchen cabinets is to paint them. Ensure the kind of paint you utilize should give a functional, washable surface.
Stunning Kitchen Storage Solutions Ikea
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:50:13 PM. Kitchen By Fleur Deblois. So today, I hope to outline some helpful pointers that you may not have previously considered when buying a new kitchen, some might be obvious at first, but they'll lead in to more interesting and useful territory as you read on.
Surprising Kitchen And Dining Room Decor
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:49:54 PM. Kitchen By Erembourg Guibord. When designing with furniture, spaces must be created between each piece that allow the 3-D character (3-D in that furniture is made with at least 3 finished sides) of each piece to be appreciated. These spaces are most important as they allow the design theme of the adjacent room to continue uninterrupted into the kitchen. The spaces allow the wall, ceiling and floor coverings (the architectural finishes) to instantly meld the kitchen and family room into one homogeneous space in a way that is impossible to do with horizontally designed cabinetry. The spaces define the room's personality and allow the furniture to become more eclectic as well, emulating the same design techniques used in the design of the family room. No longer must the kitchen have just one color of wood, or one door style or one countertop material. The spaces allow all of these elements to change more readily. For a clear example, think of an open-plan log home where all the interior walls are exposed logs. A furnished kitchen allows the logs to be seen between each piece, which helps to unify the open-plan room whereas a horizontally designed cabinetry filled kitchen covers up all the logs. In an open-plan loft design where the kitchen is always seen, a furnished kitchen can blend seamlessly into the other casual seating groupings by allowing all the architectural finishes to meander between all the pieces and hold everything together.
Shocking Java Stain Kitchen Cabinets
Published at Tuesday, October 09th 2018, 13:49:39 PM. Kitchen By Julie Chicoine. One eye-catching highlight you can add to your modernized kitchen is a copper sink. You will be able to choose from a expansive variety of copper kitchen sinks in purpose made styles and shapes, copper country style kitchen sinks, hammered copper sinks, double bowl copper kitchen sinks, and others. You may be certain that if you get a copper kitchen sink it will bring a talking point into your kitchen and everybody will love it. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Glamorous Tear it Up Mini Dress Glamorous Tear it Up Mini Dress Runs true to size. The fit is easy yet subtly sexy thanks to zipper at back. Wear it with silver rings and black cage heels for a night of way too much fun. Glamorous… | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Amazon S3 Down — Amazon's S3 storage service appears to be down. CenterNetworks images are broken because of it and I had to move the style sheet back so the site at least renders correctly. Sites like Twitter have massive broken images currently because Amazon S3 is down.
Breaking: Facebook Releases New Design — Facebook has been testing out the new profile design for the past five months but for the first time ever, they have released the new full site design (pictured below). You can access the new site by visiting www.new.facebook.com. — New Homepage
Exclusive: Twhirl gets pushy with Identi.ca — The next update of Twhirl will get support for yet another nanoblogging service, Identi.ca, and on that platform Twhirl will feature a communication method that Twitter users have been asking for: push updates. — Read to end of story for the download link and instructions.
Fallon Will Start ‘Late Night’ on the Web — LOS ANGELES — With a new round of shake-ups in late-night television set to begin next year, Lorne Michaels has decided to try to get a jump on things by starting NBC's next edition of “Late Night,” with its new host Jimmy Fallon, as a nightly entry on the Internet.
Yahoo activist calls for board battle compromise — SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A dissident shareholder will on Monday call on Yahoo Inc to compromise and accept a mixed board of directors drawn from among company nominees and a rival slate backed by Carl Icahn.
OpenDNS Makes $20k/day Filtering Phishing And Porn Sites — OpenDNS, a San Francisco based startup founded by Minor Ventures and David Ulevitch, first launched in mid-2006 as a free tool to speed up web surfing and protect users from phishing and other malware sites. — OpenDNS isn't exactly a sexy service.
My Son, the Blogger: An M.D. Trades Medicine for Apple Rumors — For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site, MacRumors.com. — It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree.
Uber-Hacker Kevin Mitnick Signs Tell-All Book Deal — Kevin Mitnick is going to tell his side of the story. And he's going to get paid for it. — Speaking to an adoring crowd of 800 at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference, Mitnick, once described as the “most wanted computer hacker in the world …
iLike launches ad platform, pushes play on Rhapsody deal — iLike, the social music service that rose to popularity with the launch of Facebook's developer platform last year, is getting bigger. The company announced that membership has surpassed 30 million users, and that it'll soon … | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Iran unveils Kish Stock Exchange
Iran has inaugurated the Kish Stock Exchange in the southern Iranian island to facilitate foreign investment and monetary activities, says the country's minister of the economy.
Seyyed Shamseddin Hosseini told reporters on Friday that private investors have allocated a building complex to different economic sectors in Kish.
"Iran has made efforts to relax constraining official regulations” to attract more foreign investment, he said, noting that such investments increased 95 percent in the country.
Hosseini also pointed out that Iran has modified and developed general and “key economic policies” during the past years.
Referring to the targeted subsidiary plans, the minister echoed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's prediction that the program would profit economic sectors, adding that it would also save billions of dollars in fuel consumption.
The targeted subsidiary plans will eventually slash all government subsidies in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The implementation of the plan began in the country on Sunday.
President Ahmadinejad said last week that the plans were guaranteed to lead to a better economy, since people would start saving on energy consumption, making it possible to export the extra reserves and pump the money back into the country's economy.
The president also reasoned that higher prices would encourage people to use less fuel and cause less harm to the environment -- especially in heavily-polluted Tehran.
Under the new rationing system, the price of gasoline will rise by fourfold from 1,000 rials (10 cents) per liter to 4,000 rials (40 cents) per liter as of Sunday.
Fuel beyond a person's quota -- which is 50 liters per month -- is now sold at 7,000 rials (70 cents) per liter. (press tv) | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
4 Hanging Exercises That Build Ripped Abs and a Stronger Upper Body
Ben, it's summer and I really want to get ripped abs, what should I do?
Man, I've been hearing this question so much lately.
My answer most of the time is, "Try the Toes to Bar move and incorporate it in your workouts 2-3 days/week."
Then I get the response of "How the hell do I do the Toes to Bar?"
The Toes to Bar move is indeed a great move for getting ripped abs. It engages the rectus abdominis (front abs) and it gives you that "ab burn" very quickly. But I get it. Not everybody can just jump up to a bar and knock these out. Just like most exercises, there is always a progression and regression system you can use so that you can master certain movements.
In this video, I'll show you different forms of the Toes to Bar movements and how you can start slowly to build yourself up to the move.
The Toes to Bar
This is ultimately a gymnastic move. If you've ever seen a great gymnast then you've seen some really ripped abs. When I do the Toes to Bar I really try to keep my legs as straight as possible and I try to prevent any swinging motions.
Bring your legs up straight, fold your body and lightly hit the toes to the bar. The trick to this is really on the way down. You don't want to just let your legs go limp and flop them down. Contract your abs on the way down and bring your legs down in a controlled manner.
Kipping
I learned this at a CrossFit gym and I found that this made the movement much easier. At the bottom of the movement, dip your head forward and use your momentum to push your body back while you bring your legs up. The kipping definitely helps make this easier, but you have to be careful. If your shoulders are beat up or if you feel more pain while doing this, don't do it. Slow down and do the next regression which is....
Hanging Knee Tucks
Start in the hanging position, bring your knees to your chest and again slowly bring your legs down. This is the easier form but it will for sure give you the same benefits of getting ripped abs.
Hanging Windshield Washers
Yeah, I'll admit it. I pretty much just added these in because they look cool as hell. I'm not sure if these will help you with doing the Toes to Bar, but I know for sure that this move will light up your obliques (side abs)! The hardest part of this might be the grip. Keep your abs up high, and windshield wash the sky moving your feet side to side.
Ben Boudro
- Fitness professional Ben Boudro is the owner of the #1 Personal Training Gym in Metro-Detroit, Xceleration Fitness. Ben owns a 10,000 sq. ft facility that helps change the lives of thousands of hard-working moms, dads and high-level athletes. Ben currently writes for several magazines such as Fitnes
Become a Contributing Expert
Greatness Within
Become a Better Athlete
Join STACK and gain instant FREE access to resources that have helped millions of people jump higher, run faster, get stronger, eat smarter and play better. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
MMOs and game design
Menu
guild achievements
Final Fantasy 14 is shaping up to be more innovative in many ways than many commenters were expecting.
The creators have said explicitly that their main audience is not current MMO hardcore players. Instead they’re aiming at players who like the Final Fantasy games and maybe haven’t gotten into MMOs before. So given that accessibility and similarity to previous single player games are at the top of the agenda, what have they come up with:
In the lastest FF installment, you can switch your character between any class between battles. The MMO will also feature this facility. Your main can level in any class available in the game (which includes some crafting classes as well as adventurers) and switch between them at any time.
Levelling becomes a weekly quest. Each week, you will be able to earn up to a certain amount of xp in each class and then the xp earned will tail down to zero.
Firstly, the concept for FINAL FANTASY XIV was to design a system of character progression that offers meaningful advancement for those with limited time to dedicate to playing. We did not want to create a game that forced people to play for hours on end to see their efforts rewarded.
Here is my simplified version:
Each week you can earn up to a threshold value of xp in each class. After this, the xp earned will tail to 0. However, the xp curve will slowly reset whenever you aren’t doing anything that would earn skill or experience points.
So you can max out your warrior xp, then do something non-xp related (not really sure what though – maybe exploring or RP) and your xp threshold will slowly reset.
As per the quote above, their goal with this system is to not force people to get all hardcore if they want to stay competitive. A nice side effect is that it tends to reward people who like to do lots of different things with their character anyway. So if you naturally would want to fight a bit, then craft a bit, then try healing for a bit, or go exploring for a bit – you will come out ahead here. You’ll be rewarded (or at least not penalised) for doing what you would have done anyway.
Compare this to current MMOs where if you want to keep up with your mates, you need to play at least as much as they do. Just think forwards to the release of Cataclysm – how many people will feel pressured to get to the level cap as fast as possible, taking as little time as they can to craft or explore or even read quest text on the way?
To me, this game just continues to sound better and better. I’m not going to cry for people whose ideal play style is to play non stop until they hit the level cap and are now complaining that the game is designed to stop that. This game is not for you. Some games are, this one is not.
So I think the general idea is good – although I’d wish that xp from one class only counted towards the threshold in that class. The devil is ivery much n the details here. Much depends on where they decide to set their thresholds and what sorts of activities are in game that don’t affect xp or skills. The other big issue here is how xp in groups and guildleves will work. If the game awards groups with more xp, then players will wear through their xp thresholds more quickly. If xp was turned off in instances, they would suddenly become useless for levelling.
In any case, the game is still in beta so they are liable to be tweaking many of these numbers.
The threshold values are being re-examined, and we plan to further adjust the different rates of earnable points based on feedback from our testers. <…> We also plan to improve experience point reduction rates, even more so than for skill points, considering the threshold is unaffected when changing class.
The main thing to take away is that if you were going to play in a way that never would have hit the thresholds anyway, you will only benefit from this mechanic. It’s an incentive to adopt that playstyle.
Grandfathering in Old Achievements in WoW
Apparently if you are in a raid guild which has acquired legendary items now, those will count towards an achievement in Cataclysm that is rewarded with a swanky guild mount.
I was noting in comments on Larisa’s blog that I find this devastatingly unfair. I speak as someone who worked on legendaries with a guild in Vanilla and is currently working on legendaries in a raid alliance right now. Neither of those previous efforts will count with anyone for anything because I am not in ‘the right sort of guild.’ The old 40 man guild split up (obviously) and the current raid set up won’t qualify for guild achievements.
I think it’s fine to record previous feats of strength if it is possible to do so. Meaningless achievements work fine for this. But those past achievements have already been rewarded in meaningful ways – otherwise we wouldn’t have done them at the time. It’s unnecessary to give some people an extra perk for doing what they would have done anyway, and unfair to only give it to people who happen to be in the right type of guild.
Maybe this is a deliberate tactic to encourage existing 25 man guilds to stay together and to use up the dog days of the expansion in scheduling endless runs to get old legendary items. And it is totally understandable that anyone who finds themselves in this situation would be pleased. But fair is one thing that it is not. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
This quote from Brennan Manning completely captured my attention a few months ago:
“The music of what is happening can be heard only in the present moment, right now, right here. Now/here spells nowhere. To be fully present to whoever or whatever is immediately before us is to pitch a tent in the wilderness of Nowhere. It is an act of radical trust—trust that God can be encountered at no other time and in no other place than the present moment. Being fully present in the now is perhaps the premier skill of the spiritual life.
There is only NOW…real living is about…experiencing who or what is immediately before us…to live in the present moment requires profound trust that the abundant life Jesus promised is experienced only in Nowhere.” —Ruthless Trust , pp. 150-158
These words transformed my outlook on all of life.
I read them when I was sitting in my car in the high school parking lot, waiting for my son. Suddenly, I was no longer “passing the time” until Josh arrived. I closed the book and became fully present to what was happening in that very moment.
Jesus was here with me! In THIS moment!
It was almost as if He had opened the passenger door, slid into the seat, and greeted me with a dazzling smile. I had a sudden, electric sense of His very Presence, which seemed to fill the car.
Ever since I became a Christian and learned that Jesus’ very Spirit comes to reside within the heart of every believer, I have known intellectually that He is always with me. And yes, there certainly have been times when I have felt His Presence.
Yet, it was as if He invited me to open my eyes to the incredible reality that He can only be experienced and encountered NOW.
The past is over and the future is not yet…I cannot physically live in either place.
This very moment is where time and eternity meet.
The enemy seeks to do all he can to veil this life-changing truth from me. He wants to keep me imprisoned in regret over the past (“How could you have behaved like that?”) and stark fear about the future (“You’re going to lose everything.”).
That is NOT living…and he knows that full well. Remember, he seeks only to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). By keeping me from fully experiencing and seeing NOW…he tries to steal my peace, kill my hope, and destroy my intimacy with Jesus.
However, Jesus beckons me into the beautiful NOW—the only place on this earth where He can be encountered in all His fullness!
Allof Him is available to allof me in this moment. Such a staggering thought!
Ann Voskamp beautifully writes of this truth: “Joy is always possible. Whenever, meaning—now; wherever, meaning—-here. The holy grail of joy is not in some exotic location or some emotional mountain peak experience. The joy wonder could be here! Here—in this messy, piercing ache of now, joy might be—unbelievably—possible! The only place we need see before we die in this place is seeing God, here and now.” (One Thousand Gift, p. 33).
Joy filled my heart because…I can do now!
Jesus never asks me to try to figure things out on my own. He does not expect me to store up enough faith to make it through a stressful time. Instead, He asks me:
“Do you have faith in Me right now?”
“Are you fully alive this moment? Are you tuned in to the music of now?”
“Can you believe for this moment that I love you passionately, completely, unconditionally? That right now, I am doing good to you?”
“Would you fully embrace the fact that I am right here with you in all My glory and power? “
Yes! I can do that! And so can you.
Right here in Now/here, you can have a divine celebration, whatever your circumstances. Yes, even the tough ones. When I am caught up in the reality of His Presence, my trials, though still real and painful, cease to be my main focus. They ultimately become the background because Jesus has taken center stage, driving out fear and flooding the dark places with His light.
Ask Him to open your eyes to the fact that He is risen. He is here. His arms are open.
I have never been so alive. My head knowledge about Jesus is now saturating my heart and the result is such joy…His joy…even though my circumstances are still tough.
My senses have been heightened because every moment is blazingly alive with His animated and energizing Presence.
I feel the warm sun on my skin.
I savor the taste of my food.
I drink in the beauty of His glorious creation.
I laugh deeper and more frequently. I let tears fall.
I lovingly study the faces of my precious loved ones, celebrating the sheer miracle and gift that they are.
I acknowledge my emptiness and invite Him to fill those places and make me whole.
I can embrace the ache of living in a fallen world, rather than surrendering to despair because His Presence comforts and soothes and heals me as He quietly whispers that this is not all there is…the best is yet to come.
I surrender to His ways because He knows what He is doing and He makes all things beautiful in its time. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
I treasure all that my days hold…because every single minute, I am held in His powerful hand and delightfully, I am the focus of His intense love. Always, He is here…in the now…revealing more of Himself to me and I am continually astonished by His beauty.
He is writing my story…and yours…in the beautiful, sacred moment called now.
He does not expect me to store up enough faith to make it through a stressful time.
This is something I get tricked into doing all the time! “I’m not worrying; I’m just trying to make sure if ___ happens, I’ll respond to it the way I should.” Except that only ever causes anxiety! So what’s actually happening is the devil is tricking me into worrying. 6_6
The above italicized statement was a statement of freedom for me today. 🙂 This whole post was freedom, but that statement was like a supercharged shot of freedom — it got me right where I needed to be gotten. \o/ (That’s a little man throwing his arms up to say YAY! ;)) | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Search form
The kratom bomb—DEA moves to fast-track scheduling herbal drug
15th September 2016
Rebecca Cooney
North American Executive Editor for The Lancet | @BekRx
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s rather controversial decision not to re-schedule marijuana as a schedule 2 drug received a flurry of recent attention, and another plant-based drug—kratom—is facing a related fate.
The DEA has indicated that it is working to expedite the temporary classification of the alkaloids mitragynine and 7- hydroxymitragynine, two of the main active constituents of the plant kratom, as schedule 1 drugs under the Controlled Substances Act. Substances in schedule 1 are considered those which have a high potential for abuse and which are not accepted as safe or effective for medical treatment or under medical supervision.
With the expedited classification targeted for September 30, 2016, the backlash from kratom users and supporters has begun to intensify. This week, proponents of the herb held a rally in Washington, DC and submitted a 120,000-signature petition to the White House opposing the DEA’s plans and asking for an open comment period that would allow experts and the public to weigh in.
Kratom, like many other unregulated herbal supplements, has the cache of east meets west. Used as a folk remedy in countries such as Thailand, kratom leaves are harvested from a tree in the coffee family and commonly steeped as tea or consumed in capsules. In small amounts, kratom is purported to have a stimulant effect, but in larger amounts, it works as a sedative.
Although kratom is still used in traditional medicine in Southeast Asia where it is grown, such as for the treatment of diarrhea or as a local anesthetic, its popularity in the west has primarily been recreational or as an opioid substitute to ease withdrawal symptoms or for chronic pain. It is in that capacity that kratom has risen to notoriety and flagged the attention of the DEA as well as the CDC. In a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report issued earlier this summer, a CDC study found that from 2000-2015, U.S. poison centers received 660 calls related to kratom, with nearly a half of reported cases requiring medical attention for either moderate or more severe symptoms, including tachycardia and nausea. Two deaths were reported. The report concludes with the suggestion that kratom use is an emerging public health threat—a sentiment echoed by the DEA.
Supporters of the use of kratom for easing opioid addiction or withdrawal allege that that it is an unfair characterization, especially in light of the serious opioid epidemic in the US. For perspective, about 28,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2014 alone. Critically, there is little clinical evidence to support a legitimate medicinal role for kratom. But, as the case has been with marijuana, there is also the difficulty of obtaining high-quality evidence with the impending schedule 1 designation, which will make studies investigating kratom that much more difficult to conduct. Without clinical support for the safety and efficacy of kratom, it is unlikely that the DEA’s decision will be circumvented. For many kratom users who have espoused the protest, “We are the ones in pain”, after this decision, relief may remain out of reach. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
A call for help
Brigitte Gabriel is scheduled to speak at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor this evening. Emails have gone out to the Arab students urging them to come to the event and “disrupt” it. It actually urges “all Muslim brothers and sisters to do what they need to do to disrupt this event.” Here is a quote from one of their multiple emails: “Muslims, Arabs, and their friends and allies should give Gabriel a proper welcome.” Gabriel writes:
Last week Tom Tancredo’s talk at Michigan State University Law School was disrupted and he was attacked. The same kind of disruption happened at Columbia when the Minuteman Project came and mayhem ensued. We are expecting the same thing tomorrow at Ann Arbor against me. This has become a pattern to silence anyone speaking in defense of America, Israel and our civilization.
I need your help. For those of you who are located in the Michigan area or close to the university please show up and support the lecture. For those of you who are in law enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and Police officers I need your help to protect me and provide security at the lecture as well as accompany me for my different media interviews in Detroit.
If you are able and willing to volunteer to provide security, please contact Linda by email [email protected]
JOHN adds: Also, if anyone can attend and bring a video camera, we’d be very interested in putting up any interesting footage of what happens. You can send it to us at [email protected] You can use a service like YouSendIt if that helps. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
U.S. Hurricane Expert to Quit, Join TV Station
MIAMI — Dr. Neil Frank, the director of the National Hurricane Center, has resigned to become a weather forecaster and science reporter at a Houston television station, a weather service spokesman said Thursday.
Frank will leave the hurricane center June 1, the first day of the 1987 hurricane season, for KHOU in Houston, said meteorologist James Lushine.
Frank was named National Hurricane Center director in 1973. Since then, his vigorous delivery and close-cropped hair style have made him a national television figure during hurricane season.
Replacement Not Named
His replacement has not been named, Lushine said.
Frank, who has been with the National Weather Service for more than 25 years, is 55, the age federal employees become eligible for retirement, Lushine said.
"It is just a situation when he was eligible to retire, and he chose to continue working in the private sector," Lushine said. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
About this business
Tips
You have already submitted a tip for this merchant. Please reload the page.
You have already submitted too many tips. Please wait and try again later.
There was an unexpected error. Please reload the page and try again.
From Our Editors
Medieval barbers let blood and extracted teeth in addition to cutting hair and trimming beards. Today's Groupon gets you a classic barbershop chop without the leaches. For $11, you get a shampoo and precision cut at The Taylor Haircutting Company, a $22 value. The Taylor Haircutting Company offers a family-friendly, professional environment where a man can relax and remember a time when attentive barbershop service was de rigueur and WiFi still stood for "wine fireplace."
A Groupon Buck is site credit worth $1 that's deposited directly into your Groupon account. If you have Groupon Bucks available, they'll be applied automatically at checkout for any deal except Getaways Market Picks. Please note that you can only earn one Groupon Buck per business from Specials. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
TEXT_XSELL_PRODUCTS
Articulated Israeli CineArm short[LLA-CINEARM195]LLA-CINEARM195
49€ 25€
Review by Martin Morgan
If you have a small camera LED light, this is a mandatory accessory. The light can be positioned in any way you like so you don't get hindered by the use of it.I bought it with other products and Iím pleased with the services this online shop provide. V
Articulated Israeli CineArm made from high grade aluminum alloy with 1/4" screws at both ends and removable shoe mount to attach it on camera. Can be used to sustain LED lights or small LCD monitors. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,4164,2577187,00.html
Cyberstalking Hype
By Lewis Z. Koch Special To Inter@ctive Week, [4]Inter@ctive Week
May 25, 2000 3:13 PM PT
URL:
'Common sense and some growing anecdotal evidence would tell you that
cyberstalking is a growing problem," said Associate Deputy Attorney
General John Bentivoglio, who handles cybercrime and cyberstalking
issues at the Department of Justice. That's when alarm bells went off
in my head.
More than three decades ago, on my third day as a cub reporter at
Chicago's City News Bureau, a hulking, menacing, slovenly city editor
named Arnold Dornfeld lumbered up to me and asked, "Does your mother
love ya, chum?"
"Yes," I responded eagerly.
"How d'ya know?"
I coughed nervously and mumbled, "Of course she does."
"Call her and check." I looked for a smile on his face. There was
none. Then he leaned in and said, "Call her or you're fired."
I quickly dialed my mother, asked the question, got a positive reply,
hung up and looked at Dornfeld. "She said she loves me."
Dornfeld looked deep into my eyes and said, without a shred of humor,
"Now you know."
Would that Bentivoglio had deigned to "call and check."
Is cyberstalking a plague, an international menace or a rare crime?
There are problems on the Internet - some real, others minuscule, many
imaginary. There are criminal financial dealings on the Net, child
porn and child molesters, dope dealers and terrorists. It's like life
- real and, at times, grim, ugly and desperate.
But when it comes to cyberstalking, there's little justification for
the hysteria.
Joel Best, chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University
of Delaware, in his brilliant, impeccably researched and highly
readable book Random Violence: How We Talk About New Crimes and New
Victims, had the sense to check out the stalking situation and found
it to be wildly overblown.
The news media, in Best's analysis, is perpetually in need of new,
attention-grabbing stories, a new crime wave or menace. This style of
journalism, Best said, forms just one side of what he called an "iron
quadrangle":
Side 1 - Sensation mongers. Frenzy and melodrama are the very stuff of
life for reporters and editors. They sell newspapers and magazines,
drive TV ratings higher and alarm the public.
Side 2 - Pandering politicians. Elected officials hold public hearings
and give "outraged" speeches and interviews, call for new legislation
that, of course, justifies their salaries and their re-election.
Bureaucrats churn out reports like beavers building a dam.
Side 3 - Trendy academics/experts/problem solvers. The existence of
"problems" opens the door to academics who need to "study" the
problems over time. Meanwhile, quotable "experts and problem solvers"
call for budget and personnel increases to combat the problems defined
by the academics.
Side 4 - Activists in search of a new agenda. There is an almost
unlimited number of potential Internet addicts/victims, all of whom
need care. Activists and professional advocates make themselves
available to the new marketplace of victims.
This iron quadrangle has already taken real-life hostage. Next stop:
the Internet.
A perfect example of the iron quadrangle at work is the assessment of
cyberstalking. How serious is it? The alleged number of stalkers in
the U.S. is 200,000. That number has been floating around for eight
years. The reporter who first reported it in 1992 can't exactly recall
his source. Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael picked it up that
year. California, with one actual stalking murder case, passed its
antistalking law in 1992. Twenty-nine other states quickly followed
with similar laws that year. Eighteen more states and the District of
Columbia followed in 1993, triggered, it appears, by exactly two other
stalking death cases in the nation.
Three cases in all. Tragic, yes - but three cases in a nation of 270
million people. Yet activists immediately equated stalking with
"violence against women/domestic violence," which allowed for
plague-sized numbers. That is how a group called CyberAngels came up
with the numbers of 63,000 Internet stalkers and 474,000 victims
worldwide, numbers even Bentivoglio's 1999 Report on Cyberstalking: A
New Challenge for Law Enforcement and Industry warned in a footnote
were "statistics from unspecified sources." How many specific
cyberstalking cases does Bentivoglio's report cite? Six.
I asked Bentivoglio, if the data gathered from the stalking survey
proved wrong, wouldn't his report's extrapolation of the extent of the
problem be wrong as well. "Sure," he allowed.
Although the report is replete with words such as "trends" and
"evidence," there is little factual support. Everything rests on a
single study. The report describes it as a "large study on sexual
victimization of college women, by researchers at the University of
Cincinnati." It was a national telephone survey of 4,446 randomly
selected women attending two- and four-year institutions of higher
education.
As defined by the study, a stalking incident was anytime someone
answered "yes" to the question: Has someone "repeatedly followed you,
watched you, phoned, written, e-mailed or communicated with you in
other ways that seemed obsessive and made you afraid or concerned for
your safety." A veritable fruit salad of offenses and a wide range of
reactions, but, hey, let's leave that aside.
The study claims that of the 13.1 percent who said they were stalked,
"24.7 percent of the stalking incidents involved e-mail." In effect,
Bentivoglio concluded, "25 percent of stalking incidents among college
women could be classified as involving cyberstalking."
Only it's not true, at least according to one of the study's authors -
Francis T. Cullen, research professor at the University of Cincinnati,
the highly regarded past editor of Justice Quarterly and the Journal
of Crime and Justice, and the former president of the Academy of
Criminal Justice Sciences.
Cullen dismissed the cyber side of the stalking study, noting it only
included a "couple of questions" related to the "cyberstalking area,"
and those questions were "not detailed." Cullen said that of those
"couple of questions," no samples of threatening e-mail had been
obtained, the questions were on a "general level," the study was "not
a study of cyberstalking per se" and, "unfortunately," the research
was conducted at such a level that, "other than knowing something had
occurred, we actually don't know much about it."
What we're left with is a suspicious statistical extrapolation and a
nearly nonexistent, shockingly weak study of cyberstalking that wasn't
even a study of cyberstalking in the first place. If a reporter had
handed Dornfeld this report, he would have torn it up, tossed it back
and said, "Check it out, chum - and next time, come back with facts." | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
She has done glamorous as well as non-glamorous roles, but Ms Padukone feels sad when people think a glamorous role does not require hard work
“I think the role is more important. It is a misconception that a glamorous role doesn’t require acting talent. It’s a bit strange, because I think at the end of the day, any kind of film – whether it is glamorous or ‘de-glam’ (non-glamorous) – requires acting. Acting is acting,” said Deepika in an interview. “For example, people think I gave a brilliant performance as Veronica in Cocktail, but it was also a glamorous role. For me, it is about the role and the film, not glamour,” she added.
The 26-year-old actor made her Bollywood debut with Om Shanti Om and has since been part of successful films such as Bachna Ae Haseeno, Housefull, Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail and will soon be seen in Race 2. For Deepika, it is important that not only her role is appreciated, but the film also does well at the box office. “When you set out to do a film, one hopes that your performance is appreciated, and the film also goes on to do well. Fortunately with me, in Cocktail, I got both. The film did well and the performance was appreciated. I hope this happens in all my films,” she said.
Asked if she fears being over-exposed, Deepika said: “I think as long as you are doing good work, that is the most important thing. I don’t think that it can result in over-exposure of any form. Also I am someone who has always believed in quality versus quantity,” she said.
The former model also endorses several brands and has just been made the face of a new range of two products alongside Priyanka Chopra. “Today I could have easily been doing 15-20 brands at a time, but I chose not to do that. I chose to endorse the best in the market,” she added.
With so many films and endorsements in her kitty, does she get time for herself? “It’s about the kind of lifestyle you lead. I can say that I have been the busiest in my career because I am juggling three films at a time. But I think I know how to conserve my energy, I know where to conserve it and spend it. I think things like my diet, workout, exercise, the water I drink and products I use add to me looking and feeling better,” Deepika said. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
NEC Cloud Communicator Android tablet with dual screens at CES
NEC has already indicated that it will be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month and will definitely have its Cloud Communicator tablet on the show floor in full force. However, it seems that the a dual screen version of the Android tablet will also be making an appearance.
I imagine that much of the “guts” of the dual-screen tablet will be the same as its single screen counterpart, meaning that we should expect an ARM Cortex A8 processor, 3MP camera, SD card slot, WiFi, GPS, and Android 2.1. The main difference, of course, is the inclusion of a second 7-inch “Retina Touch Panel” display.
The idea of rocking two touchscreens on a single tablet isn’t exactly new, but many of the concepts and prototypes we’ve seen thus far have left something to be desired. I’m not entirely sure what NEC is going to do to make its doubled-up Cloud Communicator any better, but if the rumors hold true, I should be able to find out in just a couple of weeks.
NEC to Exhibit a New Line of Android(TM) Products and Service Offerings at Pepcom’s Digital Experience and CES 2011
The First Dual-LCD-Screen Android Tablet, LifeTouch and a New Android Application Marketplace Available to Demo in the South Hall 4, Booth 36268
Tokyo, December 21, 2010 – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) announced today that it will participate at Pepcom Digital Experience and CES 2011 on Jan. 5-9, 2011 in Las Vegas. NEC will be debuting a new line of products and service offerings based on the Android platform, including the first showing of its dual-screen Android tablet, the introduction of its Home Gateway Solution designed for cloud access from home and its Android application marketplace, andronavi. NEC will also exhibit its single-screen tablet, initially announced in November 2010, for the first time in the U.S. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Clastah: Dead Stars - 2x12inch + Downloadspb12028
the fourth release of istari lasterfahrer & classless kulla under their new name clastah. double 12inch release with silverlabels in a double sided printed triptichon foldout poster cover with infosheet and stickers. limited to 299 copies. coming out of the kosmos it brings to you finest beats and words in german, english and argentinian spanish. following their breakcorish background you find electronic music like amenpunk, jungleflavours, dubby modular treatments, cumbia and candombe riddims, pure electro pop, trap grooves, acid vapor gabba and speedcore blastbeats on this release.
Tracklist:
A
where we come from
that escalated quickly
barderos de la vereda
wir streiken
B
critical richness
rammstein lösen sich auf
candombe de mucha palo
i was just wondering
C
meine lieblingsgruppe (feat. torsun)
part of it
mieses stück scheisze
museum of dead people
this is classless
D
the wandering working class
triebwagen | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
EnviTec Biogas: Thermal pressure hyrolysis increases efficiency
By EnviTec | February 10, 2017
High pressure plus high temperatures: the recipe for success from thermal pressure hydrolysis (TDH). The optimized process from the R&D division of EnviTec Biogas utilizes high pressures and temperatures to digest biomass even more effectively.
“Like EnviTec itself, thermal pressure hydrolysis is an all-rounder: the technique can be used universally for any biogas plant while also being suitable for any substrate where the breakdown of organic material—typically raw fibre—is not extensive enough in the biogas process,” explains Dipl.-Ing. Jürgen Tenbrink, CTO of the German company based in Lohne in Lower Saxony.
Apart from a long-term increase in gas yield, which can range from 10% to over 60% when renewable raw materials are used, the process also facilitates the use of substrates that have to date been entirely unsuitable for use in biogas plants—or at least not in any quantities worth mentioning.
The process is not itself new, however. “Previously, thermal pressure hydrolysis was used with the input materials—i.e. the raw matter. This is a hugely involved process, however,” explains Tenbrink—since the additional mashing means additional heating or cooling is required, depending on the type of hydrolysed material. Handling unwanted materials also adds to the effort here. EnviTec’s method skips this step, however: the process targets only the difficult-to-degrade raw fibre from the biogas process. Since the technique doesn’t involve any mashing of the input, this significantly reduces heating requirements. Other advantages include the exclusion of unwanted material as well as lower throughput.
The sustainable approach also has a positive effect on the plant owner’s cash flow: compared to a conventional biogas plant, a biogas plant equipped with a TDH system is significantly more economical to run. “Operators can make considerable savings thanks to the more cost-effective use of difficult-to-digest inputs like solid manure,” Tenbrink adds. Depending on the project, input costs can be cut by as much as 35 percent or more. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
TWO Kerry filmmakers are highlighting the effects of domestic abuse in a new short film to be premiered next week at the Kerry Film Festival.
The work of writer and director, Mark Riordan from Killorglin and producer Aaron O’Neill from Cromane, ‘The Black’ focuses on how domestic abuse could affect a whole family, paying particular attention to male victims of abuse.
Continued below…
.
The short film asks the question “What’s really going on inside?” and tells us that we never really know what is going on inside another family’s home.
It involves a detective interviewing a child, about a violent incident between her parents the previous night.
“Originally we planned to make a thriller,” said Mark, a 25 year old graphic designer at Tweak.com. “Myself and Aaron have been filming for a few years and we have mostly made horrors or thrillers. I pitched the idea to Aaron and we developed it more.
“As development continued and I wrote up the first draft of the script, we decided to challenge ourselves and tackle the real serious topic of domestic abuse. The film industry is all about entertainment and thats what we want to do, entertain an audience, but we felt this film can carry such a strong message too.
“We spent months in pre production and spoke to many organisations, including Amen, who gave us an excellent insight into male victims of domestic abuse. We met up with Michael Lynch of AV3 Productions in February and I am delighted to have worked with them on this.”
The film was completely self-funded by the two man who both work full time jobs. They are in early stages of planning for a feature film also – to be shot in 2018 – and Mark is currently working on the first draft of the script.
“We want to entertain audiences and prove that we can make a good film. The Black carries a really strong message and because of this I really hope that it can reach many more audiences worldwide in 2017 and help raise more awareness for male victims of domestic abuse,” said Mark.
The film premieres at The Kerry Film Festival on Sunday, October 23 in Killarney Cinema and will also screen at The Richard Harris Film Festival this month. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Flux – Substratum Theme 5.1.0 Apk patched is a Personalization Android app Free Download last version Flux – Substratum Theme Apk patched For Android with direct link Flux theme for Substratum is designed with pixel perfect precision and material ui, to give your phone a completely new modern look and feel! With high quality vector […]
Flux – Substratum Theme 5.1.0 Apk patched is a Personalization Android app Free Download last version Flux – Substratum Theme Apk patched For Android with direct link Flux theme for Substratum is designed with pixel perfect precision and material ui, to give your phone a completely new modern look and feel! With high quality vector […]
Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List 2.17.0 Apk Premium latest is a Productivity Android app Download last version Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List Apk Premium For Android with direct link Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List is a Productivity […]
Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List 2.17.0 Apk Premium latest is a Productivity Android app Download last version Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List Apk Premium For Android with direct link Do It Now – RPG To Do List | Task List is a Productivity […] | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Prepare for Success: Starting and Growing an Emerging Company in the Greater Philadelphia Region
Michael S. Harrington, a partner and co-chair of the Corporate Department with Fox Rothschild LLP, will speak at the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference. The Conference will be held on March 26-27, 2008, at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Harrington will serve as moderator for a panel discussion entitled, “Prepare for Success: Starting and Growing an Emerging Company in the Greater Philadelphia Region.” The discussion will explore how to start and grow an emerging business in the greater Philadelphia region, and focus on the unique challenges faced by start-up and early-stage companies. In addition, the panel will discuss and evaluate the current state of the early-stage marketplace in Philadelphia, as well as the current climate for starting and growing an emerging company.
Panel members include:
David Bookspan, DreamIt Venture, LLC
Christopher Stanchak, TicketLeap
Scott Nissenbaum, Novitas Capital
John Loftus, Safeguard Scientifics
Maria Maccecchini, Robin Hood Venture
Harrington, who serves as office managing partner of the firm’s Exton office, concentrates his practice on representing early- and middle-stage growth, technology, and life science companies in corporate finance, private equity, mergers, acquisitions, venture capital, securities, and technology law, among others. His experience includes advising institutional, strategic, and private investors on structuring, negotiating, and managing investments; representing private equity funds in raising capital and advising on requisite disclosures and federal and state securities law compliance; and assisting growth companies in investment banking, accounting, management, private investor, and other critical financing relationships.
The Conference brings together a host of thought leaders in technologies including AJAX, Ruby-on-Rails, Spring, Flex, ESBs, Agile and more as they share their experience and knowledge with attendees. Tracks include Management, SOA, Lightweight, Web 2.0, and Ruby. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
“The little boy with the big art”
Welcome to my website. I am was drawing ANYTHING to raise funds for the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh, just ask me. My little brother Toby and my wee brother Noah used to go in a lot. My name is Jack and I am 6 (now 14) years old.
Thank you to Crayola USA for the biggest box of art supplies…ever
10Jun 2011
Last week we received what we can only describe as the BIGGEST box of art supplies we have ever seen. Household name, Crayola (based in Pennsylvania, USA) had sent Jack, Toby & Noah, dozens of their products. They stood with mouths open at the amount of stuff they had received.
THANK YOU so much to Stacy Gabrielle for her kind donation. At the rate Jack goes through pens, it will probably last 2 weeks!
In true "pay it forward" style AND at Jack’s suggestion, we have gathered up a share of this donation and have passed it on to Noah’s Toddler group in Port Seton and some will find its way to the Sick Kids. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Honda BR-V vs Toyota Innova Comparison
Honda, the Japanese car maker is all set with their latest and probably one of the most awaited SUV “Honda BRV”. Expected launch date of this new model of SUV is 5 May 2016. This car can raise Honda’s position in Indian SUV car market and is expected to give a tough competition to the established car like Hyundai Creta, Renault Duster, Tata Safari Storm, Toyota Innova and new launches Innova Crysta etc. Here goes the brief comparison between the upcoming Honda BRVand established successful Toyota model Innova.
Price of Honda BRV vs Toyota Innova
Till now, no official prices are revealed by the Honda for its BRV but experts are expecting it to be around 10 Lakh. On the other hand, Toyata Innova is costly and its cost lies in INR 13.7 to 17.1 Lakh and new Innova Cryta is expected in same price range.
Comparison Based On Dimensions
Honda BRV will be spacious SUV with the length of 4456mm, breadth of 1735mm, and height of 1666mm. Its wheelbase is 2660mm and will provide the ground clearance of 201mm. coming to Innova, then length, breadth and height are 4585mm, 1760mm, and 1760mm. It provides the clearance of 176mm and has the wheelbase of 2750mm. So overall, Toyota Innova and new upcoming Innvoa Cryta is bigger and is more spacious than the upcoming model.
Comparison Based On Engines
See here honda brv vs Innova crysta then coming to the technical specification, then Innova is powered by 2.5-litre 100.6bhp 16V 2KD-FTV Diesel Engine and is only available in Diesel. This engine is capable of delivering power and torque of 100.6bhp and 200Nm. This seven seater car has the transmission system of 5 Speed manual gear box.
Honda BRV will be available in both the fuel options that is Diesel and petrol. Expected petrol and diesel engines of this car are a 1.5-litre iVTEC petrol engine (118bhp power and 145 Nm torque) and 1.5-litre iDTEC diesel engine (99bhp power and 200Nm torque). It can have new CVT automatic transmission or six-speed manual system as transmission system.
Based on Mileage Honda BR-V vs Innova
Toyota Innova is not that fuel efficient and provides the mileage of 12kmpl. Whereas petrol engine of BR-v will have the mileage of 17-18kmpl and the fuel efficiency of diesel variant is 24-25kmpl.
Comparison based on Designing
Honda’s this car is inspired by Mobilio and will be based on Active Solid Motion design ethos. It will have U shaped chrome slat, black projector headlights, 16-inch wheels, circular fog lamps with chrome bezels, roof rails, C-shaped LED rear taillights etc. Its interior will have the features like foldable third row seats, rear parking camera, electronically operated ORVMs, rear Air Conditioning vents, etc.
On the other hand, Toyota Innova and Inova Crysta is a seven seater car with a smart look and lots of space. This car is successful in Indian market and has attracted lots of customers. Toyota, happy with its success, is planning to bring its upgraded level which will named as Toyota Innova Crysta. Both the cars are well equipped safety equipment’s. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Rituals
Gwendolyn Plunkett's Ancient Vessel Art Blog features my work this week. She has invited readers to participate in her Time/Rituals/Collections interactive blog project. Gwen's invitation inspired me to think of my own rituals as I create one of my oil paintings.
I've found one of the most important and necessary rituals I engage in is writing in my journal. Before I start work in the morning, I sit quietly in the studio, with the dawn coming up. I light a candle and begin to write my thoughts, observations, and reflections on the work I'm doing. An important part of this journaling ritual are my affirmations. I have a list of 4 or 5 affirmations that deal with my art and my career, and I spend about 10 or 15 minutes writing them out, over and over. This activity calms me and sets my mood for the day. I will often read poetry at this time as well, finding inspiration in the words and imagery of Neruda, Rumi, Mary Oliver, and others. Sometimes I discover a line or phrase in a poem that I will use as a starting point for the painting. I also seek out my favorite poets to find the titles to my work.
I usually spend a lot of time beforehand looking at the painting that I am about to work on, figuring out where the painting is taking me. I try to listen to what the painting tells me. When I'm ready to paint, I set up my work table. My glass palette is always spotlessly clean before I begin to paint. I pour out 2 cans of odorless mineral spirits for washing the brushes. Then I squeeze out the colors from the paint tubes. I select my color palette for the painting ahead of time, and I usually stick to that palette for the duration of the painting.
My technique is repetitive and process oriented. Vertical and horizontal brushstrokes, applied in many layers, form a grid structure and slowly build up the abstract composition as the brushstrokes accumulate and transform the canvas. The application of the paint is methodical yet allows for chance and unplanned discoveries. Time is an element of the process, as each brushstroke represents a moment, a gesture, a connection.
Another important ritual for me is music -- the music I listen to in the studio is extremely important. I usually always listen to the music of Hildegard of Bingen (or anything by Anonymous 4), which in itself is ritualistic and repetitive, with soaring harmonies and meditative melodies. The music mirrors my painting process in its repetition and meditative qualities. In fact, I will often listen to the same piece of music over and over while working on a particular piece. The repetition of the music adds a subliminal lyric element to the imagery.
When I am finished for the day, usually around sunset, I scrape off my glass palette and clean my brushes with soap and warm water. I have a ritual for washing my brushes too. It's kind of odd and obsessive, actually. I wash each brush exactly 3 times. I then lay them out to dry, and I always let them dry for at least 24 hours. I do this every time, I don't know why.
I was delighted to discover recently a blog called Daily Routines. It includes descriptions of all sorts of rituals and habits of writers, artists, composers, etc. Like many artists and writers, at the end of my day I enjoy a glass of wine as I reflect upon that day's work and consider the next day's direction.
7 comments:
Diane,Thank you for giving a glimpse into your practice. I can certainly see how your description of how you move through your day is reflected in your work which always calms me when I look at it.
The people that I know who have a strong ritual base to their lives seem to have found a way to "be". I envy that. While I am productive, I am sporadic in my approach and rarely do things the same way on two consecutive days. There is much to think about in this post.
Thanks for your comments, Margaret. I must say that it has taken decades to get to this point of practicing any rituals in my working habits. I was very scattered for many years. I think wisdom and old age accounts for my current routine, one that really feeds my creative soul.
I have enjoyed the glimpse into your studio space and your process. I so appreciate your blog, your well thought out comments and the obvious passion you have for creating. Sometimes when I am in my studio, alone, creating, I envision other artists doing the same. And you are an artist I think of.
Thank you Diane, I need to slow down and think more about my work. I rush at things so much. Your work shows the peaceful meditative processes involved. I wish I could be as dedicated, getting up at the crack of dawn is not something I aspire to regularly, but it is a wonderful magical time. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
I would say it depends on what your intentions are. If you plan to track it or just love the look of the 1LE then it's a no brainer. However if you just want the rumble of the V8 and go cruising then a regular SS is the way to go.
Also worth mentioning is the 1LE is manual only so that's a deal breaker for some. Manual is my preference so it was an easy decision for me.
I had a 12' 2SS 45th and liked it but going to a 13' 2SS 1LE showed there is quite a difference. Handling is much better, acceleration is better due to the 3.91 gears & close ratio trans, the shorter throw shifter lifted from the ZL1 is better and I like the distinct cosmetic differences that set it apart (wheels, hood wrap, steering wheel & shift knob) .
My only "gripe" if you can call it that is maybe finding the right tire for the 1LE if I need to have it for off season driving. Right now it's a garage queen during poor weather and planned that way for winter months but who knows what the future really holds.
Thanks for the input. I guess I should of been a little more specific. I'm going to drive it mostly out ridding around not much at the track. I like to cornering fast on the back country roads. Really like the look of the 1le.
I haven't owned a camaro since my 89 Iroc-Z convertible. That was a great car. Was not a fan of the gen 4 cars so I owned a BMW 3 series, VW Toureg V8, HHR SS (still own) since then. I'm now in a market for a camaro and while I like the SS and love the ZR1, it's the 1LE that really has me back buying a camaro. I drove one a few weeks back and absolutley loved it. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Take a look at the CSA poll result below. Notice that the proportion of respondents who say that they will "probably or certainly" vote in the PS primary has dropped steadily since DSK's arrest in may.
Not a moment too soon, given a world in financial turmoil and an IMF shaken to its core by the scandal of her predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned over allegations of sexual assault in May. A moderate Socialist, DSK pushed for lenient fiscal policies and stringent financial regulations and opposed austerity programs in beleaguered euro zone economies like Ireland, Portugal and Greece. Lagarde, an unabashed free marketer, takes a much flintier approach to the crisis. It’s time, she says, to return the IMF to its roots, “that fiscal consolidation line, which I think is right.”
DSK's team apparently had it all figured out. He was to resign from the IMF in late June, announce his candidacy on June 28, preceded by a "blitzkrieg" in the last two weeks of June, positioning himself as "the French FDR," savior in a time of crisis. With Laurent Fabius as his campaign manager!
The best laid plans ... I especially like the idea of taking it easy through the summer. I've always thought that DSK was a lazy politician with little taste for the thousand indignities of campaigning (who can blame him for that?). A blitzkrieg campaign followed by a sequence of stealthy appearances would have been just his style.
Daniel Gros argues that eurobonds are not the answer to the crisis of the euro. He makes several points, the last and most important of which is "quality of governance":
These differences in the quality of governance, more than any technical problems, are probably the reason why the electorate in Northern Europe is sceptical about Eurobonds. With these fundamental differences in the way different member countries work it would in practice be impossible to conduct a unified fiscal policy even if the post of a Eurozone finance minister were created.
UPDATE: another, similar critique of the eurobond idea here, from Yannis Palaiologos.
European stock markets are rising again on hopes that the US Federal Reserve will soon initiative a third round of "quantitative easing." This is foolish. QE1 and 2 were hardly models of effectiveness, and the Japanese central bank has amply proven that expanding the money supply, though undoubtedly the right thing to do in a slump, cannot by itself turn things around: the famous "pushing on a string" analogy is, alas, more than just a metaphor. But Europeans seem to like grasping at American straws, while Americans persist in their Lafferish delusion that tax-cutters walk on water. It would be more useful, perhaps, if Europeans could prevail upon their own central bankers to ease up on their side of the Atlantic. The euro is too high against the dollar, and European inflation is too low. The IMF has recommended higher inflation targeting as one way to reduce the danger of overhanging debt, but the cry has gone unheard in the European wilderness. Indeed, continental inflation rates have begun to diverge from US and UK inflation rates:
(Source: FRED CPI data)
Europe needs to raise its inflation rate and depreciate its currency. It can't count on the Federal Reserve.
Pascal Bruckner is a writer who often has interesting and provocative things to say, but something about the United States seems to have unhinged him. He thinks he sees an "alliance du féminisme et de la droite républicaine, ultra conservatrice. Ces deux forces se sont unies, au nom d'intérêts différents, pour refermer le couvercle ouvert par les années 60-70." The old saw of America's "puritanism" is revisited, but only to assert that its existence is proved by its antithesis: "La qualifier de puritaine ne suffit pas car c'est un puritanisme retors, d'après la révolution des mœurs, qui parle le langage de la liberté amoureuse et coexiste avec une industrie pornographique florissante." It was absurd to have charged DSK with rape because America is guilty of so many crimes of its own:
And so we are back where we began in the DSK affair, with a member of the French elite excusing a sordid hotel-room encounter as une peccadille amoureuse. Amoureuse! Even the defense admits that whatever transpired between the naked Strauss-Kahn and the chambermaid wearing two pairs of tattered pantyhose was confined to an interval of nine minutes maximum. It is hard to imagine the part played by amour in such an encounter.
Bruckner tries to redeem himself in the end by allowing that, despite its depravity, America knows the difference between rape and la moindre peccadille amoureuse, as does France:
On croit rêver. Some in France seem to have learned nothing from this whole sordid affair. Fortunately, it seems clear that most of M. Bruckner's countrymen are not quite so broad-minded in their "tolerance of human weakness." France2 reported last night that DSK's approval rating has plummeted from 52% before his arrest to 28% today. And The Times reports that
Gérard Grunberg, a political scientist who studies the left in France, said that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s “image in public opinion is very damaged” and the Socialist Party itself, already annoyed with him for ruining an important political opportunity to challenge Mr. Sarkozy and with its primary soon, “does not want to have this collective occasion spoiled.”
Let's hope that Pascal Bruckner represents the embittered few rather than the sober majority.
Newsletter Subscription
Site Statistics
Followers
About This Site
I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer". | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
A June Night at The Opera Pictures
If you wish to download a copy of a photograph (on a PC or Mac):
1.Left click on the picture to open the larger image;
2.Right click on the large image and “save image as..”
3.Use the “back button” in your browser to return to the page | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
CartONG is a French non-governmental organization committed to furthering the use of geographic and non-geographic information tools and methodologies to improve data gathering and analysis for emergency relief and development programmes around the world. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Welcome to Pearl Girls™Mother of Pearl Mother's Day blog series. The series is week long celebration of moms and mothering. Each day will feature a new post by some of today's best writer's (Tricia Goyer, Megan Alexander, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Beth Engelman, Holley Gerth, Shellie Rushing Tomlinson, and more). I hope you'll join us each day for another unique perspective on Mother's Day.
AND ... do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/1-5/8 and the winner will on 5/11. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.
I held the small baby in my arms, wrapped up in a receiving blanket to keep her warm from the chill of the delivery room, and a voice spoke to me. "Congratulations, Mom."
The congratulations came from an unlikely source--the grandmother of this child, the mother of the sweet birth mother who chose adoption for her baby girl.
To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement. Thankfulness filled my heart--to God who'd answered my prayers and to the birth mom who'd chosen our family for her daughter. I also ached that my joy would be another's heartache. Working with teen moms for ten years, I was often an advocate for the young mother. I knew that while the weeks and months ahead would be a time of celebration for our family, they would be ones of heartache and grieving for this woman.
Adoption is a wonder and the beauty, and the sacrifice of it is never so clear as on Mother's Day. My new daughter is one-years-old now and she huge is a part of my heart. Her life is a gift to my days and her smile can make even the most dreary afternoon bright. I can honestly say there is no difference in the love I feel between her and my three other children. If anything the love feels even more special because she was an unexpected gift. John and I learned about her life just 2 ½ months prior to her being born. The years of prayers to expand our family were answered quickly and beautifully.
The sacrifice of adoption makes my heart ache, for I know on this Mother's Day another woman will be thinking about my daughter—her daughter. As I rejoice, I'll be crying tears for her. I'll also be sending up prayers that God will wrap His arms around her in a special way.
This Mother's Day I cannot help to think about Christ's sacrifice to make our adoption into God's family possible. Maybe it's because just a few weeks ago we were celebrating Easter, but I'm reminded anew that my gain required His loss, His pain. The greatest love, it seems, is not shown with flowers, chocolate or a diamond bracelet. The greatest love is shown when, because of your love for another, your desires and comfort are laid down for the greater good of someone else.
As Ephesians 1:3 says, “How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son” (The Message).
Perhaps you know an adoptive mother. Take time this Mother's Day to let her know that the beauty of her gift is not missed by you. Also, take time to thank God for adopting you into His forever family, thanking Jesus Christ for His sacrifice. I wouldn't be the mother I am without this Gift of Love.
Tricia Goyer is the author of twenty-six books including Beside Still Waters, The Swiss Courier, and the mommy memoir, Blue Like Play Dough. She won Historical Novel of the Year in 2005 and 2006 from ACFW, and was honored with the Writer of the Year award from Mt. Hermon Writer's Conference in 2003. Tricia's book Life Interrupted was a finalist for the Gold Medallion in 2005. In addition to her novels, Tricia writes non-fiction books and magazine articles for publications like MomSense and Thriving Family. Tricia is a regular speaker at conventions and conferences, and has been a workshop presenter at the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) International Conventions. She and her family make their home in Little Rock, Arkansas where they are part of the ministry of FamilyLife. www.triciagoyer.com | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Senator Russell Sees a UFO
This lenticular cloud was photographed over Kepala Batas, Malaysia, in November 1984. Many UFO sightings can indeed be explained as natural occurrences.
Fortean Picture Library
Georgia Senator Richard Russell was a major figure in the U.S. Senate. As head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he exerted enormous influence over the American defense establishment. When he spoke, the military listened. So when Russell reported what he had seen while traveling through the Soviet Union, no one laughed-and hardly anyone outside official circles knew of his remarkable experience until years later.
Just after 7 P.M. on October 4, 1955, while on a train in the Transcaucasia region, the senator happened to gaze out a window to the south. To his considerable astonishment his eyes focused on a large disc-shaped object slowly ascending as a flame shot from underneath it. The object then raced north across the tracks in front of the train. Russell scurried to alert his two companions, who looked out to see a second disc do what the first had just done. At that moment Soviet trainmen shut the curtains and ordered the American passengers not to look outside.
Up Next
As soon as they arrived in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the three men went to the United States embassy and sat down with Lt. Col. Thomas S. Ryan, the air attaché. Russell's associate, Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway, told Ryan that they were about to report something extremely important-"but something that we've been told by your people [the U.S. Air Force] doesn't exist."
Soon rumors about the senator's sighting reached America, but when a reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner tried to obtain details, Russell said only, "I have discussed this matter with the affected agencies and they are of the opinion that it is not wise to publicize this matter at this time." The report was not declassified until 1985. Interestingly, one of the "affected agencies" was not Project Blue Book, which never received the report. Apparently, the event was too sensitive for so lowly a project.
Notable UFO Reports
Famous people and famous events -- take a look at these notable UFO stories: | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Police: Man kills woman, then himself in front yard
Authorities say a 68-year-old man shot and killed a woman Sunday night before fatally shooting himself in the front yard of a home in rural Menifee.
Officers were sent to the home on Merritt Road to investigate a domestic disturbance shortly before 10 p.m. Before they arrived, however, dispatchers notified them that shots had been fired at the location, Menifee police Sgt. Jeff Buompensiero wrote in a news release.
Upon arriving at the home, which sits on a roughly 4-acre property along a dirt road, officers found a woman and man dead in the front yard in what investigators believe is a murder-suicide, the news release states.
Riverside County coroner’s officials identified the woman as 49-year-old Debra Vandyke. The man’s name had not been released pending notification of his next of kin.
Neighbors recalled hearing a series of gunshots around 10 p.m. in the rural neighborhood off Scott Road east of Interstate 215.
“I heard the pop, pop, pop,” said next-door neighbor Marc Miller, a former planning commissioner with the city. “There was maybe a two-minute pause and there was another pop. I came up the driveway and seen the sheriff’s lights coming right over the hill.”
Miller said his neighbors moved onto the property two months ago and often spent nights in an RV outside the home, which they were renovating. Miller said he wasn’t aware of any problems between the couple – whom he believed were married – until Sunday night’s gunfire startled him.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet,” Miller said. “All I can think about is how (they) loved the property. Next thing you know, they aren’t here anymore.”
Another neighbor, Mike Collins, said he had only exchanged friendly waves with the couple since they moved into a home across the street from his property.
Although he sometimes hears gunfire from neighboring ranchers likely shooting at chickens or coyotes, the three shots Collins said he heard Sunday night startled him enough to send him outside to investigate further.
That’s when Collins said he heard a fourth shot.
“I heard three gunshots in a row and a woman yell, ‘You shot her in the chest,’” Collins said. “I heard a guy moaning and then bam, the fourth gunshot. Right after that the police were there.”
Miller said Vandyke’s mother had been staying with the couple and answered the phone when Miller called over to the home. He said she kept him on the line when she told officers what transpired before the gunshots.
He said the man apparently had been staying in the RV at Pechanga.
“He came back yesterday and I guess she was mad at him or something and wanted him to leave,” Miller said. “She was telling him to leave for two or three hours and I guess she finally called the sheriff. … When she went outside to wait for the sheriff, he went outside and pulled the gun and shot her and went back inside and told her mother, ‘I just shot your daughter.’
“She went out to look and boom, he shot himself.”
Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call investigators at 760-393-3500. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
First-Home buyers grants - what you need to know.
First-Home buyers grants - what you need to know.
Featured Home Designs
When you're building your first home, we understand what you have to go through. It can be a stressful experience, coming up with enough money for a deposit, choosing what home design you want, and buying home decor to suit your lifestyle.
Below is a list of the first-home owner grants (FHOG) from the different states and territories that you could be eligible for. Once you know how much money you have for a deposit, you'll know your budget, and how much you can put toward building your dream home!
Western Australia
In the far west, you could be eligible for up to $10,000 from the FHOG. The value of the land and the home together must be less than $1 million if it is north of the town of Denham, or less than $750,000 if it lies south of Kalbarri.
South Australia
In the deep south of Australia, the FHOG amount is $15,000, but only if the total value of the property is less than $575,000.
Victoria
Victorian law regarding the FHOG states that you are eligible for the grant if you have never owned a property before, if the particular home has never been sold or tendered as a residential lot before, and if the total value of the home is less than $750,000.
Tasmania
In Tasmania, the current FHOG amount is $20,000. However, you'll need to act quickly if you want to receive that, because from July 1, 2017, it will be reduced to $10,000. You can commence building any time within 24 months of the transaction being approved, so if you're thinking about building a new home in Tasmania, start planning now!
New South Wales
From January 1, 2016, the FHOG amount reduced from $15,000 to $10,000, but any existing transactions before this year could still be eligible for the greater amount.
Australian Capital Territory
In the ACT, you are eligible for a $10,000 grant if your property has a total value less than $750,000, and if you reside in the constructed home for at least one year after it has been completed.
Queensland
The tropical north of Australia is a booming place to put up a new home design from G.J. Gardner Homes. You'll receive a government grant of between $15,000 and $20,000 depending on the date you entered into the building contract.
Northern Territory
The largest FHOG amount is given by the Northern Territory government ($26,000) and there is no maximum property value!
No matter where you're building your first home, there's a grant that could benefit you. Get in touch with the G.J. Gardner Homes team to start the process today.
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Images and photographs may depict fixtures, finishes and features either not supplied by G.J. Gardner Homes or not included in any price stated. These items include furniture, swimming pools, pool decks,
fences, landscaping. Price does not include all facades shown. For detailed home pricing, please talk to a new homes consultant.
Subscribe to GJ Advisor today, for a monthly email with the tools, practical tips and design advice to guide you through every stage of the building process
By clicking Submit, you agree to receive information, promotions and offers from G.J. Gardner Homes.
The information you have shared will only be used by G.J. Gardner Homes in accordance with our
privacy policy | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
We place these articles at no charge on our website to serve all the people who cannot afford Monthly Review, or who cannot get access to it where they live. Many of our most devoted readers are outside of the United States. If you read our articles online and you can afford a subscription to our print edition, we would very much appreciate it if you would consider purchasing one. Please visit the MR store for subscription options. Thank you very much. —Eds.
Heather Brown is assistant professor of political science at Westfield State University. This article is adapted from the conclusion of her book Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study (Haymarket, 2013), where it appeared in a somewhat different form.
Many feminist scholars have had, at best, an ambiguous relationship with Marx and Marxism. One of the most important areas of contention involves the Marx/Engels relationship.
Studies by Georg Lukács, Terrell Carver, and others have shown significant differences between Marx and Engels on dialectics as well as a number of other issues.1 Building on these studies, I have explored their differences with regard to gender and the family as well. This is especially relevant to current debates, since a number of feminist scholars have criticized Marx and Engels for what they see as their economic determinism. However, Lukács and Carver both point to the degree of economic determinism as a significant difference between the two. Both view Engels as more monistic and scientistic than Marx. Raya Dunayevskaya is one of the few to separate Marx and Engels on gender, while likewise pointing to the more monistic and deterministic nature of Engels’s position, in contrast to Marx’s more nuanced dialectical understanding of gender-relations.2
In recent years, there has been little discussion of Marx’s writings on gender and the family, but in the 1970s and ‘80s, these writings were subject to a great deal of debate. In a number of cases, elements of Marx’s overall theory were merged with psychoanalytic or other forms of feminist theory by feminist scholars such as Nancy Hartsock and Heidi Hartmann.3 These scholars viewed Marx’s theory as primarily gender-blind and in need of an additional theory to understand gender-relations as well. However, they retained Marx’s historical materialism as a starting point for understanding production. Moreover, a number of Marxist feminists also made their own contributions in the late 1960s to ‘80s, particularly in the area of political economy. For example, Margaret Benston, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Silvia Federici, and Wally Seccombe have all tried to revalue housework.4 In addition, Lise Vogel has attempted to move beyond dual systems towards a unitary understanding of political economy and social reproduction.5 Nancy Holmstrom has also shown that Marx can be used to understand the historical development of women’s nature.6
The dual-systems theory of patriarchy and capitalism which was a common form of socialist feminism in the 1970s and ‘80s was viewed as a failed project by many in the 1990s and beyond. In any event, the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe probably had a negative effect on the popularity of socialist feminism. As Iris Young had already argued, dual-systems theory was inadequate since it was based on two very different theories of society—one involving the historic dynamic development of society, primarily social, economic and technological, and the other based on a static psychological view of human nature.7These two theories are very difficult to reconcile because of these vast differences. However, their critiques of what they viewed as Marx’s determinism, gender-blind categories, and emphasis on production at the expense of reproduction provided a starting point for my reexamination of Marx’s work by means of close textual analysis—this in addition to the work of the Marxist feminists mentioned above.
Marx’s work contained elements of Victorian ideology, but there is much of interest on gender and the family scattered throughout his work. As early as 1844, in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx argued that women’s position in society could be used as a measure of the development of society as a whole. He was certainly not the first to make a statement such as this—Charles Fourier is often attributed as the inspiration for this statement—but for Marx, this was more than simply a call for men to change the position of women. Instead, Marx was making a dialectical argument directly related to his overall theory of society. In order for society to advance beyond its capitalist form, new social relations would have to be formed that did not rely solely upon a crude, alienated formulation of value. Human beings would have to become able to see each other as valuable in themselves, rather than as only worth what one individual can provide to another. Women would be especially significant in this regard, since they have tended to be a marginalized group within most, if not all, societies. Thus, men and women would have to reach a point of development where an individual is valued for who they are, rather than any abstract category of man, woman, etc.
Moreover, Marx appears to point in the direction of gender as a dynamic rather than static category. Certainly, Marx never directly made this claim: however, in the 1844 Manuscripts and in The German Ideology, he provided a strong critique of, and alternative to, traditional dualistic views of the nature/society dualism. Instead of nature and society existing as two distinct entities that interact with each other without fundamentally changing the essence of itself or the other, Marx argues that the two are dialectically related. As human beings interact with nature through labor, both the individual and nature is changed. This occurs because human beings exist as part of nature, and the labor process provides the means for such a temporary unity. Since both nature and society are not static entities, Marx argued that there can be no transhistorical notion of what is “natural.” Instead, a concept of “natural” can only be relevant for specific historical circumstances.
Although one should not draw too close a parallel between the nature/culture dualism and the man/woman dualism—to do so could lead to a reification of these categories that we seek to transform—the sort of dialectical thinking that Marx evinces in regard to the nature/culture dualism is also evident in Marx and Engels’s discussion of the gender-division of labor in The German Ideology. Here, they point to the division of labor in the early family as something that is not completely “natural.” Instead, even in their brief discussion of the development of the family, they point out that this division of labor based on gender is only “natural” for very undeveloped productive relations, where women’s different biology would make it difficult for them to carry out certain physically demanding tasks. The implication is that women’s supposed inferiority in these societies is something that can change as society changes. Moreover, since a social element is involved, more is needed than technological development: women will have to work themselves to change their situation.
In at least two other places in his early writings, Marx discusses the position of women in capitalist society. In The Holy Family, Marx criticizes Eugène Sue’s moralistic commentary on the fictional Paris prostitute, Fleur de Marie, in Les Mystères de Paris. In this novel, Fleur de Marie is “saved” from poverty and her life as a prostitute by a minor German prince. He entrusts her into the care of a religious woman and a priest who both teach her of the immorality of her behavior. Eventually, she enters a nunnery and dies shortly thereafter.
Here, Marx criticizes Sue for his uncritical acceptance of Catholic social teaching which focuses on an abstract form of morality that can never actually be achieved. Human beings are not merely spiritual beings that can ignore their bodily needs. This was particularly relevant for someone like Fleur de Marie since, as Marx notes, she had no options available to her other than prostitution to provide herself with a livelihood. However, the priest showed Marie her moral degeneration and told her of the guilt that she should feel, despite the fact that she had no real choice in the matter. Thus, in this text, Marx shows a great deal of sympathy for the plight of working-class women. Moreover, he criticizes the one-sidedness of Christianity, which seeks to raise the position of a pure form of mind against a pure form of the body.
Marx, however, did not limit his critique of women’s concrete situation under capitalism to the working class. In his 1846 essay/translation of Peuchet’s work on suicide, Marx points to familial oppression within the upper classes.8Three of the four cases that Marx discusses involve female suicide due to familial oppression. In one case, a married woman committed suicide, at least in part because her jealous husband confined her to the home and was physically and sexually abusive. The second case involved an engaged woman who spent the night at her fiancé’s house. After she returned home, her parents publicly humiliated her, and she later drowned herself. The final case involved the inability of a young woman to get an abortion after an affair with her aunt’s husband.
In two of the cases, Marx shows great sympathy for the plight of these women by emphasizing certain passages from Peuchet and surreptitiously adding his own remarks. Moreover, Marx points to the need for a total transformation of the bourgeois family, giving emphasis to the following passage from Peuchet: “The revolution did not topple all tyrannies. The evil which one blames on arbitrary forces exists in families, where it causes crises, analogous to those of revolutions.”9 In this way, Marx points to the family in its bourgeois form as oppressive, and something that must be significantly changed if a better society is to come about.
Marx and Engels returned to a critique of the bourgeois family in The Communist Manifesto. There, they argued that the family in its bourgeois form, based primarily on the management and transfer of property, was in a state of dissolution. The material conditions that had led to this form of the family were disappearing among the proletarians because they had no property to give to their children. They may have once been small subsistence farmers, but this was no longer possible as land was expropriated by a number of means and they were forced into the cities and factories to make their livelihood. Without this ability to transmit property to their children after their death and to control their family’s labor-power during their lifetime, the father’s power was diminished significantly, leading in the direction of a different form of the family. Marx and Engels, at this point, did not discuss in any detail what would potentially come after the dissolution of this form of the family, however.
Although Capital is devoted to the critique of political economy, there is a significant amount of material on gender and the family. In it Marx returns to and concretizes what he described as the abolition [Aufhebung] of the family in The Communist Manifesto. As machinery is introduced into the factories, requiring less physically demanding labor, women and children become important categories of workers as well. Capital finds these workers particularly valuable, since they are from an oppressed group that can be compelled to work for less.
A number of other passages in Capital illustrate that Marx held a much more nuanced view of the position of women in the workforce than most feminists acknowledge. For example, as women entered the workforce, he writes, they potentially gained power in their private lives since they now contributed monetarily to the family’s welfare, and were no longer under the direct control of their husbands or fathers for a large portion of the day. This had a significant effect on the family. Here, Marx shows both sides of this development. On one hand, long hours and night-work tended to undermine traditional family structures, as women were to a certain extent “masculinized” by their work and were often unable to care for their children to the same extent that they had been able to do in the past. On the other, in a later passage, Marx notes that this seeming “deterioration of character” led in the opposite direction—towards “a higher form of the family” in which women would be the true equals of men.10
Even though, Marx’s discussion of the oppression of women workers was somewhat limited, in Capital, volume I as well as his earlier draft material for Capital he offers a strong critique of the concept of productive labor under capitalism. Here, he makes a strong distinction between the concept of productive labor under capitalism and a concept of productive labor as such. The first is a one-sided understanding of productivity, where the only relevant factor is the production of surplus value for the capitalist. However, the second concept of productive labor focuses on the production of use values. Here, labor is valued as such if it produces something that can be used by individuals or society at large. This provides at least some ground for revaluing traditional women’s labor, even though Marx discussed this very little.
Marx’s political writings illustrate a certain evolution over time. Marx’s theoretical insights are often incorporated into his political activities. Some of his earliest political writings on the strikes in Preston, England in 1853–1854 offer a relatively uncritical assessment of the workers’ demand for a family wage for men. While Marx never directly repudiated this type of argument, his later positions appear to have changed, since he worked to incorporate women into the First International on an equal basis to men in the 1860s.
Marx’s later work illustrates a further appreciation of working women’s demands during and after the Paris Commune. This is especially evident in the 1880 “Programme of the Parti Ouvrier,” co-written by Marx, Paul Lafargue, and Jules Guesde. The preamble, written solely by Marx, states “That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race.”11 This was an especially strong statement in France, where the rather sexist Proudhonist tradition predominated among socialists.
In his writings for the New York Tribune in 1858, Marx returned to his discussion of the position of upper-class women in capitalist society. In two articles for the Tribune, Marx recounts the confinement of an aristocratic woman to an asylum in order to silence her and prevent her from further embarrassing her politically influential husband. Here, Marx criticizes all involved in Lady Bulwer-Lytton’s confinement, arguing that she was far from insane. While Marx does not discuss the ways in which women in particular are often falsely confined as a means of control, he does note the ease with which people can be confined regardless of their actual psychological state, if those requesting the confinement are wealthy and powerful enough to induce medical professionals to give their signatures. Additionally, he shows a great deal of sympathy for Lady Bulwer-Lytton, who was effectively silenced due to an agreement by which she was only able to regain her freedom so long as she agreed to never discuss the incident again.
His last years, from 1879 to 1883, were among the most theoretically interesting periods of Marx’s life, especially concerning gender and the family. In his research notebooks, as well as his letters and published writings, he began to articulate a less deterministic model of social development, in which less-developed societies could be the first to carry out revolutions so long as they were followed by revolutions in more advanced states. Marx incorporated new historical subjects into his theory. It was not just the working class as an abstract entity that was capable of revolution. Peasants, and especially women, also became important forces for change within Marx’s theory. These notebooks give some indications, albeit in a fragmentary way, of how Marx saw women as subjects in the historical process.
Marx’s notes on Morgan are particularly important, since they provide a direct comparison with Engels’s Origin of the Family, which Engels claimed to be a relatively close representation of Marx’s reading of Morgan’s Ancient Society. But there are significant differences. The most important of these are Marx’s less deterministic understanding of societal development and his more dialectical grasp of contradiction within the relatively egalitarian clan.
Engels tended to focus almost solely and one-sidedly on economic and technological change as factors in societal development. Marx, in contrast, took a more dialectical approach, where social organization is not only a subjective factor, but in the right situation can become an objective one as well. This is particularly relevant to understanding their differences on gender oppression. Engels argued that the development of agricultural technology, private property, and the subsequent changes in the clan from mother-right to father-right led to the “world-historic defeat of the female sex,” where women would remain in a condition of subjugation until the destruction of private property. In contrast, Marx not only noted the subordinate position of women, but also pointed to the potential for change, even under private property, with his discussion of the Greek goddesses. Even though ancient Greek society was quite oppressive to women, confining them to their own section of the home, Marx argued that the Greek goddesses potentially provided an alternative model for women. Marx also showed in these notes the progress of upper-class Roman women, in contrast to their Greek counterparts. Moreover, Marx tended to take a more nuanced and dialectical approach to the development of contradictions in these early egalitarian societies. Engels tended to view the relatively egalitarian communal societies as lacking significant contradictions, especially with regard to gender relations.12 Marx, however, pointed to limitations in women’s rights in the communally based Iroquois society.
Engels’s Origin of the Family only discussed Marx’s notes on Morgan’s Ancient Society. But Marx’s notebooks on ethnology span a number of other sources. His notes on Henry Sumner Maine’s Lectures on the Early History of Institutions and Ludwig Lange’s Römische Alterthümer (“Ancient Rome”) offer significant discussions of gender and the family in pre-capitalist societies as well, particularly Ireland, India, and Rome.13 In his notes on both authors, Marx appears to have appropriated much of Morgan’s theory of the development of the clan. While Marx’s notes on Maine tend to be much more critical than those on Lange, in both cases Marx criticizes their uncritical acceptance of the patriarchal family as the first form.
This is particularly important since it tends to point in the direction of a historical understanding of the family. In these, as well as the Morgan notes, Marx charts the contradictions present in each form of the family and how these contradictions sharpen, leading to significant changes in the structure of the family. Here, Marx appears to view the family as subject to a similar dialectic as that of other areas of society.
Evaluating Marx’s Work On Gender and the Family For Today
Historically, Marxism’s relationship with feminism has been tenuous at best, often due to the lack of discussion of gender and traditional women’s issues by many Marxists. Moreover, even where gender and the family have been addressed, these studies tend to follow Engels’s less nuanced, more economically oriented argument. However, I think Marx’s work on gender and the family displays significant differences from those of Engels. Important questions remain regarding the possible value of Marx’s views on gender and the family: What, if anything, does Marx have to offer to contemporary feminist debates? Is there the possibility of a Marxist feminism that does not lapse into economic determinism or privilege class over gender in analyzing contemporary capitalist society?
Certainly, Marx’s account of gender and the family occasionally evinced signs of Victorian morality; however, as I have argued, this is not necessarily a fatal flaw in his work. There are a number of areas in which Marx’s theory of society provides the possibility of incorporating feminist insights into Marxism to establish a unitary theory of gender and class oppression, which does not fundamentally privilege either.
One of the most important aspects of Marx’s work for understanding gender and the family is Marx’s dialectical method. Marx’s categories came from his analysis of the empirical world, seen as dynamic and are based on social relationships rather than static ahistorical formulations. Thus, these categories could change as society changes.
This could potentially be valuable to a feminist analysis. Marx never directly addressed gendered dualisms and categories, but he leaves some room in his theory for change within these categories. This is especially true in regard to two dualisms: the nature/culture dualism and the production/reproduction dualism. In both cases, Marx points to the historical and transitory nature of these formulations. Nature and culture are not absolute opposites: they are, instead, moments of the whole. Labor, as a necessary activity for survival, mediates humanity’s relationship with nature in very specific ways, based on the particular mode of production in question. Moreover, in terms of the production-and-reproduction dualism, Marx is normally careful to note that both are necessary to humanity, but that these will take different forms based upon the technological and social development of the society in question.
Marx points to two different aspects of these categories—the historically specific elements and the more abstract characteristics that exist in every society. Thus, in terms of understanding women’s relationship to these dualisms, a logical formulation within Marx’s thought would be to point out that biology is certainly relevant. However, biology cannot be viewed as such outside of the social relations of a particular society. This can potentially help to avoid the biologistic and deterministic arguments of some radical and socialist feminists who essentialize “women’s nature,” while at the same time avoiding relativism since, in Marx’s view, the world is not completely socially constructed. Rather, biology and nature are important variables when viewed within a socially mediated framework.
This is important for another reason. While Marx’s theory remains underdeveloped in terms of providing an account that includes gender as important to understanding capitalism, his categories, nonetheless, lead in the direction of a systematic critique of patriarchy as it manifests itself in capitalism since he is able to separate out the historically specific elements of patriarchy from a more general form of women’s oppression, as it has existed throughout much of human history. In this sense, his categories provide resources for feminist theory, or at least areas for new dialogue, at a time when Marx’s critique of capital is coming to the fore once again.
With his focus on social mediation and his emphasis on understanding particular social systems, Marx, as contemporary scholarship has demonstrated, avoided economic determinism. Certainly, economic factors play a very significant role in his thought, because they are seen as conditioning other social behavior, particularly in capitalism. However, Marx was often careful to note the reciprocal, dialectical relation between economic and social factors. As was the case with nature and culture as well as production and reproduction, economic activity and social activity are dialectical moments of the whole in a particular mode of production. In the last analysis, the two cannot be separated out completely. As Marx illustrated in his “Suicide” essay and New York Tribune articles, where he points to the unique ways in which economics and the specifically capitalist form of patriarchy interact to oppress women. Thus, in these and his other writings, Marx, at least tentatively, began to discuss the interdependent relationship between class and gender without fundamentally privileging either in his analysis.
Despite the fact that not all aspects of Marx’s writings on gender and the family are relevant today, some carrying the limitations of nineteenth-century thought, they offer important insights on gender and political thought. Even though Marx did not write a great deal on gender, and did not develop a systematic theory of gender and the family, it was, for him, an essential category for understanding the division of labor, production, and society in general. Marx’s discussion of gender and the family extended far beyond merely including women as factory workers. Marx noted the persistence of oppression in the bourgeois family and the need to work out a new form of the family. Additionally, Marx became more and more supportive of women’s demands for equality in the workplace, in unions, in the First International, and as he studied capitalism and witnessed the role of women in such important events as the Paris Commune of 1871. Despite their unpolished and fragmentary character, Marx’s notes on ethnology are particularly significant, since Marx points quite directly to the historical character of the family through his selections of Morgan, Maine, and Lange. Moreover, Marx’s use of dialectics is an important methodological contribution to feminism and social research in general, seeming to view gender as subject to change and development, rather than as a static concept.
↩ Karl Marx in David Fernbach, ed., The First International and After, Political Writings, vol. 3 (London: Penguin Books. 1992), 376.
↩ This is elaborated on in Heather Brown, Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013), chapter 5.
↩ The notes on Maine are available in Karl Marx (Lawrence Krader, ed.), The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Studies of Morgan, Phear, Maine, Lubbock) (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Co., 1972) Marx’s notes on Lange are unpublished; English translations were graciously provided to the author by those working with the MEGA project. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
DCLX-Secret Origins
Well, maybe not secret, but few people are around that remember very much.
The first DCLX-DC Lindy Exchange-was hatched in the back of a van coming back from ALHC 2001 somewhere on I-95. Mike Miloszewski was on a dance high and wanted an excuse to relive it again. And soon.
Holding a national dance competition seemed out of the question at the time, but Lindy exchanges were just becoming popular. Mike decided that it was time for DC to have its own.
I was a little skeptical. We had no resources, and the people who did don’t exactly sit around and sing Kumbaya when they get together. That didn’t bother Mike who moved pretty quickly to get a bunch of people on board this train.
Mike was a good motivator, he had the Eye of the Tiger going for him, which is probably why we elected him chairman of the committee. It helped that he was an outsider to our scene. He had learned to dance up in Boston, and had not been living in DC long enough for many people to know who he was. He wasn’t discouraged by a lot of baggage that the DC scene carried (and still carries), and was able to get people to trust him when they wouldn’t normally trust each other.
Mike was on a mission, and nothing could stop him or the the rest of our committee. Although quite a bit tried to.
Spin Control
Tops on our wish list of bands was Corner Pocket, Solomon Douglas’s first musical foray in Lindy Hop. They were probably one of the most sought after bands at the time.
Problem #1: they weren’t available.
Problem #2: It was because they were playing the Albany Exchange.
You have to understand that there still weren’t that many events out there at this time, so having two exchanges on the same weekend was a huge deal. Add to that the fact that Albany already had one exchange with positive word of mouth, and that they were in the heart of an area where we had hoped to draw a lot of people caused a near panic in the committee.
We couldn’t change the dates because they were dependent on the Saturday dance at Glen Echo with The Washington Swing Dance Committee. We definitely couldn’t do it earlier because it was already November, and we were set for the beginning of April. Later in April wasn’t an option because of the North Atlantic Dance Championships, and everyone went to NADC back then. Much later than that and we were running into other established events.
It was either that date or not at all in 2002. Seems odd since it isn’t unusual to have three or more big events on any given weekend these days, but back then no one was quite sure how much the Lindy market could bear. We decided to find out the hard way.
DCLX committee members: Donna Barker, Mike Miloszewski, Nancy Baird
At one point we discussed what we would do if the exchange lost money. It wasn’t so much of a discussion as it was long, awkward silence followed by an unspoken agreement that we’d deal with it if it happened. Fortunately, it didn’t, although when I was reminiscing with Donna Barker years later, she revealed that she would have covered any debts if it came to that.
Right before we opened up registration we made the tactical error of revealing that we were going to give priority to out of towners. Our reasoning was that it would suck for people to travel all that way only to be shut out. This did not go over very well on the old SwingoutDC on delphi.com. It triggered such a sudden and overwhelmingly negative response, that we were forced to conduct an emergency committee meeting over AIM.
Despite the urgency, I think we were too pre-occupied with the shininess of having an online meeting. We had our own chat room, but everyone was also IM’ing each other privately. It was like we had reverted to being five years old and left to play in a virtual sandbox.
Somehow we actually formulated a plan to address everyone’s concerns, but we were at a loss as to how to deal with the loudest online critic. Mike assured us that he would take care of it. Long after the event was in the books, I found out that Mike’s negotiation strategy involved dating said critic.
About a month before the exchange we got a notification from Glen Echo that they were going to close the ballroom to begin renovations. We had been hearing about these proposed renovations for years, but had stopped heeding the warnings because they had always been pushed back. Not so this time; they had finally got their act together and were going to close the ballroom to events the week before DCLX.
Fortunately, Janice Saylor, a member of both the DCLX committee and the Washington Swing Dance Committee was on it. She and other concerned people immediately contacted the the park, and convinced them to hold off the start of work for another week. By the time the first panicked posting appeared on SODC, about twelve hours after we found out the news, the crisis had already been averted.
We still had plenty to worry about, the competing Albany exchange chief among them. We had set up a primitive map on the DCLX website to show how many people were coming and from where. States would change colors depending on how many people were coming from there. I watched that thing every day like it was election night.
Advertising on the forums had an election campaign feel to it. I think both sides took a few passive aggressive digs at each other along the way. Nothing terribly serious, but I could tell they were watching us as closely as we were watching them.
Peak Blossom Time
A week before the event we calculated that we were not going lose any money. That caused a lot of relief, but then members of the committee started getting laid out with all sorts of minor injuries and illnesses. I ended up getting food poisoning that week from eating at a place before our last meeting.
Asians! Where am I?
I wasn’t going to miss this show though. I dragged myself to the Thursday night welcome dance, but ended up sitting in corner all night. I think I just wanted to see if people were actually going to show up. In retrospect I probably should have just called, but it was great to see all those people packed into the old Vienna Grille Vienna Tap RoomPotomac Swing Dance Club Jam Cellar.
I got better in time for Friday. The first dance was the J St. Jumpers playing at Zoots & Dolls, a venue run by Nancy Baird out of a fitness club waaaaaay down 66. Janice Saylor did a great job dressing up the place to give it a good atmosphere. She didn’t need to though because that place was packed. Literally. I’m surprised anyone could move at all. Attendance far exceeded all of our expectations.
We kept all of our estimates low because no one wanted to be left holding the bag if we came up short financially. In the end, we didn’t need to be that concerned, but it did make for packed venues. The Friday late night wasn’t really supposed to be a dance actually. Someone convinced a small restaurant in a nearby mall to stay open late for us. There really shouldn’t have been any dancing, but you get that many Lindy Hoppers together, and they’ll find a way.
Our least packed venue was the afternoon outdoor dances for obvious reasons. It was at the Saturday afternoon dance at Dupont Circle when we figured out that we actually had money to spend for the potluck picnic before the Saturday night dance. We made it potluck because we couldn’t provide any food. However, with our new found windfall, I made the decision to squander it all to alleviate the pressure on those bringing food.
That main dance was insanity. With the ballroom closing for a couple of years, everyone and their mother turned out probably because they had a sneaking suspicion that it may never reopen. I remember hearing that over 1200 people showed up that evening. At that time, the fire code only allowed a little over 600 in at any one time.
Marty & Jen decide to have their own 80's theme.
Fortunately someone thought fast, and cleared out the Bumper Car Pavilion to be used as a free dance space while people waited to get into the main dance. We were lucky because a month before park volunteers had already begun the process of fixing up the place to use it as a temporary dance venue while the ballroom was being renovated. They didn’t foresee needing to use it by DCLX weekend, but it was in good enough shape that all we needed to do was clear out all the tools and construction materials.
The WSDC people worked out an impromptu system where they signed people up to a waiting list. Until their names were called out to get into the main dance those dancersgot to be the first people to dance in the Bumper Car Pavilion ever.
Lots of people will be surprised to discover that we had the late night at Glen Echo as well. Janice Saylor came through for us again and personally sponsored that dance with the short lived jazz band Three Martini Lunch playing. She even worked it out so we could serve food in the ballroom. I have no idea how she pulled that off considering the strict rules they have to help preserve that historic building.
I didn’t do much dancing that weekend, especially at that late night because we spent most of it counting money. Not that there was a lot, its just that between the fatigue and the cold —there’s no heat or A/C in the ballroom—it took us forever to reconcile everything.
I had it good though because Mike spent the late night outside cleaning up the bumper car pavilion. Apparently that was part of the deal in opening it up for the main dance. He promised to have DCLX people clean up if the WSDC people could vouch for us. Not wanting to impose on anyone else, Mike cleaned up all by himself, and he did it in the freezing cold. I remember seeing people whipping out their sleeping bags and huddle underneath them for warmth in the ballroom. With no heat in the building and far fewer people in such a big space, it felt like dancing in a refrigerator. I can’t imagine what it was like being outside that whole time.
After a relaxing day dancing in Russell Senate Park in the shadow of the US Capitol, the Sunday evening dance took place at Clarendon Ballroom with The Tom Cunningham Orchestra.
Jam This
My favorite story from that weekend happened that night. All the evening dances were sponsored by the local promoters. Tom & Debra got Sunday night. Our only stipulation was that there would be no planned jams, something that they like to do at all their dances. It’s not that we were against jams in general, it’s just that Tom & Deb’s jams are mood killers for hard core dancers, and they were going to make up the majority of these dances. I think we had something like a dozen jams all weekend.
Tom & Deb agreed to our request with the understanding that spontaneous jams were fair game. Our negotiations at the old Lulu’s was kind of a joke because with that loophole, Tom pretty much made it clear that they were going to plan a “spontaneous jam” for that night. We didn’t really care since the real objective was to keep Tom from hogging the microphone for the evening.
The night of the dance I saw Tom gathering some people laying out their planned spontaneous jam. It wasn’t a secret. They were doing it in the hallway in front of everyone. Tom then made the curious choice of drafting Kevin St. Laurent into their not so secret plan. Kevin and Carla were still living and teaching in the area at that time and were pretty familiar with Tom &Deb’s jams.
So they all went up, coordinated what song they were going to jam to with TCO, and proceeded to have some people start clapping and forming a circle around Tom & Deb. Kevin had other plans.
At the same time Tom & Deb’s circle got going up front, Kevin got a bunch of people to start clapping around Matt Smiley and Nina Gilkenson dancing in the back of the room. This is still pre-Mad Dog, but the majority of the people at the dance were from out of town and they could still figure out where the real action was happening.
I wish there was video footage of this jam because it was just amusing to see the dueling jams happening on either side of the room, until finally they combined into one jam. But rather than forming one big circle, everyone ended up forming this long jam alley that people danced down like it was a Soul Train line. I think the whole thing went on for 15 minutes. Just wall to wall weirdness.
Lindy Rockstars-Yes We Went There
You would think that people would start heading home that night, but they didn’t. The place was still packed even through the end of the evening around 2 am with Chicago’s Drew Fansler DJ’ing. Once Mike got off the microphone to announce the end of the dance, I shook his hand and apologized for ever doubting him or in our ability to pull this off.
I was able to catch up with Mike the last time he came through town a few weeks before the last DCLX. Mike ended up marrying that vociferous online critic; then got divorced. He has since joined the US Air Force, and is currently stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He doesn’t dance very much these days, but he does make it a point to come out dancing on the rare occasion that he’s in town.
Actually, the last event of that first DCLX was a late night meal at the Hard Times Café just down the street. Someone convinced the owner to stay open late on a Sunday to accommodate over a hundred or so starving dancers. There was no dancing. Just a little celebratory chili to end the weekend.
I caught a ride back into town with a group of crazy Canadians that drove down from Toronto. they actually attended the Friday night dance at the Albany Exchange, then drove down to DC on Saturday to catch the rest of DCLX. Hardcore.
And that’s the story of the first DCLX. I know I’m forgetting some stuff. Maybe someone else reading this will remind me.
I have no idea where I got all these pictures. I downloaded as many as I could whenever they popped up after the event, but I don’t remember where I got each one. If you recognize them or happen to be one of the photographers, feel free to chime in so I can give you credit. I can also take them down if you want, which I hope you don’t.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
4 Comments
Jane said,
I don’t know who wrote the story of the origins of this dance event BUT I like how a group of grass roots people do something so wonderful but even more I like the way the fellow who wrote the history writes. Really, I read every line and liked them all.
Unfortunately, for me, I am not a Lindy Dancer. Too old, many inoperable body parts.
Jerry said,
Sorry, just noticed this comment. That’s Kevin St. Laurent and Carla Heiney. If I recall correctly, that was taken by a dancer who was the official photographer for the event. He had a website, but I don’t recall what it was. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Hailed by Jerry Shriver in andlt;iandgt;USA Todayandlt;/iandgt; as and#8220;the woman who makes the wine world gulp when she speaks,and#8221; Jancis Robinson created in andlt;iandgt;How to Tasteandlt;/iandgt; a classic for connoisseurs of all levels and the first introduction of its kind to focus on practical tasting exercises. Now fully revised and updated, Robinson's renowned guide proves once again that learning about wine can be just as engaging as drinking it.andlt;BRandgt;andlt;BRandgt;What better way to learn about wine than to taste it?andlt;BRandgt; andlt;BRandgt;Written in Robinson's trademark accessible style, the new andlt;iandgt;How to Tasteandlt;/iandgt; features thoroughly updated vintages and producers as well as up-and-coming wine regions and styles. Incorporating wines that are both easily obtainable and reasonably priced, Robinson's lessons are separated into complementary portions of theory and practice to help you both learn and taste your way to wine expertise.andlt;BRandgt; andlt;BRandgt;One of the world's best-loved authorities on wine, Robinson explains first how to get the most out of the flavor of your wine and food, and then about specific grapes and the wines themselves. By the time you finish the book, you will have learned how to recognize the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay and Riesling to Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and why a good sparkling wine is always better than cheap champagne. You will discover how to judge sweetness, acidity, and fruitiness as well as the difference between the length and the weight of a wine. You will also be given practical advice for dealing with wine in the real world: how to choose from a wine list, organize your own wine tastings, and pair wines with specific foods.andlt;BRandgt; andlt;BRandgt;From the armchair to the wine shop and back to the table, andlt;iandgt;How to Tasteandlt;/iandgt; will transform anyone on any level into a confident connoisseur who can leave faltering sips behind and have fun along the way.
Synopsis:
What better way to learn about wine than to taste it?
Hailed by Jerry Shriver in USA Today as "the woman who makes the wine world gulp when she speaks," Jancis Robinson created in How to Taste a classic for connoisseurs of all levels and the first introduction of its kind to focus on practical tasting exercises. Now fully revised and updated, Robinson's renowned guide proves once again that learning about wine can be just as engaging as drinking it.
Written in Robinson's trademark accessible style, the new How to Taste features thoroughly updated vintages and producers as well as up-and-coming wine regions and styles. Incorporating wines that are both easily obtainable and reasonably priced, Robinson's lessons are separated into complementary portions of theory and practice to help you both learn and taste your way to wine expertise.
One of the world's best-loved authorities on wine, Robinson explains first how to get the most out of the flavor of your wine and food, and then about specific grapes and the wines themselves. By the time you finish the book, you will have learned how to recognize the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay and Riesling to Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and why a good sparkling wine is always better than cheap champagne. You will discover how to judge sweetness, acidity, and fruitiness as well as the difference between the length and the weight of a wine. You will also be given practical advice for dealing with wine in the real world: how to choose from a wine list, organize your own wine tastings, and pair wines with specific foods.
From the armchair to the wine shop and back to the table, How to Taste will transform anyone on any level into a confident connoisseur who can leave faltering sips behind and have fun along the way.
Synopsis:
Hailed by Paul Levy in The Wall Street Journal as "our cleverest, most thoughtful wine writer," Jancis Robinson makes learning about wine almost as enjoyable as drinking it. With How to Taste, she's put together a unique wine-tasting course based on practical exercises that appeal to wine connoisseurs of all levels.
Robinson explains first how we taste wine and food, and then about the grapes and wines themselves. In separate sections on theory and practice, she offers basic technical information about wine appreciation, then shows us how to apply it in sipping exercises — all of which are based on readily available and, in most cases, inexpensive bottles. And how better to learn about wine than by actually drinking it?
By the time you finish this book, you'll know how to recognize the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay to Riesling, to Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and why you should choose a good sparkling wine over a cheap champagne. You will know how to judge sweetness, acidity, and fruitiness as well as the difference between the length and weight of a wine, and you will be able to distinguish wines from around the world. Robinson also arms you with practical advice about dealing with wine in the real world: choosing from a wine list; setting up and recording your own wine tastings; spitting out your sample mouthful correctly; and complementing food flavors with wine.
Innovative, informative, and above all fun, How to Taste is designed to be taken with you everywhere, from the armchair to the vineyard to the wine shop and back to the table.
About the Author
andlt;Bandgt;Jancis Robinsonandlt;/Bandgt; is one of the world's best-loved authorities on wine. A Master of Wine, a respected wine judge and lecturer, Robinson has also written and presented the award-winning BBC television series andlt;Iandgt;Jancis Robinson's Wine Courseandlt;/Iandgt; and She has been a regular columnist for andlt;Iandgt;Wine Spectatorandlt;/Iandgt; and is now the wine correspondent for the andlt;Iandgt;Financial Times.andlt;/Iandgt; Author of several definitive books on wine as well as the autobiographical andlt;Iandgt;Confessions of a Wine Lover,andlt;/Iandgt; she is also the editor of the multi-award-winning andlt;Iandgt;Companion to Wine.andlt;/Iandgt;
Hailed by Jerry Shriver in USA Today as "the woman who makes the wine world gulp when she speaks," Jancis Robinson created in How to Taste a classic for connoisseurs of all levels and the first introduction of its kind to focus on practical tasting exercises. Now fully revised and updated, Robinson's renowned guide proves once again that learning about wine can be just as engaging as drinking it.
Written in Robinson's trademark accessible style, the new How to Taste features thoroughly updated vintages and producers as well as up-and-coming wine regions and styles. Incorporating wines that are both easily obtainable and reasonably priced, Robinson's lessons are separated into complementary portions of theory and practice to help you both learn and taste your way to wine expertise.
One of the world's best-loved authorities on wine, Robinson explains first how to get the most out of the flavor of your wine and food, and then about specific grapes and the wines themselves. By the time you finish the book, you will have learned how to recognize the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay and Riesling to Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and why a good sparkling wine is always better than cheap champagne. You will discover how to judge sweetness, acidity, and fruitiness as well as the difference between the length and the weight of a wine. You will also be given practical advice for dealing with wine in the real world: how to choose from a wine list, organize your own wine tastings, and pair wines with specific foods.
From the armchair to the wine shop and back to the table, How to Taste will transform anyone on any level into a confident connoisseur who can leave faltering sips behind and have fun along the way.
"Synopsis"
by Simon and Schuster,
Hailed by Paul Levy in The Wall Street Journal as "our cleverest, most thoughtful wine writer," Jancis Robinson makes learning about wine almost as enjoyable as drinking it. With How to Taste, she's put together a unique wine-tasting course based on practical exercises that appeal to wine connoisseurs of all levels.
Robinson explains first how we taste wine and food, and then about the grapes and wines themselves. In separate sections on theory and practice, she offers basic technical information about wine appreciation, then shows us how to apply it in sipping exercises — all of which are based on readily available and, in most cases, inexpensive bottles. And how better to learn about wine than by actually drinking it?
By the time you finish this book, you'll know how to recognize the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay to Riesling, to Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and why you should choose a good sparkling wine over a cheap champagne. You will know how to judge sweetness, acidity, and fruitiness as well as the difference between the length and weight of a wine, and you will be able to distinguish wines from around the world. Robinson also arms you with practical advice about dealing with wine in the real world: choosing from a wine list; setting up and recording your own wine tastings; spitting out your sample mouthful correctly; and complementing food flavors with wine.
Innovative, informative, and above all fun, How to Taste is designed to be taken with you everywhere, from the armchair to the vineyard to the wine shop and back to the table.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and gifts — here at Powells.com. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
There’s so many TV shows not on TV, it’s pretty funny. With Hulu, Yahoo, Amazon, and the all-mighty Netflix, people are converting from cable to online quickly. So, if you cut the cord, here are the Top 5 shows to dive into, courtesy of Kristen Plati | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
MARKETING’S MISSING LINK
More than ever, marketing must show a recognizable return on investment.
Many firms are cutting back on staff, and any expenditure deemed not absolutely necessary, so proving marketing's value to the firm is more important than ever.
Attributing success to marketing has always been a challenge, though, as marketing a tangible item effectively (e.g. Toyotas), will lead to more sales. But marketing an intangible professional service effectively, like accounting, tax and business consulting, will lead to a quality appointment with a desired prospect - not necessary a new project or client. That depends on the sales ability of the person(s) on the sales interview.
Recently I went looking for new homeowner's insurance. Our current provider, a good company with admirable customer service, had boosted their Florida rates so high that they were about twice as expensive as anyone else.
Where do you go? What do you do?
As with any potential referral or sale opportunity where a relationship is important with the service provider, one tends to think in the following order:
1. Who do I know? or Who do I know who would know?
2. Who do I like?
3. Who can I trust?
4. Who will want the business and take care of me?
We live in a tight-knit community. Referrals are easy to come by as word travels fast. However, nobody could refer me to anyone they personally knew to help me with my household insurance needs.
A few days later, I got an arbitrary email from some guy trying to make sure I attended his fascinating presentation at the local chamber on "Protecting Businesses and Families." I had never heard of his insurance agency, but since I didn't know anyone else, contacted them looking for a quote.
Here's the marketing part: these people have been in business since 1987; they have a beautiful office building on a main road that I have passed @ 2,000 times in the last 10 years. Their service person was fabulous and went out of her way to find the right fit and save me 50% on our premium - and neither I nor anyone of the dozens of people I mingle with in the various chambers here referred them to me.
Why? It's marketing's missing link: they were invisible on the personal level. It's sort of like yeast. It grows and magnifies and makes marketing work.
This is the same malady that affects CPA firms as well.
Every contact, from the moment one does actually notice the building - to being in it - to working with their personnel to the follow-up - was all really very good. But they missed the most important piece: people buy from people they KNOW, trust and like.
How can you retain a service provider if you don't KNOW them personally?
One reason our firm has grown leaps and bounds in the last 5 years is we are represented regularly and in positions of leadership in the most important target organizations for our service.
The next time the partners complain about marketing's ROA, therefore, politely remind them that all the marketing in the world can't make up for the "missing link." They have to be involved PERSONALLY and VISIBLY to make marketing payoff.
Allan S. Boress, CPA, CVA is the author of 12 published books on marketing, selling and managing the business development process for CPAs. The "I-Hate-Selling" Book is available at www.ihateselling.com
This blog
by Allan Boress, CPA - Based on over 25 years being a practitioner and consultant to the profession. Mr. Boress is the author of 12 published books in 6 different languages, including a best-seller, The "I-Hate-Selling" Book.
Bloggers crew
Steve Knowles has spent 25 years in business and practice in the UK, but he also worked in the states and the years haven't dulled his way of seeing an alternative view to everyone else, and every day is a new adventure.
Joel M. Ungar, CPA is a lifelong resident of the Detroit area and a graduate of The University of Michigan. He is a principal with Silberstein Ungar, PLLC, a Top 15 auditor of SEC public reporting companies.
Allan Boress, CPA, with over 25 years as a practitioner and consultant to the accounting profession. Mr. Boress is the author of 12 published books in 6 different languages, including a best-seller, The "I-Hate-Selling" Book.
Larry Perry, CPA, CPA Firm Support Services, LLC, is the author of accounting and auditing manuals, author and presenter of live staff training seminars, and author of webcast and self-study CPE programs. He blogs about small audits, reviews, and compilations.
Sandra Wiley, COO and Shareholder, is ranked by Accounting Today as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Accounting as a result of her prominent role as an industry expert on HR and training as well as influence as a management and planning consultant. She is also a founding member of The CPA Consultant's Alliance. Sandra is a certified Kolbe™ trainer who advises firms on building balanced teams, managing employee conflict and hiring staff.
Brian Strahle is the owner of LEVERAGE SALT, LLC where he provides state and local tax technical services to accounting firms, law firms and tax research organizations across the United States. He also writes a weekly column in Tax Analysts State tax Notes entitled, "The SALT Effect." For more info, visit his website: www.leveragestateandlocaltax.com
Scott H. Cytron, ABC, is president of Cytron and Company, known for helping companies and organizations improve their bottom line through a hybrid of strategic public relations, communications, marketing programs and top-notch client service. An accredited consultant, Scott works with companies, organizations and individuals in professional services (accounting, finance, medical, legal, engineering), high-tech and B2B/B2C product/service sales.
Rita Keller is a nationally known CPA firm management consultant, speaker, author, mentor and blogger. She has over 30 years hands-on experience in CPA firm management, marketing, technology and administrative operations.
Stacy Kildal is the mom of two fantastic kids, an Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Certified Enterprise Solutions ProAdvisor, Sleeter Group Certified Consultant, a nationally recognized member of the Intuit Trainer and Writer Network, and co-host of RadioFree QuickBooks.
Sally Glick, CMO, Principal, Marketer of the Year in 2003 and AAM Hall of Famer in 2007, leads a lively discussion of the constantly expanding roles of marketing and the professional marketers that drive this initiative in accounting firms of all sizes.
The IMA Young Professionals Blog features the insights of IMA’s Young Professionals Committee. Committee members share advice and experiences on careers, continuing education, work/life balance, and other issues affecting young accounting and finance professionals.
FEI Financial Reporting Blog provides highlights from SEC, PCAOB, FASB, IASB, and other regulatory news, including reporting under Sarbanes-Oxley Sect 404. It is written by Edith Orenstein, Director of Technical Policy Analysis at FEI.
AccountingWEB is more than just a U.S. team of journalists and financial and technology experts - we have an international side, too! Members of our British team who publish AccountingWEB.co.uk share their ideas, insights, and perspectives from across the pond. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
About Carolina Beach
Carolina Beach is located 15 miles south of Wilmington, NC, on the northern end of Pleasure Island, the larger of two barrier islands in New Hanover County. Established in 1857 and incorporated in 1925, Carolina Beach has a welcoming, small town atmosphere.
Embrace the unique beachside boardwalk, named one of the top boardwalks in the country by Food & Wine magazine – where you can browse shops, eateries, and arcades…and feel like a kid again. There are countless ways to tempt your taste buds at Carolina Beach from gourmet cuisine and sushi to tiki bars and grills to award-winning chowder and the famous, family-owned Britt’s Donuts, where mouthwatering doughnuts have been prepared and served warm since 1939.
For those who love boating or fishing, Carolina Beach is home to some of the best on the North Carolina coast. The Carolina Beach Fishing Center and Marina is home to one of North Carolina’s largest selections of recreational fishing fleets and party boats. It also offers charters for inshore, offshore, Gulf Stream and tournament fishing excursions, as well as eco-tours, and sightseeing and evening cruises. There are opportunities for surf fishing, bottom fishing, shell fishing and deep-sea fishing.
Carolina Beach Lake Park — according to the Guinness Book of World Records — is the largest freshwater lake (11 acres) near saltwater. There, visitors can rent paddleboats and kayaks or take in a concert at the nearby amphitheater. The 761-acre Carolina Beach State Park is home to the rare and beautiful Venus flytrap, as well as nature trails, campsites, a visitor’s center, marina and educational programs. A popular area of beach known as Freeman Park is a standard spot for fishing, camping and four-wheeling. And, the adventurous will enjoy the Carolina Beach Skate Park, located at Mike Chappell Park. For history buffs, Carolina Beach offers the Federal Point History Center. Visitors can learn about the history and development of Carolina Beach. Pre-historic, Colonial and Civil War periods are also portrayed through a series of exhibits and audio-visual presentations. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
These sample scans are from the original record. You will get scans of the full pages or articles where the surname you searched for has been found.
Your web browser may prevent the sample windows from opening; in this case please change your browser settings to allow pop-up windows from this site.
Inhabitants of Suffolk
(1568)By Act of Parliament of December 1566 a subsidy of 8d in the £ on moveable goods and 4s in the £ on the annual value of land was raised from the lay (as opposed to clergy) population. These are the returns for Suffolk, printed in 1909 in the Suffolk Green Book series. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Sky Bet League 2 market movers
Before losing their unbeaten record, the Spireites were 7/4 favourites to win the division, but they’ve drifted out to 2/1 following successive defeats to Mansfield and Morecambe.
The manner of their latest set-back was somewhat remarkable, with the Shrimps a 100/1 shot to win at half-time after falling three goals behind.
They pulled off the spectacular, though, further defying pre-match odds of 150/1 by coming back to win 4-3, shortening their promotion price from 12/1 to 11/1 in the process.
Meanwhile, Fleetwood kept the pressure on by closing the gap from Chesterfield to one point thanks to a 3-1 win at Bristol Rovers, with the Cod Army now 11/4 from 7/2 to take the title.
Oxford suffered a second defeat in three games, causing their title price to drift from 15/2 out to 10/1, but the Us are still a good bet for promotion at 2/1.
Elsewhere, Dagenham and Redbridge have been trimmed from 8/1 to 5/1 for a top seven finish after picking up their second win on the trot.
In the top scorer market, York’s Ryan Jarvis has edged ahead of his counterparts with a sixth goal of the season at Torquay, seeing his odds to finish with the most goals cut from 33/1 to 20/1.
For a full list of title and promotion prices, go to www.skybet.com/fleetwood and open an account. You can join the Sky Bet ‘Free Bet Club’ for a free £5 bet each week and as soon as you deposit, Fleetwood Town will get £10! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS2) Retro Review
How about a retro review? We had one last week with Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, so let's continue this platformer-themed retro review trend with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. If you don't want to bust out and dust off the ol' PlayStation 2, you can plop down the cash for the Jak and Daxter Collection, an HD compendium of all three major PS2 Jak games. Of course, the first will always be my favorite!
Ready to Get Jak'd Up?!
Naughty Dog is one of the PlayStation brand's most proficient developers. While nowadays they craft experiences meant to be compared to and rival Hollywood, their past projects include multiple platforming games such as Crash Bandicoot, and the subject of this review, Jak and Daxter. Before the series went off into The Simpsons' Poochie the Dog territory with Jak II, with its unnecessary focus on narrative in a platformer and new "attitude", the original Jak and Daxter was meant to be a bright and cheery new platforming franchise akin to games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. Not only is it the best the series has to offer but a great platformer in its own right, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is one of Naughty Dog's finest titles to date.
Going against the wishes and warnings of Samos the Sage, who Jak and his loudmouthed pal Daxter live with in Sandover Village, the pair head to the mysterious and incredibly dangerous Misty Island. Hiding behind a rock, they catch wind of a plan from two figures being told to an army of Lurkers, foul beasts that don't take kindly to trespassers. After the villains have vamoosed, Jak and Daxter near a pool of Dark Eco, a hazardous liquid to touch. Unfortunately, Daxter falls into the pool, and when he comes out he takes the form of an ottsel, that is a combination of an otter and a weasel. When the duo return to Sandover Village and receive their deserved scolding, Samos the Sage advises the two to trek to Gol Acheron, a sage of Dark Eco who might be the only person who can return Daxter to his original form.
"What the $%#% did you guys do!?"(Okay, that may not be the exact dialogue.)
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is a product of the nineties era of 3D platformers, despite being released in 2001. The focus is on exploring large interconnected worlds in order to gather various important collectibles through platforming and puzzle challenges.
You control Jak, with the always-wisecracking Daxter in tow on his back. The typical platformer arsenal is represented and accounted for-- you have your double jump, spin attack, glide attack, among many other helpful moves to progress through the game. Jak controls well, although his jumps aren't as impressive as say, competition like Mario, for example. However, there's no denying that moving Jak around and occasionally smacking enemies feels very nice and responsive, so in that essence, Jak is like Mario.
Sandover Village is where Jak and Daxtermake their tropical home.
However, Jak can have his powers heightened for a limited time with interactions to various types of Eco energy. Green Eco energy grants Jak full health; while Blue Eco energy augments Jak's speed, ability to pick up nearby objects, and also turns on various machinery; and lastly Red and Yellow Eco energies boosts Jak's strength and allows him to shoot beams from his fist respectively.
Although Jak can only put up with getting hit three times before it's lights out (and a snide remark from Daxter who stands over Jak's KO'd face), there's a healthy amount of checkpoints to be found, so it's rare to be forced to make up a lot of ground, saving players from a hassle most of the time.
Or become fish food and lose a life instantly!
Power Cells, of which there are 101 within the game's multitude of worlds, are the major collectible of Jak and Daxter. They are the collectible similar to the Power Stars of Super Mario 64, the Jiggies of Banjo-Kazooie, and the Golden Bananas of Donkey Kong 64. These are received through traditional platforming means (i.e. make it an obstacle course full of platforming peril), as well as through trading Precursor Orbs, the currency of the series, to numerous NPC's within the many worlds of the game. Much like the games it is modeled after, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy requires player to collect a certain number of Power Cells in order to progress at some points within the game.
Power Cells are to Jak and Daxterlike Jiggies are to Banjo and Kazooie.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy isn't a very long game, but its 10-12 hours of content will make most players happy, especially compared to the amount of time it takes to beat some more modern games with a higher price tag that release these days. Collecting all of the Power Cells takes a certain degree of skill, and finding all of the Precursor Orbs in every area of the game makes for even more longevity.
A real platforming fan would run alongthis narrow cliff side path like a boss!
As for the presentation, Jak and Daxter may be an early PS2 title, but it certainly didn't look or run the part. I don't mean that in a negative way either. The graphical gods at Naughty Dog crafted a seriously well performing product. While the game itself may look visually unimpressive, how the actual game runs is nothing short of amazing. There's no loading times to speak of, next to no fog in expansive areas, allowing you to easily see across long distances, and the transitions between worlds are seamless. The sound is less inspired. Don't get me wrong-- the voice work is top notch, if not excessively Saturday morning cartoon-like, but the music is highly forgettable and did little to engage me as a listener. It's not horrid by any means, but it's also not fantastic either. It's just there.
Play Misty Island for me.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was a promising start to a new PlayStation franchise. It's a shame Naughty Dog went a different direction with the series than I, as well as many others, would have liked. That said, the platforming is solid, the levels are well made, the humor is abundant, and the technical polish is immense. Jak and Daxter's first foray into gaming as well as Naughty Dog's first attempt at developing a PlayStation 2 game both were successful if not a tad long in tooth by today's standards. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Bloody Noon Cocktail Recipe
Bloody Noon Cocktail Recipe
A citrusy cocktail for Mother's Day or any day
Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of brunch is that there’s no stigma to drinking before noon. While I do enjoy the classics like Bloody Marys or Mimosas, I also like to create new cocktails, like the Bloody Noon—which is St. Germain elderflower liquor mixed with Blood Orange soda.
St. Germain is an elderflower liqueur, which legend—or PR—has it, is crafted from blossoms handpicked by beret-wearing men on bicycles in a secret location in the Alps. While that may be less than accurate, St. Germain does add a great floral and slightly herbal touch to drinks, making it especially good for afternoon—or before noon—drinking.
Bloody Noon Cocktail Recipe
Prep Time:
5 minutes
Cook Time:
5 minutes
Level of Difficulty:
Easy
Serving Size:
1 serving
Ingredients
2
ounces
blood orange soda
1
part
St. Germain
ice, crushed
Orange peel, for garnish
Orange slice, for garnish
Directions
In a glass, combine the blood orange soda and St. Germain over crushed ice. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Movie Star Planet is a free social interactive fantasy website created for children aged between 8 and 15 years old. Children get to choose from a variety of movie star characters, dress them up, choose their hairstyles, make movies, play games and chat.
The point of the game is to earn fame and fortune by social interacting, making movies and watching other people’s movies. In doing so you can earn Fame Points and Star Coins which can be used to buy more costumes, backdrops for your movies, animations, home decor, etc. Players can also exchange gifts, collect autographs and trade items.
The more competitions you enter, games you play, friends you have and interactions you make, the more rewards you are given and as you progress you can go higher up the levels which allows you to have more character animations and other additions.
What I found out:
Users are encouraged within the game to share email addresses of friends to receive rewards.
The more friends you have the more rewards you get! Encourages you to befriend strangers.
Lots of reports that chat is often very explicit and suggestive with lots of bad language being used by older users. The app does replace swear words with symbols but users are getting round it by using text speak.
Male users using suggestive user names.
Chat rooms full off users asking others for dates. Within the game your friend status can be changed to boyfriend or girlfriend.
If you report other users you are encouraged to add your email address in return for coins you can use in game
Games that children play are full of adverts lots of these are inappropriate for the age group.
YouTube is fully integrated within the app and lots of reports that users are linking inappropriate and suggestive videos to share.
It also appears to be well known for users hacking each other’s accounts to steal rewards and coins.
We hope you find this useful, should you have any questions or queries, or like to share anything across the network please let me know we thank you for your continued support. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Assisted Living, New England
Senior Living
Assisted Living Development, New England
Mystic Senior Living
In 2012, we were contacted by Joe Mastronunzio of Brom Builders in Norwich, CT. We are often contacted by builders like Joe and his brothers, who were residential and multifamily developers looking to get into senior living. Unlike many who contact us and have a particular property, they understood the value of market analysis to find the right market and location.
We agreed to conduct three studies encompassing most of New London County, CT before identifying opportunities in two markets, with the greatest opportunity in the Mystic market. Thereafter, we conducted financial analysis, sizing, sources and uses of funds, and discussed with a variety of lenders in the industry. The market was still rebounding from the crash with dramatically fewer opportunities for financing in 2012 than exist in 2015. This was particularly true for Independent Living, which is a consideration in addition to Assisted Living and Memory Care. Church Senior Living development opportunities may also be an option.
Realizing financing options were limited at the time, we focused on the Assisted Living only and conducted an RFQ/RFP to HUD mortgage brokers that helped us size that potential financing. Concurrently, we conducted an RFQ/RFP for an operator, an architect, and a builder to assemble key components of the team. Brom had done much development locally, so they addressed the need for local engineers, including civil and environmental, as the project moved forward. Brom identified a great site.
We served as a consultant for Brom during the initial 18 months or so of their journey as a Senior Living Developer. The site had some restrictions, including being best-suited for a building that was a combination of Assisted Living, Independent Living, and Memory Care. Brom initiated discussions with the Connecticut Masons and eventually came to terms to sell the site to them for development of 179 units to Masonicare (of Connecticut), retaining a stake in the project versus Brom’s affiliate as a stakeholder. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Commercial Wall Insulation System
Heat-Ceil Commercial Wall Insulation System
Product Description: Heat-Ceil Insulation in sheet form is a light weight rigid board made of a high grade polystyrene core with pure aluminum foil laminated to both sides that reflects 97% of radiant heat, contains fire retardant and is completely water resistant. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
SGM Music || Dejavoo - Give [Prod. Jad]
DEJAVOO finally drops a potential smash hit that should take over the airwaves in no time.
Produced by Jad, As an Artiste been managed by EMW. Dejavoo kept himself relevant and ready to give the world what he knows how to do best Dejavoo sound is to be appreciated now more than ever . “GIVE” is finally here. Do Enjoy it! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The Microsoft® Web Platform offers the right tools for the right task. Design, build, debug, and deploy websites withbest asics womens cross training shoes . And then test your sites in Windows® Internet Explorer® 10 using the built-in developer tools.
VIEW MORE Learn more from our User Guides Become a pro conference caller with the tips and tricks found in these documents.best asics womens cross training shoes ??Hue by Modculture 13 August, 2015 If you love The Avengers, you might just love The Avengers officially licensed pop art prints by Art & Hue. org From Before It was way too late when I left this time Walkhighlands Review Night Light Born to Lose: Live to Win Tom Control Passing Cold warning comes, for me.
Take your pick from 14 workouts including the CoachZone with Arm Toner and Glute Toner and Total and Lower Body Trainer modes for targeting specific areas.best asics womens cross training shoes Worse yet, if I find myself on one of those obsessive street wear forums that starts discussing the differences between a fake Ice Cream BBC top and a real one, I find myself getting even more confuzzled. ??I use my Macbook everyday and nearly everyday I find something new and interesting about it, whether it aids in my productivity, speed or pleasure in work.best asics womens cross training shoes
or your current Santander mortgage deal does not have an early repayment charge (excluding Flexible Offset mortgages). Hardcore Threesome Monique Alexander and the guy she picked up tonight were having a very nice and hard fuck session until her friend Alana came by her house to visit. Once you have a professional website you may also want to think about how you can improve your online marketing.best asics womens cross training shoes | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Insurance Is a Criminal’s Best Friend
Most residents of developed Western nations assume their justice systems are relatively infallible. Going through life without constantly worrying about whether people are capable of upholding a certain standard of objectivity and fairness is easier than the alternative.
But with human decisions come human biases, even in situations that demand objectivity. For example, crimes involving more victims can sometimes receive lesser punishments, an outcome known as the “identifiable victim effect.” With more victims, each one becomes less identifiable, and this elicits less sympathy for the victims and a corresponding punishment that’s less severe.
A new study (pdf) by a group of Tilburg University psychologists lays out another bias that can creep into evaluations of wrongdoing. In a series of six experiments the researchers found evidence for the “insured victim effect” — the tendency for perpetrators to be judged differently if the losses they cause are covered by insurance. In theory, a victim’s insurance status should be insignificant. If two people steal a car under identical circumstances, an objective justice system should punish them the same way regardless of whether the victim is reimbursed by an insurance company. Yet that’s not what the researchers found.
The initial set of experiments provided basic evidence for the insured victim effect by demonstrating that people recommend harsher punishments for the theft of uninsured items. A follow up experiment showed that the effect can occur even when the victim doesn’t suffer any harm. When participants were told a worker fell off a broken ladder because of a negligent manager, but that he suffered no harm, participants still recommended a harsher punishment for the manager when the worker was uninsured compared to when he had insurance.
Another follow up experiment pushed the boundaries of the insured victim effect even further. This time the two crimes were not the same. One group of participants read about somebody who stole an expensive and insured camera, while another group of participants read about somebody who stole a cheap and uninsured camera. Sure enough, participants recommended milder punishments for the person who stole the expensive and insured camera. Even when the crime was objectively worse, the presence of insurance caused people to be more lenient.
It’s worth noting that the insured-victim effect can be mitigated. Most of the experiments in the study included a condition in which participants evaluated an uninsured-victim scenario and an insured-victim scenario back-to-back. In these conditions people tended to rate the crimes the same regardless of the victim’s insurance status. The researchers concluded that when a comparison point is available, people manage to focus strictly on the nature of the crime. However, when there is no comparison, people tend to be swayed by legally irrelevant details conerning the crime’s consequences for the victim.
The problem, as the researchers point out, is that justice systems tend to not provide comparison points:
Legal systems are often rooted in the premise that punishments should be proportional to the harm caused. However, the harmfulness of an unethical act is evaluated differently when crimes are judged jointly or separately…
It is important to realize that, in real life situations, judges or jury members are usually in a separate rather than in a joint condition. Legal policy makers should be aware that people in separate evaluation are more easily swayed by legally irrelevant details (such as the insurance status of victims) when sentencing perpetrators. This conclusion is in particular pertinent for jury members who, unlike judges, have no experience and do not reason in a comparative fashion.
The easy solution is to prevent a victim’s insurance status from being mentioned in a courtroom, although that seems unlikely given the way lawyers tend to focus on every little detail. Perhaps it’s best to simply acknowledge another chink in the armor of objective justice, and be more vigilant when it comes to scrutinizing what judges and juries believe to be undeniably fair.
Update: 4/16
My esteemed father, a lawyer and infrequent SCOTUSblog contributor, passes along this link, which suggests that discussing insurance information is almost never permissible in court.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-van de Calseyde, P.P., Keren, G., & Zeelenberg, M. (2013). The insured victim effect: When and why compensating harm decreases punishment recommendations Judgment and Decision Making
Advertisements
Share this:
Related
2 Responses to Insurance Is a Criminal’s Best Friend
Your insight here is actually at the center of US bank policy at the moment. Technically insolvent To Big To Fail banks operate at a lower cost than their solvent but smaller peers because not only does our Fed/Treasury stand behind their every bad bet (but only for TBTF institutions) but our Justice Department has said any prosecution of the executives who annually certify the book (as required by Sarbanes Oxly) for the fraudulent character of their annual reports will forgone for the “health of the economy”.
Because we are all insuring banking losses through the Fed/Treasury, our powers that be have decided no punishment whatsoever is required for the largest frauds in history. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
How to Buy Stock for Increase Profit in Market
Buy direct:Trifid Research Pvt Ltd offer direct stock purchase plans. Search online or call or write the Trifid Research whose stock you desire to buy, to inquire whether they recommend such a plan; ask them to forward you a copy of their strategy prospectus, application forms, and other appropriate information.
Most strategy allows you to supply as low as $50 per month, automatically withdrawn from your bank account.
Give close attention mainly to the fees involved. A only some companies, such as Trifid Research, offer no fee investment plans.
Direct stock purchase strategy also allows you to reinvest all your dividends manually. Your dividend is a payment made to stock-holders, based on the business profits of the corporation. Some companies even give you a concession, such as 5%, for dividend reinvestment.
Use an online discount adviser: Search for “online discount adviser” on a search engine to discover a list of adviser that you can use to buy and sell stock market tips online. Be sure to compare their fees and see if they have any unknown fees before registration. Minimizing fees and expense is solution to successful invested.
On the other hand, use a full service adviser. A full service adviser is like to a discount dealer as discussed above, except that they charge considerably high fees, and offer investment suggestion and more investigate tools. Because full service adviser are paid generally by commissions, it is in their best attention to encourage you to deal as frequently as probable, even though it may not be in your best awareness.
Stock market prices are also affected by income reports, which companies make public four times a year. If a Trifid research releases strong earnings reports, its stock market is likely to go up. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Sonya Yu is a culinary professional photographer based in San Francisco. Unrelated to food, she takes many pictures of her travels, her life, which can be discovered, for example, on her tumblr. But what interests us here is this funny series about her French bulldog called Trotter, that she disguised and dressed in different ways. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
The 7th International
Conference and Exhibition on CHEMISTRY IN INDUSTRY (CHEMINDIX 2007),
provides a forum for open high-level discussions on the technology trends,
opportunities and challenges in oil and petrochemical industries, emerging
new approaches for managing oil fields, new process technologies to
produce petrochemicals from oil, recent advances in catalyst, process
technology for petrochemical and refining processes, new analytical
methods and techniques to improve oil & petrochemical operations, evolving
technologies and applications in the Gulf GCC region,
sustaining and promoting a prosperous economy and healthier environment,
impact of chemistry on industry and society,
novel breakthroughs to further develop the petroleum and chemical industry.
Scientists,
engineers, officials, and others interested or involved in the above
mentioned areas are invited to attend and participate in this biannual
event. In doing so, the founders and organizers of CHEMINDIX 2007 hope to
establish a central hub for the rapid exchange of ideas and results
emanating from the many diverse areas of petrochemical industries. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Actions
Multiple firefighters injured in explosion at Portland bagel shop
Posted: 1:31 PM, Oct 19, 2016
Updated:2016-10-19 20:26:21Z
By:
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A powerful natural gas explosion rocked a busy Portland, Oregon, shopping district Wednesday, injuring eight people and igniting a fire that sent a huge plume of smoke over the heart of the city.
Three firefighters, two police officers and three civilians were hurt and one of the firefighters was in surgery Wednesday afternoon for a broken leg, authorities said. None of the injuries appeared life-threatening.
A building that housed a bagel shop and a beauty salon in the popular NW 23rd Street shopping district was reduced to rubble and its smoldering roof was splayed across the road.
The exterior of a building next door also was ripped off. Its windows were blown out, exposing the insides of what appeared to be high-end apartments, and debris was everywhere.
Firefighters swarmed the scene and dumped water from ladder trucks onto the smoking wreckage.
Structural engineers were asked to assess the building's integrity, and neighbors were told to shelter in place.
The situation could have been much worse.
Portland's NW 23rd Street — nicknamed "Trendy Third" — is packed with boutiques, bars and restaurants. Many of the businesses are on the street level with pricey apartments on the upper levels, and there's a day care in the vicinity.
But the explosion happened before 10 a.m. when many businesses were still closed, and first responders also had warning.
The utility that serves the area got a call saying that a construction crew had hit a gas line and authorities and utility workers who investigated had evacuated the building, said Melissa Moore, a spokeswoman for NW Natural.
People in the neighborhood reported smelling gas as they were evacuated and later felt the explosion.
An employee at a nearby kitchen accessories store said he was in the washroom when he felt a huge explosion and emerged to find thick smoke and haze. Scott Bergler said 15 windows in the first-floor store were blown out.
As he evacuated the Kitchen Kaboodle shop, Bergler saw a firefighter on the ground who had been knocked flat by the blast.
"He was obviously in shock and crawling and having a hard time standing up," said Bergler, who was still visibly shaken by the ordeal as he gathered with co-workers in a parking lot.
Nicole Christiansen climbed exterior stairs to a rooftop of a nearby building so her 2-year-old son, Theo, could see everyone was safe.
The child had been evacuated from his day care center just before the blast but heard the explosion and was scared, she said. He looked on with wide eyes and clutched a crumpled napkin from an unfinished snack as firefighters poured water on the building.
"I saw the smoke from way down the hill, and I realized he was impacted," she said. "He has to go home."
Wow. Before and after of building affected by apparent explosion in NW Portland | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Ferrer-Paris, J., SĂĄnchez-Mercado, A., Viloria, Ă., Donaldson, J.
We aggregated data on butterfly-host plant associations from existing sources in order to address the following questions: (1) is there a general correlation between host diversity and butterfly species richness?, (2) has the evolution of host plant use followed consistent patterns across butterfly lineages?, (3) what is the common ancestral host plant for all butterfly lineages? The compilation included 44,148 records from 5,152 butterfly species (28.6% of worldwide species of Papilionoidea) and 1,193 genera (66.3%). The overwhelming majority of butterflies use angiosperms as host plants. Fabales is used by most species (1,007 spp.) from all seven butterfly families and most subfamilies, Poales is the second most frequently used order, but is mostly restricted to two species-rich subfamilies: Hesperiinae (56.5% of all Hesperiidae), and Satyrinae (42.6% of all Nymphalidae). We found a significant and strong correlation between host plant diversity and butterfly species richness. A global test for congruence (Parafit test) was sensitive to uncertainty in the butterfly cladogram, and suggests a mixed system with congruent associations between Papilionidae and magnoliids, Hesperiidae and monocots, and the remaining subfamilies with the eudicots (fabids and malvids), but also numerous random associations. The congruent associations are also recovered as the most probable ancestral states in each node using maximum likelihood methods. The shift from basal groups to eudicots appears to be more likely than the other way around, with the only exception being a Satyrine-clade within the Nymphalidae that feed on monocots. Our analysis contributes to the visualization of the complex pattern of interactions at superfamily level and provides a context to discuss the timing of changes in host plant utilization that might have promoted diversification in some butterfly lineages.
Documenting changes in distribution is necessary for understanding speciesâ response to environmental changes, but data on species distributions are heterogeneous in accuracy and resolution. Combining dif- ferent data sources and methodological approaches can fill gaps in knowledge about the dynamic pro- cesses driving changes in species-rich, but data-poor regions. We combined recent bird survey data from the Neotropical Biodiversity Mapping Initiative (NeoMaps) with historical distribution records to estimate potential changes in the distribution of eight species of Amazon parrots in Venezuela. Using environmental covariates and presence-only data from museum collections and the literature, we first used maximum likelihood to fit a species distribution model (SDM) estimating a historical maximum probability of occurrence for each species. We then used recent, NeoMaps survey data to build single- season occupancy models (OM) with the same environmental covariates, as well as with time- and effort-dependent detectability, resulting in estimates of the current probability of occurrence. We finally calculated the disagreement between predictions as a matrix of probability of change in the state of occurrence. Our results suggested negative changes for the only restricted, threatened species, Amazona barbadensis, which has been independently confirmed with field studies. Two of the three remaining widespread species that were detected, Amazona amazonica, Amazona ochrocephala, also had a high prob- ability of negative changes in northern Venezuela, but results were not conclusive for Amazona farinosa. The four remaining species were undetected in recent field surveys; three of these were most probably absent from the survey locations (Amazona autumnalis, Amazona mercenaria and Amazona festiva), while a fourth (Amazona dufresniana) requires more intensive targeted sampling to estimate its current status. Our approach is unique in taking full advantage of available, but limited data, and in detecting a high probability of change even for rare and patchily-distributed species. However, it is presently limited to species meeting the strong assumptions required for maximum-likelihood estimation with presence- only data, including very high detectability and representative sampling of its historical distribution.
Berlingeri, C., Crespo, M.
A prerequisite in any conservation programme of Plant Genetic Resources is estimation of diversity. The inventory of wild and naturalized relatives of priority crops in Venezuela (CWR) is based on the main Catalogues of Flora in the country, selecting taxa closely related to crops, according to the concepts of âgene poolâ and âtaxonomic groupâ. We included 47 genera, 217 species and 228 taxa belonging to 28 plant families. Among them, those with higher richness are: Fabaceae, Solanaceae, Araceae, Lauraceae, Dioscoreaceae, Poaceae, Rosaceae and Myrtaceae. Genera with a higher number of species are Xanthosoma, Persea, Dioscorea, Prunus, Psidium, Phaseolus, Solanum, Vigna, Capsicum, Manihot, Theobroma, Ipomoea and Oryza. A total of 26 endemic species are found, which belong to genera Xanthosoma, Persea, Dioscorea, Prunus and Manihot. The primary gene pool of crops include native species from genera such as Manihot, Solanum (Section Petota), Lycopersicon, Ananas, Capsicum, Dioscorea, Xanthosoma, Phaseolus, Theobroma, Ipomoea, Gossypium, Arracacia and Psidium. Genera with native species weakly related to crops are Saccharum, Persea, Ipomoea, Prunus, Vigna, Solanum (Section Melongena) and Daucus. Crop genera without native species in Venezuela are Allium, Musa, Brassica, Spinacia, Helianthus, Pisum, Lactuca, Citrus, Elaeis, Beta, Glycine and Triticum. Only a few taxa have already been evaluated according to the IUCN criteria, and Venezuelan accessions of crop wild relatives in national and international genebanks are very scarce.
Panbiogeographic analysis of Vexillata (Nematoda: Ornithostrongylidae) and its hosts (Mammalia: Rodentia). A panbiogeographic analysis was carried out, based on a parsimony analysis of ende- micity (PAE) to analyze the species of helminth intestinal parasites of the genus Vexillata (Nematoda: Ornithostrongylidae) and their host species, mammals of the families Geomyidae and Heteromyidae. Two analyses were undertaken, the first using only those species of Vexillata with more than two locali- ties, and the second analyzing all localities of this genus as a single track. Three generalized tracks were obtained by the first PAE: northern coast of Venezuela, Central America and Nearctic. Only one track was identified by a parasite and its host (V. tejerai and Heteromys anomalus). It proposes the existence of two biogeographical nodes, the first is located between the northern coast of Venezuela and Central America, on the boundaries of northeast Colombia and Panama (Colombia node); and the other in Central Mexico. Those track and nodes overlap with some proposed by other authors. In general, it appears that these systems can be explained as three biotic components. In the case of the South American component might correspond with the isolation of species (V. scorzai), as well as by species that had expanded their geographical distribution (V. tejerai), it could be related to mobilism stages of their host (Heteromys). | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Riding in a Car made of Sticky Tape
My friend Totò, a bright-eyed and sprightly septuagenarian, had a maroon Alfa Romeo which was, basically, made of sticky tape. I don’t mean trashy thin stuff, I mean the top quality wide, brown parcel kind.
By the time I had seen his car enter the final, declining years of its life, that brown parcel tape was holding the doors on, it was fixing the windscreen in (which was made of transparent polythene), it was wound all round the middle of the car going over the roof and under the undercarriage, it was holding the rear bumper on (at one side, anyway) and it was even securing the hubcaps.
Once the car became afflicted with ‘failure to thrive’, the driver’s seat was upholstered in a solid sheet of sticky tape strips, patchwork style, with no trace of the original leather to be seen. The vehicle had no number plates near the tragic end, I think because Totò must have run out of tape before he got to them.
Signor Totò works at the village’s small Town Hall. The town hall in the village is so small that Signor Totò is the only person who works there. I am deliberately excluding the fat lady at the entrance who swats flies away and asks you your name, then sits there not telling Totò, and just waves you through to his office. She is there, yes, but you could not say that she works.
Totò was the first friend I made in Sicily, independently of my husband. He is one of the few men in the village who is not a fisherman. He is related to every other person in the village and they tease him about his famous namesake, for Signor Totò has the same name and surname as a recent President of Sicily, who governed the island for two years while on trial for being in the Mafia. He was sentenced to five years in prison but decided not to stand down as president immediately, instead declaring he would continue his full term of government and go to jail afterwards.
Whilst it is impossible for anyone outside Sicily to imagine how this could possibly be possible, here it merely provokes a day of grumbling and some groans of irritation, like the “Here we go again” groans of weary irritation on the London Underground when commuters are told their train has been taken out of service because there is a terrorist bomb on it.
Whilst our Town Hall is small, it resides in part of a sprawling, late seventeenth century villa. The only structurally sound part, in fact.
The facade boasts twin marble staircases which curve outwards and upwards in grandiose, once-magnificent semicircles and unite at the main entrance on the first floor. This is the classic design of the Sicilian baroque villa and it is always a terrible dilemma choosing which staircase to walk up, because they are both so badly cracked and crumbling that either one of them could suddenly give way beneath you and leave you with a sprained ankle and a broken nose.
“What if I go up this one and break some bones, when I could have used that one and been safe one more time?” one ponders anxiously at the foot of the staircases.
All the other offices in the building are so badly flooded, when it rains, that it is like a monsoon indoors, Totò told me. That is why his office is the only room in the building that is used any more.
“Why don’t they restore it?” I asked. “This building could be stunning if they fixed the corners back on.”
“They’ll wait until a piece falls on someone and they get sued, then they’ll do something. Until then, they won’t spend a Euro on it,” he told me.
I like to walk whenever the weather is decent, so I am often to be seen pottering about the vilage. Totò is most gentlemanly and always offers me a lift if he passes me on foot. He drives very slowly and safely.
Last week, I was caught out in an unexpected shower of light rain. My hero Signor Totò came to the rescue.
“Would you mid draping the seat belt across your body?” he asked as I settled into the passenger seat. “I know there’s nothing for it to click into, but at least it looks OK if the vigili urbani (traffic police) are checking. I’ve been bossing them around a bit too much lately, so they’re looking to get their own back. There are a couple who are not nephews of mine, so I can’t really keep them under control. They all know this car last passed its MOT nine years ago.”
We exchanged the usual pleasantries, then Totò suddenly said,
“I must apologise for going so slowly. My wife thinks I’m a cowardly driver, but I can’t risk getting up too much vibration. It heats up the bodywork and melts the glue, so the tape unravels.”
While we rolled along, chillaxing at 12 miles per hour, a car approached which was rather like a go-kart, in that it had no bodywork other than the absolute essentials. I think it was composed of pieces from at least five different types of Fiat, judging by the range of colours and the fact that the parts did not fit together particularly well. It was at least 80% rust.
“Cor, look at that heap of junk!” laughed Signor Totò, stepping on the accelerator and shooting up to almost 20 mph in a sudden surge of confidence. “How embarrassing to be seen in such an old banger!”
TOTO’S CAR REPAIR KIT
As we passed the x-ray go-kart, we realised its exhaust pipe was scraping along the road releasing sparks like a firework. It made a tinny noise, as if the driver and passenger were newlyweds and the scrap metal they were towing behind them had been tied on by their scallywag friends.
And that, my friends, was the fateful moment.
There was a dire ‘clonk’ noise from somewhere down below us, and Signor Totò and I exchanged glances. We both knew something terrible had happened to his vintage Alfa Romeo. Totò pulled over and we jumped out: His exhaust pipe was lying in the road, several metres behind us, trailing probably not less than 20 miles of tangled, sticky brown tape in its wake. Smoke was billowing out from under the bonnet. Finally, there was a decisive ‘Poff’ noise, and the engine cut out.
That was when we both knew: the end had come.
“My dear old Alfa Romeo,” said Totò, like a priest delivering the last rites, “you have served me well these past twenty-three years, but henceforth I will save a fortune in sticky tape. We must now part company for ever. Che liberazione! Good riddance!”
25 thoughts on “Riding in a Car made of Sticky Tape”
Ha ha very funny, There are so many cars running around in Sicily that should be put out of their misery.
I watched a tatty old car in Catania fail its MOT because the exhaust emission was too high. The problem was resolved in 30 seconds, they stuck the emission monitor up the exhaust of a new car and used the results to pass the tatty car.
I am sure the odd euro passed hands, or the favour would be repaid in different way.
I used to drive one of those cars that needed to be put out of its misery.
Our best man made it pass its MOT for the last 3 years. He didn’t bother with the exhaust readings fiddle. He just repaired anything that could put our live in danger and ignored the rest, writing that it was all perfect. There was a LOT to ignore!
There are many equivalents of Toto’s car here, mainly 2CV’s and Renault 4L’s. You generally hear them long before you see them. I loved your description of the town hall; it sounds…. ah , yes, that’s the word I was looking for…. authentic. Hope you grabbed the opportunity to perform the last rights – probably an all time first for a woman in Sicily, even if it IS for a car…. 🙂
This whole post made me laugh so hard. Here in the US, you’ll occasionally see duct tape (the silvery-gray cloth stuff) holding a plastic sheet over a broken window, or used to reupholster a seat or affix a broken hose. But not for major bodywork.
I had the most white knuckle ride of my life in a smart car through the streets of Catania. The rental car man dead panned us a look when we requsted a nice car. He said, “Where you are going..no nice cars.” When I saw some of the beater Catania cars, I understood it would be cheaper to fix a smart car :). People were passing each other on the sidewalks in cars, too. I was wondering if you could comment on those road side tables with umbrellas. We almost stopped at one for refreshments until I realized this was not the place for a cool drink!
Ha haaaa!
I’ve seen people driving up the pavements (or sidewalks as you Americans say) quite a few times. The worst case was when I was parking, and a guy raced up the pavement, behind five cars, and wedged himself into my space from the other side!!!!!
Oddly enough, I’ve never heard of anything happening to people at paevment cafés. Sicilians do regard food and eating as sacred, so perhaps that’s why they are careful around eating venues. 🙂
There is an upside to this, though! I once returned a rental car in Sicily with a great big dent in one door. I was expecting to be charged a small fortune, but the man just said “Oh that’s not damage, that’s normal wear and tear,” and didn’t charge me anything!
That doesn’t surprise me..lol. There were three of us, all nurses, in that smart car. My friend wouldn’t drive for 24 hours after we reached the hotel because she was so stressed.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device from WIND
It’s true they’re very open and relaxed.
Sorry to hear you find the northerners around you less friendly. I have met a lot of friendly people in northern Italy too… maybe it just needs more time? To be perfectly honest, it has taken me an extremely long time here in Sicily to take things from acquaintanceship to the stage of actually having real friends.
I live in the countryside, and when I moved into my rental house my landlord’s family was very confused because I was a 50+ year old woman living alone. They could not fathom me not living with a husband or sons for protection.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device from WIND
Reblogged this on My Sicilian Home and commented:
After all the posts that I have done recently on driving in Sicily and on la bella figura, I couldn’t help but reblog this post…it had me giggling with the picture it created in my head. I think it is only out in the countryside that you see things like this. I recommend you drop by and read more than one post of this dangerously truthful Sicilian housewife!
You make me want to hop on a plane and visit. I may never come back here though.
Back in the good ole days when we could get away with a car like that we would. Now the inspections are so strict my car wouldn’t pass because it had sharp rust underneath it. Someone might get cut. Well what are they doing under my car and if they are there they deserve to be cut. That was my thinking, but not the garage. We bought the bondo and I did the reconstructive surgery myself. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Omg, this is wonderful! I don't know anything about inlaying, but I like how smooth the two metals are when they touch. I feel like that's probably really difficult to keep clean looking. Had to forward this to my gamer friends. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
High Court of Justice and Supreme Court
The new Campus of Justice in Madrid is the largest single site dedicated to justice in Europe, the Campus will reinvent the judicial process in the region by fully integrating its many existing buildings.
The new Campus of Justice in Madrid is the largest single site dedicated to justice in Europe, the Campus will reinvent the judicial process in the region by fully integrating its many existing buildings. Foster + Partners’ designs for two new buildings – the Regional Appeal Courts and the High Court – will promote the values of transparency, accountability and democracy that drive the overall concept for the scheme, acting as a touchstone for further development on the site.
Following the masterplan, the two distinct circular volumes of the larger Audiencia Provincial (Regional Appeals Court) and the smaller Tribunal Superior de Justicia (High Court) establish a dynamic relationship, and are linked by an open public plaza. Symbolic of improved public accessibility and a greater transparency of the legal system, the buildings communicate the judicial process honestly and openly. Environmentally, both buildings are efficiently oriented to minimise unwanted solar gain, while allowing natural daylight inside.
Situated adjacent to the new Terminal 4 of Barajas Airport, the Campus will be well served by public transport links.
Audiencia Provincial (The Appeals Court)
The Appeals Court is a six-storey drum-shaped building with an undulating façade. It is penetrated by a full-height atrium at its centre, which repeats the swelling contours of the building, and is capped by a glazed roof. Its wide, welcoming entrance is guarded by a discreet security filter. At ground level, a large, decorative pool resonates with the use of water in vernacular Spanish architecture. It generates an animated visual experience as daylight is reflected, while it also cools and humidifies the environment.
The first two levels accommodate 33 courtrooms, clustered in groups of two or three and accessed via bridges. The grouping relates to the division of courts into criminal, civil and mercantile, therefore rationalising the circulation within the building. The upper levels are raised above these court rooms, providing offices at the perimeter of the building with meeting rooms encircling the atrium.
The President’s suite is symbolically placed at the top.
Tribunal Superior de Justicia (High Court)
The High Court is housed within a smaller, circular building, punctuated by a dramatic wedge-shaped aperture that forms a tall and slender entrance and widens into a central triangular atrium. The emphasis is on efficient, vertical movement through the building, in contrast with the non-linear diagram of the Appeals Court. The atrium slices through the building revealing the interior in section. Above, there are seven sculptural courtrooms, while the lower levels are occupied by a ring of administrative offices, and an information point for the public. The President’s suite occupies the highest position, perched above the courtrooms on a glazed mezzanine level. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Check out these photo eBooks of Heather:
Available for Amazon Kindle Fire®, Apple iPad®, Android devices, and Mac or PC computers. You can get kindle for your pc from amazon, if needed. It's free and works great! (see some sample screenshots below). Also, Heather gets 100% of the sale price from any purchase you make here.
Heather is at heart a country girl, having grown up in a semi-rural community in upstate New York. She spent a substantial portion of her childhood wandering her grandfather's farm in Pennsylvania, and most of her fondest memories from her youth are firmly rooted there. Now she lives in a rural area of the great state of Maine with her husband/photographer, and wouldn't trade her locale for anything.
A sample eBook page from "Lady Heather: ONE WITH NATURE" as viewed on an iPad.
Heather has an interesting ethnic makeup. Part of her lineage can be traced back to Pocahontas, in fact, which certainly explains some of her natural beauty! She writes, however, that "I am half Italian, and my Italian features and characteristics reveal themselves in fairly obvious ways. My other half is a lively combination of Scottish, English, Native American [thank you, Pocahontas], and who knows what else!" Whatever her ancestry, it has all combined to create a perfect storm of beauty with the uniqueness that is Heather. She adds, "I have often been described as 'the girl next door,' which captures one of the things people find most appealing about me--that I am 'a real woman.' I'm honored, and often a bit bemused, by all the kind things said about me."
Some quotes from her admirers: Very few women can portray beauty, sensuality, class and all the while be so wonderfully adorable. || She is SO sensual! || She has a rare desirability. || Her face is so tender. || She is a wonderful, sensual, soft, delicate thing of beauty. || She has a look that enters the soul of the beholder. || She has beautiful, magnetic eyes that speak volumes. ||She is radiant & sultry, and perfectly expresses sensual feelings and emotions. || I have lived and worked all over the world and seen a lot of gorgeous women, but I have found none more sexy and alluring!
Heather
gets 100% of the profits from the eBook sales, and that money helps us
to be able to afford new outfits for her to model, as well as traveling
to--and staying at--nice locations for new photo shoots ... so, we just
want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has purchased at least one
of them. :) It makes a big difference for us, in many ways! :)
We have all the books on our tables around the living room. Everyone who comes to visit spends some time flipping through them and exclaiming over the wonderful images. They all comment on Heahter's natural beauty and on how the images reflect the connection between the artist and the model. Each book is a work of art in its own right as is each image in each book. Thank you for allowing us to share in your photographic adventures. Lin | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Cooperation applies the situations where two or more individuals obtain a net benefit by working together. Cooperation is widely spread in nature and takes several forms, ranging from behavioral coordination to sacrifice of one’s own life for the benefit of the group. This latter form of cooperation is known as “true cooperation”, or “altruism”, and is found only in few cases. Truly cooperative robots would be very useful in conditions where unpredictable events may require costly actions by individual robots for the success of the mission. However, the interactions among robots sharing the same environment can affect in unexpected ways the behavior of individual robots, making very difficult the design of rules that produce stable cooperative behavior. It is thus interesting to examine under which conditions truly cooperative behavior evolves in nature and how those conditions can be translated into evolutionary algorithms that are applicable to a wide range of robotic situations. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
McGuire was sentenced to 10 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections on each count with count two to run concurrent to count one, for a total of 10 years behind bars. Before being released, she is to begin paying restitution to the victim in the amount of $23,496, court costs of $451.50, $100 to the Crime Victim’s Compensation fund and a $500 fine.
At the time the crimes were committed, McGuire worked as a caregiver to the victim and wrote checks to herself without the victim’s permission. For a period of about four months, McGuire cashed $23,496 in checks from the victim’s accounts for her own use.
The case was investigated by Shannon Spence of the Attorney General’s Vulnerable Adults Unit and prosecuted by Special Assistant Attorney General Larry Baker. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Farming in the Freezing Cold
Living, as we do, in Canada, we face farming in the freezing cold. This week we're experiencing below-normal temps and having kept our older laying hens longer than usual to supply our growing market demand, we are now experiencing the difficulties of winter. Our little coop is not insulated, therefore not winter-proof. We keep our larger young layer flock in an insulated barn where they easily keep each other warm.
The water, in the coop where the senior layers live right now, is easily kept thawed using an electric heat tape. The chickens keep each other warm enough to survive, but their laying production rates definitely go down if the temperature in their coop gets too low. In addition, the eggs need to be collected every hour or two if we hope to salvage any because they freeze and crack allowing contaminents into the egg and rendering them inedible for human comsumption.
Thankfully, most of our senior layers have found retirement homes on various local acreages. A few remain, headed for the stew pot or an unfortunate demise with the local friendly fox that's been lurking around...maybe they'll help us snare the fox?! Better to catch one now than six in spring!! Can't let those critters multiply around a chicken farm...been there, done that! Not pretty!
No comments:
About Me
We grow nutrient dense, clean food – no chemicals, no pesticides, non- GMO – ALL Natural foods that promote life. We are not certified organic, instead we grow everything beyond organic standards.
We want it for our family -- we offer it to yours! | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.